just curious if anyone has found a difference between having their film processed straight to a photo CD or actually having their film developed and then scanning the images at home.

pros? cons?

Scanning prints or negs?

prints...





wait.. you can scan negatives?

Posted by Durdan prints... wait.. you can scan negatives?

There's a lot of film scanners out there.
I know the printer/scanner my parents bought came with an adapter for 35mm film and slides.

I would recommend scanning negs over prints, you have a lot more control over editing the original neg than the prints that the photolab has likely colour corrected etc for you.

Not to mention dust. Dust is the bane of my existence. I don't have a medium format neg adapter for the scanner at my parents' place so I've had to scan prints I made in the darkroom and I've spent hours and hours trying to edit out all the dust that shows up on the print regardless of how clean the print and scanner are.

Scanning a print is like making a copy of a photocopy... it is already missing information from the original and is degraded.

Posted by Durdan just curious if anyone has found a difference between having their film processed straight to a photo CD or actually having their film developed and then scanning the images at home. pros? cons?

Negative scanners are the way to go. I have a Coolscan 8000 and love it. If you want to spend a little less and are only concerned with 35mm, try a Coolscan 4000.

are they really only $70US?

and do i have to do anything to the film roll first? i mean, doesnt something have to happen to the film in order to process it into a negative? since i've never had the balls to open up a roll of film after use, i'm utterly clueless

There's nothing that you or the lab has to do. The lab should return the negs to you. In fact I don't even bother with prints anymore. I just get the lab to develop the film and then they give me the negs back.

Sure the colours on the negs will be weird, especially with C-41 (just regular colour negative film like Fuji Superia, Reala, Kodak Max ect), but you just tell your scanner that and you're good to go.

I myself use an Epson V500, it does a good job actually.

oh ok, so i still have to turn in my rolls and have them develop the negatives.

Yes, unless you want to learn how to develop your negs at home (not difficult)

isn't C-41 developing very temperature sensitive?

Posted by TicTac isn't C-41 developing very temperature sensitive?

Yes. The chemistry must stay at a constant 100 degrees. Unless you want to get a Jobo CPE2 or similar, it's probably easiest to just have them developed process-only at a lab. It should only be a few bucks per roll that way.

I heard someone suggest using small crock-pots for developing C-41, since they're designed to hold a steady temp for far longer than it takes to develop

But this wouldn't be economical unless you want to develop a LOT at home as it's only a few bucks to get it done at a drug store

hey hey let me tell you something.. when i was in 9th grade, broke as fuck, taking schmintzy high school photo, i actually (thanks to half broken jimmy riggedness) had a computer with pirated photoshop 3.0 and an old umax astra scanner..

knowing nothing of proper methods, i had taken some of the negatives developed from school, cut one, and scanned the negative as it was. just (i know nothing of math, numbers or their 'ways') cropping the rest of the negative space out (i think some non photo scanners have an auto trimming option to do what im talking about) and scanning the image itself with a larger dpi. then i went into good old paint program for windows 90-something and reversed the colors. there was my photo ready to mess with in the photoshop.

basically, a real photo scanner just cuts out the extra work for you. it has software that scans your negatives in a large file size, (or whatever, i dont know proper terms) and reverses the colors to become a positive.

however, if youre as broke as a joke on coke, you caaaan do it this way and have some interesting results.

and some people like to scan their from-the-photo-department photos in a regular scanner because sometimes it adds a sort or depth, and sometimes it adds a sort of flatness.. it can be great. it can be sub-great.

experiment! being poor can have its mental goods!

Posted by TicTac I heard someone suggest using small crock-pots for developing C-41, since they're designed to hold a steady temp for far longer than it takes to develop But this wouldn't be economical unless you want to develop a LOT at home as it's only a few bucks to get it done at a drug store

hmm dont go to walgreens or rite aide, that shits like 4-5$ for negatives alone.