converting old negatives to digital

Like a lot of photographers, I've gone pretty much all digital but I used to
bulk load b&w film and have hundreds of old film strips around. I'd like to
convert those old uncut 35 mm 36 exposure films into digital files. I
checked with my local camera shop and they said they'd do it for $8 per
roll. Ouch! Is there a less expensive service around? Or perhaps I should
buy a scanner and do it myself. Can anyone recommend a scanner for this
purpose. I would want a scanner that did a full strip at once, not requiring
me to choose frames. It might make sense to buy a scanner, do the conversion
and then decide to either keep the scanner or resell it.

Thanks.

Michael

"mdb" wrote in message
news:WTMth.10345$uL6.5091@trnddc03...
Like a lot of photographers, I've gone pretty much all digital but I used
to bulk load b&w film and have hundreds of old film strips around. I'd
like to convert those old uncut 35 mm 36 exposure films into digital
files. I checked with my local camera shop and they said they'd do it for
$8 per roll. Ouch! Is there a less expensive service around? Or perhaps I
should buy a scanner and do it myself. Can anyone recommend a scanner for
this purpose. I would want a scanner that did a full strip at once, not
requiring me to choose frames. It might make sense to buy a scanner, do
the conversion and then decide to either keep the scanner or resell it.

Thanks.

Michael



PrimeFilm PF3650Pro3

Takes films up to 40 frames each. Has digital ICE3, ROC and GEM.

http://www.amazon.com/Pacific-Image-...e=UTF8&s=photo

I converted 35mm negatives to digital by taking my negatives to a shop that
will transfer negatives to a photo cd.
I believe that I got about 150 to 175 negatives on a photo cd.
She put the negatives in a strip reader ,burned the cd and was done in 20
minutes.
Price was about $2.99 or $3.99 a cd and I believe that I could gotten more
images on those cd's.
This was a big time saver.
The images loaded very nicely into Photoshop elements 4.0.
I believe that Wolf camera,Walgreen's or Wal-Mart can do that for you.
I know Walgreen's can do it because I have a friend that works there.

"mdb" wrote in message
news:WTMth.10345$uL6.5091@trnddc03...
Like a lot of photographers, I've gone pretty much all digital but I used
to bulk load b&w film and have hundreds of old film strips around. I'd
like to convert those old uncut 35 mm 36 exposure films into digital
files. I checked with my local camera shop and they said they'd do it for
$8 per roll. Ouch! Is there a less expensive service around? Or perhaps I
should buy a scanner and do it myself. Can anyone recommend a scanner for
this purpose. I would want a scanner that did a full strip at once, not
requiring me to choose frames. It might make sense to buy a scanner, do
the conversion and then decide to either keep the scanner or resell it.

Thanks.

Michael

On Jan 24, 12:42 pm, "mdb" wrote:
Like a lot of photographers, I've gone pretty much all digital but I used to
bulk load b&w film and have hundreds of old film strips around. I'd like to
convert those old uncut 35 mm 36 exposure films into digital files. I
checked with my local camera shop and they said they'd do it for $8 per
roll. Ouch! Is there a less expensive service around? Or perhaps I should
buy a scanner and do it myself. Can anyone recommend a scanner for this
purpose. I would want a scanner that did a full strip at once, not requiring
me to choose frames. It might make sense to buy a scanner, do the conversion
and then decide to either keep the scanner or resell it.

Thanks.

Michael

$8 a roll, that is $.22 a shot, that's cheap, figure 4-8minutes not
including editing for each image if you do it yourself. Check the
resolution the store is using, final file size is the key TIF files
should be 18mb or higher, jpegs, because on the compression, are
harder to average but say 2-3mb. If the files are 2-300K jpegs, that is
low resolution and don't bother. The nice thing about having an outside
lab do it for you is you don't have to do every roll now. You can also
edit out strips that have images you don't think are worth keeping. You
get 75-100 rolls done for the price of a scanner (providing they are
giving you usable high res scans).
Doing the scanning yourself, you have to learn how to scan, not rocket
science but attention to detail is essential. Two scanners to consider
Epson V700, a flatbed but does decent work on 35mm film or a NIkon
LS5000 (plus stack holder) excellent for 35mm scans.

