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Archive 2021 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives

  
 
EverLearning
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


My mom passed away several years ago and my dad passed away last year. In cleaning out his apartment we found boxes and boxes (and boxes) of photos. I have recently started slowly working my way through this massive pile of family history. Most photos had negatives in the same envelope. Some envelopes had photos but no negatives. Some envelopes even had negatives with no photos. In one such (very old) envelope, holding a few negatives up to the light, it appears that at least some of these are from the late 30's (including of my uncle who died in the second world war and for which I have seen very few photos). I should also mention that because the negatives span nine decades, they come in all different sizes.

It is apparent to me that I should not assume that the negatives in any given envelope match up perfectly with the photos in the same envelope and that I should somehow be checking the thousand of negatives for anything "special".

My problem is I have no idea how to go about this massive task (holding up to the light doesn't work very well!). I am hopeful that i can get some ideas from the knowledgeable folks here at FM.

Due to unusual nature of this question and being unsure where to post this, I have posted it to two forums. I am posting to the Pro forum only because it may take a "pro' to come up with an unusual solution to the unusual question. Apologies in advance if I really should not have posted here.

Thanks!



Nov 28, 2021 at 07:43 PM
PhilPDX
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


Several options (from worst to best quality-wise):


a) Scan negatives with a flatbed scanner

b) Use a digital camera to copy the negatives and invert them afterwards

c) Use a dedicated slide/ film scanner like the NIKON Coolscans

d) Get drum scans of the most valuable negatives from a professional service


-Phil




Nov 28, 2021 at 10:01 PM
msalvetti
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


Wow, that must be equal parts exciting and daunting. I don't think there is an easy way out. You just have to go through everything one at a time. You might consider a flatbed scanner to get at least some idea of what the negatives look like, but you probably can't scan everything and then sort. It would take way too long.

I have to admit, I have the same issue and I have made zero progress, so maybe I'm not the best one to give advice.

I'll be watching this thread for some other ideas.

Mark



Nov 28, 2021 at 11:34 PM
dclark
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


I make "contact sheets" of negatives that allow me to review them and associate them with the negatives. The basic method is that I load the film strips in "Print File Archival Preservers", Negative Preservers
I put my camera on a tripod with the camera pointing down onto a Kaiser Slimlite, KaiserSlimlitePlano. I adjust the tripod height so that a sheet of negatives on the Slimlite fills the frame. Then I put the sheet with negatives on the light, place a piece of glass on the sheet of negatives to flatten it, and take a photo. I have the camera tethered using Sony's Remote application so I can adjust exposure, focus and frame the sheet, and then capture the image directly into the computer. Tethering the camera is not necessary but is very convenient. Once I have taken many photos of sheets, I use Negative Lab Pro to convert the negative images to positives. I now have a set of contact sheets to review the negatives and decide which ones to scan. In addition, I print the contact sheets and keep them in a three ring binder with the sheet of negatives. Printing the sheets can be a problem since the white background is now black. Printing them on an inkjet printed consumes a lot of ink. If you decide to print the contact sheets let me know and I will tell you how I process the files for printing. It's a bit tedious but saves a lot of ink and looks better.

To scan individual frames, I have been using my Sony A7R3 and now A7R4 to scan positives and negatives for a couple of years. It works better than the flatbed scanner I used (Epson 750) and the Nikon and Minolta film scanners I have used. It is much faster and produces excellent files. You can see the basic set up in this thread.
https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1597233/0
I am now using an Apurture AL-MX light source with a light pipe crafted from white foam core to get very uniform illumination. Again, I use Sony Remote to tether the camera to the computer so I can quickly focus and frame the mages, and capture the images directly into the computer.

You will need a macro lens capable of 1:1 magnification, and then some adapters to use the Nikon ES-2. I assume something like what I put together for the Sony 90mm lens can be adapted to a lot of other lenses.

The main time consumption is cleaning and then loading the film or slides into film holders. Once that is done I can scan a film holder full of negatives in just a few seconds.

