Contact sheet using flatbed scanner?

Is there a practical way to make a contact sheet using a flatbed
scanner?

The situation: I have most of my negatives in sleeved pages, and I
thought it would be very useful to make a contact sheet of them. I
laid the sheet in our flatbed scanner, scanned it, and converted to
negative, but I didn't get anything usable. Is there a good way to do
this?

 

Can you provide a link to a sample of what you got?

- Mark

 

I can attach it to an email. I don't know of another way.

 

Perhaps you knew this but, since I can't see a sample of the results
you got....

Since you're scanning negatives your scanner needs a transparency
adapter (the top needs to shine light down through the negs) AND you
need to look in your scanning software for the setting/button that
sets it so the machine is scanning negatives.

The contact sheet should be a positive. So I'm not certain what you
did when you say you "converted to negative."

One of the problems with doing it your way is that to have a useful
contact sheet, you need to scan at a high resolution so that the
individual frames are useful. That contact sheet page has a lot of
"non-image" area (like the sprocket holes).


-- JC

 

Can you provide a link to a sample of what you got?

Sure, visit my web site and email me from there.

http://onelauter.com

- Mark

 

Then there's your problem. Scanning negtives is the same as scanning
slides. Both *require* a transparency adapter.

Scanners generally have 3 basic media settings:
1. There is one setting for scanning reflective artwork (photos,
drawings, etc).

Then there's two different settings for scanning transparent media
2. One settings scans slides (positives)
3. The other setting scans negatives, and when using this setting the
scanner software automatically inverts the grey tones or colors so
that the negative comes out positive. And note here that this setting
can be used to scan both b&w and color negatives when used in
combination with the color mode setting in the scanning software.

Two psssible solutions for you are to 1. buy a transparency adapter
for your model scanner OR 2. buy a dedicated slide scanner and get one
that also does negatives (but these usually scan one frame at a time
and the negative film needs to sit in a strip holder).


-- JC

 

1 - there doesn't seem to be one for our scanner, and the ones I found
were very expensive ($450-$500)

2 - I have a film scanner, but it would be too slow. It takes about 8
minutes to scan a strip of 4 negatives, plus some time changing the
film, etc. At 10 minutes per 4 negatives, that is an hour per
24-exposure roll. And I've got about 150-200 rolls. (For the last
couple of years I've been getting index prints back.)

 

I've been experimenting with scanning a gray-scale negative on my scanner,
for which there is no available transpaerency adaptor. Just putting the
negative on the scanner doesn't work well. Putting a piece of glossy paper
face-down over the negative helped a bit. My latest try is using a mirror
face-down over the negative, and that looks promising. I scan into Paint
Shop Pro, do an automatic contrast enhancement, then do a Negative Image to
convert from negative to positive. So far, it looks promising, and
certaintly good enough for a proof sheet.

 

Thanks. Let me know of any progress.

 

Another option is to pick up another scanner. I picked up an HP3570c for
about 90 bucks and it came with the Transperancy Adapter.