reprints from film negatives

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mig
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Joined: 19 Oct 2011, 9:39pm

reprints from film negatives

Post by mig »

anyone any good experience of somewhere that still performs this task please?

looking for several reprints of a shot for family / sentimental reasons.

thank you
freeflow
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Joined: 29 Aug 2011, 1:54pm

Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by freeflow »

Get it scanned at high resolution. Then you are free toshare, printout at home or use a specialist printer. Can be done if you PM me.
alicej
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by alicej »

Jessops do it. I recently had to get prints from 110 negatives and they were the only people I could find who could still deal with that old format.

Being a proper photography shop the quality of their prints tends to be rather better than you get from Boots or those envelopes you send off for Triprint or whatever, and they can also still do a good job of black and white photos, or even touch up/repair photos where an old negative has been scratched or slightly damaged.

People in the one on the Headrow were particularly helpful when I was getting old slides and undeveloped rolls of film developed that my mum had left behind when she died. Sometimes photos are important, and supporting a proper photography shop is maybe a bit like supporting a good LBS - get your prints done there and you'll get better quality, plus they'll still be in business for when you need something a bit specialist that really matters.

Negatives can't just be scanned on a normal home scanner, I don't think. I'm pretty sure they need to be on a lightbox to work properly - I tried to do mine at home and it didn't work at all.

EDIT should have said, I have no connection with Jessops other than as a satisfied customer.
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Mick F
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by Mick F »

Yes, you need a thingy for the scanner to do it. We don't have a thingy, so when I tried to scan a negative all I got was a black rectangle.

Yes, take it to a good photographic shop. When you get it printed, get a big one, then you can scan it and send it to all your friends and relations. :D
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That's Mrs Mick F's dad on the far right.
Mick F. Cornwall
mig
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by mig »

thanks for the replies.

i have been looking for a proper photography shop but they seem all to be victims of the digital camera age alas. i have had the megative scanned by a friend who has a quality negative scanner but the result is a little 'cartoon like' so i'd like to try a print directly from the negative.

looks like i'll have to hunt out the nearest jessops to manchester. the one i remember is no longer there methinks...
freeflow
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by freeflow »

Some slide scanners don't cope well with negatives. If you have a spare and you want a trial PM me.
mig
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by mig »

would love a trial yes but don't have a spare negative unfortunately. it's a really precious image for mrs mig
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ferrit worrier
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by ferrit worrier »

Mick F wrote:Yes, you need a thingy for the scanner to do it. We don't have a thingy, so when I tried to scan a negative all I got was a black rectangle.

Yes, take it to a good photographic shop. When you get it printed, get a big one, then you can scan it and send it to all your friends and relations. :D
004.jpg
That's Mrs Mick F's dad on the far right.




The negative needs to be back lit, try a piece of card over the scanner bed with a hole just big enough to fit the neg. You'll need somthing opaque to diffuse the light over the top of it, try using you bike light at variouse hights above. the resolution might not be good but you should get a picture.

Malc
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thirdcrank
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by thirdcrank »

Along with the others who have offered, I have a scanner which has the capability to scan negatives. The biggest influence on quality is the standard of the original. Many / most negs in private hands are from "snaps" taken on simple box cameras and it's easy to forget the poor quality of the resulting pictures.

You probably have a forum member living near you who will give it a go without the neg leaving your possesion.
kwackers
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by kwackers »

I have a scanner which has a specialist negative scanning ability (the reason I bought it). It's a two pass scanner that uses an infra red pass to look for marks on the negative and then uses this information to clean up the scanned image. Results have been excellent on all my negs.
The two pass feature only really works on colour or dye based B&W negs, not on the old silver based B&W.

I'm in Warrington, don't know how much help that would be but I could give it go if it is.
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DaveP
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by DaveP »

thirdcrank wrote: Many / most negs in private hands are from "snaps" taken on simple box cameras and it's easy to forget the poor quality of the resulting pictures


Mmm, I wonder. . .
I recently started scanning photos taken by my parents and grandparents. Some were definitely pre Great War. I dont know what camera Grandad had, but Dad had a bellows fronted job which took 120 roll film. I still have it. Back in the day of these large negatives, your basic snapshot was a contact print. Film and printing paper were all slow fine grained stuff and people followed the basic rules about good light, keeping still etc.
I was highly gratified at how much detail surfaced when they were enlarged on the pc screen.

Not much help to the OP perhaps, but encouraging, maybe - find a man with the right gear and you could get some very good results
Trying to retain enough fitness to grow old disgracefully... That hasn't changed!
kwackers
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by kwackers »

DaveP wrote:Mmm, I wonder. . .
I recently started scanning photos taken by my parents and grandparents. Some were definitely pre Great War. I dont know what camera Grandad had, but Dad had a bellows fronted job which took 120 roll film. I still have it. Back in the day of these large negatives, your basic snapshot was a contact print. Film and printing paper were all slow fine grained stuff and people followed the basic rules about good light, keeping still etc.
I was highly gratified at how much detail surfaced when they were enlarged on the pc screen.

Not much help to the OP perhaps, but encouraging, maybe - find a man with the right gear and you could get some very good results

120 format was (and still is) pretty good. I think even in this digital age you need a seriously good camera to touch a good 120 roll camera (some might claim you couldn't).

The best pics I've ever seen done were 10x8" contact prints taken with a simple box camera and pinhole lens. The degree of detail was simply amazing.
(There's a guy on the web who makes his own 'negatives' on sheets about 6' wide and uses a truck as the camera).
mig
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by mig »

many thanks for the thoughts and offers on this thread. very informative, helpful and heartening!
thirdcrank
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by thirdcrank »

I'll happily rephrase what I was trying to say.

The OP said his negative had been scanned and the result was cartoon-like.

AFAIK, there are only two basic types of scan ie of an object which is opaque, or og an object which is transparent. A negative is in the latter category, along with colour slides. With mine, you fit or remove a screen in the lid and off you go. You can tell it what you want to do or leave it to its own devices to identify the object being scanned. Once it knows what it's doing, the software converts the scanned image into digital form (and will, if prompted, identify and remove a lot of blemishes such as specks of muck.) I can't see how the scanning process would reduce the quality of the object, be it a photograph or a negative. (I suppose a Mickey Mouse scanner might produce cartoon results :mrgreen: )

I've scanned all sorts of pictures from old family albums. Some were taken in portrait studio type places, official school pictures and the like; others were bits and pieces of "snaps." I suppose it's understandable that relatively few negatives survive, in our family at least. Quite recently, I unearthed a couple of dozen pictures I took on a school trip to Paris in 1958. They were asking for reminiscences so I tried scanning the pics which were small and basically rubbish, although the schoolboy faces were all there. I scanned the negatives which had spent 50+ years in the same chemist's envelope as the prints, and they came out looking exactly like the prints.

In short, if it's a decent negative, a decent scanner should get good results. Beyond that, I should have thought that digital enhancement techniques can achieve immeasurably more than traditional dark room tinkering.
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Mick F
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Re: reprints from film negatives

Post by Mick F »

mig wrote:many thanks for the thoughts and offers on this thread. very informative, helpful and heartening!
Great! Hopefully you can get sorted. Some of the old photographs really need publicising to the younger generation to see how things were in the "olden days".

Mick F wrote:That's Mrs Mick F's dad on the far right.
Also, you can see the "short" trousers! That's how they wore them back in the 40s. The chap with the 'tash is Mrs Mick F's father's father's father (great grandfather) BTW.

Strange people those Manchunians! :wink:
Mick F. Cornwall
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