Tips: - Use timer or remote trigger to avoid camera shake. - Reduce exterior light you don't want any reflections from above. - If you get to the point where you want to tweak stuff like shadows and highlights, shooting in RAW mode with you DSLR camera will maximize your options.
I've been using VueScan for years... with my scanner. I never knew you could use it to convert color film negatives to positives! I love your technique because the ability to manually focus has a huge advantage over flatbed scanners because slide mounts can be different thicknesses, or even warped. The slightest bit of of misalignment can cause a scan to lose sharpness. I've been experimenting with using my Sony a6100 with a macro lens, and the results have been superb. Also, if you fill the frame, the true resolution is MUCH higher than flatbed scanners since most scanners use digital interpolation to create higher-res scans.
I like your rig. I use my smartphone to shoot - 2 things: 1 make sure your camera is facing the shiny side of the negative, or else it will come out backwards. 2 I use the vocal command feature; when I'm ready, I just say "capture" and the phone takes the picture eliminating jiggle.
More tips: Slide copying in this manner should be done under very subdued (ie: kinda dark) room lighting conditons. Plus, you should mask all the extraneous white light coming from AROUND the slide (on the WHOLE light box surface). These techniques are necessary to insure reduced lens flare and help to deliver maximum color saturation. Otherwise your images will have a slightly "foggy" look, which you'll easily see in a 'before and after' masking comparison.
The modern way of doing this is with Adobe Lightroom and Negative Lab Pro. If your DSLR permits tethering, you can "scan" directly into Lightroom and not have to transfer images from a card. Negative Lab Pro will convert your negatives almost automatically to positives. Of course, shoot RAW if possible and never save your image as a JPEG, only TIFF or DNG. There's a lot more to this method than I've mentioned, but, TH-cam is your friend to learn how it is done.
When doing things this way how large will the image go without becoming pixelated or blurry? Also the images you converted were they from the smart phone or the expensive dlsr camera? I do not have a dlsr but I do have a good Nikon Slr camera that I love to take photos with. I am an artist and need models to pose for my artwork. I haven't used a film camera in a long time but still have negatives. I also have a few that are a bit out of focus but I have aps that fix that very nicely. Thanks for the video and info.
Mate thanks for the tips .. for me Vuescan was an idea I have never considered before. It is FAR faster and more accurate than me doing it in Photoshop (Ps).. oh god the tweaking and failures I have had. Vuescan is now going to do most of the heavy colour correction grunt work, and Ps for editing the result. I imagine I will output most files in tiff format as from memory it keeps most of the photo data unlike jpeg so Ps has the most data to work with. Thanks again .. PS .. 1. using an iPad as my lightbox, but before I get into "production" mode I will need some kind of diffuser as the screen pixels are very evident in the scan .. same with the smartphone doing the same. Some type of white plastic sheet should do the trick. 2. Remote triggering the camera is also a must as my tests show camera movement as i press the button .. where are my spare batteries? EDIT a couple hours later. Don't have a photosolve thingie so cut a frame sized hole in a fridge magnet. Will take longer but it successfully flattens the negative Thanks Again ...
You can get an LED lighttable on Amazon for about $20.00, with varied intensities of light. Nice and even. They are light, and flat, about the thickness of an iPad. Often sold as a tracing aid. I’ve also heard of people using their IPads as a light table, there is a simple software that just projects a white screen.
Samuel - Yes, alternate light sources may be used! But it is best to have a diffuser of some type between the light source and the negative, esp. if you are using an LED light source.
Or get a light box app to your ipad. Make sure to use some sort of diffusion to counter the pixels or use a sheet of glass rised above the ipad surface.
Thank you for a nice instructable! One question: In Vuescan, after you have done your preview and chosen the profile for the scan (to file) is it then possible to select ALL images in the list and set batch scan ON? Will it autocrop and give the same colorvalues to all images based on the preview?
Yes, you can batch scan all selected images, and it will autocrop and give the same settings to all images. This is why it is important to take your pictures using a common reference point as the same crop will apply to all selected images.
Thanks for the vid, this takes me back. However, with 10k + slides (most are DUPES, as the originals, are in the files of the stock agencies that I shoot for), this not an option as I simply do not have the time. Even back in the day when I was shooting film and digital film scanners (Nikon's Coolscan was one of many that I owned) were coming onto the scene, it was an arduous process at best. Now computers then (Mac Qandra), were admittedly painfully slow compared to today's offerings, still, I can not see spending any serious time to devote to this very slow process.
Using a 1:1 macro lens with a fullframe camera should result in perfect crop, right? All the creamy megapixels of the camera will come to good use. I haven’t tried it myself, but I’m guessing this would be the case.
