Photos negs

I'm not sure this is the right forum.. but we'll see...

In the old days you used to get your photos from the chemist, along with a few strips of negatives.... i now want to scan these negatives in somehow.... but will they be in colour?

No, they'll need to be converted - hence why they are negatives rather than positives.

If you are using a dedicated negative scanner then it will have software to handle the conversion. Here's some useful info Linky

If you don't want to go to the expense of buying a neg scanner than you could always get prints made and scan those with an ordinary flatbed scanner.

Hi Chris, thanks for the response.... the reason i asked this is because i have an hp photosmart c8180 printer which has a dedicated scanner for negs... but the one i tried today resulted in a B&W image.... can i expect this printer to convert to colour? or do i buy a dedicated negative converter, or do i take them into Jessops?

I'd expect to see a colour positive image on the screen. You may need to tell the software to process the image first though.

Have a look at your software package that came with the printer - or perhaps look at the HP website to see if it can be downloaded.

Also, check your printer manual - see if you've accidentally engaged B&W mode rather than Auto or Colour.

Interesting and I have also wondered how to handle negatives. After reading this I think I'll give them a go with slide copier and see if I can inverse the colour with software. The advantage of DIY is one can also crop and where there is a high dynamic range even take multi exposures and combine them so you can display the whole range caught by the original negative.

However it depends on if it is all worth the effort. Special one in a life time shots may be well worth it. However with a standard snap shot I do question the use of digital negatives or other RAW formats. It does allow one to correct for under exposed parts and reduce the dynamic range to a level the monitor and printer can handle but it all takes time.

If I go out with my camera it will take at least twice the time I am out to process the images when I return. Gimp, Picturenaut, Photoshop or any other package used to process images takes time. And it your not prepared to spend the time then sending to a process house is likely best option.

To scan negatives you need the light behind them - so you need a proper negative scanner, or an attachment for a normal flatbed (which many flatbeds come with as standard ) A slide copier should work fine if you can get the negatives straight - my slide scanning attachment has an insert to hold negatives correctly.

Obviously set the scanner to scan colour! It doesn't matter if the scan comes out negative or positive - every photo/image editing package I've seen has an invert function to convert one to the other.

At long last I have got around to trying slide copier with negatives. Took some messing around to mount negatives but once secured aimed at sky and took photos. All done RAW mode and as a negative image not a clue as to setting to use when converting into Jpeg so used nothing at first.
Once into Photoshop CS4 simple select Image then adjustment then reverse and negative became positive. Then into image/adjustments/color Balance and I had to move the Cyan - Red slider well to right. And it produced near perfect image.
Used levels then unsharp mask about amount 175% radius 1.0 Threshold 0 and the image was far better than the one scanned from the print.
I did point the slide copier at the sky with a cloudy day and the white diffuser down and had to use manual settings to adjust light input but all in all it worked well.