Scanning negative film at home. Digitizing photographs taken on film using a digital camera

Many people have old films with negatives and positives of photographs stored at home. Surely many people have thought about preserving this material in digital form. But how to do that? ? This article will tell you how to build a mini darkroom at home, in which you can quickly and efficiently make digital copies of film and slides.

To work you will need:

Necessarily:

  • digital camera (DSLR)
  • flash or other powerful light source
  • photo enlarger
  • lens 50mm-80mm
  • macro rings
  • softbox
  • Software for DSLR
  • USB-mini USB cable

May be useful:

  • adapter ring M42
  • slide adapter
  • flash sync cable
  • flashlight
  • scotch

It is best to place a photo enlarger next to your computer.

Photo enlarger assembly.

The parts circled in red will have to be dismantled. They will interfere with the installation of the camera. Everyone will have their own lens. It is best to use optics with a fixed focal length 50 or 80 mm. The lens may distort colors, so it's worth experimenting with different models. Macro rings should be selected by trial and error.

You will need a softbox to create the background. You can make the softbox yourself. Any box for the case will do. You need to make two holes in it. Install a flash or other powerful light source in one. White sheets of paper can be inserted into the holes to improve the reflective surface.

As a scattering background, you can use any plastic or foam object that will transmit soft diffused light.

This is how our softbox shines.

Flash is a great light source for several reasons. The power can be adjusted, and the light is so strong that you can shoot at fast shutter speeds with a closed aperture.

Now it's time to move on to setting the focus and selecting macro rings. Almost any camera can be used, the main thing is that it has interchangeable lenses. Live View mode is very useful. If your camera has a crop sensor, you will have to compensate for this with macro rings. The main thing to remember is that the more macro rings, the greater the magnification.

The selection of rings is carried out as follows. You need to remove the slide adapter from the enlarger and attach the film to it. It is worth choosing the sharpest frame. This frame needs to be highlighted. Any backlight is suitable for pre-setting. You can use a mobile phone.

You need to stand above the table with the camera, pointing it vertically at the frame. Now you need to check whether the frame is cropped. If it is still cut, then you need to increase or decrease the number of rings. When everything is ready, you can insert the film with the slide adapter into the enlarger, connect the camera to the computer, switch it to manual mode and turn off autofocus. The camera must be placed vertically under the enlarger.

To adjust the focus, you need to move the enlarger up or down. By opening the aperture to maximum, it will be easier to catch focus. Additional lighting can help.

When the focus is approximately captured, you can tighten the adjusting nuts on the enlarger and begin to accurately calibrate the focus on the camera itself. It is better to close the aperture to get maximum sharpness. Now you can install the softbox on top and connect the flash. The flash can be fired by connecting via a sync cable or using a sensor. In the second case, the master flash should be the flash built into the camera.

All camera settings will be made manually. The flash must be set to manual mode too. ISO should be set to the lowest possible. The shutter speed should be 1/250 or 1/125 second. It is better to set the format for saving frames to RAW. White balance needs to be adjusted for different types of films. It is advisable that the pictures are immediately saved on the computer.

If you shoot B/W negatives, then color temperature does not play any role. You need to set monochrome images in the settings and take photographs.

When shooting color film, you can set one of the standard white balance values: portrait, landscape, and others. For most shots, a color temperature of 5500K is suitable. In some cases, the image may appear too warm after inverting. In this case, the value can be raised to 6200-6500. By photographing in RAW format, all these manipulations can be performed during processing.

During the digitization process, the most important thing is to choose the right flash power and white balance.

For negative film:

  1. The more light there is, the darker the photo will be after inverting.
  2. The higher the color temperature, the lower it will be after inversion.

Positive film does not bring such hassle. Everything is correct there. The more light, the brighter. The higher the color temperature, the warmer the photo.

A few examples:

B/W negative.

Color negative. Moscow. 1974

Color positive. Moscow.

The result is quite good image quality, which is practically not inferior to specialized scanners. When you zoom in on the frame, you can see the grain of the film. This is what largely affects the quality of the image.

The preparation process usually takes no more than 10 minutes. Filming also goes quite quickly. In one hour you can digitize about 100 frames. There are many nuances with post-processing, but that's a completely different question.

Digitizing slides

The same mechanism applies to slides. Only to digitize them you don’t need a photo enlarger.

The hardest part is building a structure that will hold the slides flush with the softbox. You can use a slide adapter and any stands: books, boxes, boards, etc.

The camera must be mounted on a tripod. The main thing is to keep it flat.

The design should look something like this:

The softbox should be placed at a distance of approximately 20-30cm from the slide. If white spots appear on the film during shooting, you can try moving the softbox.

