Scanning Photo Negatives

[moondoggy23]

I've found quite a few negatives my wife has been holding onto from as early as 6yrs ago to several decades. I was curious what was on some of them and began scanning them using an old all-in-one we still have laying around the house we've not used for some time. I've been using GIMP to edit the scans to see what was on the negatives, but have encountered a problem with horizontal lines appearing on the scanned negatives. They are so pervasive on the negatives that being able to recognize any details is practically impossible. I'm going to look into either a new all-in-one or a scanner specifically designed for scanning slides and photo negatives, but I'm also curious if anyone here on T9k have had any experience scanning negatives. Any advice/tips would be greatly appreciated. I've been reading a couple of blogs/forums and the GIMP help browser to get an idea what tools would be best to use, but I'm pretty much a novice at this sort of thing.

Here's the before scan:

Here's the same scan after some editing I've done:

 

[Wooty]

I had to scan some family negatives for a while, and it's pretty crucial that you backlight them while they are being scanned with something like this:
http://www.popphoto.com/gear/2011/07/how-to-scan-negatives-using-standard-scanner-0

You can also buy the backlight boxes commercially, or you can buy scanners dedicated to scanning negatives. Obviously, you will need a very high DPI to get any sort of resolution.

I can't really tell, but from your first picture, it looks like your scanner is really bad and is introducing a ton of noise... unless the film is really in that bad of shape.

 

[moondoggy23]

I had to scan some family negatives for a while, and it's pretty crucial that you backlight them while they are being scanned with something like this:
http://www.popphoto.com/gear/2011/07/how-to-scan-negatives-using-standard-scanner-0

You can also buy the backlight boxes commercially, or you can buy scanners dedicated to scanning negatives. Obviously, you will need a very high DPI to get any sort of resolution.

I can't really tell, but from your first picture, it looks like your scanner is really bad and is introducing a ton of noise... unless the film is really in that bad of shape.

Thanks for the tip(s). The scanner is really bad and old. I'm using an HP psc 1210 that I got when I went to college, so it's about 11yrs old now. I know now the scanner is introducing a bunch of noise, because I tried scanning in some negatives from my wedding that was only 6yrs ago and the negatives aren't in terrible shape. Most all-in-ones I'm looking into now have an optical scan resolution of about 2400dpi. I think that would be enough, but I'm not 100% sure. The negative scanners I've looked into have had mediocre reviews, at best.

 

[Bored]

Depending on how good your phone is can always take a pic with that, as far as a makeshift backlight, take a piece (or several depending on brightness needed) of paper, put on top of lampshade, put photo in middle where the O of the lampshade is. Take best resolution pic ya can get with phone, mail/xfer said pic to computer, edit like ya did with GIMP, profit.

P.S. Of course you want to do this rather quick as the heat may damage the film within a few seconds of the light being on sooo be careful.

Orrrrrrrrr set the background of your monitor to white, put the photo on that and see if can get results that way for a 'makeshift' lightbox. I'm just pulling this shit out of my ass...

 

[moondoggy23]

Taking photos of your negatives

I had considered doing this, but I am worried a little bit about the integrity of some of these negatives. My wife told me some are from her late grandmother, so they are probably from dozens of years ago, and they haven't been kept in ideal storage/locations. I don't want to burn/singe any negatives before I can get a good image from them. I may try that for some of the negatives I've got (my wedding pictures, for example, since I already have the actual photos and scanned copies so losing the negatives wouldn't be a loss) and see how that works, though. It's times like these I wish I had tried to get a Master's degree in Historical preservation/archiving...

 

[moondoggy23]

BUMP:
OK, bought a new all-in-one and am trying the link you posted, Sonic. The images are turning out better. There is less noise from the scan, now I just need to work on photo editing...