Using my Canon R as a film scanner

[Chris Summers]

I have a vast collection of slides and negatives, lots of my stuff from my film days but also my dad's collection and my grandfather's as well. During the pandemic when I was spending a lot more time at home I decided to start digitizing all of this stuff. I found an old Bessler enlarger someone was giving away and I got it and removed the lamp housing/negaive carrier section and mounted a tripod head and my Canon R fitted with a 100mm macro lens and an extension tube. It makes a really good copy stand that can easily move the camera up or down as needed. I use an old slide sorting light box as my light source and found online some carriers designed for holding cut film strips and one for mounted slides. My grandfather's negatives taken in China were harder to digitize as they were really odd size film from old cameras he owned. Grandpa went to China to work in the Chinese Postal Service in 1902, it was run by the British. He was there until 1932 when he went back to England as Japan was advancing into Manchuria. My grandfather was a pretty good amatuer photographer who loved "street photography" of everyday things. I think he mainly used Kodak film cameras and due to his employment was often transferred to different parts of China. He took pictures all over China, even near Tibet.

Overall the process is pretty straight forward. I use the camera's auto exposure and then do a 2 shot bracket of 1/2 down and 1/2 stop up to try to ensure I get a good exposure. I use Lightroom and a plugin called Negative Lab Pro that helps convert the negative to a good quality positive image. Sometimes I go into Photoshop for additional editing. The last shot was colorized using one of the Neural Filters in Photoshop.

I do own some older Epson film scanners but find using my Canon R to be faster and better quality.

 

[TonyB]

I’ve been doing the same, using a Nikon ES-2 slide/film kit. That works great for 35mm but have been struggling to find an easy way to do all the other formats in my parents and grandparents negative collection. Great idea using an old enlarger and I’ll keep my eye out for one. Thanks.

 

[MikeZ]

I'm not sure what has impressed me the most - your ingenious solution for digitizing old negatives, or your grandfather's collection of images. The historical content in those negatives is absolutely intriguing. Thanks for sharing.