digitizing negatives – a technical post (part 2 of “the lucky dilemma…)

Okay, I don’t really want to go into too much technical stuff here – that’s not what this blog is about – however, workflow, and shooting film are very important creative issues.

As I mentioned before in previous posts, shooting film is important to me (and PC and JD)! But how do you add it to your efficient digital workflow?
shoot film – develop it – scan it

Now that can be tedious and time consuming. There are great labs that will process your film and digitize it for a reasonable cost – for some a perfect solution. (Richard Photo in LA for one).
But I just love processing my own BW … and I like the way my negs look and print when I process them. It’s not that they are of higher quality (necessary) it’s more a style thing – okay enough of that..
Now, if you develop yourself how do you digitize it efficiently at high quality?
You photograph your negs with your digital camera! Sounds crazy … but, it was done all the time when people used to “dupe” slide film to protect the precious original. There are great resources on the web of how to do it. Google “camera scan”
I liked Peter Krogh’s great advice on the subject: http://www.dpbestflow.org/camera/camera-scanning

I was asked to show some samples – following is a detail and the image of a TMZ 3200 negative that I shot recently and digitized using my EOS 1DS.

Disclaimer: I like the quality of my neg and the digital file I got – It’s a 22mb file and it serves my purposes great. This is all very subjective (in my view). I am posting this because I was asked to show an example. I am not claiming this is the best way or the best quality – it’s my personal favorite workflow right now.

Advertisement