Author Topic: Advice For Scanning Old Negatives  (Read 17498 times)

Offline david64

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Advice For Scanning Old Negatives
« on: Wednesday 17 March 10 00:10 GMT (UK) »
There has been quite a bit of talk re. scanning old negs on here. I did quite a lot of research (from next to no photographic background) before buying a scanner and am very happy with the results.

If you want to scan old negatives (or new negatives) there are five main scanners you want to be looking at:

EPSON Perfection 4490 - c. £160
EPSON Perfection V500 - c. £180
EPSON Perfection V600 - c. £225
EPSON Perfection V700 - c. £350
EPSON Perfection V750 - c. £700

More money = more whizz.

The family historian will only really need the 4490. Although it can be quite hard to get hold of these days as the newer models are putting it out of production.

The two biggest questions people have re. scanning negatives are:

1 - What is the quality like?

So long as you buy a good scanner, the quality is very good. The only negative really is with colour photos that are very dark, which tend to come out with a bit of colour noise. Although I think that is more down to bad photography :P Another negative is certain type of matted gloss finished photographs will come out a bit noisy due to the light from the scanner.

2 - What size negatives can I scan?

Unless you have very large negatives (bigger than A4), you should be able to scan negatives of any size - depending on which scanner you buy. The EPSON V600 has an area about 6 inches by 14 inches that is used to scan negatives. While the ESPON V700 can scan negatives that are A4 size.

The negative scanner is on the roof of the scanners. Below you can see the V600 followed by the V700 with their negative scanning plates on the inside of the lid:



So, if your negatives are within that size, you will be able to scan them.


The EPSON scanners also come with technology known as Digital ICE, which automatically removes dust and scratches from colour negatives only. I'm not sure if it works on colour photos though; I think it may work on some depending on what type of dyes etc. the photo is composed of. The results of Digital ICE are very impressive.