Scanning Your Film Negatives vs. Prints: An Interesting Comparison

I have all of my old B&W negatives and want to make enlargements of some of them. I used to have a darkroom and did my own but have since moved and no longer have my equipment. Have you compared prints from negatives the old fashioned way with prints from negatives that have been scanned? Is quality lost in the scanning? Just wondering about grain and pixels. I’m about to start on a project using my old negatives and want the best results. Wondering if I should head back into the darkroom. Thanks for any input.

I’ve searched all over the internet and this is the first and only post on this subject I’ve been able to find. I’m glad there’s at least one page on the internet that compares film negative scanning vs photo scanning. You finally answered my question about whether film negative scans actually provide better quality. And it was interesting to learn about the cropping. And FYI, I’m sure people would love to see even more comparisons such as how much color accuracy and dynamic range can be achieved when scanning each type of media.

If you print your photos in the darkroom, you’ll get accurate colors and more details than scanning the negative.

In my experience, it’s true that scanning the negatives yields better resolution, better dynamic range, as well as allowing you to recover parts of the image that didn’t appear in the print. However. And this is a big however. Getting the colors right when scanning negatives can be a meticulous and time-consuming process, requiring individual adjustment of the majority of photos scanned. And this is abundantly clear even in the example given in this article. The version that’s from the scanned negative has a garish green color cast that is extremely unlikely to have been part of the original photographed scene. And when scanning color negatives, such color casts are more the rule than the exception, unless you have exactly the right profile for the type of film used.

And so I’ll offer this counterpoint: the viewfinders of most cameras back in the day didn’t generally show the entire field of view that would be captured on film; and that was okay, because in the printing process, that unseen area would be cut off anyway, so the photographer still mostly captured what they intended to. Additionally, color film was originally meant to be used for printing on color print paper, and the process involved in doing this automatically produced relatively accurate, pleasing colors which take a lot more work to reproduce from negative scans.

And so I would say, if accurate or pleasing colors are your priority, you’d do well to consider scanning your prints instead of your negatives. If you use an IT8 chart to profile your scanner, you can pretty much “set it and forget it”, and just scan photos as fast as the scanner allows, while at the same time getting the exact same colors you see in your prints. And if your prints are faded, most scanning software should have a function to restore the colors, which tends to work great on faded prints, but not at all on faded negatives.

My personal experience with scanning negatives has been one of frustration. Sure, there’s somewhat more detail and dynamic range to be brought out by doing so, and while some rolls of film scan beautifully, and require minimal adjustments to produce good colors, I’ve found that most rolls are recalcitrant messes of weird color shifts and color casts. In the end, I’ve found I’m getting much better results (color-wise) scanning the old prints instead. Not to mention it’s a lot faster.

I have a large collection of photos from 80’s onward and I have preserved almost all the B&W and Color negatives till date. A few years ago I bought a flat bed scanner and scanned all the photo prints (mostly postcard size) from my albums. Though they have a sentimental value, I was not very happy with the scans, compared to today’s digital photos.

Though the 35mm film (max of 87MP) held most of the information than today’s 2.5MP to 20MP cameras, I have used till date, I find a disappointment to compared the paper print scans to direct digital photos.

That is the reason why I bought a small film scanner (not very expensive, Jumbl 22MP All-in-1 Film & Slide Scanner w/Speed-Load Adapters for 35mm Negative & Slides, 110, 126, Super 8 Films from Amazon US). I am yet to scan some photos and compare with the print scans. If the negative scans produces better than print scans, I am going to replace all my old scans with new film scans. This is a huge project and I will be needing lot of time. Being still in a job at 62 years, I find it difficult to allocate time for these things as I have lots of other hobbies. 🙂

What a wonderful comparison. It really makes me wish I had scanned more of my film instead of just my paper prints!

