Negative scanners
Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 1:14 pm
Has any got any experience or recommendations regarding negative scanners, basically for 35 mm use?
I have thousands of images in this format, and would like to have access to many of them digitally, but the thought of scanning the prints is a non-starter for a number of reasons. Principal problems are time, or the need to cut down the volume by pre-selecting, but more so the fact that most prints are poor representations of the negative, having been printed by automated processing machinery. I have many disappointing prints that have much superior negatives, and that have been latterly recovered from them. Scanning defective image prints seems counter-productive. Better to start with the original source from the neg, then any fiddling needed can be done with the favourite editing package.
Since the price of neg scanners has come down, there doesn't seem to be a lot of user info about, so if anyone's had hands-on, it would be interesting to know with what, and how good/bad the results were.
I have thousands of images in this format, and would like to have access to many of them digitally, but the thought of scanning the prints is a non-starter for a number of reasons. Principal problems are time, or the need to cut down the volume by pre-selecting, but more so the fact that most prints are poor representations of the negative, having been printed by automated processing machinery. I have many disappointing prints that have much superior negatives, and that have been latterly recovered from them. Scanning defective image prints seems counter-productive. Better to start with the original source from the neg, then any fiddling needed can be done with the favourite editing package.
Since the price of neg scanners has come down, there doesn't seem to be a lot of user info about, so if anyone's had hands-on, it would be interesting to know with what, and how good/bad the results were.