scanning 6 x 9cm negatives

[cosmicma]

i have been given the task of scanning just over 600 6 x 9cm B&W negatives for a friend, all were taken around 1953 and are street scenes of bolton, to be more precise they are all to do with billboards in the bolton area around 1953

the only thing i have to scan these in with is a rather ageing epson perfection 2450 which is doing the job but i'm finding a few are turning out a little soft on the focus side but not all
the negatives are not branded so i have no way of knowing who manufactured them and because of their age i know nothing more about them

i'm not sure if the slight softness is to do with the actual photo or the way it is being scanned because some are sharper than others and with having very little experience with 6 x 9cm negatives of that era i'm not sure what to expect
maybe somebody with experience scanning old 6 x 9 B&W negatives could advise me if it's the way things are or there is something iv'e missed

TIA

 

[shreds]

If they vary, then it is more than likely due to the negs rather than the scanner. Technology in the 1950's including shutter and emulsion speeds were incredibly slow compared to what we are used to today. Have you put a couple of sample negs under a high powered loupe for comparison?

 

[TheBigYin]

agreed - first step is to examine the negs with a decent loupe on a lightbox (or lightbox app for a tablet... i've a couple of the free ones for the iPad and they're certainly usable)

if the negs are sharp on there, then it's likely down to the scanner.

One thing I've found with larger negatives, is that the larger the neg, the harder it is to keep it completely flat whilst scanning it - with 6x9s or 6x12s in the neg holders for the Canon 8800F that I use, the actual holder should keep the neg flat and just above the surface of the scanners glass platern. But, with old negs, they're sometimes a little "soft" and they "sag" down towards the glass - which is just enough to put the critical focus a little out - the bigger the negatives, the more pronounced this can be.

Equally, some negatives have "cupped" over the years of storage in a shoebox (yes, I know, but they weren't necessarily mine... as the "keen photographer" in the family, it seems that when any of the past generation of aunts/uncles die, they pass their "shoebox of pictures" over to me, and I end up scanning them, then giving a digital version back with the originals...). Anyhow, these "cupped" negs are even harder to get a scan of, because if scanned one way up, they'll be in contact with the glass and the scan ends up covered in newtons rings - OR - you scan them the other way up, and they bend away from the glass, and go out of focus. Usually, they end up in a warm room, under a pile of heavy books for a month or so, which cures them.

I did consider getting myself one of the "Betterscanning" negative holders with the Anti-NewtonRings Glass and using that, but at around $100 my Yorkshire Genes kicked in and I decided against it.


ETA: there's a specific model for your Epson 2450 scanner btw... have a look here

 

[steveo_mcg]

You can use a 50mm lens in lieu of a loupe.

 

[cosmicma]

thanks for the replies
i havn't got a loupe but i think the friend i am scanning them for has so i will ask for it
i never thought about using a loupe but now you have mentioned it it seems obvious i think the daunting task of scanning just over 600 negatives in taking around 7 minutes each just said just get them done but if i'm going to do them i want them as good as i can get with the equipment i have
the negative carrier that comes with the scanner isn't great to be honest and i was thinking if i could cobble something together as a substitute, any advice would be great

here are a couple of examples of the best and worse so far out of the 70 or so i have scanned
these are just scanned and not processed in any way

out of focus


in focus


any advice would be great

edit...
just looked at the link and and like you said at the best part of 100 quid i think i'l give it a miss
might try making a template and see how i get on

@steveo_mcg
good call i never thought of that

 

[ChrisR]

Did your friend say what they were taken with? I'd be guessing a bellows camera like a Zeiss Ikonta, most have either zone focusing or an uncoupled rangefinder; it is VERY easy to get out of focus shots with that sort of equipment! Your friend probably ditched the prints that were OOF but would probably not have had the motivation to ditch the corresponding negative. So I'd guess it's likely the issue is with the negative. Exposure may also be dodgy.

Light box and loupe is probably a good idea; probably easier to tell if a 6*9 negative is OOF than the 35mm ones which often seem sharp even when they aren't! I haven't tried the 50mm lens idea, note to self!

One possibility is to size each negative up in the scan preview, and then scan the dodgy ones at a much lower resolution (ie faster). That way your friend gets a record of the attempted shot, and gets good scans of the better ones (that's roughly my approach with old material... I have a couple of thousand of my father's old 6*9s to scan one day!).

 

[abdoujaparov]

I *think* the telegraph pole on the left is in focus here, so my uneducated guess would be photographer error. I'm guessing these were taken with a scale-focus folder?

 

[cosmicma]

just done a few more and looking at the negatives using the light box app and a 50mm lens ( never considered using a 50mm lens as a loupe thanks for the suggestion ) the ones i looked at are all in focus so the soft focus scans are down to me
i did a quick experiment by sandwiching a negative between a thin piece of glass and the surface of the scanner and the focus using that method is spot on but it's a bit too fiddly to be a practical way of scanning them in. some sort of holder using that method would be useful i just need to figure out how to make one i have an idea that might work which will allow me to scan 2 or 3 at once

thanks for all your advice even the smallest bit of info can become very useful