Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/06/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]It is pouring out today. No photo ops. Just plenty of time to read neglected LUG postings. While cleaning out my photo closed I stumbled on a box of Robot negatives taken about 1970. There were several dozen neatly coiled rolls, each containing about 50 B&W images. Probably about 1500 pictures in all. Normally I would have scanned the negs in my Minolta 5400 scanner but that has been acting terminally flakey and I have not found a repair site willing to work on it. Additionally, I don't have a negative carrier for Robot sized images. I usually have to do them one at a time. I stumbled on a workable solution. I have an Epson V500 flat bed scanner with a negative carrier that takes two 9" strips of 35 mm film side by side. (6 frames 35mm, 9 frames Robot, 12 half frames). By slipping two strips of Robot negs into the holder I managed to scan 18 Robot frames at 6400 dpi every 25 minutes. Not bad. It would have taken me much, much longer to do them individually. I'm not sure that the 6400 dpi that the Epson claims is the equivalent of the same scanning resolution in a true film scanner but the images look OK. Each strip is saved as a long 9" x 1" picture on my Mac computer. Using iPhoto, I can look at each strip, select the individual images I want, adjust and frame them properly, and export them as JPG files. Then I can burn them on disc or make a print. The quality may not be as high as actually printing them with an enlarger but for small prints it doesn't matter much. Next I'll try it on a much greater cache of 1/2 frame negatives. Works for me. Larry Z