![]() Next, I find it simplest to place the strip so the ‘first’ frame is nearest where the scanner head starts. I’ve looked at films that have been stored in cardboard strip holders packed tightly into a box for decades and while almost flat, you can still see a slight curvature if placed on a flat surface. The curvature results from the behaviour of the emulsion (I would guess during processing) making the emulsion side of the film concave. Some films have a very obvious, even quite thick emulsion that is easy to spot in any light.Īnother way to tell, which is possibly the easiest, is that films tend to have a top-to-bottom curve. The less shiny side is the emulsion side. Look closely at a strip of film under a bright light and see if one side is uniformly shiny and the other is not. The emulsion often has a more dull finish than the film carrier itself. But there are several ways you might be able to tell. Having the light travel through the film material itself can only degrade the image, however slightly.įrom what I’ve seen the emulsion side is usually the ‘back side’ of the image when viewed in its correct orientation. It stands to reason that the emulsion be as close to the scanner sensor as possible, optically speaking. My V370’s negative strip and slide holder even has printed diagrams on it explaining this, but I say ignore that and go with what I describe here.įirst, ensure you place the strips emulsion side down. At least these offer compression! Basic Scanner Practiceĭifferent software will usually dictate which way around you load the negatives (or indeed slides). Scan a few films first and work out the average amount of space consumed per frame, then you can calculate how big a drive you’re likely to need.įinally, when it comes to high quality, 16 bit output, there’s really only one game in town - the venerable TIFF file. This results in some very large files! I highly recommend you purchase a hard drive specifically to store your scans. As my scanner only has even divisions of its maximum 4800dpi, that means I scan at 4800dpi.įor the same reason - best possible quality - I also scan and output in 16 bit grayscale for black and white negatives and 48 bit colour for colour negatives. Best practice appears to be around 4000dpi scans for 35mm film. ![]() But if I ever wanted to edit and print them, that’s only an approximately 2 megapixel image. I could scan them all at 1200dpi for browsing purposes, and that would be fine. Any more resolution would be beyond what the film was able to capture in the first place. That is to say, the scans offer about the best one could possibly get from the negatives. That second point is why I have chosen to go for “archival quality” scans. I want to see what they all contain and be able to revisit them just as I do with my own digital photos.My purpose in scanning all these films is twofold. Wait a minute! Why are we starting with the result of the process? Because I want to lay out what I’m going for, before I get into the details. So with all that out of the way, let’s get down to business. You can take my word for it, or do your own research. Much of what I mention below as “best practice” was gleaned from numerous web searches. VueScan let me use that scanner for many more years. I first bought VueScan when I switched from PC to Mac and could not get ‘official’ software for my then ancient HP scanner. It gives you as much or as little control as you want.It is not tied to one platform or one brand of scanners.I use VueScan from Hamrick Software because Scanners come with a variety of software - some good, some bad - and there are numerous third party software products, too. Different models may also vary in the quality of output and in the amount of control you get. I need a scanner for regular flatbed document scanning anyway, so I chose this type of model. Dedicated film scanners may, in fact should, yield better results more easily, but they come at a hefty price. There are many different scanners out there and these come in several different types. ![]() The specific model is the Epson Perfection V370 Photo. Assumptionsīecause my intent is to document this process for the benefit of others, I must first set out some basic assumptions that I’m working with. What follows is both the latest and, I think, best approach I have found that balances ease of action with quality of result. Others much harder to perform but with better results. Some approaches have been easy to perform but yielded suboptimal results. I have had many starts on this project and many different approaches, each with their own issues. Some years ago I began the task of scanning my father’s large collection of photographic negatives, comprising several hundred films.
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