Curtis, this thread is getting pretty old but I am hopeful you are still monitoring. I have beautiful photos from a 35mm of my firstborn. When my twins were born 28 years ago I discovered way too late that the first few months of their life there was I believe a problem with the internal light meter and many of my photos are very, very dark. In some cases hardly worth keeping the print. I do have the negatives! In this case, will I be able to improve the image substantially with current photo editing software? Would I be better off having a company like Brite Pix do it for me?

I tried the Epson Perfection V850 and the software that was included was the worst I had ever used, Silverfish I think it was. I was not alone in my opinion about this software issue also. I then returned the scanner and purchased a 9-11 light panel. $85.00
I tried using my Nikon D810 and my Zeiss 100mm F2 macro lens and a few extension tubes to make some in camera copies of old ( 35 yrs ) that I had in my portfolio. The Zeiss is a manual focus lens so I used the focus confirm to verify focus. After shooting a few I then loaded them into Lightroom and I noticed that if I posted them on Facebook they looked ok but if I really hit the 100% enlarge in LR they were not in focus. Do you think the original wasn’t 100% tack sharp or that my Zeiss lens needs to be calibrated or Fine Tuned a bit? The only other scanners I have seen that do 35mm & 120mm film run about $1200.00 to $1500.00 They are not the flatbed scanners.

I have a Mac computer and I am preparing to scan thousands of photos and film. Since all your info is at least a year old, would you now recommend the Epson Perfection V800 or V850? Also, the apple software is no longer made…would you recommend Adobe Photoshop Elements software instead? And is the V800 that much better than the V600? Thanks for all your wonderful help as I am
not a techie and I could never have considered this project without your outstanding advice.

Thank you so much for your delightful and informative posts re: scanning. Am going to rescan many of my photos in tiff at a higher resolution instead of the original scan in JPEG. Also have loads of 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 slides as well as 35 and have a lot of 3 d slides. Can the 3-d slides be scanned…. if so, wouldn’t they loose much of the depth of field? The Epson 750 didn’t come with a 2 1/4 slide holder, only for 25 and have been unable over the years to locate one.

At what dpi do you suggest I scan the slides? Also purchase Lightroom a few months ago after Apple decided not to support I photo and Aperture. Am in the middle of my 8th decade and the thought of learning a new program makes me wonder if I’m in my right mind!

Thanks again, for your terrific information

When confronted with this huge task of scanning all the family photos, I think it’s important to decide how good is good enough, and not just how good can it possibly get.

I tend to get perfectionistic and spend a lot of time making it the absolute best it can be, but in reality I now I’m mostly wasting my time, because a faster way of doing it, while of lesser quality, is good enough quality.

Once it’s good enough, there is no point in making it better. Only problem is that you have to decide when it’s good enough, and be comfortable that you won’t change your mind later.

So, the question is, is it actually of any importance to get the extra part of the image, that was previously cropped away on the prints? Unless it contains some super interesting information, that revels some secret, then I don’t think there is any point in caring about it. Your family has been looking at the print for all these years, and the print is the way they remember it, had it in their albums or on the walls/shelves. Unless there’s a photo where they have been saying “I wish we could see what was just outside the edge right here”, then it’s not important.

I started scanning everything to perfection, but had to rationalize to not end up spending years on something that was never going to matter to anyone.

I have a hard time doing it though, and do end up spending time doing it perfectly anyway. I find it hard to make the choice, especially since it’s not just for myself (although I’m probably the only one to ever even notice the difference. I get the impression you know the feeling).

Hi again,

Your reference to http://historicphotoarchive.com/stuff/scanning.html is very helpful. There’s a page illustrating the various labels and types of slide mounts (‘containers’) used for Kodachrome slides over the decades. Just this difference in labels can be some help in dating slides to an approximate time if there is no handwritten information on the mount and nothing visible in the image to help with dating (such as licence plates on cars, dates on signs, calendars visible in the image). Finding at least approximate dates for undated photos can be a challenge and worthy of one or more posts on its own.

