Make a Scanner Mask for 110 And/Or APS Film [Updated]

2012 is the year of the 110 film revival!  

Hey, Broadway revives enough crap to choke Godzilla....why not this unobtrusive film format?!?!?

New and exciting 110 emulsions are flooding the market!  But the big question is, "How do I get my Pocket Instamatic photos on this new-fangled Inter-web thing?"

I'm glad you asked!  You can use the age old, "tape the film strip to the glass scanner bed" method and scan away, but these scans tend to wash out  due to the light leaking around the image.  With a negative that small, you will want to squeeze as much quality out of them as possible.  There are also many companies that will scan them for a hefty mark up, but here we'll try for world class scans on a budget.

In this Instructable, we'll build a 110 film format mask for an Epson Perfection 4490.  The same concept will work for just about any flatbed film scanner.

[Update] I used this same technique for APS film.  See the last step.

Step 1: Stuff You Will Need

1.  Black poster board.

2. Razor knife or exacto knife.

3. Scissors. 

4. Stiff ruler (metal is great).

5.  Black gaffers tape.

6. White glue.

7. White plastic yogurt container.

8. An original negative holder that came with your scanner.

9. About an hour or so of time.

Comments

[melanys12]

Why didn't I think of this! I made one straight long rectangular card that fit into the black carrier, but I was having problems keeping the film from curling (I didn't cut individual holes, or make a sandwich.

You just re-invented sliced bread!!! Yay :-)

[shawnmuller]

What a difference this made for me! I have the same scanner and before was just placing my 110's on the glass (with poor results). So much better now. I did find that some of my 110's seem to have a different amount of space between frames than you mention. No big deal though, i just created a separate mask.

[Nano_Burger]

No, you do not "need" to use a mask, however if you don't your scans will most likely be of lower quality. By lower quality I mean low contrast, loss of detail, poor exposure and poor color rendition (for color negatives). You can compensate for some of this post, but it is much easier to get a high quality scan to begin with.

The mask serves several purposes:

1. The mask puts the film at the scanners optimal focus. Scanners are designed to have a little space between the film and glass plate. That is why the OEM masks are built that way.

2. The space between the negative and the glass bed reduces the chance for newton rings as the film is not touching the glass.

3. The mask flattens the negative to give a focused scan across the negative (especially important with old negatives that tend to "cup").

4. The mask optically isolates the image so the auto exposure just has the image area to deal with and not extremes of light and dark. Again, that is why the OEM masks are built that way.

With larger negatives, you might be able to get away with an "on the glass" scan, but with 110 film, the image area is so small any degradation of the image scan will have a noticeable effect on the final image.

[useraaaaa]

do you really need a mask?

[useraaaaa]

i mean you can put whole strip...
and "space between frames" can be used as "point of white" (or black)