Finally, it should be noted that the sharpest images are obtained at medium aperture values. This is demonstrated in a photo that was taken at various settings: f7, f9, and f16. At f7 the frame turned out to be sharp, but optical distortion and a drop in sharpness in the corners of the frame are noticeable. The f9 value showed the most optimal result.

Based on materials from the site:

Many people probably have dozens, or even hundreds, of black-and-white and color photographic films in their home archives. You don’t feel like throwing them away, but watch the slides through a slide projector if you have one. modern computer Somehow I don’t want to anymore. So the question arises of converting films to digital. There are basically two different ways:

1) scanning films using a photo scanner or tablet with a special adapter for films. A flatbed scanner with a slide module differs from a regular scanner in that it has a backlit lid and a single-color lamp.

2) reshooting negatives and slides using a digital camera.

Let's consider both options and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each of them.

- 1. Scan

If you already have such a scanner at home, and the number of slides or films is small, then this method is quite acceptable. It is hardly reasonable to specifically buy expensive equipment for one-time use. In addition, when large quantities With photographic films, the scanning process becomes very tedious, since one frame with an acceptable resolution takes 4-5 minutes, and on a professional scanner with good resolution it takes up to 10 minutes.

As a rule, scanning film on a budget flatbed scanner equipped with a slide adapter produces very mediocre image quality. In this regard, many began to use digital cameras to reshoot negative and slide films, followed by correction in a graphics editor.

- 2. Reshoot

Reshooting is the fastest, cheapest and quality option film digitization

There are many ways to reshoot films. Some require self-made quite complex devices. The method I present requires virtually no special equipment and is quite easy to use.

You will need:

Digital camera

PC or laptop monitor

2 tripods

A camera is mounted on one tripod, and on the other any device for fixing film or slides. For these purposes, I use either a slide frame from an overhead projector or a frame from a photo enlarger.

In both cases, the film does not need to be cut; it is securely fixed and easily scrolled. In order to get good results when reshooting films, you need to shoot them in the light, that is, the light source must be behind the film. As a light source, you can use any uniformly luminous object, for example, a PC or laptop monitor. This is the simplest and most effective way.

To get a uniform screen glow, run Adobe program Photoshop and create a new document of any format, for example A4. You will receive a document white. Now we go to full screen mode and the entire screen turns white.

There is only one requirement for a digital camera - the presence of a macro mode. The less minimum distance, on which macro photography is possible, the better. Ideal option will be 2cm or less. I usually shoot with a Lumix from a distance of 1 cm. larger size camera matrix (in megapixels), the higher resolution the frame is obtained. The distance from the LCD monitor is 25-35 cm. Closer pixels of the screen create moire, further the glow of the screen weakens. We set the ISO to the minimum value and use the shutter delay mode. You don’t have to close the aperture too much, since the depth of field in this case will not have an effect. Thus, the entire shooting process (for a single frame) takes ~10 - 15 seconds.

The process of evolution of photography has been going on for almost 200 years, and during this time film photography has been reborn into digital photography, but after it film photo archives remain. To store them you need space and special conditions, but if the film is digitized, all this will not be necessary. Plus, digital photos are safer to store.

In addition to film photographic archives, there is a lot of film photographic equipment left, which they still continue to shoot with. Film photography allows you to get very high quality images. This means that she will live together with “digital” for a long time. If photographic film is digitized, then using a computer you can take even better photographs.

Digitize photographic film- this means that each frame needs to be divided into individual elements pixels and save information about their color and coordinates in a program file. For these purposes, you can use two main devices: a scanner or a digital camera. How to digitize photographic film with their help will be discussed further.

Which scanner to digitize photographic film

A scanner is the most convenient device for digitizing your film or slides different formats. With its help, you can very quickly convert your film photo archive into digital form, while maintaining very good image quality. The level of quality will depend on the design of the scanner (Fig. 1).

Fig.1 You can digitize photographic film using different types of scanners.

Exist different types scanners for digitizing film, slides and other transparent photographic materials. Although they are all adapted to work with film, their capabilities are different, which means the price is different. In order to digitize photographic film at home, two types of scanners are suitable - a scanner with a slide module and a film scanner.

Surely many of us have dozens, hundreds, thousands of color and black-and-white photographic films from the distant past, and maybe even the present. But not many people know how to digitize film at home. But I just don’t feel like throwing away pieces of the past, and I don’t really want to look at slides using an overhead projector in the age of leaps and bounds of technological development.

Where can a slide projector keep up? In another half century, people may be using teleportation to travel. Digitizing photographs will help you kill two birds with one stone - get rid of photographic films and at the same time save them in another format. How to digitize photographic film at home? This will be discussed in this article.

How to digitize old photographic films at home?

