Surely many of us have tens, hundreds, thousands of color and black-and-white photographic films from the distant past, and maybe even the present. Only not many people know how to digitize film at home. And throwing away pieces of the past simply does not raise a hand, and you don’t really want to look at slides through a slide projector in the age of seven-league technological development.
How can a slide projector keep up with it? Another half century, and people will probably use teleportation for travel. To kill two birds with one stone - to get rid of photographic films and at the same time save them in a different format - digitizing photos will help. How to digitize film at home? This will be discussed in this article.
There are basically two ways:
1) Scanning of films, which is carried out using a photo scanner or a flatbed with a built-in film adapter. A flatbed scanner with a built-in slide module is significantly different from a simple scanner - a different cover and a single-color lamp.
2) Reshooting slides and negatives using a digital camera.
Thanks to these methods, you can clear your space of trash and not worry about how to properly store old tape archives.
Film photography, although a relic of the technological revolution, is still used for photography. It provides photographs with the most high quality pictures, if, for example, to digitize existing photographic films. Then you can use a computer to make the image even better. Not surprisingly, film photography is back in vogue. However, many do not know how to digitize film themselves.
Film digitization is the process of breaking each frame into individual elements(pixels) and saving color and coordinate information in the program file. How to digitize film at home? To carry out this task, you will need either a scanner or a digital device.
Scanner is the most convenient device for digitizing slides or photographic films of various formats. Thanks to it, you can quickly convert a film archive into a full-fledged digital form, while maintaining optimally good image quality. Quality in this case depends entirely on the design of the scanner.
Today there are various types of scanners with the ability to digitize films, slides and other transparent photographic materials. All these devices are designed to work with film, but they all have different capabilities, respectively, and the price too.
You can digitize film at home using two types of scanner: the first is with a slide module, and the second is a film scanner.
Of course, a tablet with a built-in slide module is much cheaper, but this does not mean that it will do its job poorly: it allows you to get a good quality picture, and it digitizes not only photographic films, but also photographs. Now that you know how to digitize film, you can safely use this type of scanner to save your home photo archives. They are compact and multifunctional.
If you remain an adherent of film photography and are thinking about how to digitize film at home in large quantities, then you definitely need to make a choice in favor of a film scanner. And although its cost is much higher than that of the first type, it is more convenient. Of course, the image quality is also at a high level.
There are two more types of scanners that can digitize both color film and black and white. These are drum photo scanners and minilabs. In the event that digitizing photos is not so frequent for you, a scanner is a secondary matter, and it is easier to pay for this service at a photo kiosk. A high-quality image can only be achieved in a professional laboratory, so be extremely careful when contacting a professional.
It is enough to have your own camera to digitize both black and white film and color at home. Best Option in this case, it will be a camera that has interchangeable lenses. Some manufacturers of photographic equipment make special attachments for camera lenses. With such devices, photographic film is photographed against a bright light background.
In addition to devices manufactured by firms, it is possible to digitize photographic film using a nozzle, which is made from improvised materials. You need to find a hollow cylinder corresponding to the diameter of the lens, attach to it a platform with a hole made on it to fit the size of the required frame. In appearance, such a design should resemble a branded one.
The necessary operation can be performed at home even without a lens attachment. Instead, you can cut the frame to the size of the frame and set opposite white background. This way you can use a monitor screen with a white document as a white background. To achieve the desired effect, you need to insert a film into this frame and take a photo of it from a tripod.
Of course, for digitizing photographic films at home, it is possible to use more complex structure. It may include a device for rewinding roll film, a screen with backlight for diffusion, a frame on which the camera is mounted. All these manipulations depend on your sleight of hand and ingenuity.
Lens attachment or homemade design are used if it is necessary to digitize excellent quality at minimal cost. In this case, it will be very useful. In addition, with the help of sleight of hand, you can create a design that will fully meet your requirements when digitizing any type of transparent photographic materials.
