Colour neg scanning with a flatbed?

Tight Fart

Tight Fart

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Is there an easy way I can scan 100s of colour negative strips on a flatbed scanner, and then save and view as positive?
(I have an old version of Photoshop 8)
 
I'd say try it and see, I have done it with 6x9 negs years back and they came our ok-ish, but scanners vary a lot. If I remember rightly I scanned a bit of clear leader in first and and used it as the basis for a filter to remove the colour cast unless your scanner has the option for colour neg film.
To be honest the price of a film scanner has come down, you can pick them quite reasonably, my Canon flatbed actually has a film scanner built it, and the quality isn't up to proper film scanners but it's fine for an A4 of for the web if you need a quick picture for something.
Note a proper film scanner can be quite slow, if you've got hundreds to do take a week or two off. ;)
 
I'm not fussed on the quality just looking for a quick easy way to view in colour to pick the ones for a film scanner.
 
Not quite the same, but if you have a lightbox* and an i-phone, there is an application which can view negatives as positives.

Might be enough to work out which have potential for a proper scan.

(* a window would probbably work)


Steve.
 
For speed, you could just select by assessing content / composition and tonal range with a lightbox and a loupe ....
 
Well it's time consuming even using an expensive flatbed as well as scanning you sometimes have to adjust for colours, exposure etc in Photoshop...well unless you don't mind and just wants to see what's on the neg. But if in the UK and near a Asda superstore they would scan 36 frames and put on a CD for £2, this way you can see if any shots are winners and then go from there.

BTW forgot.... a flatbed scanner will auto convert a neg to positive and you usually have a choice of JPG or TIFF file.
 
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On Asdas web site the cost is £34 for 50 negs upto £350 for a 1000?
My flatbeds won't convert the scans, my Nikon film scanner could take an hour to do a dozen files!
 
Tight Fart said:
On Asdas web site the cost is £34 for 50 negs upto £350 for a 1000?
My flatbeds won't convert the scans, my Nikon film scanner could take an hour to do a dozen files!
Click to expand...

See the girl in the store as she told me £2 up to 36exp...... in fact if you get a film dev at the same time for £2 then it only cost £1 to scan to a CD and you get a thumbnail index of your shots.
Anyway £34 for 50 negs is ridiculous as with their machine she could do 50 negs in about 15-20 mins.
 
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I thought there may have been a way to scan the negs onto one file to view as positive, like the old proof sheets (36 to a page) , I have several thousand to look through. To do one at at time with a dslr and slide adaptor would take forever.
 
Depending on the size of the light source built into the lid there's nothing stopping you scanning strips of negatives side by side at the same time. The software (Viewscan/Epson Scan/Silverfast etc) will then just invert the whole scan so you end up with a contact print style image.
 
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If you have lots to do and you can afford it, I'd strongly recommend a dedicated 35mm scanner that can do a roll at a time. I use a Pakon 135+ which scans a roll in about 10 to 15 minutes, including loading and unloading, exporting the pictures etc. A lot of people seem to buy them to scan their archive of old films then re-sell them on eBay. The way the price of these old scanners are going, you may even make a profit :D
 
stevelmx5 said:
Depending on the size of the light source built into the lid there's nothing stopping you scanning strips of negatives side by side at the same time. The software (Viewscan/Epson Scan/Silverfast etc) will then just invert the whole scan so you end up with a contact print style image.
Click to expand...

I have done this using a cheap all-in-one printer-scanner, with a set of 6*9 black and white negatives that I found amongst my old negative envelopes, from a folder I bought, only used once and then forgot all about. It worked pretty well for what it was. It's troublesome getting the negatives (or strips) lined up, but for the OP's purposes it might be appropriate. I'd strongly recommend finding some way to associate the scanned file names with the envelopes; I invented a systematic file naming scheme (including the rough year, film type and a clue about contents), then wrote the file names on the negative envelopes.

Results for colour negatives are likely to be much less successful than black and white, because of the orange colour of the underlying film base. A simple inversion won't give a good result, but will at least enable you to tell what the subjects are, so as to work out which films to scan later.

In my own case, I decided quite early on that I was interested in the whole set rather than cherry picking, and I scanned everything from 1967 to about 1980, and then did some cherry picking after that (holidays and travel etc, rather than every stage of my kids growing up). I would quite like to fill in the gaps but the initial push has faded as I do new films. I started in March 2011 and finished the bulk of it (134 films) by November that year, with a few more bursts later as I found more, interesting sets.
 
Theoretically you could do a contact sheet with a v700 sized scanner. They've got a 10x8 backlight which is basically the same surface as a 36 exp roll of 35mm, so lay out the cut film and scan at a fairly low resolution. The quality won't be great as the scanner focuses a few mm beyond the glass but it'll be good enough for your purposes.
 
Any of the old flatbed scanner with a 10x8 light hood would do a contact sheet especially as many included the frame to hold a whole roll of 35mm film.

As with all the flat bed options, (Even the New ones) quality is minimal often only good enough for screen or Electronic projection and focus is never spot on, (Thats the same with most current film scanners as well)

Scan time will depend on resolution set but can be quite quick if set to a lower resolution, which with flat bed scanners you should be doing as none of them come close to their claimed resolution.
 
i think the cheaper option would be to buy a second hand flatbed scanner, i own v700, it does the job for contact sheet plus you have more control over rather than giving it to someone else. And in future if you really want to blow it up, you can do drum scan for a price
 
I now have quite a good solution, I now take a picture of the neg with an old canon G5, reverse it in Photoshop and it works quite well, I'll put the results up if anyone's interested.
 
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