There are basically two ways:

1) Scanning of photographic films, which is carried out using a photo scanner or a tablet with a built-in adapter for films. A flatbed scanner with a built-in slide module is significantly different from a simple scanner - it has a different cover and a single-color lamp.

2) Re-shooting slides and negatives using a digital camera.

Thanks to these methods, you can clear your space of clutter and not have to worry about how to properly store your old film archives.

Do you know that…?

Film photography, although a relic of the technological revolution, is still used for photography. It provides photographs with the highest image quality if, for example, existing photographic films are digitized. Then you can use a computer to make the image even better. It's no surprise that film photography is coming back into fashion. However, many people do not know how to digitize photographic film themselves.

What it is?

Digitizing photographic film involves breaking each frame into individual elements (pixels) and storing information about color and coordinates in a program file. How to digitize photographic film at home? To accomplish this task, you will need either a scanner or a digital device.

What scanner are you using?

The scanner is the most convenient device for digitizing slides or film various formats. Thanks to it, you can quickly convert a film archive into a full-fledged digital form, while maintaining optimally good image quality. The quality in this case depends entirely on the design of the scanner.

Digitization of photographic film on various types of scanners

Today, there are various types of scanners with the ability to digitize films, slides and other transparent photographic materials. All of these devices are designed to work with film, but they all have different capabilities, and accordingly, so does the price.

You can digitize film at home using two types of scanner: the first is with a slide module, and the second is a film scanner.

Of course, a tablet with a built-in slide module is much cheaper, but this does not mean that it will do its job poorly: it allows you to get a good quality picture, and it digitizes not only film, but also photographs. Now that you know how to digitize photographic film, you can safely use scanners of this type to save home photo archives. They are compact and multifunctional.

If you remain an adherent of film photographic equipment and are thinking about how to digitize large quantities of photographic film at home, then you definitely need to make a choice in favor of a film scanner. And although its cost is much higher than that of the first type, it is more convenient. Of course, the image quality is also at a high level.

There are two more types of scanners that can digitize both color film and black and white. These are drum photo scanners and minilabs. If digitizing photographs is not so common for you, a scanner is a secondary matter, and it is easier to pay for this service at a photo kiosk. High-quality images can only be achieved in a professional laboratory, so be extremely careful when contacting a professional.

Digitizing film without a scanner

It is enough to have your own camera to digitize both black and white photographic film and color film at home. The best option in this case it will be a camera that has interchangeable lenses. Some photographic equipment manufacturers make special attachments for camera lenses. With such devices, film is photographed against a bright, light background.

Digitizing film in a special attachment for a digital camera

In addition to devices produced by companies, you can digitize photographic film using an attachment made from scrap materials. You need to find a hollow cylinder corresponding to the diameter of the lens, attach to it a platform with a hole made in it to suit the size of the required frame. In appearance, such a design should resemble a proprietary one.

The necessary operation can be performed at home even without a lens attachment. Instead, you can cut a frame to fit the frame and place it in front of a white background. This way you can use a monitor screen with a white document as a white background. To achieve the desired effect, you need to insert film into this frame and take a photograph of it from a tripod.

Of course, to digitize photographic films at home, it is possible to use more complex design. It may include a device for rewinding roll film, a screen with backlighting for scattering, and a frame on which the camera is mounted. All these manipulations depend on your sleight of hand and ingenuity.

Lens attachment or homemade design are used if it is necessary to make digitization of excellent quality at minimal cost. In this case it will be very advisable. In addition, with the help of sleight of hand, you can create a design that will fully meet your requirements when digitizing any type of transparent photographic materials.

Cost of digitizing photographic materials

The issue of price and quality, convenience and speed of operation is inextricably linked with the procedure for digitizing photographic film. You shouldn’t blame the low quality of digital images and the inconvenience of work if your budget doesn’t allow you to do everything right. the best level. It is worth considering that quality work is always expensive. Here it is important to weigh all sides and make a decision, because if the photographic film itself does not contain valuable information highest quality, then no matter what devices you use, you cannot remove it from good quality Images. It is worth approaching wisely and weighing your capabilities and needs.

Most of the old footage was taken on photographic film, once popular during Soviet times. The names of popular films in past times were “SVEMA” and “TASMA”. Films such as Fujifilm, Kodak, and Konica were also used, which were used by many Soviet amateur photographers. At that time, the quality of these films was not optimal, and the optics of this period left only much to be desired. High quality was not so easy to achieve. Of course, you can connect expensive equipment to digitize this type of photographic film. But everything will go down the drain if the quality of the photo was not good to begin with.

Therefore, we can conclude that digitizing photographic films from past decades is a difficult and time-consuming task, and often thankless, since it is almost impossible to achieve a high-quality image.

