COPYING NEGATIVES WITH YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA

21/06/11 20:31

So who needs a medium format scanner when you have a great capture device already. Yes just use your camera with a macro lens. ?

If you have any questions about this process just email me info@justaskcam.com

Here is a little trick I just figured out to copy your old negatives or slides.

I am going to focus on the negative side in this article.

1. Find a used negative carrier for an old negative enlarger. For this demo I used the medium format negative holder from my epson scanner.
2.Now you must either suspend the negative holder from a stand or any other thing you can find.
3.Then use a true macro lens to focus on the negative in the carrier, I used a tripod so it was easier for me to stay inline with the negative.
4.You need a light source. I used a white lightning ultra 1200 flash on 1/4 power. This was in a larson softbox, however any softbox would do, or maybe a bed sheet . All this does is soften the light source.
5.I set my 5D mark II with a 100mm f2.8 macro lens, at 100 iso, manual exposure setting @ f.10 @ 100 of a second shutter speed and white balance was set to flash.
6.Shot the exposure and took the raw file to Adobe bridge cs5. When you see the image of the negative you will notice when you open it into camera raw the image will be quite yellow orange in color.
7.In Adobe camera raw I adjusted the color temperature to 2300 and on the slider below this I set it to -3. I went to the exposure slider and lightened it up. Remember you are seeing in reverse so you must do the opposite of what you would do with an image from your camera.
8.Then in Camera raw choose the open tab on the lower right hand side, this will open it into photoshop.
9.Now you must invert the image by pressing ctrl I this will change the image to a positive. Now you can do your corrections to bring the image to a normal look.
10. To balance quickly just use the levels or curves layer and the grey, white, and black point eyedroppers; This will help you nail the color faster.