Film Negatives Question: I have some very old 35mm negatives from photos taken in various places. Is it possible to have the negatives put on a picture CD so that I could download to...

zuzanne Loc: Crawfordville, FL

I have some very old 35mm negatives from photos taken in various places. Is it possible to have the negatives put on a picture CD so that I could download to my computer and do some PP in Photoshop or Lightroom?

Negatives are 20 to 30 years old.

Thanks zuzanne

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

zuzanne wrote:

I have some very old 35mm negatives from photos taken in various places. Is it possible to have the negatives put on a picture CD so that I could download to my computer and do some PP in Photoshop or Lightroom?

Negatives are 20 to 30 years old.

Thanks zuzanne

You might be able to get COSTCO to do it. Age shouldn't matter. If you can't get it done anywhere you might try scanning them. I think some programs might be able to reverse the colors and turn it into a positive.
Never fear. Someone in the Hog will come up with the answer you seek.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

Indi wrote:

You might be able to get COSTCO to do it. Age shouldn't matter. If you can't get it done anywhere you might try scanning them. I think some programs might be able to reverse the colors and turn it into a positive.
Never fear. Someone in the Hog will come up with the answer you seek.

Almost any PP program can invert a scanned negative. Many have a menu option to do so.

I use Lightroom, which doesn't have a menu item to do so, but it's a simple matter to create a preset. To do so, you'd go to the Tone Curve, and drag the left edge to the top, and the right edge to the bottom, then save as a preset.

Odie-Jay Loc: Was Littleton, CO now Overland Park, KS

My Wolverine scanner detects negatives (color or b&w) and converts them to a positive file. I have done several and followed with pp and cleanup/restore. Very effective.

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

zuzanne wrote:

I have some very old 35mm negatives from photos taken in various places. Is it possible to have the negatives put on a picture CD so that I could download to my computer and do some PP in Photoshop or Lightroom?

Negatives are 20 to 30 years old.

Thanks zuzanne

Yes! There are several companies who will do this. Just Google. I don't know the best ones. I had a company do this for me a few years ago, the result was excellent. Came back as tiff file. Not sure today's situation, but I know that there are many. A local company, Digital Pickle has a good rep among local photogs.

BebuLamar

DWU2 wrote:

Almost any PP program can invert a scanned negative. Many have a menu option to do so.

I use Lightroom, which doesn't have a menu item to do so, but it's a simple matter to create a preset. To do so, you'd go to the Tone Curve, and drag the left edge to the top, and the right edge to the bottom, then save as a preset.

It's not as easy as you said. The color negative has an orange mask and is of very low in contrast.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

zuzanne wrote:

I have some very old 35mm negatives from photos taken in various places. Is it possible to have the negatives put on a picture CD so that I could download to my computer and do some PP in Photoshop or Lightroom?

Negatives are 20 to 30 years old.

Thanks zuzanne

Age of the negatives is an issue only in that the colors start to wander at some point. Every slide scanner I've ever owned has had the ability to scan negatives also. In fact, I scanned five color negatives (dating back to 1977) today on my Nikon LS-2000 which now lives in our basement; it is very slow, but it does an excellent job of dealing with surface imperfections. Unfortunately Nikon no longer makes any scanners - I'm guessing that digital cameras have been around long enough that scanning has become a declining industry. Our upstairs scanner, made by Plustek, also has a negative mode (in fact, it has a profile for each type of negative, which in theory should reduce amount of post-processing adjustment to be done afterwards). My Epson scanner also has a negative mode, but I've always had more problems getting good scans of transparencies from it, so I tend not to use it for that purpose.

As far as I know, the various companies that scan slides also slide negatives.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

zuzanne wrote:

I have some very old 35mm negatives from photos taken in various places. Is it possible to have the negatives put on a picture CD so that I could download to my computer and do some PP in Photoshop or Lightroom?

Negatives are 20 to 30 years old.

Thanks zuzanne

Zuzanne, I regularly scan my negatives, which were made 30-40 years ago. No problem.
--Bob

Dik

Got a 1:1 macro lens?
A piece of white plexiglass over a light and a negative carrier from an old enlarger can make a very good film copying station.
For color negatives, white balance on the clear (orange) part of the film, and increase contrast as needed.

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

Where in Florida are you? (Doesn't really matter - Priority Mail is pretty inexpensive these days) I have had transparencies scanned by Southern Photo Supply in Melbourne and I believe their sign said they can scan negatives - they probably do the inversion to a regular image for you.

See:
http://southernphotosupply.com/filmandscanning.html

You might give them a call at 321-254-4224

They are one of the great traditional "brick-and-mortar" stores that still answer questions, let you hold the equipment, give classes, etc....

ralphc4176 Loc: Conyers, GA

Depending on the number of negatives you have, it may behoove you to buy a negative scanner and convert them yourself. If you have lots of spare time and a fast computer.

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

At the risk of sounding like I'm trying to drum up business, may I say I do this? I have a Nikon 9000 scanner and do 35mm and medium format negs and slides. If interested, send me a PM. Actually there are lots of places that do this for you, but be sure to ask HOW LARGE the scans will be. Most do a small scan (good for 4x6 or maybe 8x). But to get large scans from which you could print large prints, it starts getting expensive and some don't know how to do it. I had to teach my Costco photo manager how to do larger scans when my scanner went missing.

billwassmann Loc: Emerson, NJ

I would put them on my copystand and rephotograph them. You could also try scanning them. Everyone assumed they are color but you didn't say. Even so you could probably reverse in PhotoShop. You could also have prints made and work with those.

zuzanne Loc: Crawfordville, FL

Thank you all for your help. The negatives are in color from my old Kodak point and shoot film camera. I have an Epson All-In-One Printer/Scanner/Fax machine. I will check out the book on it to see if I can scan the negatives on it. Other wise I will check to see if my Costco can do this. There are a few from a charter boat trip many years ago that we took of the Killer Whales around the boat that I would like to try improving thru PP.

Thanks again for all you help, I'll let you all know how it turns out.

zuzanne

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

zuzanne wrote:

I have some very old 35mm negatives from photos taken in various places. Is it possible to have the negatives put on a picture CD so that I could download to my computer and do some PP in Photoshop or Lightroom?

Negatives are 20 to 30 years old.

Thanks zuzanne

Film scanning services are pretty common. Look for a custom photo lab near you, or a film scanning service that specializes in that sort of thing. Better labs can provide TIFF files, but the amateur labs will just provide JPEGs. You want 16-bit TIFFs if you can get them... or afford them.

If you have hundreds or thousands of negs, getting your own scanner may be the best bet. I use and recommend EPSON's high end flatbed scanners.

If you have COLOR negatives, realize that the dyes have probably faded quite a bit. It may take a lot of work to get the color even close to reality. Every brand, age, type, speed, and batch of emulsion has a different color balance, so realize that full restoration can be time consuming or expensive or both (or impossible). In some cases, converting to B&W makes sense...