While I don't have negatives of my own to scan, my late father-in-law left behind a treasure trove of slides. He was strictly a film guy; never made the switch to digital. Now I have to figure out what to do with thousands of slides, and how to preserve the best ones.
A fun project but for thousands I would send them off to be scanned by an automated facility. They have equipment that will rapidly convert them. My home setup would take a very long time!
I think the first thing that we will have to do is view them to decide what is worth scanning. There are so many to go through and he took photos of everything. Many will not be of any interest to us, such as vacation photos. But we have found some real gems of family members. Much of his older stuff is in black-and-white. He even used to develop his own photos down in the basement.
Admittedly, scanning is my least favorite part of film photography. I’m not satisfied with lab scans and camera scanning sounds too fiddly and time-consuming. I’ve used Epson flatbeds for medium format scans and the results were acceptable for web use. I don’t have a good solution for 35mm yet.
It is a little fiddly, but the macro lens simplified things by creating "flat" images. Epson has stopped making flatbed scanners for negatives - it was announced last week :(
I am growing less interested in how things look on the web and more interested in how they look hung on the wall - hence this latest obsession.
I heard about Epson. My hope is that we will see a “point-and-scan” scanner with great image quality in the next few years.
I fully understand the obsession with prints! I printed over twenty photographs a couple of months ago to hang on my walls. The next batch will come after I get myself to edit more images.
While I don't have negatives of my own to scan, my late father-in-law left behind a treasure trove of slides. He was strictly a film guy; never made the switch to digital. Now I have to figure out what to do with thousands of slides, and how to preserve the best ones.
A fun project but for thousands I would send them off to be scanned by an automated facility. They have equipment that will rapidly convert them. My home setup would take a very long time!
I think the first thing that we will have to do is view them to decide what is worth scanning. There are so many to go through and he took photos of everything. Many will not be of any interest to us, such as vacation photos. But we have found some real gems of family members. Much of his older stuff is in black-and-white. He even used to develop his own photos down in the basement.
Sounds like a really fun project for cold winter evenings
Admittedly, scanning is my least favorite part of film photography. I’m not satisfied with lab scans and camera scanning sounds too fiddly and time-consuming. I’ve used Epson flatbeds for medium format scans and the results were acceptable for web use. I don’t have a good solution for 35mm yet.
Hey Mike,
It is a little fiddly, but the macro lens simplified things by creating "flat" images. Epson has stopped making flatbed scanners for negatives - it was announced last week :(
I am growing less interested in how things look on the web and more interested in how they look hung on the wall - hence this latest obsession.
I heard about Epson. My hope is that we will see a “point-and-scan” scanner with great image quality in the next few years.
I fully understand the obsession with prints! I printed over twenty photographs a couple of months ago to hang on my walls. The next batch will come after I get myself to edit more images.