Digitising B&W Negatives on the Cheap
In this article I’m going to use three 35mm film negatives to discuss what you should consider for when choosing an entry level scanner for digitising your black and white negatives. Then I’ll use a fourth negative to show you how you can do it your self for under €50.
Like me, most people get into film photography either by buying an old camera from the 70s, 80s or 90s or a new camera from a brand like Lomography. Some people do it for the challenge that comes from not having the instant feedback of digital. Some do it for the artistry of film photography that is challenging to reproduce in Adobe Lightroom. Others simply do it for the novelty value. I do it for all of those reasons.
I shoot with 70s vintage rangefinder cameras specifically because I want my photos to have that “70s character”. Something that I haven’t been able adequately to reproduce from a modern camera lens and Adobe Lightroom and a marketplace of presets. I also enjoy the challenge of having to think for myself more and having to wait to see the results of my work.
There are lot of different factors that affect the “quality” of a digitised film negative. These include: the uniformity of the brightness and colour temperature of the back light; the resolution of the scanner’s sensor; the quality of the scanner optics; whether the scanner has an infrared channel; and whether the scanner has fixed focus or auto focus. There are lot of well meaning people that will tell you that this factor or that factor is crucial but some factors are more relevant than others. For example, the use of infrared light to minimise the effects of dust on the negative only works with colour negatives.
First, if you want super sharp, high resolution images don’t shoot film or at least don’t shoot 35mm film. Lens quality has improved hugely in the 20 years since the big Japanese camera brands stopped investing in film cameras. The optical quality that was once only available to professional photographers is now available in consumer products.
I have a superbly crafted and expensive Leitz Wetzlar Summicron-C 40mm f/2 lens made by Leica in the late 1970s, which isn’t as sharp as my considerably cheaper Nikon Nikkor AF-D 50mm f/1.8D lens that was made in China in 2009. The Nikkor is technically superior but I prefer the way the Summicron handles the mid tones in my black and white images.
It is a misconception is that resolution is everything. It’s not. The resolution of a scanner is important but so is dynamic range of the scanner. Resolution is a big, impressive sounding number that most folks have gotten used to from buying mobile phones, TVs and computer monitors whereas dynamic range is a small sounding and unfamiliar number. Black and white films generally have a wide exposure latitude, basically the number of shades of grey the film can record between pure white and pure black. Dynamic range is the number of shades of grey that a scanner can record when scanning a negative.
Lastly, there is no absolute “best scanner”. I’m not going to try and tell you what to choose. The best scanner for you will depend on your own budget and what you intend to do with the digitised images. Scanning and sharing pictures on social media is technically far less demanding than scanning and printing them to hang on your wall but no less rewarding.
The Scanners
All the scanners I’m comparing are for scanning 35mm negatives or slides.
Webcam in a Box
The first scanner is the Silvercrest Negative Digitiser SND 3600 D3 which was the first scanner I purchased after I took on my lockdown project of developing my own black and white films. I was tired of looking at my negatives with a loupe but I also wasn’t ready to spend money on a more expensive device.
Overall, I quite like this scanner for black and white only (the results with colour negatives are really bad). It comes with its own easy to use software. It connects to the USB only, no additional power cable. And scanning a strip of 6 negatives takes me less than 3 minutes. The main downside is the low dynamic range. The term dynamic range is not event mentioned in the marketing material or in the user manual.
This SND 3600 represents a class of cheap (under €100) film scanners that are essentially webcams and a light source in a box. You can typically recognise them from the product description which will describe a “CMOS sensor”. The resolution of a digital camera is stated in megapixels. For example, the SND 3600 has a “CMOS-Sensor (5 Megapixel)” or in other words it’s a 5 megapixel webcam.
Resolution of a scanner is stated in the number of dots per inch (dpi) that it can resolve. The product description for these devices typically give two numbers for the scanner resolution, a smaller one and larger one, that is twice the size of the smaller one. For example, the SND 3600 has a resolution of 1800dpi and 3600dpi (interpolated).
What does this mean, in practical terms? Well, in theory, it means that I could print a scanned image up to 21cm × 14cm (8½" x 5⅔"). A 35mm film negative is 36mm × 24mm and 1 inch is 25.4mm, therefore the scanned image will be approximately: 36 ÷ 25.4 × 1800 = 2551dpi on the long edge; and 24 ÷ 25.4 x 1800 = 1700dpi on the short edge.
A resolution of 300dpi is considered the minimum required to for printing a photo, so the biggest we can safely print the image is: 2551 ÷ 300 = 8½" (21.6cm) on the long edge; and 1700 ÷ 300 = 5⅔" (14.4cm) on the short edge.
We ignored the bigger number of 3600dpi, why? Simple, on this type of device, interpolation means photographing the negative twice with the same camera. It doesn’t add any additional detail to the scanned image. It just makes a bigger file on your laptop.
