Scanning photo negatives from 1920s

[Tansy_Gold]

A friend has found a considerable quantity of very old photographic negatives, at least as far back as the 1920s, and possibly even older. We would like to find out how good the resulting photos would be without risking taking them to the local Walgreens or Target for handling by, well, the usual people at Walgreens or Target.

I have an HP Photosmart 3210 all-in-one that includes capability to scan 35mm slides and negatives. I purchased this piece of equipment in 2006 and have enjoyed working with it immensely. I was able to quickly scan over 2500 35mm slides, then do basic editing on them.

Unfortunately, it appears the device will not handle negatives of anything other than current "standard" size. The antiques are roughly 3 x 5 and will not slide into the holder, and the device won't scan without the holder in place.

Any suggestions? We do not have a "real" photo lab anywhere available.



TG

[Why Syzygy]

1. Walgreens

doesn't charge for photos that don't turn out. Do they?

[Tansy_Gold]

4. It's not the cost.

Their equipment is set up to handle standard film, not 80-year-old individual negatives. Their people are also set up to handle standard film. We're not eager to put these things in the hands of someone who looks at it and says "Gee, what's this?"

We also don't know how stable the negs are physically, how brittle, how fragile. Dropping them off at Walgreens or Target with one person who seems knowledgeable and careful doesn't mean they'll get handled start to finish with that person. One has already been ruined by some jerk getting his fingerprints all over the middle of it.


TG

[struggle4progress]

7. It's not that hard to make B&W contact prints. You need the treated paper, hypo, and stopper,

a wire and some little clothespins, together with a few pans, a timer, and a dark red light, so you can see what you're doing without fogging the prints. Aside from that, you need to rent, borrow, or build a little box with an interior white light, a glass or transparent plastic window, and a top. Drop the negative on the window, put down the top, turn on the white light, count, turn off the white light. Into the hypo, into the stopper, maybe a rinse, then hang up to drip dry

You'd need to find a room you could adequately darken, and you need to experiment a bit on the first few. After that, it's clockwork: expose, expose, expose, expose .... develop, develop, develop, develop ... Lightproof envelopes for the unexposed paper and for the exposed undeveloped paper are good ideas, since your lightbox will probably leak some light

You don't want the hypo in your eyes on on good clothes, and you don't want it on your skin very long

But it's pretty easy; lots of my friends and I used to do it as 10 or 12 year olds. Unlike color you needn't be too touchy about the temp.

[Tansy_Gold]

9. There are several hundred of these negs

We'd like to know which ones are worth printing -- if any -- before we go to the time/trouble/expense of actually having prints made. That's the whole point of trying to get them scanned first -- find out what they are, how good they are, etc.

But thanks for the info!


TG

[CK_John]

2. Check for weekly newspapers or University photo shops in your area. n/t

[struggle4progress]

3. What keeps you from scanning them as if they were simply pieces of paper?

Can't you just place 3 3X5 down one side and 2 5x3 down the other side of the scanner bed, lower the cover, scan the 5 as a high resolution jpeg (say) and then open the image in something like photoshop, enlarge it to 2 or 3 times original size, and change it to it's negative?

[Tansy_Gold]

5. It doesn't work that way

Negatives, like slides, require light to go through them, not be bounced off the surface. That's why there are separate light sources in the lid of the HP3210 for scanning film. If you scan a negative or a slide as a flat piece of "paper" you get either a plain black image or none at all.



TG

[struggle4progress]

6. * slaps forehead *

but, of course! dumb question! sorry ... :)

[struggle4progress]

8. How to Scan 35 mm Slides On a Flatbed Scanner

http://www.abstractconcreteworks.com/essays/scanning/Backlighter.html

[Tansy_Gold]

11. I actually tried this for slides before I bought the HP3210

It works fairly well, and although the dimensions given are for 35mm, it would be adjusted to fit this larger format. It would at least give some idea what the photos are of.

Thanks!



TG

[struggle4progress]

10. Based on #8, try something like this:

Get some stiff white cardboard, a ruler & compass, and some tape

First, cut out identical four isoceles triangles with sides in the ratio x : (sqrt(3)/2)*x : (sqrt(3)/2)*x where x is 5" or a bit bigger and sqrt(3) is the squareroot of 3: 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 + 1/256 + ... So you can figure out how to adjust the compass openings to construct the triangle

For x = 6", for example, the four triangles have sides 4 13/16 : 4 13/16 : 6

Tape the triangles together into a square pyramid. Put the negative on the glass. Drop the pyramid over it, adjust the scan region, and scan

Reflected light from the scanner should illuminate the negative from behind

[Tansy_Gold]

12. Making it easier ----

Could I just take four sheets of white cardboard (or with white paper lining grey cardboard) and cut the corners off to make the four right triangles with hypoteneuse of, say 6 inches?