Tom

tomm42 wrote:

$8 a roll, that is $.22 a shot, that's cheap, figure 4-8minutes not
including editing for each image if you do it yourself. Check the
resolution the store is using, final file size is the key TIF files
should be 18mb or higher, jpegs, because on the compression, are
harder to average but say 2-3mb. If the files are 2-300K jpegs, that is
low resolution and don't bother. The nice thing about having an outside
lab do it for you is you don't have to do every roll now. You can also
edit out strips that have images you don't think are worth keeping. You
get 75-100 rolls done for the price of a scanner (providing they are
giving you usable high res scans).
Doing the scanning yourself, you have to learn how to scan, not rocket
science but attention to detail is essential. Two scanners to consider
Epson V700, a flatbed but does decent work on 35mm film or a NIkon
LS5000 (plus stack holder) excellent for 35mm scans.

The base 5000ED (it's not actually an "LS-5000", though I tend to think
of it that way also, leftover from the LS-2000" includes support for
handling negative strips up to 6 frames.

The "stack holder", if you mean the SF-210, is for handling mounted
slides (could be negatives, except nobody mounts their negatives in
slide mounts). It's a nice option if you have lots of mounted slides,
but it does cost 50% of the price of the 5000ED (the 5000ED is about
$1k, the SF-210 is about $500).

I believe there is also a long-strip film adapter that will handle
entire rolls. I don't have it, though, so I don't know either what it
costs or how well it works.

As you say, scanning yourself is a SLOW process, and extremely
painstaking. There's a big learning curve (and if you're not careful,
and get too productive right up front, you'll find yourself going back
and rescanning the first half of the job because you've learned so much
by the end). It's kinda fun, and gives you more control and better
results than I've ever seen from lab scans or photo CDs.

I had the same problem, except mine was worst. My negatives were all
chopped up into strip. Nowadays, when you make prints from a film
photos (at walmarts, etc), they offer you to get a digital files in a
CD for additional couple of bucks. But, they DO NOT take film strips
for a cheap price. They have to do it one by one with the film strip.
The last one I asked, they will charge about $2-3 per photos!.... if
you have over 100 negatives. If you have negative film strips like I
do,it will cost a fortune to do it by commercial lab.
Then someone suggested to get Canon 35mm film scanner. (Canon FS 4000
US). See at http://www.photozone.de/2Equipment/scanner.htm
I believe it costs about $600-800. Nikon also made the scanner special
for 35 mm film. I don't know about B/W film though. It is a box the
size of a shoe box or slightly larger. The problem with doing it
yourself is that you are now dealing with the colour adjustment,
software and other stuff to play around with. In addition, your
negatives must be free of specs and super clean, as tiny dust will be
amplified as they are scanned (because your negative is small).
I never bought the unit, and decided to scan the post card size photos
instead in a regular colour scanner. It still is a slow process.
If your film in a roll, then those commercial photo place can do it
very quickly.

On Jan 24, 2:28 pm, if wrote:
"mdb" wrote:
I'd like to
convert those old uncut 35 mm 36 exposure films into digital files. I
checked with my local camera shop and they said they'd do it for $8 per
roll.That sounds suspiciously cheap, IME for that cost you only get 1500x1000
pixel scans which are ok for small prints but in no way capture the full
image quality. I'm paying 3 times that amount to get decent scans
(3000x2000). However if your films are from a long time ago, eg 25 years,
then there may be no point scanning it more than 1500x1000 since films were
much more grainy in those days.

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 17:42:14 +0000, mdb wrote:

Like a lot of photographers, I've gone pretty much all digital but I used to
bulk load b&w film and have hundreds of old film strips around. I'd like to
convert those old uncut 35 mm 36 exposure films into digital files. I
checked with my local camera shop and they said they'd do it for $8 per
roll. Ouch! Is there a less expensive service around? Or perhaps I should
buy a scanner and do it myself. Can anyone recommend a scanner for this
purpose. I would want a scanner that did a full strip at once, not requiring
me to choose frames. It might make sense to buy a scanner, do the conversion
and then decide to either keep the scanner or resell it.

Thanks.

Michael

How expensive is your time? A normal flatbet scanner will take a strip of
about 6-8 negatives at a time. Epson has several at their online store. I
recently purchased a Perfection 4490 - it does a very nice job, but it
takes a lot of time.

