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Archive 2009 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?

  
 
kennewt
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?


Hi

I am involved in an estate in which there are lots of 35mm slides and 35mm Kodak film negatives which will have to be duplicated so the geographically dispersed family can have their own copies.

I'm experienced using CS4, but am not sure how the digital scans of negatives are "processed" so that you can get a positive print?

Can you do this with plug ins in PS or do you have to buy specific software that works on the type of film negative?

I'm thinking of a Nikon 5000 scanner, and if you have an opinion that would be good too!

Answers would be very helpful. Thanks all.

Ken K.



Dec 30, 2009 at 10:23 PM
Bobster2
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?


The scanner software usually converts negative to positive.The quality of the conversion depends on the software.



Dec 30, 2009 at 10:29 PM
Cicopo
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?


I had a Nikon film scanner and all the software you need comes with them to scan and save in at least 2 formats, one being the Nikon format (NEF I think) and a TIF for certain & I think I could also save in jpg format but sometimes I lost detail. The Nikon scanners are expensive so depending on the quality of output needed you might want to research some of the Epson scanners too. Either way if you can produce jpg's you're all set even without Photoshop unless you are expected to tweak the images.


Dec 30, 2009 at 10:50 PM
kennewt
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?


Thanks for the information.

I know that I can get pretty good flatbed scanners, but I think I'll go with something like the Nikon, as there are some photos I took that I have negatives I want to work with in PS. Some in particular are of my girlfriend who died 2 years ago from breast cancer, and I have negatives of some beautiful pictures of her from when we first started dating 10 years ago, that can be improved by bringing up the shadows.

Cicopo: Do you like the Nikon Scanner? I will convert .NEF to .dng as I do with all my RAW photos.


Ken K.






Dec 30, 2009 at 11:04 PM
ericgu
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?


I needed to do this recently for a bunch of pictures from my father after he died, and I ended up sending them out to scancafe. They did a nice job, and when I got them back I uploaded all of them to my smugmug account and sent links out to all the relatives.

Scanning it yourself will take a *long* time.



Dec 30, 2009 at 11:06 PM
Cicopo
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?


I was quite happy with my scanner, but sold it about a year ago because it hadn't been used for a while. I think I bought it in 2001 and there have been many improvements since then. It was a Coolscan IV ED, which I think had 3000 DPI of resolution. TIF's were over 50 MBites, so it filled CD's rather quickly back then. I realized this morning that when used as a stand alone application it only saved in either the Nikon NEF format or as a TIF. However if you opened Photoshop and ran the scanner as an input device you could then save in other forms such as a jpg.
As mentioned it's a slow process, especially if you run digital ICE on each scan, but luckily mine was set up in our family room so I'd just watch TV as I converted the images each night.



Dec 31, 2009 at 08:16 AM
bobrcw
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?


Ken -

I've scanned over 7,000 negatives and slides dating back to 1965 with a Nikon 5000ed and am delighted with the results. Two advantages of a film scanner versus a flatbed are that no glass intervenes between the film and sensor and each piece of film is precisely focused. Depending on settings, each frame takes from 45 to 90 seconds to scan. Tedious but manageable. I was amazed at how much better the negatives were than was reflected in the mediocre prints which came back when they were originally processed.

Sadly, Nikon seems to be exiting the scanner business and the 5000ed status was recently changed to "discontinued" at B&H. The scanners are widely available used, however, as many people resell them after scanning their film. I believe that Scancafe actually uses Nikon 5000s and 9000s to do their scans.



Dec 31, 2009 at 09:13 AM
Lovesong
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?


kennewt wrote:
I will convert .NEF to .dng as I do with all my RAW photos.

Ken K.



A bit of a heads up regarding the "NEF" format. While you may be aware of the fact that Nikon uses .NEF to describe their DSLR raw format, when it comes to their scanners, "NEF" is little more than a cruel joke. What the Nikon software does, is it saves the files that are scanned as NEFs as a tiff, which can then be only opened by their proprietary software (or a plug in for PS, which I found unreliable). There is no advantage to doing this in terms of image quality.

If you were to get a scanner, I would look into getting VueScan from Hamrick. It's solid, stable, and allows you to save raw (meaning separate files for the tiff and the IR (dust removal) scans). It's an extra $80, but in my opinion, it's a sound investment.

For image processing, I am yet to find a better book than Ctein's Digital Restoration From Start to Finish. It's an excellent resource, even for those of us that are skilled in PS.

Good luck with your project.



Dec 31, 2009 at 10:46 AM
Rod Bergen
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?


+1 for VueScan Software

You might want to also look at the Plustek 7300 Scanner.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/539388-REG/Plustek_Technology_Inc__A17_BBM31_C_OpticFilm_7300_35mm_Film.html



Dec 31, 2009 at 11:54 AM
LDBecker
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Scanned Negatives to Print? How?


+2 for VueScan. I have a Nikon Coolscan V ED, which I used for a couple of years under XP Pro, but when I built a new pc using Vista 64, I found that neither my Nikon film scanner NOR my Epson 3200 flatbed scanner was supported. I thought I'd have to spend mega $ on something like Silverfast's VERY GOOD software - and get a copy for each scanner. Not worth it.

I decided to check out VueScan and found that ONE copy worked for both scanners! And it works very well - better than the original software, certainly, but also, it seems to me, on par at least with Silverfast's software. And for hundreds less.

Also +2 on the time to scan the film/slides. Scanning slides, to me, is easier because you have the actual slide there to tell what the color should be. With negative film, you're guessing. Silverfast let you select from different film types (e.g., Velvia) and it got you close, but it was still hard to get things right.Sometimes it seemed impossible to get it right, but that was a few versions of Photoshop ago.

A real positive for scanning your own slides is that you can correct the color shifts in old slides. I have LOTS of old slides that have shifted to reddish - Silverfast AND Vuescan do a great job of bringing back the correct color. I doubt that a high volume lab will take the time to color correct slides for you. Old color negatives MAY have color shift issues (not really sure about this).

Larry Becker



Dec 31, 2009 at 01:49 PM





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