Today’s Question: I read with interest your post on digitizing analog photos. There’s a company called “Negative Supply” that has a lot of products (on the B&H website) which look like they’ll do a decent job. Any insight or comments on this do-it-yourself sort of approach, other than the time involved?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can most certainly scan your own photos rather than using a service such as ScanMyPhotos (https://www.timgreyphoto.com/scan). The main drawback is of course the time you’ll spend scanning the images, the need to buy some additional gear, and the precision that can be required in setting up your camera to photograph the slides or negatives.
More Detail: If you want to scan your film images yourself rather than pay someone else to do that work, there are certainly options available. The three basic categories of hardware for this purpose are film scanners, flatbed scanners, and accessories that enable you to photograph the slides and negatives.
The products from Negative Supply (https://bhpho.to/4gwULCg) revolve around the latter option, where you use your camera to photograph the slides or negatives. This involves an illumination source to backlight the slides and negatives, a mount to hold the film perfectly flat, and a stand to mount your camera above the film you’re photographing. You could also use a tripod for this purpose, but this does make it a little more challenging to get the camera lined up properly. That said, this is absolutely a viable approach, and many photographers have used variations on this type of setup to digitize their analog originals.
I prefer the use of a dedicated film scanner, in part because this makes it much easier to scan images with minimal effort, and the scan quality is generally very good. One scanner I’ve had the opportunity to test and got good results with is the Plustek OpticFilm 8200i film scanner (https://bhpho.to/3qIfxdX). There are other options, though not as many as there had been in the earlier days of the transition from film to digital.
Many flatbed scanners also support scanning slides and negatives, but this is generally not my preferred solution. In many cases the quality is not as good as can be achieved with other means, and it can be a little more labor-intensive to get properly aligned scans. That said, a flatbed scanner that supports scanning transparencies via a built-in backlight does provide a relatively economical solution to scanning slides and negatives. I just prefer to use a dedicated film scanner, using a flatbed only when scanning photo prints and documents.
