This is what happens when you “scan” film with a film camera

It’s always fun to see people still experimenting with film in 2024. And I don’t mean experimenting in the traditional photographic ways but experimenting with the process itself. And this video from YouTuber Max Adams is a perfect example of it.

Alex was curious to find out if you could “scan” a negative by photographing it to another negative, resulting in a positive. And how good would it look? Would it have weird colour shifts? Let’s find out.

A fun experiment used to be a common technique

Photographing negatives onto fresh negative film used to be a common technique. Although, perhaps more in cinema than in photography. Max created what is known as an internegative. Companies like Kodak even make film designed specifically for this purpose.

An internegative is a motion picture film duplicate. It is the color counterpart to an interpositive, in which a low-contrast color image is used as the positive between an original camera negative and a duplicate negative.

After a film is shot, the original negatives—taken directly from the camera equipment—are edited into correct sequence and printed onto fresh stock as a cohesive film, creating an interpositive print used for color timing. From the interpositive, answer prints, which include the color-corrected imagery and a properly synced sound track, are made. Once approved by the studio, the final answer print is made into an internegative used for striking copies that will be delivered to theaters for viewing.

Wikipedia

But not knowing this in advance Max’s experiments are quite interesting to see. Logically, the answer to the question should be obvious. When you make a negative of a negative, it is indeed a positive. But this wasn’t the only question. Did it have colour shifts? Weird grain issues? Or any other weird artifacts?

Yes, to all of the above. But that is more than likely down to the film stock he was using. It’s an interesting technique to try today outside of the movie industry. It’s a fun technique to experiment with for creative effect, although that can get quite expensive very quickly!

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