Well, lets just say I've gotten better at this over the last couple of years. The left image was one of the first I've "scanned" with my DSLR, and the one on the right I've just rescanned using the techniques described below (higher resolution available here). Right now I can get higher resolution and better image quality that what street labs give you on CD.
I've seen many articles on the web explaining the basics of digitising film negatives or transparencies with a digital camera. The basics are quite simple: you take a photo of a negative into a light source and invert. That's it. But that alone led me to scan negatives that looked like the one on the left, above. Because I've never seen one tutorial that told me "the whole story" of how to do it properly, I've decided to put together what I've learnt during the last two or three years of scanning film with my DSLR.
First of all: Why?
- Street labs can usually scan the film but I’ve got bad scans and missing/cut frames more than once. Also, when you scan, you make some artistic decisions over contrast and colour that are often definitive. By leaving these decisions to a machine or someone else, you are losing control over your creative freedom.
- I often develop film myself and I don’t own a film scanner. Even if I did, good film scanners cost a fortune and I get better quality from scanning the film with my DSLR than I would if I used an average scanner.
- Very precise control over colours, highlight and shadow curves, while making use of the vast film dynamic range.
These are my reasons, you may obviously have different ones. Some people do this because it’s faster than using a scanner, but that depends on how much time you spend post-processing, and I do spend a bit more than I would like to admit, but it is a time spent doing something that gives me pleasure, not pressing buttons on a poorly designed software and waiting for a tedious scan.
All the following instructions have the objective of achieving the best possible resolution, colour depth and dynamic range out of the film, while keeping image noise as low as possible. Also, I aimed at keeping the whole process as quick as possible. I think each time I’ve made a scan I’ve got better results than the time before, because I keep improving the process and now I’ve got to a stage I’m quite happy with the results.
I’ve separated this tutorial into five sections, and you may want to skip, or skim through some of these.
I've seen many articles on the web explaining the basics of digitising film negatives or transparencies with a digital camera. The basics are quite simple: you take a photo of a negative into a light source and invert. That's it. But that alone led me to scan negatives that looked like the one on the left, above. Because I've never seen one tutorial that told me "the whole story" of how to do it properly, I've decided to put together what I've learnt during the last two or three years of scanning film with my DSLR.
First of all: Why?
- Street labs can usually scan the film but I’ve got bad scans and missing/cut frames more than once. Also, when you scan, you make some artistic decisions over contrast and colour that are often definitive. By leaving these decisions to a machine or someone else, you are losing control over your creative freedom.
- I often develop film myself and I don’t own a film scanner. Even if I did, good film scanners cost a fortune and I get better quality from scanning the film with my DSLR than I would if I used an average scanner.
- Very precise control over colours, highlight and shadow curves, while making use of the vast film dynamic range.
These are my reasons, you may obviously have different ones. Some people do this because it’s faster than using a scanner, but that depends on how much time you spend post-processing, and I do spend a bit more than I would like to admit, but it is a time spent doing something that gives me pleasure, not pressing buttons on a poorly designed software and waiting for a tedious scan.
All the following instructions have the objective of achieving the best possible resolution, colour depth and dynamic range out of the film, while keeping image noise as low as possible. Also, I aimed at keeping the whole process as quick as possible. I think each time I’ve made a scan I’ve got better results than the time before, because I keep improving the process and now I’ve got to a stage I’m quite happy with the results.
I’ve separated this tutorial into five sections, and you may want to skip, or skim through some of these.
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Signing UpStep 1: What you need
- Ideally, you need a DSLR (any would do) because of the higher colour/bit depth. But the same basic principles would apply to even a point and shoot if that’s what you’ve got;
- Again, ideally you should either use a macro tube with a prime lens or a macro lens, but if you don’t have any of these, your kit lens will also do the job, with a bit of loss in usable resolution, due to cropping. Kit lenses work just fine for medium format;
- A light source, preferably a flash wirelessly triggered, but a well lit wall, the sky or even a computer monitor will work;
A white translucent, clean surface, such as an acrylic board. This is only needed if you’re using a very close light source, such as a flash;
- A piece of cardboard or wood and a couple of clamps are useful.
- If you’re using a flash, you will need either a cable or a wireless trigger. You could set up your flash as slave and trigger it with the in-camera flash but you would have to do it in a way that it wouldn’t get any light reflecting off the film surface, which may be a bit hard.
- Again, ideally you should either use a macro tube with a prime lens or a macro lens, but if you don’t have any of these, your kit lens will also do the job, with a bit of loss in usable resolution, due to cropping. Kit lenses work just fine for medium format;
- A light source, preferably a flash wirelessly triggered, but a well lit wall, the sky or even a computer monitor will work;
A white translucent, clean surface, such as an acrylic board. This is only needed if you’re using a very close light source, such as a flash;
- A piece of cardboard or wood and a couple of clamps are useful.
- If you’re using a flash, you will need either a cable or a wireless trigger. You could set up your flash as slave and trigger it with the in-camera flash but you would have to do it in a way that it wouldn’t get any light reflecting off the film surface, which may be a bit hard.
![Make a Scanner Mask for 110 And/Or APS Film [Updated]](http://www.instructables.com/files/deriv/FAK/O3KJ/H4UZV6RY/FAKO3KJH4UZV6RY.SQUARE.jpg)
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Your information is far more worthy of reading than the childish comments that were posted and you graciously ignored.
Thank you
I spent HOURS looking at these images from the 1940's - 1960's reels my Dad gave me. Many of them are so damaged now that I'm afraid to put them in the viewer. (I even have some from the Apollo 11 mission images.) Many of these images were taken around the world. I used to sit outside and imagine I was touring all those exotic places. I just don't want to lose those memories and this might be the best way for me to do it. Thanks a bunch!
because it is too easy!
But thanks for the input, anyway! I do appreciate it :)
Can't both be 'left' !
I am in the process of setting up to copy some of my negatives.
I will use the neg carrier from an old enlarger to hold the negatives and probably use an LED lamp with a diffuser as the light source.
If you have a lot of negatives to scan it would probably be worth grouping them by film type and then finding an approximate correction for each type.
You could then set up macros for batch processing each set.
That should give you a reasonably good correction that will just need a bit of tweaking of the individual images.
Yeah I use to do that exactly. Every time I get a roll developed, before cutting the film, I run it through the scanner and then process it in batch ;)
Not only did I get a new way of scanning older films (it work with B&W too of course), but the photoshop part on balancing colors is very clear and I always need inputs on this matter as I have a very feeble mind regarding color techniques !!!!â¦
I truly thank you !â¦
I have about 100 boxes of Kodachrome slides taken by my father and myself over the years. He started shooting slides at the end of WWII. With a few mods, your setup should work for slides just as well. I am a big fan of making things out of reinforced/laminated cardboard when structural strength is not that important. You have taken a lot of trial and error out of building a great slide copier. For example back lighting through the hole in the box seems obvious (now), but has plagued my thought processes.
I am curious why you did not paint everything flat black to stop bouncing reflections and colors all over your camera's sensors?
I think you left out some images in Step 9. You mentioned them but they are not there.
Also a nit-pick - loose means 'not tight.' You use loose instead of 'lose.'
Alos, for slides this guy http://www.flickr.com/photos/gerdivinia/5414312332/ has a very neat way of holding them. The L holder seems sturdy enough and quick to use, have a look.
I haven't painted it black, I see your point, but it doesn't seem to be an issue for some reason. I think, at least behind the diffuser, it even helps to have some light bouncing around, to help it diffuse better.
Thanks again!