Photographing negatives and slides

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I apologise now if this is a dumb question. I would try it out myself except my macro lens is not in the same county as myself.

Is there any reason why you can't photograph negatives and slides rather than scanning them? Perhaps taping them to a window and using the diffuse light on an overcast day to do so? Does inverting a negative give a correct positive?

I'm trying to reduce the amount of clutter in my life, buying a film scanner isn't really something that I want to do.
 
CharlotteM said:
Does inverting a negative give a correct positive?
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It won't be far off, they'll obviously need some basic tweaks but nothing that can't be done in a few minutes with photoshop.

Using a lightbox would probably be better than a window, an iPad/tablet at a push would, do but beware of Newton rings if the film isn't perfectly flat on the surface you use.
 
Thanks guys, I will give it a go with confidence then!
 
RaglanSurf said:
Musicman gave it a go with a home made set up recently http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/using-a-sony-a7-as-a-35mm-film-scanner.520691/
Personally although I don't have a huge amount of space at home and I could do with getting rid of a couple of scanners I couldn't be doing with the faffing about and having to scan 1 frame at a time but if you've got the patience the results are very acceptable.
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I've said most of what I needed to on that thread, but all I can say is that IME it's a lot quicker and easier than doing it with a flatbed scanner. :)
 
ive just done a bunch by hand, the few ive looked at on pc have been okish, if you take a blank piece of film (between frames for example) and set that as white balance, take your pics then when you invert you should be very close on white balance. biggest annoyance and issues are keeping film straight, holding a roll in place, having a smooth defused light source, getting tripod and camera fairly level with the film and not have fingers in the way...
now im just trying to figure out a workflow with the bits ive got...
thinking of dxo crop and convert to tiff, then batch conversion in irfanview with negative selected (inverts colours)
 
PMN said:
Just as a random idea, could you use something like the film holders that come with scanners like the V500 to hold the film in place?
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I had wondered if I still had some holders from an old flatbed scanner I used to have, but I think I threw them away. Must be easy to pick up on eBay though.

Or my other option, to be honest, was going to be sandwiching them between two bits of glass or similar!
 
From my initial experiments using slides placed on a light box, the problem you have doing it that way is that you'll likely end up with lens flare from the light source around the edges of the film. IIRC there were also occasion problems with light from round the sides reflecting off the front element of the lens and back onto the film that you're trying to image.

I did experiment with using cardboard tubes to create an improvised lens hood which helped, but it made getting the right focal distance trickier. Putting a large mask around the frame you're shooting might also solve the issue.

A bellows solves both that and keeping everything at a firmly fixed distance so I didn't have to refocus every time you changed the film frame, which slows you down a lot.
 
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yes a holder from scanner would help, but i was doing sprocket holes and 127 film, and using a *puck* from a old scanner that was 6x8cm for the light source.
 
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