The issue of price and quality, convenience and speed of the operation is inextricably linked with the procedure for digitizing film. Do not blame the low quality of the digital picture and the inconvenience of work if your budget does not allow you to do everything on the best level. Keep in mind that quality work is always expensive. Here it is already important to weigh all the sides and make a decision, because if the film itself does not contain valuable information top quality, then no matter what devices you use, you can’t extract from it good quality Images. It is worth approaching wisely and measuring your capabilities and needs.
Most of the old shots were taken on photographic film, once popular in Soviet time. The names of popular films in the past were "SVEMA" and "TASMA". Photographic films such as Fujifilm, Kodak, Konica were also used, which many Soviet amateur photographers were fond of. At that time, the quality of these films did not differ in optimal results, and the optics of this period left only much to be desired. It was not so easy to achieve high quality. Of course, expensive equipment can be connected to the digitization of this type of film. But everything will go down the drain if the quality of the photo was not good initially.
Therefore, we can conclude that the digitization of photographic films from past decades is not an easy and time-consuming task, and often thankless, since it is almost impossible to achieve a high-quality image.
The price range of the device will average about 17,500-24,000 rubles. Thanks to such scanners, you can extract good image quality, they are easy to use, do not take up much space, and certainly will not be idle.
Digitization of film to obtain the highest quality is best done on a professional scanner. Of course, this will cost you a pretty penny. The main thing here is to understand whether quality is really important to you for any money or not. Moreover, it is unlikely that you will be able to transfer the highest quality of photographic films from the monitor screen or in the paper version.
How to digitize film at home? The risk is not always justified, so leave this matter to professionals. To achieve an average positive result of digitization, it is better to contact the nearest minilab. Such a service will not hit the pocket. But before you go to a professional, be sure to select the shots you really want to print or post somewhere on the Internet.
Don't be afraid to add valuable photos to your archive thanks to film digitization!
The article was written more than 10 years ago, but the method has not lost its relevance....Many in those recent times were filmed with simple film soap dishes, and sometimes with SLRs. Pictures were printed in minilabs, stored in albums...
Several years have passed and the figure reigns supreme in everyday life. Most of the pictures are not printed, but stored on computers. Old albums are slowly thinning out, then one relative will ask for an old picture, then another. At some point, you open the album and you don't find a few of your favorite pictures there.
I think many have preserved enough non-digitized films family archives. Film - here it is, reluctance to print, I want a picture in a computer.
Digitize as soon as possible. But what? A bad scanner digitizes poorly, a good one is not bad, there is already one at home - the old one does not break the infection, but it's a pity to throw it away.
But there is an average digital camera. Maybe them? What brand? I have an Olympus C4000. On the Internet I find an adapter for scanning film among the accessories. Yep, it might! Urgent buy! What is the price? What? I bought my fotik for this money!
I go to the forums, read reviews, nothing special, just a lens attachment. A friend of mine was shooting slides, he gives me a couple of slide frames. From a jar for food for aquarium fish I make a piece of pipe so that it fits tightly on the lens (jars come in a variety of diameters, so I managed to choose exactly the diameter of the lens) and so that the frame is at the focusing distance of the camera. The main thing is to accurately cut the pipe while observing the parallelism of the plane of the lens. I fix the frame cold welding, which lies in the car of every motorist (45 rubles). Frame for free. Well, the adapter is ready.
I'd rather scan. First, I aim at the sky through the window. I take a picture one-tenth result is zero. No blue channel, no green channel. You don't need to be very smart to understand that you need even diffused light like in a scanner. An inner voice says that the idea failed. Theoretically, one should look for frosted glass, fasten it to my flimsy construction. What about the world? Where to take it? So that the source is even? Too much rigmarole. The idea is dropped.
After a while, sitting in Photoshop, I create a new document, it expands to full screen, the background is white. Ha! Here it is a source of white even light (an LCD monitor, I can’t say anything about others). So we create a new white document and expand it to full screen and that's it.
