Scanning Old Negatives Pointers – Preserve Your Old Photo Film Negatives Effectively For the Future

Although very few people still utilize negatives to develop images and photos, there are others that scan these film negatives to obtain clearer pictures, and prefer this option of scanning negatives as compared to scanning the actual images. Going back into the world of 35mm films, when they are developed into prints, a part of this developing process generates film negatives. These small strips in reality possess the exact and precise images that were brought into existence when you snapped the photo with your film camera. Thus why not preserve your old photos and pictures by scanning these film negatives that would produce better quality images for your digitizing exercise? You could also keep these scanned images for a long time period, and having the best quality pictures would make your collection all the more complete.

One might wonder why the process of scanning film negatives is considered the better option compared to scanning the actual image or the photo print itself. Well, the negative is actually the real image from the camera, and possesses all the information and details that was captured when you actually took the picture. If you have actually had the opportunity to scan a negative, and compared it to the result of scanning the image of a photo print, you would realize that the clarity and details that you would find from scanning of the negative to be better and clearer. Scanning from the print is actually creating a third-tier class photo, which means that the image has gone through two different levels prior to that, thus you would have lost a certain amount of information with each level that you go through. Thus the ideal method to obtain a high quality duplicate of the image that you want to replicate is by scanning film negatives themselves.

In reality, many scanners that are available today allow the actual scanning 35mm negatives in addition to film slides and photo prints. It is not difficult to use these scanners, as they allow you to scan film negatives easily and without much hassle. Nevertheless one must be careful with the type of scanner that is obtained. Usually the cheaper scanner do compromise a little on quality, and if you are looking at scanning negatives regularly, you might want to consider purchasing a scanner that is specific for negative scanning.

And before you start your scanning process, you need to clean your negatives with a soft, lint-free cloth so that there is no dust or particles on your negatives before you scan them. The amount of preparation that you put in would directly impact the quality of the image that you produce, thus make sure that you keep your negatives in the cleanest possible condition before you scan them. And you do not have to worry about damaging your negatives when you scan them as the scanner light passes through them very quickly and would not cause harm to them.

Preserve your old negatives well, and scan them effectively with the above-mentioned tips. All the best!