Using your Mobile Phone
The second scanner is my iPhone 8 plus my iPad as a backlight.
The minimum focusing distance is important if you are using your phone as a scanner. The further away your phone’s camera has to be from the negative the lower the resolution of the scanned image will be. I’m using my old iPhone 8 because it has a shorter minimum focusing distance (approx. 6cm) than newer iPhones, for example my iPhone 12 has a minimum focusing distance of approx. 10cm.
The minimum distance between the backlight and the negative is important if you are using a device like a tablet or a laptop screen as the backlight. The light from these screens is not uniform, it is made up of tiny dots and if the negative is too close to the screen the uneven backlight affects the scanned image. To avoid this the negative needs to be at least 5cm from the screen.
To avoid distortion, the backlight, the negative and the mobile phone camera must all be parallel to one another. Whilst apps like FilmBox claim to show good results from hand holding a negative and a phone in front of a laptop screen. The reality is that hand holding results in digitised images that suffer from complicated distortions that cannot be automatically corrected by software.
Lomography Smartphone Scanner
The third scanner is the Lomography Smartphone Scanner plus my iPhone 8. This is the entry level scanner I was originally going to try until I found the Silvercrest scanner on offer my local supermarket. I really like Lomography’s mission, so when I decided to write this article I went ahead and bought it anyway.
The Lomography scanner provides a low tech solution to the problems associated with hand holding. It includes a battery powered backlight and a means of positioning your phone so it is parallel to both the negative and backlight. As well as a simple, stepped solution for varying the distance between the camera and the negative
The iPhone 8 has a 12MP camera but with the camera 7cm from the negative (the next closest setting to 6cm) the negative fills less than half of a 9MP square image. This results is a scanned image which is 10% smaller than the image from the scanned image from the Silvercrest scanner. Scanning images with the Lomography scanner is also slower.
Overall, I’m not a big fan but I’m also not the target audience for this scanner. It’s really aimed at folks who get their colour film processed and printed and then want to share them on social media. With that as the main use case, taking pictures of the negatives on your phone makes a lot of sense. The LomoScanner app, does a good job of converting the negative to a positive image but the scanned images it produces are tiny, less than 0.5MP, and I achieved the best results by taking a square picture with the camera and converting it using the Google Snapseed app.
Mid Range Comparison
For comparison, I’m also including the scans from my Reflecta Scanner Pro 10T (also sold as the Pacific Image Prime Film XEs), a mid range film scanner which at over €700 including software is 20 times more expensive than the other scanners. It connects to the USB with an additional power cable. Mounting a strip of 6 negatives takes me a couple of minutes and it can be fiddly to seat the strip properly, especially if the film stock is prone to curling. Scanning each negative at full resolution takes approx. 4 minutes plus another 2-3 minutes in Adobe Lightroom to convert the negative to a positive image.
The 10T has an effective maximum resolution of approx. 4100dpi when scanned at 5000dpi which translates to 23MP. It also has a high dynamic range (Dmax 3.9) and multiple-exposure support which improves the shadow and highlight details by using multiple scans similar to HDR photography. The scanner also supports scanning at 10000dpi but this doesn’t add any additional detail to the scanned image.
The Negatives
Time to introduce the three negatives I’m using as examples.
Resolution: Technical Comparison
The first negative is a shot of a 1951 USAF optical resolution test chart. Typically, this type of test chart would be purchased as a 35mm slide that can be used to measure the optical resolution of the scanner. Instead I’m using a photograph of my computer monitor showing the test target. Originally, I did this because I was curious to see how different the camera lenses and film stocks affected the overall resolution. In this article I’m using one of the those negatives to illustrate the relative resolutions of the three scanners.
The resolution is measured by finding the smallest element where all three vertical bars and all three vertical bars are distinguishable. The smallest visible element in the original screenshot is group 1 element 4.
In the scan from the Reflecta Scanner Pro 10T, the smallest visible element is group 1 element 3. I can distinguish the horizontal bars on group 1 element 4 but not the vertical bars, so the lens and film stock only have a small impact on the resolution.
The best I could manage when hand holding the negative and phone was group 0 element 1. I’ve included the entire digitised image as it also shows the affects of the distortion
There is a small amount of distortion with the Lomography Smartphone Scanner plus iPhone 8. The smallest visible element is group 0 element 3. Six elements lower than the Reflecta.
In the digitised image from the Silvercrest Negative Digitiser SND 3600 D3, the smallest visible element is group 0 element 4 which is slightly better than the Lomography scanner. I can distinguish the vertical bars on group 0 element 5 but not all three horizontal bars.
Dynamic Range: Shadow Detail
The second negative is an early morning shot of Amsterdam Nieuwe Meer taken into the sun. On the right of the frame is the bright reflection of the sun on the water and on the left of the frame is an area of deep shadow. The shadow area contains the trees and the road along the lake shore.