Well that only makes sense if you already own a Fullframe DSLR and macro lense. For the average person that investment is way too much. You could already get a proper dedicated negative scanner for that price.
I do it with ipad as light box and a camera then through laptop i convert them + i would know if take them by high end camera like a7rii instead of iPhone will make any difference? Thanks panda
Using a quality DSLR camera can make a huge difference in quality - unless the original photo is already in low quality. (Small cheap snapshot cameras only ocationally shot photos of decent quality).
And yes, using an A7Rii or iii will give you 42 megapixels and RAW photos, but I guess what matters more is the lens you use. I will try this with a 1:1 macro lens.
You had the color-film selection as Kodak Gold, I know that that is either a mistake or Vuescan may not have the proper film type like Kodachrome, etc.
Rolando - One of the nice features about VueScan is that it allows you to select from hundreds of film types. It usually helpful to test various film types to see which one(s) give the best conversion when converting camera-digitized files as the VueScan film type conversion algorithms were optimized for scanned negatives.
Lester - Yes, you can use a scanner. But it takes a lot longer to scan negatives than to take pictures of negatives. It typically will take 60 seconds or so to scan a negative vs a few seconds to position and scan a negative frame per the method shown in the video. If you do use a scanner, I definitely recommend using VueScan with the scanner.
Dave MaC Thank you so much for the info! I didn't take any classes about the films (whatever you call it) that's why I know little about it. It just caught my attention and got interested and I decided to try it. But anyway, thank you so much :)
1)A tripod. 2)A 35mm rectangle frame. 3) PS remove film base color. 4) cmd + I. 5) cmd + shift + L. 6) cmd + shift + B. Okay, that's it. better then scanner!
I don't know where you're located but if you ever want to come to our office in NYC or LA to play with our Like-This-But-On-Steroids system you'd be welcome to. It's in use at the Library of Congress for the FSA collection, the Smithsonian, Center for Creative Photography (which houses the life works of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams) along with many others. It's call the DT Film Scanning Kit and uses an aerospace-grade aluminum chassis, a custom 98 CRI/CQS LED light source, a german Schneider macro digitar lens, and a 100mp 16 bit sensor along with custom software called Capture One Cultural Heritage Edition. We'd love to show you how your concept is being used at a higher end.
Film scanners typically take from 1-2 minutes to scan negatives. This process will let you take pictures of negatives as fast as you can position them (every 5 seconds or so). The images can then be batch converted to positives using VueScan. If you have a lot of negatives, this saves a lot of time. If you have only a few negatives, a typical film scanner will work just fine.
thanks for the video seems like a LOT of work (making a stand- making a fixture to hold the smart phone) why not just buy a negative scanner? warmly Mr p decker
Peter - Most negative scanners take a long time to scan a negative due to the higher resolution setting. If you have a lot of negatives and want to convert them quickly, making a jig is a small price to pay to save you lots of hours of scanning. For comparison, I have an Epson V600 that will scan negatives - but it takes 1-2 minutes to scan one negative depending on the settings vs. just a few seconds using the approach I describe. If you use a DSLR camera, the quality of the converted images is comparable to the flatbed scanned version. And the higher quality smartphones will also take some excellent pics, although they will usually require some cropping.
PandaPix i make the counter argument that you can scan multiple negative strips at one time. I put like 5 strips by 5 photos last time and that's like 25 photos and scanned them all in like less than 5 minutes. Your process takes too long and is even less accurate
I just wrote a longer version of this same advice, above (sorry .. didn't read all the posts before writing . but this advice is to important and basic, I rushed to add it).
I've found a better way to hold and position negatives using the negative film holder from an HP ScanJet TMA C9911B negative-slide scanner attachment. It will be awhile before I can post a video showing this method, but if you are interested in finding out more about this approach, please contact me at pandapixky@gmail.com
Brook - Thanks for your comment. I have an Epson V600 that makes decent scans of negatives. It takes about 1-2 minutes for each negative frame (depending on if Digital ICE is turned on). The results of the camera conversion process compare well with the scanned images. Once the jig is set up, the conversion goes as quickly as you can position the negatives and take a picture. In addition, the plastic negative holders for the Epson V600 are very flimsy and are a pain to load. If you have lots of negatives (hundreds, or thousands), it may make sense to make a jig like this as it will save a lot of time in the long run.
I have done this before and if you don't want to shell out the 40 dollars for VuScan then you can do the same thing with GIMP, which is free and can do way more than this program
There are a lot of android apps to invert color on real time, so maybe you can skip the software purchase or even do it with photoshop with a couple of clicks.