TG, who has lots of grey cardboard and lots of white paper

[struggle4progress]

13. Try it and let us know. I calculated so the top of the pyramid would be a right angle

in the hopes that the light wouldn't just bounce around inside the pyramid, but I haven't tried any of this and so I shouldn't make grandiose pronouncements. The simpler the solution, the better ...

[Tansy_Gold]

14. But if each side of the pyramid is a right triangle,

with the four right angles at the apex, wouldn't the top be a right angle?

I'm not a mathematician, but I have a pretty good spatial sense. . . .


And I've also been known to be totally wrong!




TG

[struggle4progress]

15. Actually, come to think about it, the four right angles you want to put together

will only fit if all four sides lie flat in the same plane

[Tansy_Gold]

16. You're correct. I realized that while I was in the shower!

I told you I could be wrong! ;-)

Using TWO of the right angle triangles, however, joined with a wider strip than shown in the original template, would give the proper angle on at least two sides.

The point is, pun intended, I'm trying to do this as cost-effectively as possible and still keep control of the negs themselves. We do NOT want to hand them over to non-professionals.

Furthermore, it may turn out that there's nothing on them worth printing. We have a rough idea of the location SOME of them were taken and we know the latest -- but not the earliest -- possible date. Contents of the pix may provide additional info.

I'm going to try the 2 triangles with a joining strip method later this afternoon and will let you know what happens.


TG

[struggle4progress]

23. After thinking about this, I'm gonna say that negatives CAN be viewed by reflected light

This is really obvious in certain nineteenth century silver prints, where the developed negative picture actually becomes a mirror and hence the positive was viewed by reflection

But in the past I've actually viewed by reflected light ordinary B&W negatives. The images are rather hard to discern by eye, but they might be enhanced significantly by digital processing. I know from hobby experience that such processing can detect a significant range of hues in the "black" areas of digital photographs. Whether the scanner is good enough to detect the differences digitally, of course, is the key question -- but it can't be answered simply by naked eye inspection, and of course one expects these "black area differences" to be lost if the original scan is printed without careful digital processing

Anyway, here's the idea. Your negatives will have two different sides. On one side is the developed emulsion; this is the side you want to reflect light from. Carefully put the negatives emulsion side down on the clean clean scanner glass bed: try not to slide them, since you really don't want to scratch the emulsion. It might be necessary to create a very black paper mask for the bed with proper sized rectangular cut-outs for the negatives, so that the scanner isn't confused by lots of white light reflected back from the top, and it might be necessary to adjust the scanner for high contrast. Import the scanned images (which will look entirely black to the naked eye) into an image processing environment, change to negative, and then adjust brightness and go for high contrast

[Tansy_Gold]

17. Thank you all for your input!

I knew I could count on DUers!




Tansy Gold

[hunter]

18. Quick and dirty: Put them on a lightbox in a dark room and take pictures of them.

My digital camera does a pretty good job but my cheap light box is not so good because the light is not even. I'm keeping my eyes open for one of those better light boxes doctors use to look at x-rays. Eventually I'd like to build something especially for this purpose with a metal frame or glass plate to hold the negatives flat and a solid mount for the camera.

I use the GIMP or Irfanview to make positives from the negative images. My camera will do that too (I think...) but I've not bothered to figure out its absurdly intricate menus.

[Why Syzygy]

19. Someone in the DU Photography group

might have suggestions:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=280


This is an online forum discussing negatives of that age:
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/film-discussion-q/63967-cleaning-1920s-negatives-50-year-old-slides.html

[EvolveOrConvolve]

20. I'm completely ignorant about photo negatives

But with their age, would exposing them to the strong light of the scanner have a chance of ruining them?

[Tansy_Gold]

21. We don't know for sure.

That's why I wanted to get as much info as I can before we actually try anything at all.

I've used the pyramid-style thing before, and it works, though not particularly well, for slides. I haven't tried it with negatives. That's my project for this afternoon. . . .


TG

[Fumesucker]

22. Use your monitor as a light source, place the negative in front of it and photograph it..

Make a little frame to hold the negative an inch or two away from the monitor, put a pure white image in Photoshop or whatever, make it big enough to more than cover the negative.

Then just set your digital camera up in front of the monitor on a mini tripod or whatever and snap away. If your camera is five or more megapixels you should have plenty of resolution for all but the largest and sharpest negatives.

Try to make sure that your camera is as square as possible to the negative or else on side will be focused better than the other.