I've been experimenting for a while. And here is almost complete repeatability. You just need to follow a certain sequence of actions
OK it's all over Now.
Examples of all three channels after scanning, plus the final image below. For my camera, after inversion in Photoshop, I selected corrective curves, they are approximately the same for the entire film, but slightly different from the brand of film. To speed up the processing process for the film, I write an action: crop, barrel correction, invert, adjustment layers. Then manually more precise correction.
In these pictures, I did not specifically touch the barrel, so that there was an idea of \u200b\u200bwhat is obtained at the output.
Top down:
Digitizing film at home is not a myth, but quite a normal phenomenon. From the text below you will learn about two simple and budgetary ways to digitize photos yourself. In both cases, "PhotoMASTER" is required. In this program, you can turn the negative into a positive, and improve the quality of the pictures. Download the distribution kit from our website right now, then you can easily solve these problems:
For digitizing film, special mini-scanners are best suited: KONICA MINOLTA Dimage Scan Dual IV, Espada QPix MDFC-1400, etc. However, there is no need to spend money on the purchase of such devices: for work will do and regular scanner. Besides, in modern models often a special compartment is provided for fixing photographic film. For example, it can be found in the Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II, Epson Perfection V600 Photo and other scanners.
With such a device, the principle of digitizing becomes very simple: you need to fix the film in the holder and scan it. Then save the resulting negatives to your PC and proceed to post-processing.
Not everyone has a scanner at home or in the office. This means that the first method is not suitable. But even then, you should not give up trying, collect the films in a bag and put them in the pantry until better times. They can still be digitized at home. The second easiest way is to reshoot the negatives. You will need:
You can use both the camera and the camera on your smartphone. Be sure to turn off the flash in advance and set the maximum resolution in the settings.
Its role can be played by a table lamp, a flashlight, or even a laptop screen, if you set the maximum brightness in the settings for it. It is also advisable to open Notepad in full screen or Blank sheet in paint.
Figure out how to secure the film against a light source. Otherwise, it will curl during shooting, the photo will be blurry. A device for fixing the film can be built from improvised materials. For example, you can take a small sheet of cardboard or thick paper and cut out a 35x35 window in the center. Two centimeters from it to the left and right, make two incisions. You can put a film into it, then it will not curl and bend. You can quickly and easily take a good picture.
To make the design stable, make two folds along the edges of the sheet. Secure the resulting "legs" with a stapler or tape. Now you can place the film in front of a monitor screen or above a lamp and figure out how to digitize film at home.
Arrange the objects in the following order: light source, film structure, camera. It is highly desirable to pre-install a camera or smartphone on a tripod or a stack of books. If you shoot handheld, the photo may turn out blurry. Take a picture of everything the right shots, and then transfer them to your PC.
Now you need. In this program, you can turn the resulting negatives into normal pictures and, if necessary, improve their quality, remove minor defects, and much more.
Launch the editor and open any of the photos. Go to the "Tools" section and select the "Curves" tool. Change the position of the RGB curve: move the bottom edge up and the top edge down. All light shades will instantly turn into dark ones, and light ones into dark tones.
If necessary, you can adjust the brightness of the photo. Create an additional point (or more) on the line and drag it up or down. Watch the result in the preview window.
If the edges of the photo do not look very neat, then crop them. This is where the "Crop" function will help you. You can manually mark the crop boundaries or use the proportions suggested in the program. With their help, you can easily and quickly prepare a photo for a VKontakte post or for publication on any other site.
Sometimes there are various defects on the films: burnouts, spots, scratches or holes. If it is problematic to digitize a video cassette or film with such shortcomings, then the situation is different with photographic film. Digitization - only chance save the life of the old cadres.
In the photo editor, you can easily "patch" holes, and generally improve the quality of the source. To get rid of scratches and stains, activate the repair brush. Adjust its size and feathering in the right panel and click on the problem area. A moment - and the defect is no more.