VueScan has hundreds of profiles for negative films already built into the program to minimize the number of post-conversion adjustments needed. I suggest converting a sample negative image with VueScan (use the free trial version) and then comparing those results with the results you get with converting the same image with android apps or other programs. I think you'll find that you'll get far better quality images with VueScan, with much less work.
i would suggest avoiding the slide-frame as it crops the image you wanna scan a little too much. If you digitize your photo you want to gather as much picture informtion as possible. That means all the way to the sprocketholes. You can always crop it afterwards digitally anyway. You wanna make sure you gotta use the fullest capacity of your picture resolution. And you don't change it from TIFF to JPEG (Big NO NO). You change it to BMP. JPEG should always be the LAST step at the very end when you create a copy of your finished picture to share with others. Never save your working files as lossy JPEG files. BMP files are no problem and are lossless. That is the the format you use to work with.
Tips:
- Use timer or remote trigger to avoid camera shake.
- Reduce exterior light you don't want any reflections from above.
- If you get to the point where you want to tweak stuff like shadows and highlights, shooting in RAW mode with you DSLR camera will maximize your options.
Lasse Buck agreed 👍
I've been using VueScan for years... with my scanner. I never knew you could use it to convert color film negatives to positives! I love your technique because the ability to manually focus has a huge advantage over flatbed scanners because slide mounts can be different thicknesses, or even warped. The slightest bit of of misalignment can cause a scan to lose sharpness. I've been experimenting with using my Sony a6100 with a macro lens, and the results have been superb. Also, if you fill the frame, the true resolution is MUCH higher than flatbed scanners since most scanners use digital interpolation to create higher-res scans.
Thank you very much for the tips. It looks very simple how you do it, but I understand you got it after a lot of tests.
I like your rig. I use my smartphone to shoot - 2 things: 1 make sure your camera is facing the shiny side of the negative, or else it will come out backwards. 2 I use the vocal command feature; when I'm ready, I just say "capture" and the phone takes the picture eliminating jiggle.
More tips: Slide copying in this manner should be done under very subdued (ie: kinda dark) room lighting conditons. Plus, you should mask all the extraneous white light coming from AROUND the slide (on the WHOLE light box surface). These techniques are necessary to insure reduced lens flare and help to deliver maximum color saturation. Otherwise your images will have a slightly "foggy" look, which you'll easily see in a 'before and after' masking comparison.
The modern way of doing this is with Adobe Lightroom and Negative Lab Pro. If your DSLR permits tethering, you can "scan" directly into Lightroom and not have to transfer images from a card. Negative Lab Pro will convert your negatives almost automatically to positives. Of course, shoot RAW if possible and never save your image as a JPEG, only TIFF or DNG. There's a lot more to this method than I've mentioned, but, TH-cam is your friend to learn how it is done.
When doing things this way how large will the image go without becoming pixelated or blurry? Also the images you converted were they from the smart phone or the expensive dlsr camera? I do not have a dlsr but I do have a good Nikon Slr camera that I love to take photos with. I am an artist and need models to pose for my artwork. I haven't used a film camera in a long time but still have negatives. I also have a few that are a bit out of focus but I have aps that fix that very nicely. Thanks for the video and info.
Amazing video. Quick & easy . Saves Money & Time
whats the adaptor you mention at 0:55 ?
Dave - I list the equipment used in an Instructable:
www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Convert-Film-Negatives-with-a-Digital-Camer/
Mate thanks for the tips .. for me Vuescan was an idea I have never considered before. It is FAR faster and more accurate than me doing it in Photoshop (Ps).. oh god the tweaking and failures I have had. Vuescan is now going to do most of the heavy colour correction grunt work, and Ps for editing the result. I imagine I will output most files in tiff format as from memory it keeps most of the photo data unlike jpeg so Ps has the most data to work with.
Thanks again ..
PS ..
1. using an iPad as my lightbox, but before I get into "production" mode I will need some kind of diffuser as the screen pixels are very evident in the scan .. same with the smartphone doing the same. Some type of white plastic sheet should do the trick.
2. Remote triggering the camera is also a must as my tests show camera movement as i press the button .. where are my spare batteries?
EDIT a couple hours later. Don't have a photosolve thingie so cut a frame sized hole in a fridge magnet. Will take longer but it successfully flattens the negative
Thanks Again ...
And what about setting white ballance in camera? Is it not matter? I think that if my light box have a cold Led light, I have to set it on my camera.
