I began out in movie and I’ve a giant assortment of analog negatives and transparencies, significantly 35mm black-and-white negatives. There are nonetheless some good pictures in there however digitizing them to a good high quality has proved time-consuming and costly.
I’ve tried flatbed scanners with transparency adaptors, however A4 scanners aren’t capable of resolve the extraordinarily fantastic element in 35mm originals – even scanners designed particularly for photographers.
So what about movie scanners, that are designed particularly for 35mm negatives? These are costly and getting more durable to seek out. Nikon not makes CoolScan movie scanners, my Minolta DiMage Scan Elite 5400 II bit the mud way back, and each have been gradual to make use of. Even the finest movie scanners could be laborious work.
That’s the technical strategy. However my new strategy owes extra to the kitchen desk than the physics lab.
A photographer buddy satisfied me to strive it out. He makes use of a replica stand, a lightbox and a digicam with a macro lens. I don’t have a lightbox, so I exploit a Joby gentle with a diffuse entrance panel as a lightbox on my kitchen desk, a tripod, my Olympus PEN E-P7 and an Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm Macro lens with a hood to maintain any flare from the lamp to a minimal.
Truthfully, the entire thing has proved so fast and easy that it is made me begin trying once more on the finest movie cameras, since I do assume analog movie has a particular character that may be very tough to match with a digital digicam.
The trick is to place the digicam very fastidiously in order that it’s precisely perpendicular to the movie, after which to maneuver the movie and never the digicam as you go from one detrimental to the subsequent.
So does the 20MP Micro 4 Thirds sensor of my E-P7 have the decision and dynamic vary to do justice to my 35mm negatives? Simply! Right here’s why.
First, analog movie doesn’t have the decision of digital sensors. The E-P7’s sensor can simply resolve even the best grain in my negatives.
Second, analog negatives shouldn’t have the type of excessive tonal vary you may think. Movie can seize an especially huge brightness vary, but it surely compresses it right into a narrower vary within the negs. In consequence, my E-P7 can simply accommodate the tonal vary of my negs, and I usually need to ‘increase’ it modifying to revive full black-and-white values.
With this setup I can ‘scan’ a complete 36-exposure movie in round 10-Quarter-hour, extract each ounce of picture high quality from my negatives and I don’t even get the mud points that used to plague my movie scans.
So, that is the weirdest factor – it’s taken a contemporary mirrorless digicam to carry again my outdated analog negatives into my digital workflow. I’ve even purchased movie for the primary time in 20 years!
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