Quote:
Originally Posted by thecatspajamas
Jerry,
Are the negatives you are trying to scan color or b/w? Color negatives (the kind with that orange hue) can be tough to invert manually in Photoshop as its not just a straight simple inversion as it is with b/w. That was another thing I was very happy to allow the scanner software to do automatically for me.
As for the flashlight backlight option, it sounds like the light source is adding too much light so that it just blows out the image, kind of like staring into the sun. You might need to use thicker paper or a different flashlight to lessen the amount of light passing through. Although if you're getting passable results with just ambient light by leaving the scanner lid open, by all means, go with whatever works. I think you will have a hard time getting printable images that way, even after tweaking in Photoshop, but if you're just wanting to preview them on screen, that method may work fine for you.
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Lance ... the only negative I've tried so far is black and white, although I do have one color negative. I've only tried this one of my three B/W's so far since I don't want to damage the other two while I test using my scanner. The B/W negative I'm using is a single 35mm negative probably cut from a strip, and I didn't pay a lot for it, so if I mess it up it won't be the end of the world. You are exactly right about the "too much light" problem. I finally put the scanner in my lap (it is a small scanner) and moved around under the room light and scanned and can see that as I move from different places around the room the scan gets darker and lighter. And if I put any light too close to the glass it just "blows out the image", as you say. I think today I will try to find a place in the room using the ambient room light above as the only light with the scanner lid open since that seems to do about the best, so far. But the three issues so far using this method are:
1) The scan is either too dark or too light (can't seem to find a happy medium ... yet).
2) Sometimes with the ambient light the brightness looks OK, but the scan has ripples in it (this is too bad because the amount of light appears to be pretty good). Maybe this scanner just is too wimpy for what I'm trying to do.
3) Often after I invert the image in Photoshop there is a very light green tint.
Primarily I'm just trying to get a decent enough scan so I can archive it to see the image for my own viewing pleasure. And ... I really wanted to post a couple of my negatives to the forum to show, but the scans have been pretty bad. I'll keep trying today. Also ... I'll be getting prints made from a photo lab since I doubt I'll ever be able to get a good enough scan from my scanner. As always, thanks for your input!