Scanning old negatives

StueveShots

I don't know if I am asking this in the correct forum, so please feel free to move this if I've chosen poorly.

I would like some advice. I an avid amateur photographer of over 20 years, but only for last four have I used a digital camera. I also travel extensively, many of the trips before my personal digital age. Thus I have hundreds of photos I would love to digitize so that I can put them on my website and share them. (Especially because I love playing around with post-processing now, revisiting photos I've finished to see if something different could be done--maybe I play too much, but hey, it's like candy!)

What is the best/most efficient/affordable way to do this? Any recommendations? I'm guessing that many of you might have been in the same boat at some time.

Thanks!

Wil Davis

It depends on the format. If you've shot mostly 35mm, and if you have the slides and original negs, then you might consider investing in a slide/film scanner. I've about 30 years worth of slides & negs, mostly taken on 35mm and for that I have a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED. I think if I ever got around to my medium format stuff (less than 5% of my total), then I'd farm it out to a specialist processing house with a drum-scanner, or find someone with a scanner capable of doing 6x6, and either borrow or trade. With the amount of medium format film/slides I have, it's not worth buying a scanner, so perhaps I should rent.

If you only have the prints (i.e. no negs), then you might use a good flat-bed scanner (at as high a resolution as possible).

Bear in mind it also helps if you're familiar with a good editor (e.g. PhotoShop) and it's very, very time consuming.

HTH -
- Wil

BTW - Welcome to DGPF!

basflt

most scanners can scan directly from your negative / film
just make sure they are clean and dust-free
the editing part you [ probably allready know
i dont think brand matters much

StueveShots

Wil: Thanks for the greeting! I'm having fun learning my way around and have been posting plenty of pictures. The feedback on these forums seems to be great!

I appreciate the specific reference to the Coolscan. I do have most of my 35mm negatives and slides and that is what I would like to scan. I am relatively proficient in PS and working on LR.

basflt: Thanks for the comment. I'm curious why you say brand doesn't matter much? Is there no real quality difference between scanners? Are there some minimum specs I should look for?

basflt

what i meant was more about resolution
there is no need for special scanners
a moderate cheap scanner of well known brand will do
[ with option to scan negative / film offcoarse , not every scanner has that ]

i said that because
there is no need to scan at resolutions much higher then the originals
my scanner is a [ cheap ] piece of antique [ Epson perfection 3490 PHOTO ]
it scans at 3200 dpi , which is sufficient imo
as said above ; high resolution scans take a very long time
you will have to experiment with resolution settings vs quality

StueveShots

Thank you! That's very helpful. I appreciate it.

MomaZunk

After bugging out of Houston for Hurricane Rita with too many boxes of photos, I decided to get the important photos to digital format.

I decided to purchase a dedicated scanner and do it myself for 3 reasons:
1. I wanted to maintain control of the final scan product,
2. I could tag the photos and time taken as I went, versus getting a big batch of digital files that I would probably end up sorting through the photos anyway. and
3. I did not have an appreciation of the time it would take to do the scanning.

Frankly, I probably would still have done the scans myself with the first 2 reasons.

I attempted the low cost option of using my flatbed scanner, but I was not satisfied with the results.
I am using my flatbed scanner for prints with the Vuescan software.

I used the Nikon Coolscan V ED to scan all of my negatives and slides.
The following site by Wayne Fulton was extremely helpful in the process. http://www.scantips.com/

It took me 2-3 hours per roll of negatives. This included scanning, setting level/white/black points, adjusting the date taken, and tagging.
I scanned into tiff format and took about 15 MB of space each file. I did not scan at the highest resolution.
It was very time consuming. You should consider the time commitment versus hiring the digitization out.

Good Luck
MomaZunk

StueveShots

Thank you, MomaZunk! That is very precise help and I appreciate it. I also think that I might as well do the sorting myself ahead of time. I have all the photos filed with their negatives and I can even pull just the strips that I want. (I especially want to capture my travels and the baby photos of my kids.)

My heart goes out to you. My sister had to flee NOLA during Katrina and lost almost everything. So I do understand how priorities shift and certain things suddenly seem even more precious than before. I hope everything turned out alright in your case.

MomaZunk

Yes, things were definitely fine for us. We did not get caught on the 20 hour gridlock like others since we did not leave until the morning of the storm.
But going through the process of collecting the P's: people, pets, paper, and photos.....We had too much stuff for 2 cars.

All photos and important paperwork are now kept current in digital format on a Netgear ReadyNAS that can be picked up and put in the car at any time.

pathfinder

I scanned many of my family photos with a Nikon CoolScan IV about 8 years ago. The newer software from Adobe - ACR 6.1 and Lightroom 3, offers significantly better quality than was available back then...

I chose to scan my own images so that I could determine the quality of the files and their color balance, etc. I estimate it takes 5 - 15 minutes per frame to do what I feel is a good job. I used VueScan and my CoolScan IV ED.

StueveShots

Thank you, pathfinder. This is very helpful also. Certainly sounds as if I should take a look at Nikon scanners!