Scanning one negative at a time

Scanning film is painful and time consuming! If you have a 1000 negatives, it will take you approximately 10 hours just to become familiar with the hardware and software and over 100 hours to scan, crop, color correct, save, etc. your images. Our humble advice is simple: let ScanCafe do the negative scanning for you.

With that said, you may still have the desire to scan negatives on your own. Therefore, below you will find some negative scanning instructions provided by our experienced and professional scanning technicians.

In short, if you are going to do it, do it right!

In addition to the following negative scanning tips, we strongly encourage you to read:

• Scanning Negatives and Slides by Sascha Steinhoff (2007)
• Mastering Digital Scanning with Slides, Film, and Transparencies by David D. Busch (2004)

Preserving your precious memories for generations to come requires you to follow a cumbersome process diligently.

How to Scan Negatives: Pre-Scanning decisions

• Scanning resolution: Scanning negative film is far more labor and investment intensive than scanning paper photos. You should leave no stone unturned in capturing all the information available on your precious negative. Your goal is to archive and preserve precious memories and we recommend 3000dpi. Why? 3000dpi allows you the option of printing your original photo to poster size. There is some debate on whether 4000dpi is better than 3000dpi. If higher is better, then 4000dpi should be better, right? Not really. While 4000dpi will provide far better resolution, it has the potential of capturing the surface grain of the film, thereby degrading scan quality. We have experimented with film from over 80 years old to today and have found that 3000dpi provides the best results.

• Buying a negative scanner: See ScanCafe's Top Tips for Buying a Negative Scanner.

• Organizing negatives: Organizing negatives is a daunting task prior to scanning. In comparison to slide scanning where you can visually see what's on the slide, negatives are difficult to see against a light source. Your best bet is if your old negatives are still in the cardboard sleeves that they came in when you got the film developed. You can categorize your negatives by labeling each cardboard sleeve as one event or time period (see more tips on nomenclature below). Alternately, you could buy archival quality plastic sleeves for negatives at PriceGrabber.com and organize them systematically. We strongly recommend not going through this pain if you are going to digitize them anyway. Once you digitize all your negatives, you will be able to easily move pictures around using good organization software such as Google's Picasa.

• File naming: If you have negatives organized in the typical cardboard sleeves, we recommend you use your scanner's "batch scan" mode which allows you to scan negatives without having to individually name each one of them. If you are particular about naming each negative with a different file name, we recommend that you do this after the batch scan is complete. You can review your digital scans and name them as you see fit. Use a systematic nomenclature approach such as: Year_Event_description 1979_May_thru_Aug, 1979_European_holiday, 2002_NewYear_Boston, 1995_Birth day_Sam. Choosing the correct nomenclature will simplify organization and the ability to search for your photos at a later date. Latest photo organizing software such as Google's Picasa will allow you to individually "tag" each image with multiple descriptors. This can be done at a leisurely pace after completing the scanning project.

How to Scan Negatives: Processing Tips

• Clean the negatives: Most negatives you have should be in fairly clean condition and will not require cleaning as long as you are using a scanner with Kodak's Digital ICE software, which we believe is a must have! (Note that Digital ICE does not work for paper photo scanning). Use compressed DRY air to blow away dust and grit. Do not use your breath! If your negatives have been stored in a cool dry place, this should be sufficient prior to scanning. We recommend using a special film cleaner such as “Rexton Anti-Static Film Cleaner for Black & White and Color Film” if there is dirt that you cannot get off by simply using compressed air. This should be a last resort. Here again, use a lint free cloth and wipe gently along the length of the negative. Do not apply the cleaner in a swirling motion because you will scratch the surface. If your negatives are still in very bad condition, you can scan them and then apply some photo restoration techniques to the digital image to bring the images back to life.

• Scanner settings:

  • DPI: 3000. Your file size will be approximately 5-7MB for an uncompressed jpeg and ~40-70 MB for a TIFF.

  • File format: If you are not a professional, we strongly recommend JPEG (uncompressed). Why? The large file sizes of TIFF will kill your hard drive, and you'll have to buy extra storage capacity. For professionals or people familiar with image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop and who have a lot of hard drive space, TIFF is a good option. This option allows you to make many edits without losing "image quality". That said, for 95% of the people out there, JPEG is the way to go.

  • Digital ICE: Test your negatives with and without Digital ICE and determine which is the best setting. Check for sharpness of the image at a high zoom level. For some images, Digital ICE might "remove" more than just dust and scratches. Once you are convinced of the effects of Digital ICE, choose to enable or disable this feature.

  • Unlike slides, DO NOT crop your negatives before you do the final scan. Do not set a standard crop for every negative since negative placement in the scanner might vary from frame to frame.