Scanning negatives with a camera
A flatbed scanner was slow and soft, so I moved to photographing negatives with a digital camera and a macro lens. The setup cost less than a used film scanner and is much faster.
The setup
- A 1:1 macro lens, stopped down to f/8
- An LED light panel with a high colour rendering index
- A copy stand made from two shelf brackets and a piece of plywood
- A negative holder that keeps the film flat without glass
Things that matter more than the camera
Flatness comes first: a slightly curled negative will be sharp in the centre and soft at the edges. Second is alignment — the sensor has to be parallel to the film, and a small mirror placed on the holder makes that easy to check. Dust is the last enemy; a blower and a clean room beat any software cleanup.
Processing
I shoot raw, invert the image, and set the black and white points by hand for each frame. Automatic inversion tools are convenient, but they tend to flatten the tones that made the negative worth scanning.