You can get an LED lighttable on Amazon for about $20.00, with varied intensities of light. Nice and even. They are light, and flat, about the thickness of an iPad. Often sold as a tracing aid. I’ve also heard of people using their IPads as a light table, there is a simple software that just projects a white screen.
Samuel - Yes, alternate light sources may be used! But it is best to have a diffuser of some type between the light source and the negative, esp. if you are using an LED light source.
Or get a light box app to your ipad. Make sure to use some sort of diffusion to counter the pixels or use a sheet of glass rised above the ipad surface.
Thank you for a nice instructable! One question: In Vuescan, after you have done your preview and chosen the profile for the scan (to file) is it then possible to select ALL images in the list and set batch scan ON? Will it autocrop and give the same colorvalues to all images based on the preview?
Yes, you can batch scan all selected images, and it will autocrop and give the same settings to all images. This is why it is important to take your pictures using a common reference point as the same crop will apply to all selected images.
Thanks for the vid, this takes me back. However, with 10k + slides (most are DUPES, as the originals, are in the files of the stock agencies that I shoot for), this not an option as I simply do not have the time. Even back in the day when I was shooting film and digital film scanners (Nikon's Coolscan was one of many that I owned) were coming onto the scene, it was an arduous process at best. Now computers then (Mac Qandra), were admittedly painfully slow compared to today's offerings, still, I can not see spending any serious time to devote to this very slow process.
Using a 1:1 macro lens with a fullframe camera should result in perfect crop, right? All the creamy megapixels of the camera will come to good use. I haven’t tried it myself, but I’m guessing this would be the case.
Well that only makes sense if you already own a Fullframe DSLR and macro lense. For the average person that investment is way too much. You could already get a proper dedicated negative scanner for that price.
They also have scanners that do the same thing.
Can you do this with Kodak's Disc (Circular) negatives if you can somehow fashion some type of holder for it?
Chris - Yes - This method will work with a Kodak disc. You'll get better results with a macro lens, though, since the negatives are so small.
Chris Goguen
Intersting idea.
The Viewscan i just downloaded does not have an option on the media tab for negatives. I don't know if I pay the $40 if it will then show that option.
Click on the 'Options+' button at the bottom.
can i use scaner instead of cemra or smart phone?
sir do you know the name of the converter you can just place on a scanner to do the same thing
I do it with ipad as light box and a camera then through laptop i convert them
+
i would know if take them by high end camera like a7rii instead of iPhone will make any difference?
Thanks panda
Using a quality DSLR camera can make a huge difference in quality - unless the original photo is already in low quality. (Small cheap snapshot cameras only ocationally shot photos of decent quality).
Thanks a bunch for thinking outside the (light) box for me! I will try this with my iPad.
And yes, using an A7Rii or iii will give you 42 megapixels and RAW photos, but I guess what matters more is the lens you use. I will try this with a 1:1 macro lens.
I notice that the slide showed 'this side toward screen'. I think you have it backwards don't you?
Ric Trexell my iPhone has all my pictures in negatives and can't figure out how to turn it back?
do wee need to develop our film first??? thanks
Yup. This is for developed negatives.
I need closed captioned on screen. pls add those
Grazie!
You had the color-film selection as Kodak Gold, I know that that is either a mistake or Vuescan may not have the proper film type like Kodachrome, etc.
Rolando - One of the nice features about VueScan is that it allows you to select from hundreds of film types. It usually helpful to test various film types to see which one(s) give the best conversion when converting camera-digitized files as the VueScan film type conversion algorithms were optimized for scanned negatives.
Can a scanner be used?
Lester - Yes, you can use a scanner. But it takes a lot longer to scan negatives than to take pictures of negatives. It typically will take 60 seconds or so to scan a negative vs a few seconds to position and scan a negative frame per the method shown in the video. If you do use a scanner, I definitely recommend using VueScan with the scanner.
@@pandapix9519 Thanks!
Do I need to develop my film first? Or I can do this after I took my film out of my camera?
You NEED to develop the film. If the film touches any light outside of the light it's exposed to when you take a picture, it will be completely ruined
Dave MaC Thank you so much for the info! I didn't take any classes about the films (whatever you call it) that's why I know little about it. It just caught my attention and got interested and I decided to try it. But anyway, thank you so much :)
I wish this would be possible :/
Thank you!
1)A tripod. 2)A 35mm rectangle frame. 3) PS remove film base color. 4) cmd + I. 5) cmd + shift + L. 6) cmd + shift + B. Okay, that's it. better then scanner!
