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How I “scanned” old negatives with $0 budget, a DSLR and stuff I had at home

by 23 Comments

A few days ago, my boyfriend found some old 35mm negatives. I really wanted to see baby photos of him, so I was wondering: can I “scan” these films with just my DSLR and the stuff I had lying around? I’ve never done it before, neither with a proper scanner nor by improvising. So, I gave it a shot and after some DIY solutions, improvisation and lots of fun – I did it. I’ll share my process with you in this article. So, if you have some old negatives and some free time, take a look.

When I first got the idea, I just put the film on my tablet, found a white background and took a photo. I had a 35mm f/1.8 lens already on my DSLR and added a Raynox DCR-250 so I could get closer. I just wanted to see what it would look like.

I imported the photo to Lightroom, inverted the colors and did some minor editing. It’s not bad; I can see that he was a really cute baby. But there are pixels visible because of the tablet screen:

So, earlier today I decided to try and make the scanned photos look better. At least as good as I could with just the stuff lying around the house. I had an idea inspired by some of the awesome articles here on DIYP, and I got to work. Here’s what I gathered:

First, I draw the square shapes on the cardboard and cut them out to hold my films:

Then, I taped them together so I could slide the film in:

I used a clothes peg to hold the cardboard, and stuck it in the roll of Scotch tape. Total improvisation, but it turned out to be stable. I placed an old lamp behind the film (although a speedlight would do as well. I added a sheet of paper to diffuse the light. Some books to adjust the height of my weird film holder, and voila:

I used a Nikon D7000 and a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens. I don’t own a macro lens, so I added the aforementioned Raynox DCR-250. Before sliding each film into the holder, I cleaned it from fingerprints. I also blew off the dust before taking the photos.

Here’s one of the photos straight out of camera:

After taking the photos, I imported them into Lightroom. I inverted the colors by inverting the curve and then corrected the colors and contrast.

Later on, I also edited some of the photos in Photoshop, trying to remove the stains and dust. Retouching is not really my area, but I did some quick fixes on the photos that had a lot of stains. Here are a few examples, only the third one has been retouched (badly) to remove some large stains.

There were also some reversal films, so I scanned those too. Here’s how they turned out:

Considering that I have no experience in scanning film and that this was merely an experiment, I’d say this isn’t too bad. Of course, you can achieve better results with an actual scanner. But if you’re looking for a $0 DIY way to do it, let this be an inspiration. If nothing else, the photos will at least make your parents and partner go “awww.” : )

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  • Tj Ó Seamállaigh

    Why not scan the negative right away and do the work in Photoshop, instead of shooting it with DSLR?

    • Balayage

      No scanner. That is the whole point of this exercise. I have a similar setup that works just fine.

    • Dunja0712

      I don’t own a scanner. 🙂

      • Tj Ó Seamállaigh

        ah got it clear now.
        Though, right now, scanners are pretty cheaper than DSLRs (and quite useful for document work and such)- I scanned the family collection of old photos and digitized them saved as TIFFs.

        • CAugustin

          Yes, some scanners (mostly flatbed) are cheap, but resolution is very limited. Film scanners are quite affordable too – unless you want to go to medium format. And they are all crap. Slow. Resolution is not up to par. Driver nightmare. Abysmal scanner software (the worst of the worst I can think of). Slow. Slow. Slow.

          I bought a Plustek OpticFilm 120 for over 1600 EUR – and I get “stripes” when scanning color negatives (in the sky, where there is no texture and the negatives are quite dark). I’ve got *much* better image quality with my Sony A7 (and some more elaborate color-conversion techniques in Photoshop than described here). It looks as if I might return to it.

          No, using a DSLR or mirroless camera (e.g. MFT with HiRes mode), some slightly more elaborate mechanical setup, a good-quality enlarger lens (e.g. EL-Nikkor 2.8/50), RAW and Photoshop gives actually much better quality with color negative film, and it is much faster than using a scanner.

          The only thing where a dedicated film scanner (of higher quality) shines is infrared dust removal. But if I get stripes on my scans, this is of no use. (I returned the scanner and I’m waiting for the replacement or re-adjusted scanner. Than I’ll see if it is a general problem with this scanner model; investing the money in a good digital camera would have been far better, because the camera can be used for digital photography too ;)).

  • yup, my dslr, macro lens and ipad for backlight (at a distance so you don’t see tablet pixels).

  • Matthias

    Nice, but…. been there, done that, it was fun, but at some point you find out that while using a camera to digitalize really has potential, light reflecting off the film kills quality. I did solve the issue using a broad cardboard tube (the kind posters come in) lined with black paper on the inside. Basically, the camera comes at one end of it, film holder at the other. Rest is detail. HUGE improvement! It’s gonna cost you a couple of EUR/USD for the paper and the tube if you don’t have them around, but it’s still really dirt cheap :), and ya 16 mp camera easily gets a 10-12 megapixels output for no money where affordable scanners seem to all float around 4-5 MP. One more thing: before going out to buy a macro converter, consider extension rings. Cheaper, better quality, and since you’re doing that indoors in controlled conditions, the main advantage of macro converters – not taking the lens off – doesn’t matter anymore.

