Is there a section for film shooters?

Archibald wrote in post #18555864
You CAN'T scan a transparency by reflection. I mean, you can if you want, and get an image, but it will be garbage. That's because the reflected light passes through the transparency TWICE. That will cause the image to be doubled to some extent, and the contrast will be double too. Plus it will be very dark, and there will probably be ugly reflections of the scanning light. In short, garbage.

DOH! I'm so thick sometimes. I just didn't think of that. Thanks. That rules out using either one of my current scanners. Maybe I'll consider a dedicated 35mm scanner like Gerry mentions, above. Shooting film used to be easy. Jeez!

EDIT:
Nope, just looked at prices. I'll pay the developer $5/roll for a while.

Α scanner makes sense if you have a large archive of film negatives and slides. I estimate I have 4000 frames. Not all of them keepers of course, but some are worth it due to the sentimental value.

Very touching. Makes me want to buy a scanner and do my old negatives. My dad's been gone 25 years. I only went digital in 2008 or so. Thanks for posting that

My color negs go back to around 1970. Many are faded, but with some work, come back to life.

This one is from 1970. The quality has deteriorated, and there are signs that the dyes have migrated. But it is well worth having IMO. The scan won't fade... I just need to finish scanning my negs before they fade more.

Archibald wrote in post #18556207
My color negs go back to around 1970. Many are faded, but with some work, come back to life.

This one is from 1970. The quality has deteriorated, and there are signs that the dyes have migrated. But it is well worth having IMO. The scan won't fade... I just need to finish scanning my negs before they fade more.

Hosted photo: posted by Archibald in
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forum: Canon Digital Cameras

This one is from 1983, and after some work looks close to new.

Hosted photo: posted by Archibald in
./showthread.php?p=185​56207&i=i71444063
forum: Canon Digital Cameras

Some of the old negs scan easily and need little PP. Others are really tough, requiring adjustments to the color curves, because the dye layers have faded differently. For me, the effort is worth it.

As for the cost of a scanner, that is not a big deal compared to the value of the scans. I paid $1200 or so for my CoolScan. After more than 4000 scans, it works out to 30 cents per scan. And I could probably sell the scanner now for a lot more than I paid for it. (I should have bought two!)

Excellent colors! I found that my early negatives (ca 1978-1984) have retained their colors very well. Starting from 1984-85 some negatives developed a yellow streak in the middle third (lengthwise). I suspect development liquid residue (C41 process) in the middle which doesn't age well.

I also got some funky color distortions with some Fuji Film ca 1984:

MakisM1 wrote in post #18556243
Excellent colors! I found that my early negatives (ca 1978-1984) have retained their colors very well. Starting from 1984-85 some negatives developed a yellow streak in the middle third (lengthwise). I suspect development liquid residue (C41 process) in the middle which doesn't age well.

I also got some funky color distortions with some Fuji Film ca 1984:

Hosted photo: posted by MakisM1 in
./showthread.php?p=185​56243&i=i189995226
forum: Canon Digital Cameras

And a more 'normal' view of the yellow residue issue in Kodak film:

Hosted photo: posted by MakisM1 in
./showthread.php?p=185​56243&i=i240953614
forum: Canon Digital Cameras

Wow, that is a nasty color pattern. It would be hard to fix too with a grad treatment in PP because it is not consistent. But it might be possible to reduce the effects.

I have a few old negs too with patchy discoloration, but nothing like this.

The final steps in the C41 process are fixer, wash and stabilizer. Of course sometimes things go wrong, and that can lead to problems down the road. It's anybody's guess what the problem might have been here - residual fixer, contamination of stabilizer with developer, whatever. It does seem that a residual chemical in the emulsion has yellowed along the outer parts of the negatives, where there would be better access to air.

It is also possible that the negs were stored somewhere at one time where there was exposure to fumes, such as sulfur dioxide from low-quality paper.

Yellow along the edges would translate to blue edges in the positive and yellow (relatively) in the middle portions. Have you tried re-washing to see if the discoloration might wash out? A long shot, probably. Water should not be harmful to the negs, but you might want to use foto-flo or some-such to prevent mineral deposits.

Boy all this mention of color shift and areas of color fade (or whatever)! Got me wondering, so I just scanned negs taken when I was a mere pre-teen, in 1962 on Kodacolor-X, my first roll of film done with something other than a child's 'toy' camera, and in the starting years of my love of photography. Oddly, I learned to process B&W film before my father ever let me use HIS camera!

Scanned with my Canon 8800F scanner at 1200 dpi, then -20% pixel count resize for posting. I did this with no real preparation of the negs (cleaning, dust removal)


With a bit of digital noise reduction, and detail sharpening, but zero modification to color balance or brightness or contrast or color saturation:

Wilt wrote in post #18556302
Boy all this mention of color shift and areas of color fade (or whatever)! Got me wondering, so I just scanned negs taken when I was a mere pre-teen, in 1962 on Kodacolor-X.