I don't know where you're located but if you ever want to come to our office in NYC or LA to play with our Like-This-But-On-Steroids system you'd be welcome to. It's in use at the Library of Congress for the FSA collection, the Smithsonian, Center for Creative Photography (which houses the life works of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams) along with many others. It's call the DT Film Scanning Kit and uses an aerospace-grade aluminum chassis, a custom 98 CRI/CQS LED light source, a german Schneider macro digitar lens, and a 100mp 16 bit sensor along with custom software called Capture One Cultural Heritage Edition. We'd love to show you how your concept is being used at a higher end.
dtdch.com/film-scanning-kit/
I'm gonna give it a shot with my Lumia 1020.
going to try this now hope it will work
thank you very much
For all the trouble and maybe less money, you can just buy a used film scanner from ebay!! Why reinvent the film/slide scanner?!
Film scanners typically take from 1-2 minutes to scan negatives. This process will let you take pictures of negatives as fast as you can position them (every 5 seconds or so). The images can then be batch converted to positives using VueScan. If you have a lot of negatives, this saves a lot of time. If you have only a few negatives, a typical film scanner will work just fine.
thanks for the video
seems like a LOT of work (making a stand- making a fixture to hold the smart phone)
why not just buy a negative scanner?
warmly
Mr p decker
Peter - Most negative scanners take a long time to scan a negative due to the higher resolution setting. If you have a lot of negatives and want to convert them quickly, making a jig is a small price to pay to save you lots of hours of scanning. For comparison, I have an Epson V600 that will scan negatives - but it takes 1-2 minutes to scan one negative depending on the settings vs. just a few seconds using the approach I describe. If you use a DSLR camera, the quality of the converted images is comparable to the flatbed scanned version. And the higher quality smartphones will also take some excellent pics, although they will usually require some cropping.
I know right
PandaPix i make the counter argument that you can scan multiple negative strips at one time. I put like 5 strips by 5 photos last time and that's like 25 photos and scanned them all in like less than 5 minutes. Your process takes too long and is even less accurate
Thanks
I
Much better to have a film scanner. If you do go this route mask off all other light from the box and turn off room lights.
I just wrote a longer version of this same advice, above (sorry .. didn't read all the posts before writing . but this advice is to important and basic, I rushed to add it).
I've found a better way to hold and position negatives using the negative film holder from an HP ScanJet TMA C9911B negative-slide scanner attachment. It will be awhile before I can post a video showing this method, but if you are interested in finding out more about this approach, please contact me at pandapixky@gmail.com
PandaPix 2anes
Prix 3ans
I like this video it's clever
can i use my scanner instead?
No camera huh?
R B-C nah
A lot of extra work just get a simple slide scanner for $75-$100 and get just as good results much faster!
Brook - Thanks for your comment.
I have an Epson V600 that makes decent scans of negatives. It takes about 1-2 minutes for each negative frame (depending on if Digital ICE is turned on). The results of the camera conversion process compare well with the scanned images. Once the jig is set up, the conversion goes as quickly as you can position the negatives and take a picture. In addition, the plastic negative holders for the Epson V600 are very flimsy and are a pain to load.
If you have lots of negatives (hundreds, or thousands), it may make sense to make a jig like this as it will save a lot of time in the long run.
Smart Idea
I have done this before and if you don't want to shell out the 40 dollars for VuScan then you can do the same thing with GIMP, which is free and can do way more than this program
GIMP requires a lot of adjustments to convert negatives to positives. VueScan has a very simple interface that allows you to do this in one step.
There are a lot of android apps to invert color on real time, so maybe you can skip the software purchase or even do it with photoshop with a couple of clicks.
VueScan has hundreds of profiles for negative films already built into the program to minimize the number of post-conversion adjustments needed. I suggest converting a sample negative image with VueScan (use the free trial version) and then comparing those results with the results you get with converting the same image with android apps or other programs. I think you'll find that you'll get far better quality images with VueScan, with much less work.
+PandaPix
you will have to buy the sofware sooner or later, when after a certain number of trial, VueScan will be incrusted over your result
i would suggest avoiding the slide-frame as it crops the image you wanna scan a little too much. If you digitize your photo you want to gather as much picture informtion as possible. That means all the way to the sprocketholes. You can always crop it afterwards digitally anyway. You wanna make sure you gotta use the fullest capacity of your picture resolution. And you don't change it from TIFF to JPEG (Big NO NO). You change it to BMP. JPEG should always be the LAST step at the very end when you create a copy of your finished picture to share with others. Never save your working files as lossy JPEG files. BMP files are no problem and are lossless. That is the the format you use to work with.
why not use a tripod?
Ok, Bit Never Touch the Slides 👹
looks like a pain