I use Negative Lab Pro to process color negatives. I batch process groups of images that have been shot on the same film type. It goes pretty quickly.

It is a bit of an investment in time perfect your work flow but it goes pretty quickly. I have scanned several thousand negatives and slides with this system.

The above methods results in contact sheets and negatives captures as RAW files. You may want to convert them to DNG for long term preservation.

Scanning prints can be done with a good scanner like the Epson 750 or 850. It can be pretty tedious.

I hope that helps. It sounds like you have some family treasures so it will be worth some effort to preserve them digitally.

Dave






Archival negative storage and contact sheet. The contact sheet has been processed so that only the image portion of the film strip has been converted to a positive. Consequently the white areas have not be converted to black.



Edited on Nov 29, 2021 at 11:08 AM · View previous versions



Nov 29, 2021 at 02:04 AM
tcphoto
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


If it were me, I'd make contact sheets of each envelope on my flatbed scanner and decide which images to print. Only you can decide what level you want to save them at and archive but a basic Canon or Epson printer and nice paper should work.


Nov 29, 2021 at 10:03 AM
Taperwing
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


To add a little to Dave's excellent info.

I've done scans on dedicated film scanners, flatbed scanners, and now, using my camera as a direct copy device. I've become quite fond of the speed and quality of using my camera, although all of my experience is with color slides and B&W negatives. However, doing a search on "color negative inversion photoshop" will bring up several work flows to try.

For bulk scanning, I like the idea of using clear negative sheets covered by a sheet of glass, over a backlight panel. All of my old negatives and slides are in such sheets. Need to work in a darkened room to eliminate frontside glare.

For more detailed scans, I use old enlarger negative carriers. Doesn't make too much difference whose they are, as long as they can be laid flat on your light panel.

If you are really going to make a go of this, it is incredibly helpful to have a copy stand available. I have a Kaiser RS2, which truthfully is silly expensive for what it is. Such a device makes it easy to keep the optical axis of your camera orthogonal to what you are trying to image and allows for easy height (scaling) adjustment. If mechanically handy, it would be easy to repurpose an enlarger mechanism and base as a copy stand.

To start, you can do far worse than finding an old MF Nikkor 55/2.8, or AF Nikkor 60/2.8 and adapting to whatever mirrorless system you care to use. They are flat field corrected, which is important for this work. Just set at f/8 and go to town.



Nov 29, 2021 at 10:59 AM
dclark
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


tcphoto wrote:
If it were me, I'd make contact sheets of each envelope on my flatbed scanner and decide which images to print. Only you can decide what level you want to save them at and archive but a basic Canon or Epson printer and nice paper should work.


Yes, a flatbed scanner can work, but it can be slow. Once I am setup I can make contact sheets in a few seconds each. You will still need to convert the files to positives using Negative Lab Pro or some other method.

Printing the contact sheets will consume lots of ink unless you edit them so that only the image portion of the negatives are converted to positives. Otherwise most of the sheet is black and that require lots of ink. BTW, I use Red River Premium Matte 8.5x11 paper. Works great. An alternative to doing all the work to edit the contact sheets is to have them printed at a place like Costco. They don't care how much black there is.

Dave



Nov 29, 2021 at 11:21 AM
tcphoto
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


No need to print contact sheets, just the selected images.


Nov 29, 2021 at 11:25 AM
dclark
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


Taperwing wrote:
To add a little to Dave's excellent info.

I've done scans on dedicated film scanners, flatbed scanners, and now, using my camera as a direct copy device. I've become quite fond of the speed and quality of using my camera, although all of my experience is with color slides and B&W negatives. However, doing a search on "color negative inversion photoshop" will bring up several work flows to try.

For bulk scanning, I like the idea of using clear negative sheets covered by a sheet of glass, over a backlight panel. All of my old negatives and slides are in such sheets.
...Show more

I did forget to mention the need to block room lights a bit to avoid glare. I just wrapped a cloth around the tripod legs and that worked great.