    • Dunja0712

      Nice! I’m sure gonna make more effort when I take up the serious task of digitizing all my and boyfriend’s negatives. And these tips are really useful! Thank you for sharing! 🙂

  • lewisfrancis

    Clever, worked about as well as I think you’d have gotten with a lower-end flatbed that can handle film, like my Epson V500.

    • lewisfrancis

      Oh, and cute pics!

      • Dunja0712

        Thanks! 🙂

  • karlzemlin

    I’ve done hundreds of slides using a similar setup, except i have black craft-foam tube between the film holder and the lens to keep light off the surface of the film. I use a flash in a softbox for the light source. A larger light source helps hide flaws in the films. Many times faster than scanning, and working with the raw files in LR is quick and easy.

  • MisterWU

    At least use a bellow between your lens and the film, you will get more acceptable results. You can make one with only black paper. Use a hard mount between your camera and the film to be aligned.
    You can find hundred of good DIY box surfing around to get something better.
    Is good if you are happy with the results, but objectively is quite crappy even compared to a cheap film scan

  • Every time I come to this website on my phone I get redirected to “you won a new iPhone” or “you won an amazon gift card” ads. Stop it DIYPhotography. Stop the garbage ads.

    • thanks for the heads up on this, we are working hard to kill those

  • I have a slide holder for my flatbed scanner

  • ralf korbmacher

    Fyi, Dunja, i have a flatbed scanner with film holders, but get better results with a similar DSLR setup. The tablet (or phone) pixels can be eliminated with any translucent sheet such as mylar btw the film and tablet. It allows you to flatten the film for better focus (I use the glass of a broken frame to hold down the negatives). If you have very fine grain film and can get closer to the negative (depending on what lenses you have), you can take several pics of a single negative and have Photoshop stitch them together. It does a remarkable job (see attached). https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b82c52d434678106c225cc87b2f505a04a4ec50a9b262c98f3662ca110dfba43.jpg

    • Dunja0712

      Nice! Thanks for sharing. I also had the idea to try “scanning” with a DSLR, add a translucent material to my tablet and a glass from a frame. 🙂 As you mention, it would be a good option because it would help straighten out the films. But, I didn’t have any glass, so I stuck to the stuff I had. I’ll sure try it your way next time, because some of the films are really curved and it’s a pain in the neck to “scan” them my way.

  • Sean

    Wow. A rarity. An ACTUAL DIY article on DIYP. Like the second one this week. Haven’t seen this is couple years since DIYP went to reposting PetaPixel instead of original content.

  • Nice and simple. Actually – scanning negatives with camera RAW gives more versitality and resolution than most of film scanning services.
    BTW: here is my very sophisticated scanning rig:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eeaf991eeefad5535bfe2948cf378a0008eb366a11622999080b363f32437c9c.jpg

    • Peggy Wilson

      SOME MIGHT CALL THIS THE RED NECK OR SOMETHIN LIKE THAT OR HILBILLY STUFF (LOL)NO OFFENCE TO EITHER MY FAMILY B FROM OAKLAHOMA WAY OF LIFE,
      We (I) call that ninja (jugallo) stylest WHOOP! WHOOP! I LIKE IT I LIKE IT A LOT! NOW I MYSELF HAVE A CHEAPY PROJECTOR FROM BACK IN THE DAY, PURCHASED FROM NONE OTHER THEN OUR(YOUR) FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD STORE HOBBY LOBBY THINK THAT WOULD WORK AS WELL???

  • PhilGear

    Nice write-up of your conversion process! I bit the bullet and decided to get an Epson V600, and during scanning I used my phone as a light table during the cleaning step. Recently just built and launched an Android app on the play store to help others save some time! Check it out when you have some time!
    https://www.philgearphotography.com/lighttable https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d3d9a0fa94368ca428b897d73fb61d30de02e902e134892639de1f6b74f3f7f6.jpg

  • Greg Miller

    Sorry to rain on everyone’s parade here but this simply doesn’t look very good. I’ve worked endlessly on getting a good inversion from a color negative shot with a dslr and while it is passable to a lot of people, it’s never what I’d describe as good color. Even Phase One struggles with getting good inversions from color negatives on their iXG camera system with is designed for this. The closet you’ll get for a proper inversion is with the “Negative” module that comes with the Colorperfect software but even that has some issues with some colors coming out simply wrong even though neutrals, flesh, foliage and sky are looking right.

    Again…I don’t mean to be an a hole, but I know that the inversion is a bitch of a thing and the companies that deal with this on a professional level haven’t been able to make this work well with color negatives. These “scans” in the samples here simply don’t look right and I’ve never seen it look right on a consistent basis.

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