Converting negatives to digital?

has anyone done it and if so how?

I have hundreds of old negatives, most in great condition. I would like to somehow save them to my computer to view and share.

any help would be appreciated.

I've sent off video tape to be converted to digital. I recall it was fairly cheap. Lots of services online. Don't recall who I used.

Time was getting a scanner that did this well was pricey. right now there seem to be dozens of options @ about $100.00
Hiowever, if you sort film scanners by positive review on amazon, you will see the top rated one with 4.5 stars costs over $1K, while the next best @ 4 stars includes models ranging from $70.00- $150.

I am not sure of the quality of results with these low cost options, maybe someone else on the forum will have first hand experience.

I also know that some advocate using your DSLR for digitizing printed photos, but I am not sure that this is as good and option for slides or negatives.

Here is some info that might help;
https://www.bhphotovid​eo.com …uying-guide/film-scanners

A comparison of a $200.00 scanner to a $3k scanner;
http://howtoscan.ca …gative-scanner-review.php

consumer reports (2014 though) ;
http://www.consumerrep​orts.org …scanners-review/index.htm


An argument for using a DSLR instead of a scanner;
http://petapixel.com …era-instead-of-a-scanner/

And a tutorial;
http://petapixel.com …al-camera-and-macro-lens/

IMHO the process seems to be prohibitively time consuming

Depending on your budget of time and money you seriously should consider a service. The way I approached this with slides (positives) was to get quotes and samples from several services and then chosen the 'best' one. Saves you quite some time - especially if you have loads of negatives. As I am probably not in the same country as you are, my choice won't help you.....

You could also try using a common flatbed scanner:

https://luminous-landscape.com/digital-contacts/
http://forums.popphoto​.com …-scanner-%28reflective%29

thank you everyone.

will check all recommendations out.

thinking a flat bed scanner may be the better way to go for me.

it will be fun to see photos again from the 70's.

I use a flat bed scanner to scan both slides and negatives and I'm happy with the results. Not all flat beds will do slides and negatives, need to have a light in the cover and software to that will do the job. Mine has frames to hold slides (16 at a time) and film strips of different sizes.

To get it done without haste, too much time and spending big money on hardware, plus buying software, but with results suitable for view and sharing I recommend what I'm using. Epson flatbed scanner. Something similar to V550 model. Comes as complete package. Scanner, film holders and very good software.

Manual feed, one by one scanner is difficult to handle with large amount of film to scan. Fully automated scanner for entire roll is too complicated in construction.
But Epson allows you to put up to 12 (6x2) frames and scan them in fully automatic mode. I'm doing it with 5 frames strips, which are stored in archiving sleeves available at very good price from BH.

I have used a Canon flatbed (8800F) scanner to scan both B&W and color, both negs and transparencies. The quality of the scans seems pretty good, if I let the scanner driver do scratch/dust removal for me, as shown here, reducing the effort involved in cleaning and making dustfree every negative to be scanned. This Kodacolor 200 neg from 1981 was scanned at 4800 dpi, resulting in a 6448x4544 pixel resolution image which takes up 4.4MB of disk. It did take 7m30s to scan just one neg however! (this is a screen copy of an image viewed at 16%)

Save yourself the hassle and send out your negatives to ScanCafe. There is nothing to like about scanning...very boring and labour intensive...then you need to do the cleanup of dust spots in post. ScanCafe can do it all for you and leave you to spend your time on more productive tasks.

I have a Canon 9000F II scanner which does a good job of scanning negatives, but it's time-consuming.

You might consider scanning the negs as a strip at low resolution - that speeds things up enormously and gives you the equivalent of a proof sheet (old timers will remember them). Once you have the proofs you can decide which shots you want to scan at high quality - and the scanned proof sheet is a nice index of your negatives for future use.

-js

#6

I like your idea!

Thank you.

I have lots of spare time to do this. Retired, snowing out, chores are done,

You might check out VueScan, a very versatile aftermarket scanning program. After much messing about, I decided to use Canon's software instead, but VueScan is a very nice program.

-js

I have an Epson v550, and I like it a lot. You can scan up to 12 negatives/slides at a time, and if you stick to the lower resolutions (1200dpi is way more than enough for web or 4x6 prints) and it doesn't take too long. The software has a pretty decent auto mode, and it has a very good feature for getting rid of things like dust and scratches. I recently bought Silverfast (didn't care for vuescan) which gives you a ton more control which is nice if you avidly shoot film as well as digital, but not necessary for just digitizing stuff for memories. I got the scanner refurbished for only $120 and I've saved a ton of money on scanning because of it.

I have the v550 as well. It does a good job. I scan them to .tiff files and import them into lightroom. Pretty sweet and easy. Fortunately I don't have thousands like others do. I think I paid $149.00 for the scanner which comes with everything you need.