In article , Ken Hart
wrote:

If you were to sandwich the negs between two pieces of glass, put a
large white paper a couple feet away and light the paper, it might work.
Certainly cheap enough to give it a try.

except for the reflections off the glass.

We are lighting from behind. I see now that I didn't make that clear.

it's obvious it's lit from behind. except that's not the issue.

The procedure would be camera looks at glass/negative sandwich, white
paper or posterboard is a couple feet or so behind the glass sandwich,
and the lighting is beside (ideally, both sides) the glass sandwich.
Ideally, there is no light hitting the camera side of the glass.

The confusion is mea culpa.

unless you have a dark tube, there will be light hitting the camera
side of the glass. it's also not an ideal method, even without any
reflections.

the fact that you said 'it might work' means you haven't actually done
it.

slide/negative copiers hold the slide/negative in place with a tube or
bellows to block stray light, without glass, and with back
illumination.

nikon makes a (relatively) inexpensive slide holder that mounts on the
front of a macro lens:
https://nikonrumors.com/wp-content/u...ES-2-film-digi
talizing-adapter-set-for-Nikon-D850-550x413.jpg

a common way of illuminating it is to use a wireless flash:
http://www.throughthefmount.com/articles-tips-digitise-7.jpg

a more elaborate (and more expensive) option is bellows and a
slide/negative holder:
http://www.destoutz.ch/slides/acc_cu_slide-copy_ps-4_02_alt4.jpg
https://2.img-dpreview.com/files/p/T...665/f856c0f1a3
2a48a692f2ce92feeccfa8

Doing that with color negs would be trickier, as you would have to get
rid of the orange mask along with doing the reversal.

computers can do that without any effort at all.

"Computers" can't do that, software can.

arguing just to argue.

apparently you don't understand that software does nothing without a
computer.

There may be a program or a utility within one of the photo-shop type
programs that remove the orange mask in one fell-swoop, but I don't have
it, nor do I have much need for it.

then you shouldn't comment on it.

On the very few occasions that I've needed to remove the mask, I just
played with the color sliders until the color was right.

in other words, you don't have the proper tools, plus your method of
guessing doesn't work as well as you might think.

Ideally, I
would have included an 18% grey swatch, then read the grey + mask, and
negated the colors to get back to grey. In the darkroom, it would be
around 60M+40Y.

ideally, one would use the proper tools and not pretend it's the same
as and subject to the limitations of an old school darkroom.