For high res scans of film the setup using the Nikon ES-2 is great, but does require some work to adapt it to your macro lens. Your suggestion of a copy stand is a good alternative. It would be possible to adapt the method used to make contact prints by building a platform to move the Slimlite up to the 1:1 working distance of the macro lens. Taping some wood guides onto the Slimlite to align the film holder should make it possible to quickly make 1:1 images of the negatives. That is not as fast or stable as the ES-2 setup but it should be pretty quick.



Nov 29, 2021 at 11:40 AM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


All of the above suggestions are great and plan to use some of those for my own scanning.
Yet one option I did not see mentioned was having a service do the scanning for you.
It costs money as well yet all of the above involves equipment and it depends on how you value your time.
If time is scarce and paying for the scanning service is not cost prohibitive, it may be worth considering.
There are many services out there and Larsen Digitial is just one (its not the low cost provider) that I am linking for a sample reference: https://larsendigital.com/



Nov 29, 2021 at 01:11 PM
PhilPDX
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


John Wheeler wrote:
Yet one option I did not see mentioned was having a service do the scanning for you.


See my response above, point d)

-Phil



Nov 29, 2021 at 01:29 PM
chez
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


John Wheeler wrote:
All of the above suggestions are great and plan to use some of those for my own scanning.
Yet one option I did not see mentioned was having a service do the scanning for you.
It costs money as well yet all of the above involves equipment and it depends on how you value your time.
If time is scarce and paying for the scanning service is not cost prohibitive, it may be worth considering.
There are many services out there and Larsen Digitial is just one (its not the low cost provider) that I am linking for a sample reference: https://larsendigital.com/


I agree with having a service do the bulk scanning. If you have thousands of negatives to scan, you'll quickly find it a chore that just eats your spare time. Pay for a scanning service ( ScanCafe ) and use your free time to take more photos.



Nov 29, 2021 at 02:06 PM
chez
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


PhilPDX wrote:
See my response above, point d)

-Phil


Your suggestion is to use a drum scanning service ( expensive ) for only the best of the best, which might be an approach...but for the huge bulk of the negatives, a faster / cheaper approach would be to use a bulk scanning service that get's you images good enough for small prints and definitely good enough to view on a screen.



Nov 29, 2021 at 02:08 PM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


PhilPDX wrote:
See my response above, point d)

-Phil


Thanks Phil
I did see you option d) which I thought was a good idea if you have a super keeper negative.
From my own personal experience, trying to pull out the best of the best just from a negative can
"trying" at best. Maybe some can visualize / recognize what is in the image from a negative, yet that proves to be quite the challenge for me and a number of others I have talked to on the subject.
Also, at least for my parents negatives, the vast vast majority were not worthy of a drum scan from both subject matter and quality of the original shot.

So at least for me, before proceding with your step "d)" I am suggesting that there needs to br a positive image through some mechanism.

For me, for the future, I plan on using Dave's approach in his post above creating contact prints from which to select which should have a higher quality scan.

My main emphasis of my post was to point out there is a significant investment of time involved and to consider an approach that would relieve some of that burden if time was relatively tight and funds were not a big issue.




Nov 29, 2021 at 04:09 PM
dclark
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


I have inquiries about the process to get rid of the black in the positive contact sheet image so it can be printed.
Below is an image that shows the original photo of the negative archive sheet, and the same image converted to a positive. I open both images as layers in Photo Shop. I put the positive sheet on top of the layer stack. I then use either the Rectangular Marquee tool or the Polygonal Lasso tool to select the positive images in the film strips (in this case seven selections of two, three or four frames). With that selection, I used the "Add Layer Mask" icon in the layers panel to create a mask on the top layer. That makes a series of white strips in the mask that reveals the positive, but masks out the rest of the negative strip and the black area. That results in the third image, which I flatten, save as a jpeg, and print.