With a bit of digital noise reduction, and detail sharpening, but zero modification to color balance

With a bit of digital noise reduction, and detail sharpening, and WITH modification to white balance (eyedropper on lady's white sweater)

Brings to life my father (now 25 years gone), and mother's youthful beauty (now 93).

Looking good, Wilt!

I find it a rewarding journey to dig out the musty old negs and slides and see what is on them.

Well, you guys are making me want a scanner just for my old stuff! Once emotion becomes a factor, cost ceases to matter. Much. ߘ

Archibald wrote in post #18556283
...
It is also possible that the negs were stored somewhere at one time where there was exposure to fumes, such as sulfur dioxide from low-quality paper.

Yellow along the edges would translate to blue edges in the positive and yellow (relatively) in the middle portions. Have you tried re-washing to see if the discoloration might wash out? A long shot, probably. Water should not be harmful to the negs, but you might want to use foto-flo or some-such to prevent mineral deposits.

Nope. The pre 84 negatives and the post 84 negatives were stored in the same box since the early nineties. Pre-84 shows no problems (and they are quite a few). I will be moving to post 92 negatives and I think I will see a definite point, after which there will be no more yellow.

I haven't tried to wash the negatives, but there are a few that I might re-visit after a wash... Big print candidates! That will be the summer time frame, as I want to finish with 10 more years of negatives, before I start re-visiting.

@Wilt. Excellent color quality! Aren't you glad you can now post process these photos?

As I said before, a trip down memory lane.

Yours truly and my young fiancee, a bit worse for the wear, after a few days hiking in the California Sierras. The colors have not been corrected in any way, Kodacolor 100 September 1980

MakisM1 wrote in post #18556243
Excellent colors! I found that my early negatives (ca 1978-1984) have retained their colors very well. Starting from 1984-85 some negatives developed a yellow streak in the middle third (lengthwise). I suspect development liquid residue (C41 process) in the middle which doesn't age well.

Do you recall if these were "home" processed? The Tetenal DIY kits were know to throw a similar yellow color cast.

John from PA wrote in post #18556353
Do you recall if these were "home" processed? The Tetenal DIY kits were know to throw a similar yellow color cast.

No, most of them were 'Pharmacy processed' (Eckerd drugs) but also a lot at Denevi Camera. I can't see a pattern, other than the approximate date when C41 became the Kodacolor developing process.

I never processed color at home, I had a B&W darkroom 5 years earlier, but I couldn't afford a color head and the equipment for temperature control of the developing process. My brother sold the darkroom stuff (enlarger, trays etc) because he decided that I wouldn't return to Greece.

At least he was right!...

Bassat wrote in post #18555314
An update of sorts. I found an EOS 3 for not much more than a set of ND filters. Now I have 1/8000!

Ok, let me update the update. The EOS 3 fell through, so took a $90 chance on a 'tested, working properly' Yaschica FX-D that comes with a flash, 28mm, 50mm, and 135mm primes. Can't wait to see a split-prism focus screen, again.

Max shutter is 1/1000 on this body. I'm gonna need those ND filters!

MakisM1 wrote in post #18556374
No, most of them were 'Pharmacy processed' (Eckerd drugs) but also a lot at Denevi Camera. I can't see a pattern, other than the approximate date when C41 became the Kodacolor developing process.

I never processed color at home, I had a B&W darkroom 5 years earlier, but I couldn't afford a color head and the equipment for temperature control of the developing process. My brother sold the darkroom stuff (enlarger, trays etc) because he decided that I wouldn't return to Greece.

At least he was right!...

What year were your negs processed? C41 become the standard process in 1972 for C110, or 1973 for other film formats.

In 2001, I bought a Nikon CoolScan IV (LS-40) to scan a bunch of negatives I had from when I lived in Scotland in the early 1990’s. I started scanning a few, but the only post-processing SW I had was Photoshop LE, and later Elements 2.0, and I didn’t really know how to use them so I gave up.

I’ve become more proficient with Lightroom over the past couple of years, so I recently gave it another shot, the negatives now being 24-25 years old. I’m pleased with the results overall. I struggled with exposures and metering there because the sky was always bright overcast and the everything else was in shadow and I didn’t have the experience to know how to deal with it. I was often disappointed with the prints that came back from the labs. Now, 25 years later, I can use Lightroom to correct exposures, tone down the highlights, and pull out details from the shadows that I always suspected were in there.

This is Castle Stalker, perhaps more popularly known as Castle AAAAAARRRRRRRRGH. All that water is reflecting the bright overcast sky, so the negative is underexposed and everything that’s not water was dark shadow in the original print. This was taken with a Canon EOS 100 (Elan in North America) and 100-300 f/4.5-5.6 USM lens on Fuji Super HG 400.