Photo Negatives

[treeturner123]

Hi All

During a tidy out, I 'discovered' a huge box of old 35mm negatives both Colour and B&W (I used to do my own processing and enlarging)

Does anyone have any experience on the multiplicity of units that can convert? Every one I have looked at has such a wide range of comments, I don't know which to plump for. There is such a wide range of prices as well. I really only need it for negatives/slides, not copying photos themselves.

Or, shall I just dump all of the negatives??!!

Comments appreciated.

Phil

 

[petermillard]

We digitised our photo collection via the negatives using an iON Pics 2 SD scanner - has the advantage that is scans to an SD card, so you can scan whilst, say, watching telly, without needing to have a computer attached. Quality was certainly 'good enough' for our usage.

The unit came with holders for prints, 35mm film strips, and mounted 35mm slides; if your collection is in a larger format then you're in for a longer search, I think.

HTH Pete

 

[t8hants]

My bog standard Epson scanner scans slides and negatives, its a decade old.
I've done hundreds with it, but it so boring, a job for when you are in the mood.

 

[morturn]

There are a number of scanners that promise to scan negatives and slides, and did own one once, but it was not very successful.

To date the best I have used is the Nikon Cool Scan. I borrowed one recently off a friend to do some slides and negatives. When I eventually got it working it was remarkably good. Unfortunately, Nikon did not publish an updates driver for the machine that was XP based, but I managed to modify the driver code so it now works on windows 7 just fine.

A second option you could try is to use a slide projector on to a decent flat surface and then digitally photograph the projected image.

Don’t whatever you do dump your negatives.

 

[ColeyS1]

I wonder if there is a company that offer this as a service ? I had several mini dv videos and put off loading them onto a computer for years. I found somewhere that provided this service, money well spent !

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

[nev]

Same as Peter above, pics 2 sd scanner
This is the result from two random slides one from the late 70's and one from the late 90's.
The aerial shot was from memory, Fuji film, 35mm Canon EOS ?

 

[NazNomad]

My bog standard Epson scanner scans slides and negatives, its a decade old.

I probably have the same model Epson. Great for negatives.

 

[sunnybob]

I had a very aggressive clear out of our photo collection. My advice is to go through them and dump everything that is a scenery shot. No one wants to look at where you went on holidays because the internet is awash with professional photos.
Keep every one with people in them. Other family members are prepared to spend an evening comparing wedding photos and other snaps and asking who the strange bloke on the right is.
Many shops offer a transfer service, but be warned its not as cheap as you would wish.

 

[treeturner123]

Hi All

Thanks for the comments, I will take them to heart and start by going through as sunnybob suggests so that I can see exactly what I have left/

One thing that I will need to check is how well any unit deals with B&W negatives which probably account for half my collection.

Phil

 

[jpt]

I have used the ion 2sd to do thousands, literally, of slides and negatives and it does a good job on both B&W and colour. The only thing is they are low res scans at 96dpi for B&W but still good enough for use on a computer or showing on a HD TV.

Examples of B&W neg scans.

john

 

[Shultzy]

My advice is to go through them and dump everything that is a scenery shot. No one wants to look at where you went on holidays because the internet is awash with professional photos.

Whatever you do don't take sunnybob's advice. Your photos are unique, and they may contain historical information for local archives.

I went to Poland in 1965 with a brand new camera. To test it before I put the colour film in I took 36 B&W photos of anything. When I had them developed there was nothing interesting to a fifteen year old. Twenty years later, on a return visit to relatives, they were the most looked at and commented on photos I have ever taken. There was nobody on the photos that anybody would recognised but the buildings, fashions, buses, trains, cars and houses they all knew and could see the changes over 20 years.

That's the problem with today's "photographers", nobody is taking potential "historical" photos of anything.

PS google negatives scanners, there are plenty about, just make sure they have the correct mounts for your negatives. I have a Canoscan.

 

[morturn]

My advice is to go through them and dump everything that is a scenery shot. No one wants to look at where you went on holidays because the internet is awash with professional photos.

Whatever you do don't take sunnybob's advice. Your photos are unique, and they may contain historical information for local archives.

I went to Poland in 1965 with a brand new camera. To test it before I put the colour film in I took 36 B&W photos of anything. When I had them developed there was nothing interesting to a fifteen year old. Twenty years later, on a return visit to relatives, they were the most looked at and commented on photos I have ever taken. There was nobody on the photos that anybody would recognised but the buildings, fashions, buses, trains, cars and houses they all knew and could see the changes over 20 years.

That's the problem with today's "photographers", nobody is taking potential "historical" photos of anything.

PS google negatives scanners, there are plenty about, just make sure they have the correct mounts for your negatives. I have a Canoscan.

I would second that too don’t bin anything.

In Birmingham, there was a lady college lecturer who during the 50s and 60’s of very ordinary everyday photos of the streets, houses and factory’s etc. as part of her teaching.

The lady died in in 1969 and the slides and phots were almost binned. Fortunately, someone had the hindsight to recognise that due the age of these phots, there was a record of significant social change,

The Phyllis Nicklin collection is now recognised as an incredibly valuable archive that gives a great insight into the social changes that took place in what’s was a very industrialised town. They have featured in a number of major exhibitions

 

[RogerM]

Agree about chucking nothing out. I have family photos going back to the 1870s and I treasure them. Recently came across some acetate negatives taken by my grandfather in his RFC uniform in 1917 when he was about 20. I've scanned all his negatives using an Epson V500, now superceded by the Epson V550, and the results have been terrific. Scanned colour negatives from the 1980s give a far superior result to scanning the print made at the same time.