"ray" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 17:42:14 +0000, mdb wrote:

Like a lot of photographers, I've gone pretty much all digital but I used
to
bulk load b&w film and have hundreds of old film strips around. I'd like
to
convert those old uncut 35 mm 36 exposure films into digital files. I
checked with my local camera shop and they said they'd do it for $8 per
roll. Ouch! Is there a less expensive service around? Or perhaps I should
buy a scanner and do it myself. Can anyone recommend a scanner for this
purpose. I would want a scanner that did a full strip at once, not
requiring
me to choose frames. It might make sense to buy a scanner, do the
conversion
and then decide to either keep the scanner or resell it.

Thanks.

Michael

How expensive is your time? A normal flatbet scanner will take a strip of
about 6-8 negatives at a time. Epson has several at their online store. I
recently purchased a Perfection 4490 - it does a very nice job, but it
takes a lot of time.

Resolution must be considered also. The lower the resolution, the faster and
cheaper the scans, and the less space they will use up on the CD, or other
storage. But, the downside is that you won't be able to blow them up and/or
crop them with Photoshop to get a more interesting image, or get rid of
extraneous stuff that you don't want on the original image. If you think you
will want to crop and/or otherwise change your images, then I believe you
would be better off purchasing a decent film scanner and doing it
yourself....This will give you the ability to scan some images at low
resolution, and others that you want to change at a resolution that is
higher........

"if" wrote in message
...
"mdb" wrote:
I'd like to
convert those old uncut 35 mm 36 exposure films into digital files. I
checked with my local camera shop and they said they'd do it for $8 per
roll.

That sounds suspiciously cheap, IME for that cost you only get 1500x1000
pixel scans which are ok for small prints but in no way capture the full
image quality. I'm paying 3 times that amount to get decent scans
(3000x2000). However if your films are from a long time ago, eg 25 years,
then there may be no point scanning it more than 1500x1000 since films
were
much more grainy in those days.

Like Panatomic X?

Kodachrome 25?

I don't think so.

Joe

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:45:18 GMT, "Charles Eaves"
wrote:

I converted 35mm negatives to digital by taking my negatives to a shop that
will transfer negatives to a photo cd.
I believe that I got about 150 to 175 negatives on a photo cd.

You do realize that drastically reduced the resolution of those
images. Of course if you have no need for the original resolution that
is fine.

For me, scanned 35s are 68 to 130 megs each. That means I could only
get about 10 or 12 of the lower resolution and about 5 of the high
resolution on one CD.

She put the negatives in a strip reader ,burned the cd and was done in 20
minutes.
Price was about $2.99 or $3.99 a cd and I believe that I could gotten more
images on those cd's.
This was a big time saver.
The images loaded very nicely into Photoshop elements 4.0.
I believe that Wolf camera,Walgreen's or Wal-Mart can do that for you.
I know Walgreen's can do it because I have a friend that works there.

"mdb" wrote in message
news:WTMth.10345$uL6.5091@trnddc03...
Like a lot of photographers, I've gone pretty much all digital but I used
to bulk load b&w film and have hundreds of old film strips around. I'd
like to convert those old uncut 35 mm 36 exposure films into digital
files. I checked with my local camera shop and they said they'd do it for
$8 per roll. Ouch! Is there a less expensive service around? Or perhaps I

That is the cheapest I've seen it. Going rates are on the order of 50
cents to a buck or more an image.

should buy a scanner and do it myself. Can anyone recommend a scanner for
this purpose. I would want a scanner that did a full strip at once, not
requiring me to choose frames. It might make sense to buy a scanner, do

the Nikon LS5000ED has an optional adapter that will take full rolls.
It comes with a strip holder that will do either 5 or 6 frames per
strip. It's the type where you just stick the end of the strip in and
it scans the whole thing. I don't use it on B&W so I don't know how
well it'd do on those.

Having passed the 30,000 image mark (both slides and negatives) I can
say it is a lot of work, takes a lot of DVDs, a good filing system
along with a good naming system. Magnetic media as well as the R/W
CDs and DVDs are short term storage only. Actually the R/W disks
aren't know for reliability there either. As to the good CDs and DVDs
no one knows for sure how long they'll last, outlandish claims based
on accelerated age testing and guess work aside. That means stored
images should be tested for integrity on a regular basis.

the conversion and then decide to either keep the scanner or resell it.

Thanks.

Michael



Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com