Since digital photography has almost totally taken over the market, many people are probably wondering what to do with the thousands of “analog” negatives and slides they accumulated during the pre-digital age. I know I have boxes of the things, since I worked as a “semi-pro” photographer for several years. Many haven’t been examined in years, but I’d like to put some of them online. The prints are missing, so I can’t scan them. What to do?

Happily, there’s a relatively inexpensive solution. Nikon, Plustek, and other companies make “negative and slide scanners” that turn those old bits of film into shiny new JPEG or other files in relatively short order. If you’re scanning negatives, software can translate them into “positive” images just as if you’d made a print under an enlarger.

Prices for these units vary widely, based on resolution and capacity. An 1800 dpi unit from Pacific Image weighs in at $120 from BH Photo Video, while a 4000 dpi Nikon Coolscan multi-format unit (that can handle 35mm, medium format, and probably 110 and 120 sizes as well) will set you back a cool $2000. There are also automated units that will process whole strips of negatives in one go, which eliminates the need to sit around scanning individual images.

Many units also include software that will help iron out analog-era problems like scratched film or exposure issues. Back in the day, we took care of problems like these in the darkroom using fun tricks like “dodging and burning” or even hand-retouching of negatives. Now, software does it all.

Remember, though: you’re moving physical media to online storage, so you need to guard those scanned copies by making backups and maintaining them. If you’re out of luck if you throw out all those negatives and also lose the image files due to a disk crash or other catastrophe.

My plan is to scan in everything I think is useful, and maintain those negatives in protected storage along with a copy of the files. I can always re-scan really important ones if the technology improves over time or (as I hope) analog photography makes a comeback. In the meantime, I’ll be able to inflict old vacation photos and some of my student art projects on an even wider audience than ever before.

So what are you waiting for?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Graphics, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.