DIGITISING FILM
Across this green and pleasant land, precious photos sit in kitchen drawers, cupboards and shoeboxes just waiting to be digitised. Whether with a scanner or your camera, Will Cheung explains how you can do your bit for posterity
Film is enjoying a revival. Younger creators who have only known digital have discovered there’s a special pleasure to be had from the light-sensitive stuff; and there are those who grew up with film, switched to digital and have rediscovered their love for analogue. Whether film’s second coming is driven by the technical challenge of getting things right at capture, the craft of film photography or the thrill, one thing is for sure, film is on the up.
You could argue that the medium never truly went away and there is a huge archive of memories, history and creativity out there, in drawers, shoeboxes, still stashed in their original d&p wallets or neatly catalogued in albums.
So, whether you’re creating fresh images or working with existing ones, digitising film pictures is very much a good thing. Once in a digital form, you can clean and colour correct them, make endless perfect copies for your archive and there’s the multitude of options when it comes to outputting; social media, books, prints, mugs, jigsaws, wall art and so much more.
Next steps
Right, we’ve got you interested, what next?
Of course, there are the commercial options to consider, but our focus is on home work where there’s the option of scanning with a dedicated piece of equipment or using your camera as a ‘scanner’.
It is less likely is that you own a scanner but if this option appeals, something like an Epson Perfection V600 flatbed scanner is in the shops at £299 and can handle different film formats as well as prints and documents. If you use only 35mm format film, consider the Plustek OpticFilm 8200 Ai while the Kenro Film Scanner KNSC201 at £115 is more budget friendly.
We’ll delve deeper into the scanner options shortly, but let’s chat through the option of using your camera. Copying prints is one thing and fairly easy, but to get frame-filling copies of 35mm originals a macro lens is essential. Also, you need to think about your set-up if you want high-quality shots, and there are DIY and purpose-made solutions.
Which scanner?
The two scanner types are the flatbed and the dedicated film scanner.
The flatbed is the more versatile so if you have different film formats in your archive and also want to scan prints and documents, it’s the more sensible option. This type of scanner has a mechanism similar to a photocopier where the lens and light tracks across the image area, scanning as it goes.
Lift the lid and you’ll see a glass plate where the target image is placed in a film holder. Just use the appropriate holder and locate it correctly, so the software can detect the