Now you know how to digitize old photographic film at home. Pictures can be saved to a computer or printed immediately. Download the program "PhotoMASTER" and give new life frames from photographic films today!
From the translator: This article continues a series of publications by various authors on film photography. The previous article was titled "Film: Tips, Cameras, and First Instructions" and is available at .
This tutorial will show you how to "scan" your film with a DSLR. The reason for using a digital camera for this operation instead of a slide scanner is to save money and ensure the integrity of the films. A good film scanner is expensive, so you should only buy one if you need to scan a lot of film. Another option would be to have the film scanned by specialized photo labs with professional scanners, but many people are put off by the prospect of mailing the film.
First of all, it must be recognized that the method proposed in the lesson will not give the same result as a professional scanner. However, this is a fantastic idea and a great way to digitize your tapes at home.
Before you get started, make sure you have everything you need:
First, you will need a glass surface to shoot on. I used a glass table, but a photo frame can be just as handy. To use the photo frame, it is enough to remove the backdrop and the photo from it - the glass with the frame will remain. Next, you'll need to find something to use as a glass coaster. Try stacks of books or multiple boxes. A construction height of 30 cm is enough.
Now that we have our "subject table", it's time to set up the camera and tripod. The lens you use determines how close to the glass you can shoot. Whatever lens you may be using, try to fill the film frame as much as possible. large area field of view of the lens.
The most important thing in setting up a tripod is to set the plane of the camera matrix parallel to the plane of the glass. The best way to do this is to lengthen the rear leg of the tripod more than the two front legs so that the camera is directly above the glass. Remember that if you over-extend the tripod leg, it may become unstable and eventually fall over!
Now you need a piece of clean photo paper with no extraneous inscriptions. A large piece is not needed - 10 * 15 cm is enough. Place the photo paper on the glass under the camera.
Then place the film on the photo paper. You will probably need something to hold down the film - two film containers will do. When installing them, be careful, try not to move them over the film, so as not to get scratches and damage.
At this point, you can either use a remote-controlled flash or a bright table lamp. Be careful when using a constant light lamp as it creates a large number of heat, which may damage the film. Place the light source under the glass, aim directly at the film. If you are using a flash, you will have to do some tests to find out correct settings. The purpose of the settings is to get slightly overexposed photo paper. I used a Canon 430 EX flash at half power and about 30cm away.
Now put your camera in manual mode. One of your most important settings is aperture - set it to about f.7.1. Shutter speed is a little less important - something around 1/10 - 1/20 should be fine. The ISO value should be set as low as possible to reduce noise. You are now ready to shoot film!
Open the image in Photoshop. If the photo is incorrectly oriented - correct it through the menu "image" -> "canvas rotation" (Image> Rotate Canvas).
Duplicate the background layer by pressing Command-J on Mac or Control-J on Windows. This is not mandatory, but just good habit- saving the original image.
If you scanned slide (positive) film, skip this step. For negative film, with the duplicated layer selected, press Command-I on Mac or Control-I on Windows to invert the image.
If you scanned color film, skip this step. For black and white film, go to the menu “Image -> Adjustments -> Desaturate” (Image> Adjustments> Desaturate) to desaturate the image and remove all color.
Select the crop tool and delete all digital values in its settings.
Position the crop tool roughly around your frame, but don't worry about perfect edges just yet.
Align one of the corners of the frame as close as possible to the corresponding corner of the photo. You can use the arrow keys to put it in place more accurately.
There is a small circle in the center of your frame - this is the anchor point around which the rotation is performed. Click and drag the anchor point to the corner you set up in the previous step. Let the anchor point be anchored at this corner.
Next, we will rotate the frame until it is parallel with the frame border. Using the mouse, go to one of the corners of the frame adjacent to the anchor point and place the cursor slightly away from the corner so that the mouse pointer arrow takes on a curved shape. Press the mouse button and drag the frame until it is parallel with the border of the photo.
