Film to digital

Hi all,

I've got a question for you experts here. I really don't know how it works and I don't have a scanner. So please don't laugh :blush2:

Anyhow, I still have some rolls of film from decade ago (including a roll of Kodak Panatonic-x 32, a couple of rolls of Ektar 25, a roll of Kodachrome 25 and some Etkachromes ) sitting in the fridge. I've shot recently a couple of Fujichrome Velvia 50 from the same period in the same fridge for the same amount of time and they turned out like new film did. So, I determined that those films still work and I could try to "kill" them all and save the fridge space for...ice cream :)

Questions:

After I shoot them, have them developed, what do I do to turn them into digital images?

For black and white, should I just get the negative scanned or have them printed first and scan the photos themselves?

If I just have the b&w negatives scanned, what would I get...some negative images? And then is it like I just use "invert" in Photoshop to get the positive images?

What to do with the developed color negatives? Do you scan the negatives or the prints? Then what's the next step?

Thanks for your help!

Very cool! I hope you end up shooting those and posting how they came out! :D

99.9% of labs out there will be able to scan your film for you and burn the files to cd. All of your print film will be positives after scanning but, yes there is an invert function in PS to change negatives to positives. I think you will have a harder time finding a place to develop traditional B&W film than you will finding a lab that does scanning. Make sure to post some of the shots when you get them developed :thumbsup:

Aaron

Thanks for the quick reply, Aaron!

I definitely will turn them into photos.

As for finding a lab that will develop and print b&w film, there's a local lab that still does that. Actually, I got them developed and printed a roll of decade old exposed b&w film once. I won't say the 4x6 prints looked good but I believed it was more my faults back then ( I was trying for the first time a roll of Kodak ISO3200 b&w shooting a concert indoor in a stadium). Negative looks OK, I think.

I have a roll of partially exposed FP4 125. I think I will try finishing that one first, see what I'd get from that lab and start from there. I'll save that Pan-x 32 for a better day.

If you only want to scan in a small number of slides or negatives, yeah, I would just use a service. Buying a scanner is expensive, esp if you need a medium or large format film scanner (I payed almost $2k for the Nikon Coolscan 9000. It's great, but that is expensive). Good luck!

G