As you discovered with your ‘126 negative’, different film formats have different sizes and often cost more to have commercially scanned than the standard ’35 mm’ slides or negatives (actual image area of each is 24 x 36 mm), because they require the use of a more expensive, medium format scanner to allow appropriate cropping. Over the years, Kodak, and often other manufacturers, produced a variety of films, many of which could be and were put into 2 inch by 2 inch slide mounts to fit standard slide projectors. There were size 127 ‘Superslides’ (about 40 x 40 mm image area in 2×2 inch mounts). These were most commonly found in commercially available souvenir slide sets at tourist destinations and have most likely faded to some extent by now. For several decades, there was 828 slide film available, including Kodachrome, which gave an image area of about 28 x 40 mm, again mounted in 2×2 slide mounts. Kodak and others produced the 126 “Instamatic” film for both slides and negatives. It had a 28 x 28 mm image area, also in 2×2 inch slide mounts. One of the last film formats to be introduced was the “Pocket Instamatic” or 110 film, again in both slide and negative versions. Its image area was about 12 x 16 mm and the slides came in either smaller mounts which worked only in special, Pocket Instamatic slide projectors from Kodak, or optionally, there were adapter mounts available into which the standard Pocket Instamatic mount could be snapped and then shown in a standard 35 mm slide projector. For illustrated samples of the various film formats, see http://www.pearsonimaging.com/articles/about/filmformats.html.

Some of the less-expensive, so-called ‘slide scanners’ on the market today are actually dedicated, special-purpose digital cameras. While they are advertised as being useful for quickly digitizing your slide/negative collections (and with some models, also your 4×6 or smaller prints), they will ‘scan’ ONLY the standard 24 x 36 mm area of 35 mm slides/negatives. They will crop off any image area larger than this (Superslides, 828, 126 slides, etc.) and they will leave black borders around smaller slides or negatives. Few, if any, allow any exposure adjustment or other corrections and, in my somewhat limited experience with two different brands, post-scan adjustments are difficult at best in Lightroom or Photoshop. They seem to work best if the original is correctly exposed, with a broad range from dark shadows to light highlights. A bright sky and a mid- to dark foreground will often yield a decent exposure on the sky and a silhouette of everything else. I’ve not noticed any decrease in scanning time using one of these units instead of the Epson 2480, which yields significantly better results.

Your Epson V600 will scan any of the previously mentioned slide or negative formats, as well as many of the medium formats such as 6 x 4.5, 6 x 6, 6 x 7, 6 x 9 cm slides or negatives. You may need to manually crop some formats after doing the preview. For anyone considering purchasing a scanner for slides or negatives, this is a significant factor to consider in making a selection to buy.

Since scanning the original slide or negative means you are working with the first-generation image created in the camera, it will nearly always yield more visual information than scanning a print or second-generation image. Even a custom-made print, rather than an automated machine print, will lose some quality in the transition from a light-transmitting medium (positive slide or negative) to a reflective light medium such as paper, regardless of any texture introduced by the paper’s surface. The custom-print job would cost more and may or may not include all of the original image area, depending on the print aspect ratio compared to the slide/negative aspect ratio. Unless it is printed ‘full frame’, a 35 mm slide or negative will be cropped from its 2:3 ratio to 4:5 when printed on 4×5 or 8×10 standard paper. Printed full frame on 8×10 paper, it gives an image about 6.7 x 10 inches. As you discovered, machine prints often crop some of the image area, sometimes a significant portion. They also try to give ‘correct’ exposure and color balance to every print so, for example, a dramatic, colorful sunset sky with a dark foreground, will often have washed-out sky color and ‘correctly’ exposed foreground details, probably not what the photographer wanted in the photo. Also, negative to print aspect ratios are often different and will cause cropping.

For these reasons, scan your slides or negatives if at all possible. NEVER discard them, even once they’ve been scanned. If you later acquire a better scanner, and as you improve your scanning skills, you may want to go back and re-scan at least some of your originals.

