Hello good people,
A friend has a collection of about 2000 Film negs which he wants to help me transfer to DVD.
I’m prepared to do the work and am trying to work out the most cost efficient way.
Given the number, I’m guessing c 40-50 rolls of processed film I’ve decided to scan them myself with an off the shelf scanner and then transfer onto DVDs. I thinking about low res scans initially and then Armyn can pick and choose those he wants at a higher resolution. Does this make sense as a plan or can anyone else suggest a better course of action?
Peter
Just scanned a few hundred negatives and slides myself with a Canon 8800 (possibly 1000 slides and negs - my dad’s collection going back to 1940)
The pain is how long it takes.
It takes about about 20 minutes to scan 12 negatives. 2000 negs - 60 hours of back and forth.
I would experiment first. If lo res is not much quicker than hi res, the pain will be cataloging and then re-scanning.
Better to scan them all at once at good resolution (2400dpi?)
Use a Swiffer cloth or compressed air to clean them off and clean the platen regularly.
Plus, depending on how you arrange them (hopefully cut into 5 or 6 pic strips)
rescanning a decent number might be a royal pain determining if you have the correct one, especially if there are 4 negatives in a row of Aunt Alice standing at the door, which one was it he wanted? Slides would certainly be easier.
Unless he had amazing lenses, 2400dpi = 2400x3600 or about 8Mp is decent resolution.
My experience doing something similar with photos, is that the most time-consuming part of this is the physical part of this is the physical work of putting items on & off the scanner.
So I wonder about doing this in 2 passes of scanning. Just scan everything in high-resolution the first time, and then discard the ones that aren’t wanted (or save them anyway, since disk/DVD space is so cheap).
You might want to do an experiment, like scan 10 items in low-res, than the same 10 in high-res, and carefully time how long it takes you. See if the low-res one is enough faster to matter.
Scanning film negatives, in my experience, is a lot slower than scanning developed photos. Rather than scan in lo-res, why not try this:
-get your friend’s hands on an iPad
-download a lightbox app, which will turn the iPad’s screen completely white
-place a negative on the white screen
-using an iPhone, invert the colours (in the phone’s settings menu) and start the camera app
-use the camera app to view the negative in full living colour
This is a super easy thing to do, provided you have the tablet & phone. Do this to weed out the negatives that don’t deserve scanning and save yourself a lot of time.
Thanks both of you.
Couple of questions, is scanning at a higher resolution, say 8MB, really that much more time consuming than a ‘working copy’ at say 4MB?
Secondly is it feasible to arrange the negs in order they were shot along with discrete Film roll numbers so that Armyn, and me!, can quickly identify which pictures might need re-scanning?
I’m unsure what kit was used to shoot the pictures originally, could have been anything from a Nikon F1 to a fixed focus disposable camera.
Peter
Thanks Greg four your reply, Armyns now using his first smart phone, no idea of it’s pedigree which might support colour reversal. I can easily make up a light box for him, but at 77 he wants to spend more time on things he enjoys rather than the slog of film scanning dusty old film, and who can blame him!
Peter
is scanning at a higher resolution, say 8MB, really that much more time consuming than a ‘working copy’ at say 4MB?
Test with your scanner and see. It’s worth it to spend a little time experimenting.
is it feasible to arrange the negs in order they were shot along with discrete Film roll numbers so that Armyn, and me!, can quickly identify which pictures might need re-scanning?
Sure, since you’re the one doing the scanning, you can do it any way you like. One trick I use to identify this sort of thing is small post-it notes - I write the date and whatever info I want on the sticky side of the note and then stick it to the glass next to the image so the label gets scanned along with the image.
Thanks Ornery Bob,
Haven’t bought the scanner yet, my old Epson refuses to talk to Windows 8.1. So I’m looking at a bespoke neg scanner, £30-40 should get be a 5MB image, 10MB if I use the interpolated image which I’ve never been impressed by.
Prices for commercial services seem very high;
http://www.thefilmscanningservice.co.uk/#!prices/c2vz
So I’m going down the DIY route.
Peter
scancafe.com has been my choice lately. Periodically, they have sales. And they have different levels of resolution available.
One of the biggest advantages of farming it out is dust cleaning. Physically before, and afterwards with techs/workers using software.
Thanks ‘Old Man’, I’ll look into Scan Cafe, assuming they provide a reasonable service to/from the UK. Still be looking at £500 or so.
I guess I’m going to have to learn how to use The Gimp, free photo editing software, as well.
Hope to see Armyn tomorrow so we can discuss this.
Peter
Nice idea about using a smartphone camera as a neg viewer, GregH. But why an iPad? Can’t you use pretty much any monitor as a lightbox by just opening a new blank/white document window?
