Scanning Photos and Negatives

Do you have negatives or photos that you say you will have reprinted or scanned "some day"? I have for over 25 years.

When I picked up my Honeymoon photos, I wanted to keep them in order so I wrote a number on the back of them. This was before I knew to use a photo safe pencil/pen. As I stacked them, the ink from the pen made a mark on the next photo.

If the ink marks are in the sky, they can be cropped out, but if they're in a main part of the photo like in the wave below or in someone's face, it's more of a problem.

Since then, I have wanted to get reprints of the photos and make a honeymoon photo album but I never did. As I have quoted before, "something that can be done at any time is often done at no time".

For years, I had "lost" the negatives. I couldn't find them in the box of negatives I had at my house. When we were visiting my in-laws, I recognized a box in the closet and remembered that I had stored my first box of negatives there.

It's a tip I had heard, to keep your photos and negatives in a separate place. It's equivalent to the reason we back up our photos today. Ideally, your back-up drive should be in another location or on the cloud. If anything happens to the originals in your home, you always have your back-ups.

When I started my Revive55 Project last summer, reprinting these photos and making a photo album was one of the things I wanted to get accomplished. Our anniversary is this month, and this was my plan but with non-essential businesses closed, I can't take in my negatives to be reprinted.

That's not a big problem because I also wanted to digitize the photos. I wasn't sure whether I would get the photo lab to digitize them or if I would do it myself. Years ago, we bought a scanner - maybe it was purchased at the same time as the Elgato Video Capture we bought for our 20th anniversary. Click here to read my post about digitizing home videos.

I have used the scanner to preserve photos and negatives in the past but never got to my honeymoon negatives.

I got the scanner out this week and was disheartened to see that it was no longer compatible with the updated OS on my Mac. Our older iMac was updated as well. I started searching for a new scanner. I consoled myself with the thought that maybe a new one will be more efficient and better quality.

This is what my scanner looks like. The first photo shows the negative film holder installed in the lid of the scanner. The lid closes and the negative gets scanned. The second photo shows the white cover that is used to cover the black holder when you want to scan photos or documents.

The third photo shows the other side of the negative film holder where you load the negative as can be seen in the fourth photo. You lift the top that holds the negative down when closed.

                          

It's not the simplest process which is why I thought that over the years, something better would be on the market.

The reviews did not reassure me. I found the negative holder awkward on my scanner but the new ones were labelled as flimsy. The better quality scanners were over $1200. I was almost convinced to purchase a medium priced one for $275 that I had read and heard was a great scanner since starting my Revive55 Project. I felt though, that it was wasted money because I didn't think it would be any better than the one I already had. Bummer.

I then found online software that we could buy that would make it work again. It was a cheaper solution but was it a trustworthy solution?

When I was quarantined in April, I had tried to use my old MacBook (circa 2008) but couldn't get it to work. I used a refurbished Linus laptop instead. My scanner wasn't compatible with the laptop so I got the MacBook out again and got it to work.

I downloaded the scanner software, and it WORKED!!! I was SO happy and relieved. I'm so happy that we still had it. We hadn't used the MacBook in years and when it was in the process of crashing, I managed to export the valuable photos, music and documents from it before it completely crashed and we needed to wipe it.

I was happy to scan the negatives. Some of the printed photos are markedly improved just by scanning the negative. Going back to that first photo I showed with the ink marks:

Original photo printed (1990's)

Scanned from negative film (2020)

Scanned from negative film (2020)
edited to straighten the horizon line, correct yellowish tinge
and lighten shadows possibly due to age of negative

By scanning the negative, the sun is visible and there are parts of the photo that was cropped on the initial photo. In this case, seeing the extra chair doesn't add value but sometimes a critical part is missing. The negative is not 4x6 so when a photo is printed, it cuts off part of the photo. If you have printed photos online, you will see this when you choose whether you want to crop a little on either side or more on one side.

As technology changes, I am being reminded that we should preserve things while we still can. I had old negatives from a disc camera that became obsolete. I'm not sure if I kept them or not, but I googled and learned that I may be able to scan them with my scanner.

I will now scan as many negatives and photos as I can before technology changes again and I'll have to spend more or lose my memories preserved in these images.