Scanners for Large Negatives?

Ironsides asks: "My family has a number of old negatives that we would like to digitize. While we could spend the cash and have them all turned into prints and scan the prints, we would prefer to scan the negatives directly. One other problem is that several family members scattered throughout the country also have collections that would need to be scanned in and we could not possibly pay to have them all turned into prints. Now, here's the catch: a sizable number (at least 100 hundred, possibly several hundred) are 1:1 negatives that are 4x5 inches in size (yes, these are very old negatives). Now, I've been looking at slide and negative scanners and unfortunately it seems they only go up to 2.3x3.5 inches (6x9 cm). Does anyone know of a high quality scanner that will handle such large negatives?"

Comments

A drum scanner is designed for this.

[toby]

Find your local reprographics/graphic arts service bureau. They'll do this no problems -- there is no better instrument for the job than a drum scanner.

Ignore the drum scanner comments.

[temojen]

I use a CanoScan 9950f for 4x5 and 6x6 (inches and cm, respectively; the photography world is funny like that). It does just fine for prints up to 24"x24"@300ppi from 6x6. True, a drum scanner is sharper, but so many times the price, and you can get similar results by over-scanning and downsampling. True, a flatbed doesn't have the same DMax, but your negatives aren't fully opaque anyways.

Try this (for B&W negs):

1. Use a CanoScan 9950f or Epson v750*
2. Get a registered copy of VueScan
3. Scan at your scanner's max physical resolution for 6x6, and 1/2 max for 4x5
4. Set white and blackpoints to 0.
5. Scan at 16 bit depth greyscale, 2 samples, no sharpening, no dust correction
6. Save as 16 bit Tiff
7. Load your images in Cinepaint or Photoshop CS or Elements 4 or later
8. Adjust the "Levels" to set your desired black and white points.
9. Save this to your archive as a 16 bit tiff.

now, for each desired print or display size:

1. Open the image in your editor
2. Resample down to the desired size (@300ppi for minilabs and many inkjets, 360ppi for Epson inkjets, ignore ppi and dpi for screen display)
3. Apply unsharp mask (you can sharpen a LOT on large B&W)
4. If you have a profile for your printer or lab, convert to that. If you're sending to a minilab you don't have a profile for or posting online, convert to sRGB.
5. If printing on your own printer, save this file as print-ready, 16 bit profiled tiff.
6. If you're sending to a minilab or posting online, convert to 8bit and save as JPEG (98% qual for minilabs, 75% ish for posting

* CanoScan models don't work on Linux; the Epson v750 may with Vuescan (needs libUSB and USB group access).

Re:Flatbed

[Zachary Kessin]

If you have a lot of 4x5's check out some of the large format photography pages (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/). 4x5 and larger photography is still something that people are activily doing, so they have looked at these issues before. http://www.photo.net/ is also a good place to look