Copying color negs to digital

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Tom Gardner - 11 Jul 2004 15:38 GMT

I just got a slide copier for my Minolta Z1, works great! What's the best
way to copy negs? BW negs should be no problem in Photochop but how can I
compensate for the color neg base? I haven't tried anything yet, nor have I
Googled it...(shame on me) but, I figured I'd get the best advice here. I
figure that I will shoot more 35 color negs, if I can convert them to
digital this easily, to play with and it's a whole lot cheaper to print just
the 1 in 250 that's worth printing, than printing them all.

The copies of the chromes I have done have been better than professional
scans! It seems that grain and pixilation happen at about the same
magnification.

Reply to this Message

Jan T - 11 Jul 2004 20:25 GMT

I think photographing your negs through a duplicator is not a good idea:
you'll loose sharpness and adjusting colours will be a time-consuming job if
at all satisfactory. The only answer is a negative scanner with appropriate
software. In case you should buy your own: a negative scanner (or it's
software) automatically converts the negative colours to positive and
filters the typecal orange-brown mask away. Even my flatbedscanner with
built-in (very basic) neg. scanner does this job with ease.

I have my negatives scanned in the local photo shop; my favorite dealer has
a Fuji Frontier that scans in a quality I've never seen before. The scans
are burnt on a CD or e-mailed to me directly. Costs maybe 8$ a film. Peanuts
compared to the value of the scanner he uses; I'd never bother buying my own
film scanner.

Jan

> I just got a slide copier for my Minolta Z1, works great! What's the best
> way to copy negs? BW negs should be no problem in Photochop but how can I
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> scans! It seems that grain and pixilation happen at about the same
> magnification.

Reply to this Message