One really nice thing with dedicated film scanners, and some flatbed ones (and a feature worth checking for) is that with colour neg film an IR channel is used to detect dust and scratches. The dyes used in colour neg are transparent to near IR, and so the IR channel sees nothing unless there is dust or a scratch on the film. This feeds the software and allows very good automatic amelioration. The Canon 8800 md2000 used does this - and is a good choice.
If you can manage it a you might be able to find a high-end second hand scanner that sucks the strips (rather than flatbed), and then sell it again for not a big overall cost. However my cursory checking suggested that they don’t drop a lot in price second hand, so the tied up capital might not be small.
Double post
[QUOTE=Mr Downtown]
Nice idea about using a smartphone camera as a neg viewer, GregH. But why an iPad? Can’t you use pretty much any monitor as a lightbox by just opening a new blank/white document window?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, but a tablet makes it a bit easier as you’d otherwise have to hold the negs up to a monitor, compared to just laying them on the tablet.
Most monitors can be laid down flat. Even if the one they’re using can’t for some reason, the effort to hold them up might be quite reasonable if the alternative is purchasing a tablet.
The biggest pain I found was the Canoscan I have has a two-strip negative holder.
I presume your negs are cut into 6-picture strips (or 5, it seems, is the more recent practice).
So you load up the two strips, do a preview, and then set it to scan. Return in 20 minutes to repeat. This was the biggest pain, having to babysit it. Do it once as soon as you get up, do it again before you leave for work, do it again as soon as you get home and then again all evening.
Does it matter if it takes 22 minutes instead of 14 minutes between each change? It’s the handling that is a pain, and if he’s going to want one or two re-scanned from each strip, with handling and loading and counting, it’s easier to just hi-res scan the whole thing at once.
(The nice thing about the 88000 too is that it came with a 120-film scan (I have some) and a slide scanner (Imagine 750 slides, 4 at a time…)
Thanks all of you for your help.
Armyn and I have ordered a Canon V370 to get me started. It appears he’s been using a mix of Leicas and Nikons since the 40s’ so the 4800 x 9600 dpi resolution might be justified. I also found a program called Phocus from Hasselblad which might prove a better alternative to the GIMP.
So rough copy first of everything and then finer and tariffed copies of selected originals.
Probably have a superb summer in London whilst I’m stuck indoors bent over a PC!
Peter
Besides the dust, problems to look for include finger prints (sometimes pretty permanent) and mold. Kodak Film Cleaner might be a good thing to look for. Or a similar product.
Get rid of as much of these issues as you can BEFORE scanning, and then you won’t be spending so much time correcting afterwards .
Or, you can re-wash serious problem negatives (get Photoflo or similar to prevent water spots, have fine hooks to hang to dry and weight to prevent curling)
Yes, a Swiffer cloth, lightly applied, will help remove dust and avoid static, and is disposable (or use it for the floor after a few days) - unless you have a darkroom negative or lens brush with the squeeze bulb air pump attached.
I still say experiment with scan timing first, and only hi-res rescan the most extremely important pics. Also, experiment with some of the best photos to see if 4800dpi is justified. Older cameras, unless extremely good, probably did not get pictures that sharp. It makes no sense to simply get higher quality resolution of film grain. Seriously, 4800x9600 - for 35mm scan, actually 7200x9600 or something - holy crap, that’s the resolution of a $60,000 Hasselblad digital today. Like I said, I settled for 2400dpi and maybe half the pictures lived up to that scan level.
(Please reply when you get started with what sort of camera & lens used and how good the negative resolution is as a result… I’m curious)
Canon v370 - is that anything like the Epson V370?
If you can find an outfit that will do the work inexpensively and that your friend will trust with his negatives, that will get things done with a lot less hassle, as they have equipment that will handle the job in bulk.
If I were doing it, I’d do the preliminary scans on my Epson 1640XL with B813202. That can do 48 images in one pass, assuming 6-image strips.
Then, once I got the list of images where high-res scans were needed, I’d use my Plustek OpticFilm 8200i to scan them individually.
But I’d still grumble and say “2000? Are you for real?”
I’m curious how the V370 handles negatives.
The Canon 8800 - you remove the wite backing from the lid, it exposes a backlighting strip in the lid about 3 inches wide. The scanner comes with a set of plastic holder inserts - 4 slides, or 4 120 negs, or two 6-negative 35mm strips.
You don’t just lay a bunch of film strips on the glass and start scanning.
You can define the scan area but it auto-defines the areas it thinks matches the type of film in the holder. My dad until the 60’s had an odd camera that did square negatives on 35mm so each time I loaded a negative strip or set of slides I had to redefine the non-standard scan areas.
I couldn’t just scan everything and crop, because the auto-level function would compensate for the extremely bright inter-negative areas and ruin the contrast of the negative.
SO, the devil is in the details, but after the first 100 or so you’ll get into a pattern.
I checkedthis morning - even for 2400dpi, I could see visible grain on Kodachrome slides taken even in bright sunlight. (When enlarged enough)