URGENT Film Negatives.

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

I was looking for some photos in my negatives as there are some positive prints I've given away over the years to relatives, and guess what!!! My negs are deteriorating!!

On scanning a couple, I have a negative print scanner, I found dampness damage, scratches to the emulsion etc... I'm now in the process of scanning ALL my negatives, another few years and they will be so damaged by time that it will be impossible to retrieve them.

I also store them in plastic bags sealed against moisture in a dark place too!!!

CHECK YOURS if they mean anything to you, get them checked by a pro if you don't possess negative scanning and software capabilities.

I restored one in the computer to almost new yesterday.

BUT, if you have precious memories on film negatives, get them checked out!!

[mick2me 3,033]

Good advice

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Came as a bit of a shock a few days back to find 35mm negs were deteriorating Mick!! I thought they'd last much longer. I was getting ready to copy all of them to my computer eventually, now its become urgent.

There's some old 120 format negs I can copy, but others I don't have holders for, may have to make those myself. Tried laying the negs on the "window" but the scanner doesn't see them that way, something to do with spacing.

Now we are in the "digital" age we tend to forget negatives which are not only fading, but the emulsion is getting "hard" too, getting scratched and affected by air humidity.

The colour fading's no problem with professional software, can be brought back to brilliant colour., but scratches and spots take many hours of hard work at the pixel level to correct, yellowing caused by dampness is another difficult problem to cure.

[Rhymester 25]

I was going to buy a film scanner to digitise my 35mm slides but bought a slide duplicator instead. I have been getting really good results when I use it on s Canon 300 D.

There is a slot on either side so that you can feed strips of film through instead of having to mount individual slides: I have photographed some old black and white negatives this way and just inverted the image in Photoshop.

I got mine off Amazon - here's a link if anyone's intersested:

slide Duplicator

[mick2me 3,033]

Interesting, they are selling for more on eBay

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Never gave it a thought about photographing negatives before, must give it a try on the oddball sizes the scanner won't recognize. I'm also have trouble with negatives that are "curled" . Looks like I may have to purchase the special glass inserts to hold them flat while scanning them.

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Found the solution, using two thin pieces of glass with the odd sized negatives sandwiched between, placed in the middle of the photo flat bed scanner. Bottom glass is to give correct spacing, top is to keep negatives flat.!!

Surprised I hadn't found that in earlier searches as some were dated four years back.