Now adjust the other sides of the frame to properly crop the photo. Drag the sides by the squares in the middle of the frame lines. Press "enter" when you have your frame ready. Now you can export your image or print it!
This method may not replace scanners anytime soon, but it's a great alternative if you don't need to scan a lot of film. If you want to see a few examples of the result that can be obtained using this method, follow the links below to the photos created using the technique described in the lesson:
Have fun and tell us about your film scanning experience!
This is a great way to read 35mm film frames on mobile phone! It is just as easy to use as its commercial counterparts.
New Year's gift for dad:
Preparing a gift for my dad is always tricky considering he has everything he needs. There is no better New Year's gift than the one made by the son's hands: D He is an excellent photographer (amateur), and in his youth he shot a lot beautiful photos. Of course, even before switching to digital DSLRs, my father used analog single-lens DSLRs. Unfortunately, most of the family photos were washed away by the flood in the 90s. But my father kept the films themselves in a waterproof box. Now thousands of negatives are waiting for the projector to appear in the family :D I can't wait to give him this gift!
This is just the perfect gift for old school photographers! :D
How easy is the process?
Just insert a 35mm film > Turn on the power > Activate the phone's camera > Select a convenient scale > In the settings select the photo effect of the negative > Do it again. Everything is simple! :D
Attention: The quality of the photo depends on the phone's camera. In my photo samples I used a cheap 5MP smartphone as well as an iPhone. I tested the projector on Samsung's Galaxy S4 and this smartphone was better than the rest in quality! The more megapixels, the better: D
Step 1: Gathering Tools and Materials
The necessary spare parts cost me less than 150 rubles (not counting the smartphone)
What we need:
- Your smartphone
- rectangular case
- 6 white ultra bright diodes
- 100 ohm resistor (1/4W)
- 9 volt battery with clip
- simple slide switch
- a piece of white acrylic 40x70 mm
- tube of superglue
Tools and equipment:
- multi-bladed folding knife
- hand drill
- soldering iron
- hot glue gun
Step 2: Camera Hole and Film Slot
Use a light matte marker or highlighter to mark your measurements and then drill a hole big enough for your phone's camera. I used a 10mm drill and cut the edges of the hole at an angle with my penknife.
With a file, sharpen the edge of the case cover, making a slot for the film. I cut a 40mm slot for my 35mm films.
Step 3: Making the Acrylic Diffuse Screen
The white LEDs provide spot lighting, but for our purposes the light needs to be diffused so that the picture is well balanced and lit.
1) Cut out a 40x70mm rectangle from acrylic
2) File the edges of this rectangle with a file, this will make it easier to feed the film.
3) Glue the acrylic plate into the case on the pre-glued 4 foam squares
Step 4: Receiving Mechanism
Sometimes the film jams, making it difficult to feed. I added a take-up mechanism that grabs the film from the other side, allowing it to pass through the projector.
To do this, I used a piece of an old ruler and super glue, building latches in the case.
Step 5: Install Diodes
You need to install diodes on both sides of acrylic screen. Divide the diodes by 3 for two sides, so the lighting will turn out better. Positive contacts go up, negative contacts go down.
We glue the diodes to the body with hot glue. Glue also works well as a reflector for light!
Step 6: Soldering the Parts
I have shown the diagram in the photo above. Solder the battery, resistor, switch and diodes together.
Step 7: Check Diodes
Connect the battery, turn on the switch and your diodes should light up.
Step 8: Customize your phone's camera settings!
1) Open your phone's camera. I'm worth operating system Android 4.1 Jellybean.
2) Go to settings, color effects and select “negative” (“Negative”)
3) Use the zoom feature to prevent photos from being cropped.
4) Take a couple of shots, you will probably want to use the auto-correct function: D
Step 9: That's it! Refresh old memories!
We have a lot of negatives that we never printed. It's so nice to dig into the past, bringing back fond memories :D I hope you enjoy your projector too! My camera is not very good quality so some of the shots are shaded.