The Silvercrest scanner produces a nice contrasty image that I like but the low dynamic range means the detail in the shadow areas is lost. This could be printed at up to 20cm × 15cm.
I gave up trying to get a good handheld scan. I had some success with the Filmory app but the digitised images are tiny, 10.5cm × 7cm.
The image produced by the combination of the Lomography scanner and iPhone 8 shows much more shadow detail. The image needed some processing in Snapseed to correct the distortion, convert the negative to a positive and add some contrast. It’s not quite to my taste but for something done entirely on my phone, it’s good and could be printed at up to 19cm × 13cm.
For comparison, this is a nice, contrasty 5:7 aspect ratio crop of the scanned image from the Reflecta Scanner Pro 10T which could be printed at up to 17cm × 12cm. The full size crop is 6591dpi × 4708dpi and can be printed at up to 55cm × 39cm.
Resolution: Room to Crop
The second negative is a wide shot of three dog walkers and their two dogs. These subjects only fill around one sixth of the overall frame. This represents a common scenario of taking a shot with the intention of cropping it later. In this case, I felt I needed to take the shot quickly, from a distance before the people or more likely, their dogs moved. Now I want to crop it so that it can be printed 15cm × 10cm (6" × 4') which requires 1800dpi × 1200dpi.
The Silvercrest scanner produces a contrasty image but the low dynamic range means the detail in the shadow areas is lost. The lack of shadow detail results in an image that looks “digital” and lacks the analogue film aesthetic, I want. In short, it’s not to my taste.
Again, the image produced by the combination of the Lomography scanner, iPhone 8 and Snapseed still lacks contrast. There just isn’t enough dynamic range in the digitised image to preserve the shadow detail in the clothes if you push up the contrast. It isn’t to my taste but overall I think it’s good. This could be printed at up to 18cm × 13cm.
For comparison, this is a nice, contrasty 5:7 aspect ratio crop of the scanned image from the Reflecta Scanner Pro 10T which could be printed at up to 17cm × 12cm. The full size crop is 4007dpi × 2862dpi and can be printed at up to 33cm × 24cm.
Conclusion
Not being able to spend €100s on a scanner should not stop you from scanning your own negatives.
If your artistic preference is towards lower contrast images and you have a laptop you can use for scanning then I suggest considering a scanner similar to the Silvercrest Negative Digitiser SND 3600 D3. I bought mine for €40 but a guide price of around €100 is more realistic.
Tip: if you are thinking of buying this type of scanner, try and avoid the ones with built-in screens, these just add to the cost.
If like me you prefer more contrasty images or if you don’t have access to a laptop for scanning or you simply want to do everything on your mobile phone, then I suggest buying the Lomography Smartphone Scanner. There similar products including the Kodak branded Mobile Film Scanner. The most important feature is the ability to you to adust focusing distance between the phone’s camera and the negative.
None of the dedicated negative scanning apps I tried does a great job and my suggestion would be to use an app like Snapseed or the mobile version of Adobe Lightroom. Snapseed is free and I find it easier to use than Lightroom.
In the Netherlands, low resolution scanning typically adds around €5 to the cost of having a black and white film developed. So the €39 plus shipping it costs to buy a Lomography Smartphone Scanner would pay itself back after 8–10 rolls of film.
Workflow
This is my workflow for creating a black and white image from a 35mm negative using the Lomography Smartphone Scanner and Snapseed.
The first step after loading the digitised negative into Snapseed was to rotate the image to vertical. I use the edges of the sprocket holes as a visual guide.
The second step is to correct the perspective. This can be tricky on a small screen but if your phone was laid flat on the top of the scanner, the distortion can be removed using either the vertical or horizontal tilt tool. Taking the time to get your phone as parallel as possible to the top of the scanner means you won’t need to spend time making perspective corrections.
Tip: I found that putting a piece of cardboard between the back of my phone cover and the scanner helped a lot.
The third step is to crop the image to remove the sprocket holes. On a small screen I find doing this in 2 steps helps. First a 3:2 aspect ratio crop to remove everything but the negative image. Followed by a second “artistic” crop to remove any unwanted parts of the image.
After cropping, the next step is to convert the negative to a positive using Snapseed’s the Curves tool. You can to this by dragging the white circle on the top right, down to the bottom right. This will turn the image black. Then drag the blue circle from the bottom left to the top left. This results in a positive image.
The next step is to convert the image to black and white using the Black & White tool. I prefer to use the neutral setting and adjust the contrast using the Curves tool but you may prefer to use the one of the other black and white settings.
Lastly, after converting to black and white, instead of using a Black and White preset, you can adjust the contrast using the curves tool. I used strong contrast on this image.
In total, including loading the film strip and taking the picture of the negative, the conversion takes around 6 minutes.
