How to digitize negatives and slides without a scanner, using a digital camera.
26 Comments
How to digitize negatives and slides without a scanner, using a digital camera.
I’m going to try this, but I’m going to use another cell phone as a white background to serve as the lightbox.
If you take a picture of a NEGATIVE (colour or black & white), to reverse it to a POSITIVE press CTRL + I. That is the shortcut for Inverse. 😃
If you "wet mount" the negatives to the light box, you get best results. Also if the light box has "adjustable color temperature" , your scans are as good as those from the labs.
Do you use same method for black and white?
I know this is a very old discussion but here is my question anyway. I've been using a light box same as you suggest and most of the time it works pretty well. The exception is on very light slides that have a lot of white space. What happens is that I get yellow bars. I think it is because of the florescent lamps blinking at 60hz. Any idea on how to resove this issue?
thank you
I like your no nonsense style. Thank you.
wow, what a great idea. Was going buy those 5 mp scanners. why, when my camera is like 14+MP, Minolta. Also the box provides a quick view of my slides to decide if i want to digitize them. Great job and thanks for taking the time to make and post it. 2 days from today, i will get my light box delivered. Porta-Trace / Gagne POLB1012L2 1012-2 Stainless Steel LED Light Box, shopped eBay for used one, but they wanted 20 to 30 dollars for delivery. ridiculous. New with free delivery at B&H for almost same price of a used one and at least I know the bulbs will be good.
I just coincidentally came up with a similar method to this a few hours ago with my old Light table from traditional animation. Mine slopes on an angle, and I was stupid, and wasted so much time angling my camera on a tripod to almost the same slope. It would have been much easier if I just put the light table on it's side, and shot straight with the camera like you did, haha! I'll keep that in mind when I do some more of my Grandmother's slide next week. Thanks for the idea!
If you have a tablet or Ipad, you can use its screen instead of a lightbox!
Do I need a film holder for slides?
I dont get the name of the software
I am not sure but there is a kind of solution that people who deal with developing photos use. I don't know what it is called. Do have to get the negatives washed with the solution/liquid or can I just use this method by only taking the roll out the camera? Does it only work with already scanned negatives?
Thank you for idea.
You could use a tablet or smartphone as the backlight too.
will give this a shot hope it works only need to use it for it strips of negative film so did not want to spend money on film scanner
I tried this and the results are nowhere near acceptable.
Thanks for the tips. Made my first slide and negative copies just fine. Photoshop really helps "autocorrect" both kinds of media, and, of course, reverses a negative to positive. What gave me hope was looking at the camera you used. I thought you had to have a DSLR, but I have a Fuji FinePix S 14 megapixel, which is similar to the style of camera you used. Lord forgive me, but I used four Bibles to prop up the camera.
my grandpa is doing this right now. if your camera has the "negative" photo effect, would that work as well?
Thank You!!!!!
Superb! A friend of mine just asked me for tips on a good and affordable film scanner to digitize tons of slides. Looking for answers I found your video.
Many thanks, beats my old Minolta 5600 or Epson v70 scanners hands down and for sure the new low end ones available at B&H.
Easier, faster, cheaper!
Have you tried your computer with a white screen "on your browser"?
just save "<body bgcolor="White"></body>" to a file named "name.html".
then drag it to the browser. or find a white part of any webpage.
obviously….
Super useful! Thank you so much!
I use Paint Shop Pro, but Photoshop or any decent paint program should do the trick. If you're interested in free software to do this, Gimp (google it) is open source and very good, too.
what is the last software used to let the picture to its original form?