Digitizing photos?

[Eleonora Deak]

Cool. In my experience, b&w negatives scan as black and white. True black
and white. I can't remember now if we needed to select a black and white
channel on the computer to scan b&w negs. I'm pretty sure we didn't.  Either
way, scanning b&w negs was always easier to get a satisfactory result from
than printing. It's usually when you come to printing that there's an issue
because the print machines are colour printers. And even when you select the
appropriate channel and use b&w paper, you still get tone issues. From
negatives, you get the best results from hand printing.

So, I believe scanning your negatives is definitely the optimal option if
you want true black and white pictures. From there, I think your computer's
printer would be able to print it as black and white without tone issues;
your normal printer can (I think) bypass the colour inks when it wants b&w
but the photo print machine only minimises the colour filters' effects but
can't bypass them completely.

I hope that makes sense and that I explained it properly. If I didn't and
it's just plain wrong, I'd love to know about it.

Or, just have a go. Take a negative strip into a shop (or mate in
visual/fine arts dept), get it scanned and see if you're happy with it -
price is usually in proportion to quality of work and willingness to fit in
with customers' needs.

Eleonora



on 21/2/05 11:23 AM, Michael Walsh at micwalsh at arts.usyd.edu.au wrote:

I should have pointed out that my particular inquiry has to do with B&W
negs. Although the prints I have are 'in colour' which gives them a sepia
look.
Michael

wmlinguist at kisser.net.au wrote:
----------
From: wmlinguist at kisser.net.au
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 08:35:57 +0800
To: Doug Marmion <dem at coombs.anu.edu.au> <mailto:dem at coombs.anu.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Digitizing photos?

In the neg scanning program, there's should be a thing you (or the customer
assistant) can go into to select the right film channel (so different
channels have the densities set to suit the needs of different film brands'
idiocyncracies - just like on the print machine - except most places don't
bother because it gets a bit fiddly. Ask about it and maybe offer to pay a
bit extra.

Eleonora

on 20/2/05 2:10 PM, Doug Marmion at dem at coombs.anu.edu.au wrote:


There are some photos I want to digitize. I have ready access to
good quality prints but I can also get access to the negs.

Is it better to digitize off negs or off prints?

Michael Walsh


Hi Michael,

As a general rule, it's always better to scan from the originals (the
negatives) than from a copy (the prints). However (presuming you're
talking about colour negatives as opposed to B&W) I've read that
there can be real problems in getting the colours right due to
differences between film brands (and even between different film
types from the same manufacturer). So while scanning from prints
won't produce results of the same quality it might be more practical,
depending on what you want the scanned images for.

cheers,
doug







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