Dave










Nov 29, 2021 at 04:32 PM
Taperwing
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


If technique is good to excellent, one is unlikely to see much improvement when going from a film scanner (Nikon Coolscan or the like), or even a well done digital camera copy (ie excellent lens, optimal aperture, etc.), to a drum scan, for color negatives.

Color slide film has a higher dynamic range (difference between Dmax and Dmin) than negative film. The former can have a dynamic range of up to 3.2, while the latter can hit 2.8ish, and remember, that is a log scale. A drum scan can deal with a range of up to 4.0, while most scanners top out around 3.0.

While a drum scan can certainly eke out the last iota of information on a piece of film stock, it cannot work miracles. For example, most of the stuff my father shot came from inexpensive consumer cameras with indifferent technique. As such, they are not worth the added expense and effort of drum scanning.



Nov 29, 2021 at 04:35 PM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


dclark wrote:
I have inquiries about the process to get rid of the black in the positive contact sheet image so it can be printed.
Below is an image that shows the original photo of the negative archive sheet, and the same image converted to a positive. I open both images as layers in Photo Shop. I put the positive sheet on top of the layer stack. I then use either the Rectangular Marquee tool or the Polygonal Lasso tool to select the positive images in the film strips (in this case seven selections of two, three or four frames). With that
...Show more

Thanks Dave. That helps a lot. I use the same archival sheets as well.

After looking at your approach, here is an alternative partial or total approach. I just took your first shot of the contact sheet of the negative as a starting point in Photoshop with a black background



Then I just just the Blend If slider in Layer Styles to knock out the whites and turn them to black:



At this point you could take them into Lightroom with the negative plugin you used for the inversion process or, just stay in Photoshop, add an Invert Adjustment Layer, and then a curves adjustment Layer. I just used the black point, white point, and grey point eye dropper tools (pretty arbitrarily) and thought I got an acceptable contact sheet at pretty low investment.
Thought it was worth sharing
John Wheeler



Edited on Nov 29, 2021 at 05:37 PM · View previous versions



Nov 29, 2021 at 05:29 PM
PhilPDX
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


John Wheeler wrote:
Also, at least for my parents negatives, the vast vast majority were not worthy of a drum scan from both subject matter and quality of the original shot.


John, I misunderstood your original post. You and Chez are of course right: only the best negatives and slides should be scanned with a drum scanner. For the rest it makes a lot of sense to just send them to a more affordable bulk scanning service. Contact sheets, as Dave suggested, are a very good idea, too. I scanned all my negatives and slides myself using a Nikon Coolscan 4000 ED. The scanner delivers 4000 dpi and offers ICE, which is invaluable for dusty or dirty slides. Processing takes a lot of time, though.

-Phil




Nov 29, 2021 at 05:33 PM
Paure1
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


Hi,
My approach has been a bit different from what has been described so far.

When I retired in 2005 I purchased an Epson V700 and have been scanning films - Color Neg, slide and B&W along with documents connected with family history. The scanner could handle 24 frames or 12 slides along with med format and reflection.
I scanned films using either 2400 or 3200 dpi. Like most people I didn't find I had any any Nat Geo pictures.

I just checked my records and find the *.tif count at 56K.

I found over time several procedures that have held the system together and enabled quick access to the files.
1. Devise an open ended catalog system that is tied to the file naming system to allow retrieving a specific file.

2. I started using Lightroom at the same time and tagged all the files as I processed the scan files.

3. I saved a ~2mb jpg file of each picture.

4. The Google Picasa picture software was released about the same time so I could search the jpg files very quickly using the tag names or file names. I didn't use the Picasa tagging option. Unfortunately no replacement for Picasa - like has surfaced for this work.

5. Plan your storagecapacity and back-up files. I started with CD, then DVD, then Blu-ray and changed to HD's about 3 years ago.

Good luck with your project,
Allan




Nov 30, 2021 at 01:14 AM
rattlebonez
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Seeking guidance with old family negatives


ScanCafe does quality scan work:

https://www.scancafe.com/



Dec 01, 2021 at 07:37 PM
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