Digitising Your Old Films
Ashok Viswanathan shows how you can convert your old ilm image to digital
Having been into photography, since the early 70’s, I have built up a collection of negatives and slides that were filed away and had not seen daylight for decades. Many of these images are memories of friends, family, celebrations and events. Some of them were images that I exhibited in Salons in the 70’s.
Digital gives us the opportunity to bring these images back to life. The options to do this are:
Drum scan, which is both very expensive and time consuming, and mainly suited to book publication. Using a film scanner, such as the Nikon Cool scan which is not easily available.
Using a flat bed scanner, such as Epson v900 which gives good results, but, is somewhat slow to work with.
Copying your negative or slide directly, using a digital camera.
I decided to explore the last option and have received surprisingly good results. In a short time-span, I managed to copy over 150 negatives. You will need to mount your digital camera on a sturdy tripod and swing the head horizontally, so that the camera is now facing downwards. It is critical that you adjust the height in such a way, that it almost fits the frame, leaving out a small edge that can be cropped later. Many of the newer cameras like Fujifilm, gives you the option of a simulated horizon in the viewfinder, which helps in levelling the camera. Additionally, you can check if the edges of the frame are parallel to the edges of the negative. Be sure that you avoid misalignment, or else, one part of the image may get out of focus.
The best option is to use a macro lens, so that, there is no distortion as these lenses are designed for close focussing to 1:2 or 1:1 ratio. Autofocus helps in getting the focus, spot-on. I used an old Pentax 100 mm macro lens mounted on my Fuji XE3 via adaptors. As there is no communication between the lens and the camera, you need to manually focus with the aperture wide open and then set the lens to f/11. Exposure is made by adjusting the shutter speed to get the best histogram, pushing it as much as possible to the right, without blowing out the highlights. This is essential for ensuring that you capture the shadow detail. It is advisable to use a cable release to fire the shutter, as any other method will come with some degree of camera shake.
In order to light the negative, you are required to place the negative strip on special holders to ensure that they are flat and prevent stray light from causing a flare. These holders are available on Amazon and are modestly priced. The negatives need uniform back light, for which, I found that the best option was a colour corrected light box (5000K) in 5x4 inch size. Once you establish focus, exposure and alignment, you can copy a strip of six negatives in a couple of minutes by simply moving the negative holder, from left to right, under the lens. It is important to note that a colour corrected lightbox makes post processing, particularly of colour negatives and slides, much easier. Medium format and larger negatives can be sandwiched between 2 clean sheets of glass, before being placed on the lightbox. Don’t forget to blow off any dust from the negatives before you insert them into the film holder.
I use RAW for the best quality. The files can be opened in Affinity or PS and you can start by cropping off the edges of the frame where you can see the negative holder. Adjust to make sure that the horizons are perfectly straight and use the “invert” command to change the view from negative to positive. Adjust levels, contrasts etc. as you normally do for digital files and add some sharpening. You may find that dust and scratches will need to be touched up before you save the file. If you copy colour negatives, you need to go a few steps further. The orange mask is difficult to correct in post processing. However, there is a software called “Negative Lab Pro”, which does an excellent job of directly converting from negative to positive, along with colour correction. A trial version is available as a plugin to Lightroom.
My experience with old lenses is that they tend to be soft, and that is an advantage in getting the maximum detail out of the negatives. I have found that, in many cases, I actually got more details than I could see in the prints made in the 1970’s.
So get those old negatives and slides out of the storage and give them a new lease of life.