The price range of the device will average about 17,500-24,000 rubles. Thanks to such scanners, you can extract good image quality, they are easy to use, do not take up much space, and certainly will not sit idle.

To obtain the highest quality, it is better to digitize photographic film using a professional scanner. Of course, this will cost you a pretty penny. The main thing here is to understand whether quality for any money is really important to you or not. Moreover, it is unlikely that you will be able to convey the highest quality of film from a monitor screen or in a paper version.

Conclusion

How to digitize photographic film at home? The risk is not always worth it, so leave this matter to the professionals. To achieve an average positive result of digitization, it is better to contact the nearest minilab. Such a service will not break your pocket. But before going to a professional, don’t forget to select the frames that you really want to print or post somewhere on the Internet.

Don't be afraid to add valuable photographs to your archive with film digitization!











Read your favorite photo frames from film with one click! Revisit those old memories again! The project for the coming weekend will be to create a portable film projector for a mobile phone for less than 150 rubles. Our upcoming device is highly compatible with iPhone, iTouch, Galaxy S4, HTC and other smartphone brands in the market.

This great way reading 35mm film frames onto mobile phone! It is as easy to use as its commercial counterparts.

New Year's gift for dad:
Preparing a gift for my father is always difficult considering he has everything he needs. There's no better New Year's gift than the one made by his son’s hands: D He is an excellent (amateur) photographer, and in his youth he shot a lot beautiful photos. Of course, even before switching to digital SLRs, my father used analog single-lens SLRs. Unfortunately, most of the family photos were washed away in a flood in the 90s. But my father kept the films themselves in a waterproof box. Now there are thousands of negatives waiting for the family to get a projector: D I can’t wait to give him this gift!

This is just the perfect gift for old school photographers! :D

How simple is the process?

Just insert the 35mm film > Turn on the power > Activate the phone camera > Select a convenient zoom > In the settings, select the photo negative effect > Do it again. It's simple! :D

Attention: The quality of the photo depends on the phone's camera. In my photo examples, I used a cheap 5MP smartphone, as well as an iPhone. I tested the projector on Samsung's Galaxy S4 and the quality of this smartphone was better than others! The more megapixels, the better: D

Step 1: Gathering tools and materials


The spare parts I needed cost me less than 150 rubles (not counting the smartphone)

What we need:
- Your smartphone
- rectangular body
- 6 white ultra bright diodes
- 100 Ohm resistor (1/4W)
- 9-volt battery with clip
- simple slide switch
- a piece of white acrylic 40x70 mm
- a tube of superglue

Tools and Equipment:
- multi-blade folding knife
- hand drill
- soldering iron
- hot glue gun

Step 2: Camera Hole and Film Slot


Use a light matte marker or highlighter to mark the measurements, then drill a hole large enough for your phone camera. I used a 10mm drill bit and cut the edges of the hole at an angle with my pocketknife.
Use a file to sharpen the edge of the housing cover, making a slot for the film. I ground down a 40mm wide slot for my 35mm films.

Step 3: Making an Acrylic Diffuse Screen


White diodes give out spot lighting, but for our purposes the light needs to be diffused so that the picture is well balanced and illuminated.

1) Cut a 40x70mm rectangle from acrylic
2) File the edges of this rectangle, this will make feeding the film easier.
3) Glue the acrylic plate into the body onto the pre-glued 4 foam squares

Step 4: Receiving Mechanism


Sometimes the film becomes wrinkled, making it difficult to feed. I added a take-up mechanism that grabs the film from the other side, allowing it to pass into the projector.

To do this, I used a piece of an old ruler and super glue, making clamps in the body.

Step 5: Install the Diodes


It is necessary to install diodes on both sides of acrylic screen. We divide the diodes into 3 for both sides, so the lighting will be better. Positive contacts go up, negative contacts go down.

We glue the diodes to the body with hot glue. The glue also works well as a light reflector!

Step 6: Solder the parts


I have shown the diagram in the photo above. Solder the battery, resistor, switch and diodes together.

Step 7: Checking the Diodes


Connect the battery, turn on the switch, and your diodes should light up.

Step 8: Configure your phone's camera settings!


1) Open your phone camera. I have it operating system Android 4.1 Jellybean.
2) Go to settings, in color effects and select “Negative”
3) Use the zoom function to prevent photos from being cropped.
4) Take a couple of pictures, you'll probably want to use the auto-adjust function :D

Step 9: That's it! Let's refresh old memories!


We have a ton of negatives that we never printed. It's so nice to delve into the past, bringing back pleasant memories: D I hope you enjoy your projector too! My camera is not very good quality, so some pictures are shaded.