Transferring Negatives

spudbynight · 22 May 2011 at 18:43

I have some negatives I want to transfer to digital images.

I don't have a huge amount of them. Am I best off sending them to someone to get them transferred or doing it myself?

If I send them off - any recommendations on the best place to send them?

If I do them myself how straight forward is it?

Paul11 · 22 May 2011 at 18:47

you can get negative scanners which are very easy to use (i will be selling one shortly on MM)

if you dont have many, do it yourself

if you have a lot, send them off

spudbynight · 22 May 2011 at 23:09

Any recommendations on services to get them transferred?

Also, let me know about your scanner. Roughly what sort of price are you looking for?

spudbynight · 25 May 2011 at 17:20

Bumpety bump

Mp4 · 25 May 2011 at 22:52

A competitor (begins with M ends in N) have scanners for £40 new atm

Tomsk · 26 May 2011 at 11:33

Mp4 said:
A competitor (begins with M ends in N) have scanners for £40 new atm

The cheap scanners that have proliferated in the last year or so are basically digital cameras. They're probably good enough for most uses.

My opinions:
(digital camera) scanners
pros - cheap, easy to use, may have hardware enhancemenst to cope with the compressed dynamic range of negatives
cons - negatives aren't always flat, so the 'camera' might not acheive good focus across the whole negative.

flatbed scanners
pros - cheap, easy to use (if they have the software), keeps negative flat
cons - might not have hardware enhancements to cope with the negatives compressed dynamic range, resolution might be interpolated

film scanners
pros - designed for one purpose to ensure best results
cons - expensive, usually slow because of need for quality

Ev0 · 26 May 2011 at 12:13

I'm in the same boat with potentially quite a lot of negatives to get scanned in, so would be interested to know of any decent send away services that can scan and catalogue them for me.

spudbynight · 13 Sep 2012 at 14:03

OK - revisting this.

I have picked up some negatives from my mother. A large number are 110 negatives. There are also some 126 and other odd format negatives.

Cheapest pro place for 110 negatives is coming in at 44p per negative. I have a few thousand of these so pro is too expensive.

I have just ordered a Conon 9000f scanner as it seems to be able to handle these in a roundabout way. Any suggestions from anyone else on this?

a1ex2001 · 13 Sep 2012 at 14:49

Send away services are far too expensive for bulk scanning for the average person as you've discovered. I've used an Epson V500 to great effect with some of my old 35mm negs obviously the quality isn't upto a dedicated film scanner but then most of the origionals were from cheap disposables!

Scanning a few thousand negatives will be seriously time consuming and probably drive you too disapare as most of them will be rubish snaps.

spudbynight · 13 Sep 2012 at 17:00

It is the 110 negatives that are going to be the biggest issue.

I have also ordered a Vero negative scanner for £60 online. It isn't an actual scanner - it is a digital camera with a fixed focal length but the results MIGHT be acceptable.

I will play around with the Canon as well to see what is best. I have some 35mm and medium format negatives which will be OK with the Canon.