After a hard day of shooting, I would always rush back home to develop my film and hope it turns out right. BW development, from what I’ve known has always been an ongoing learning experience for me.

Loading disasters, torn sprockets, shredded film, over-developing, and more. After development, I’m always filled with wild anticipation at what the final image would look like scanned, but I live to wait another day as I am without a flatbed scanner :S

Today, I had it! I decided to test out the El Cheapo method of scanning film, or reproducing a digital image of a physical negative if you will. Armed with my trusty Gitzo tripod, Nikon D300, and my favourite workhorse, the Nikon 105VR micro, I was all set.

Placing a white piece of tracing paper on the screen of my laptop, I secure it with scotch-tape as I arranged it onto a blank Microsoft word document. Pasting the negative on the illuminated tracing paper, I adjusted my settings to f22, ISO 100, and tripped the shutter with a cable release.

After which, I uploaded the working copy of the file into my computer and exported it out as a TIFF file into Photoshop CS4. I created a duplicate layer, grayscale it, then using the adjustments tool, created a curves layer with the “negative” option selected.

Finally, my BW image appeared before me, and after a few tweaks with an additional layer, with smart sharpening applied and opacity dialed down to 70%; the deed was done.

Whew, pretty neat huh?

If a 16 Base lab scan is a lifeboat, I would say the El Cheapo method is a piece of driftwood. You won’t die from the quality, but it ain’t the best you can get out of your negatives compared to a dedicated film scanner.

But hey, at least you get to see your results while waiting for the lab scans.

Minolta X700, MD W.Rokkor 35mm f1.8, Kodak TRI-X 400 @ 800, Kodak HC-110, 1:100, 14 mins @ 28C.

Advertisement