Ghetto Scan: Digitizing your negatives the "cheap" way.
So while I obviously like spending time in my darkroom making quality prints, sometimes it's just a whole lot more convenient to scan in a negative; especially if it's one you don't quite care enough about to spend hours printing it. I recently saw a tutorial on DigitalRevTV's Youtube channel about how to scan negatives using your DSLR, and wanted to try it for myself. I first picked out a negative, and placed it in the appropriately sized enlarger negative carrier. This is so the film stays flat. I then placed the carrier with the film on top of my light table. With all the other lights off in the room, I took a photo of the negative with my 50mm lens (with a macro adapter screwed on). Here's what I got:
I then uploaded the shot onto my computer, rotated it, and made it black and white:
Lastly, I cropped it, and inverted the tones to change the negative to a positive:
And there you go! I was impressed with how easy this was, and disappointed in myself for not thinking of it sooner. The quality is decent enough to share with friends, but it's not anywhere near as sharp as a real print.
Thanks for looking!