There were several types of glass slide mounts available over the years, although they may well be hard to find to buy now with the near-universal switch to digital imaging and the discontinuance of most slide films. GEPE for decades offered a variety of image-opening sizes in two-piece, snap together 2×2 inch slide mounts. The individual slide frame was removed from the original cardboard or thin plastic mount (original mount, usually destroyed in the process, was then discarded) and the piece of film was carefully slipped under a tab on each long side of one half of the mount. The film emulsion (dull) side was placed next to the glass on the dark gray side of the mount, then the white side of the mount was snapped into place to enclose the film. Newton rings,(concentric, rainbow colored lines), were frequently a problem. They could be avoided by using more expensive, anti-newton ring glass in the mounts. These were also offered by GEPE and probably others.

An alternative method of glass mounting involved two pieces of plain glass, 2×2 inches, sandwiching the film between them. The combination was then taped together using black or silver tape around the four edges.

I’ve had experience mounting slides using both of these methods. Believe me, the GEPE method was better to work with. If there ended up being some unwanted dust on the slide or the inside of the glass, an X-acto knife or similar could be used to separate the two parts of the mount, the slide could be cleaned and repositioned if needed, and the mount snapped back together. With the taped glass sandwich, the tape had to be carefully sliced on at least three sides, the dust had to be removed, then new tape had to be applied. Of course, there was always the danger of breaking one or both pieces of glass in the mounting process and Newton rings could be problematic.

In general, glass mounts held the film flatter for better focus in projection; protected it from dust, moisture, and contaminants in the air; and from finger prints. However, if the glass broke, the film could be scratched or torn. As mentioned, Newton rings could also be problematic. Any moisture trapped inside the glass mount could lead to the growth of fungus on the film with subsequent eventual destruction of the film. The glass surfaces can also introduce focus problems for scanners that do not offer manual focus since the scanner’s autofocus often will focus on the surface of the glass instead of the film.

Cardboard or thin plastic mounts were less expensive to use, hence their prevalence in factory-mounted slides. They avoid any problems with Newton rings and fungus growth but offer virtually no protection from dust, moisture, airborne contaminants, or fingerprints. They also may or may not hold the film as flat as glass mounts, depending on how the film is fastened to the mount. This avoids the problem of a scanner’s autofocus focusing on a glass surface but may introduce the problem of excessive film curvature, requiring more depth of field in the scanner to keep the center and edges equally sharp.

Theoretically, the best way to scan slides or negatives is to wet-mount them in the scanner, either a drum scanner (several thousand dollars new) or in the Epson V750 Photo Pro. In practice, at least according to several reviews I’ve seen, the realistic benefits gained from wet-mounting don’t warrant the extra trouble and expense involved, when compared with the results obtained with the Epson V700 or V600 flatbed scanners. The main advantage of the V700 over the V600, is its ability to scan more than 4 2×2 slide mounts at a time and the ability to scan 4×5, 5×7, and 8×10 inch slides or negatives. Unless one has need of either of these features, the more-than-double price of the V700 over the V600 is not likely justifiable.

If you want some glass mounted slides to play around with, or if you just want some glass mounts to try mounting some of your slides in, send me an email with your snail mail address and I can send you some.

Art Taylor

Curtis,
thanks for the extensive reply.
I also shy away from opening the old frames, especially as most of them are old Kodachrome 25 slides in paper frames.
Did you discover any difficulties (e.g. regarding sharpness) when scanning slides in an old glass frame? Although the glass is very thin, it might cause problems in focusing correctly. Found a box with a few hundred glass fframed slides recently but haven’t tried a scan yet.
Y.

Hi Curtis,
thanks for the reply. The issue with scanning my parents slides also lies ahead of me (problably an experience like in a time machine).
One question remains: when the scanner automatically grabs the image, how much of it is cut off? As you see from your own example in the post, automatic processing doesn’t always show the full picture.
Thanks again and have a nice week.
Y.

Have you ever tried to get scans of color slides? And if yes, did you remove the frames from them?
Anyway this was a very interesting case study and I am now off to expore more of your site.
Thanks and have a good weekend!
Y.