How many of us have a giant box of 35mm negatives somewhere gathering dust in our closet? We know there are some wonderful photographic gems in there somewhere, for which prints no longer exist because we gave them all away or they've faded with age. We know photographs don't last forever and we know that we "ought" to get busy converting that mountain of memories to a more permanent digital format. Here are some tips for making sure the scans you make are as good as they can be.
Choosing a Scanner
The scanner you choose can make all the difference in how long this job takes you to complete. A multipurpose flatbed scanner with a slide/film scanner in the lid can give you the ability to scan not only negatives, but also hard-copy prints as well. In addition, it can give you the ability to scan and convert documents to text and save yourself a lot of typing. This versatility comes at a price---speed. Scanning film and slides with a flatbed scanner is time-consuming at best, and if you have a large number of slides, you have to consider whether its worth it to spend considerably more money to purchase a dedicated negative and slide scanner.
A good film scanner not only can triple or quadruple the rate at which you scan your negatives, it also reduces how much you handle the negatives themselves. If you have the wherewithal to buy a dedicated film scanner, I highly recommend it.
The Right Resolution
Scanners record images as tiny dots. The more dots per inch (dpi), the higher the resolution of the picture and the better the quality. Since negatives are small, you need to make sure that you set the resolution on your scan relatively high. This seriously impacts storage, as the higher the resolution you make your digital scan, the larger the file will be. You can lower file size by lowering resolution; keep in mind that you will pay a price in reduced print quality.
Professional quality images will require a scan setting of 2400 dpi. This image is going to eat up massive amounts of storage space on your hard drive.
If you plan to enlarge your prints (and you'll have to, since you're starting with a tiny negative), a good rule of thumb is to double the resolution as you double the print size. With family photos, you might be content with scanning an image at 300 dpi if you're enlarging to a 4x6 print. If you're going to an 8x12 print, you should scan the original negative at 600 dpi to get the same relative quality.
As you scan your pictures, watch out for those "special" ones for which you might wish to have a better quality print, and scan those at higher resolutions. If you're scanning an entire collection, it's probably not practical to scan everything at hi-res unless you're Ansel Adams and recording your negatives for posterity. Grandma's birthday snaps could probably get along fine at 200 dpi to 300 dpi for the original scan. Scanning at anything lower in resolution than that can give you pictures that are pixilated and very low in quality.
Format and Output Issues
When choosing an output format for your images, you'll find the TIFF format the most versatile. TIFF files are most resistant to loss of quality if they are touched up and resaved using photo-editing software. The downside is that TIFFs are a bulky format and take up large amounts of space.
JPEG files are relatively lean, but lose some quality because of the space-saving information storage method of the format. JPEG's are, however, quite versatile and are the standard picture file format for uploading photos to the Internet. If you're saving family photos and not doing a lot of heavy editing and enlargement, JPEG can work well and will certainly save you storage space.
For most images, setting your output for "millions of colors" is the best way to go. For black and white images, however, you can save a lot of disk space by setting the "grayscale" option when you scan. Some early photographs were made with a process called sepia-toning that imparts a brown overtone to the photograph. For those pictures and for black and white photos on which you may want to do extensive editing or cleanup, it's better to use the "millions of colors" setting. This will make it easier for you to do subtle edits. You can always convert the finished picture to grayscale.
Remember the negative has to be turned into a positive print. Most scanners automatically do that on the negative setting, but if for some reason yours doesn't, you'll have to manually "invert" the negative and make it a positive. It saves you time if the scanner does this for you.
Storage
Storage can be a real issue. There are several options. If you're scanning a collection, you might want to invest in a very large external hard drive, because images will eat vast amounts of space on your main drive in short order.
Don't forget to back up files as you go. There's nothing worse than having your hard drive crash with thousands of your photos on them. Invest in a DVD burner and copy completed files and subfolders as you go. If you can organize your negatives by how you plan to store them, then it's easier for you to work on one pile at a time. When you're done, burn a DVD or two with everything from that section and archive it someplace safe (and hopefully fireproof).
You can, of course, use thumb drives and other forms of portable memory, but I personally feel nervous about depending on flash memory for my backup. There's nothing that makes me sleep as well at night as having a permanent, burned-on-disk record of my images in a nice fireproof safe.
Cleaning Images
Take a look at your images as you scan them. You should, of course, carefully brush dust off the negatives before you scan and, if necessary, clean thumb prints or other smudges. Some scanners can actually correct scratches and dust during the scanning process. Try it with a few known damaged negatives to see how effective the clean-up utilities in your scanning software are before letting them take a run at your precious pictures. Make sure the software isn't damaging the quality or distorting images during a clean-up scan. In that case, it's far better to preserve the image as-is and clean it up yourself with your photo-edit software.
Keeping your eyes open and looking over the finished scan can save you a lot of time later. If you spot an image that needs some work, you can always tag the file name you use for the image with a marker letter. I like to put a double or triple "A" before the name. This moves it to the top of the file list in Explorer and bunches up all the negatives I need to work on so they are easy to find without scrolling through a long list and trying to remember which ones needed my attention.
Organizing Files
As you save images to files, create folders and subfolders that are labeled by date and subject. Plan your file system first so that it's easy for you to know where to put things and where to go back and find images later. Imagine the hard drive as a file cabinet with drawers (folders), hanging files (subfolders) and flat files (sub-subfolders).
A series of main folders representing the year is a good first level of organization. You can then create subfolders under each year's files that specify either the month or the occasion. I use the month for this level for all my new photos. Don't forget to use two-digit numerals even for one digit months (01, 02, 03) or you'll wind up with February being alphabetized after October in your yearly files. If you don't remember the exact date, you might create a special set of "era" files that go by periods of five to 10 years. You can always go back and figure out where they should go, and in the meantime, you've got a place to put the files.
If you look closely at the margin of some of your commercially printed negatives, you'll find the date is often printed on the negative itself.
Finally, under the monthly folders, you can create a sub-sub-folder for special events like holidays, ceremonies and events.
Tags: hard drive, film scanner, your negatives, ability scan, amounts space, better quality