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My wife recently asked me if I could have a negative, that she finally located in an old photo box, developed for her. Well, at first it seemed simple enough until I found out that processing for the old Kodak disc film was almost non-existent and those that did do it wanted $25 or more per disc! To make matters worse she only wanted one of the shots developed, but the processing was by the disc only. There had to be a less expensive way!
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The Solution ...
At first I considered buying a new scanner with 'slide' and 'negative' copy capabilities. That was not a good solution for me because I already had a good scanner and also a second scanner would be hard to install in an already crowded computer hobby area. After some further thought I remembered that I had used one of my webcams to do some macro (close up) photography on an earlier project. With this in mind I constructed the following apparatus:
The Hardware ...
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| Figure-1. | Figure-2. |
| My negative capture fixture in actual use. The small desk lamp is used as a 'back-light'. | RGS-AvaCam freeware program capturing a disc negative image mounted on the capture fixture shown in Figure-1. |
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| Figure-3. | Figure-4. |
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Hardware capture fixture broken down into its primary sub-components. They are:
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Close-up view of the mounting bracket (lower left) used to hold the disc negative holder (lower right). You can also see a small extension coming off the left side of the main support stand. This is used to steady the cardboard light reflector. The mounting bracket has two small magnets on each end which enables it to hold on to to the support stand (Figure-1.). The magnets also allow movement of the bracket so I can precisely align the negative in front of the webcam. The disc negative is attached with a small removable bolt to an empty thread spool (Figure-3.). The spool has a magnet glued on the bottom which allows it to hold on to the 'red' tab in the center of the mounting bracket. This also allows for negative alignment (spin to select the desired single image, etc.). |
The Software ...
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| Figure-5. | Figure-6. |
| Captured image from RGS-AvaCam program (Figure-2.). It is shown here after being cropped in Paint Shop Pro. | Image inverted by using the 'Negative Image' function in the 'Colors' pull down menu of Paint Shop Pro. |
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| Figure-7. | Figure-8. |
| Additional processing of inverted image (Figure-6.) using MediaChance's ColorCastFX freeware program. | Final rendering after some tweaks were made with the image enhancement functions of my all-time favorite graphics program - Ulead's PhotoImpact. |
Final Notes ...
The final image, in my opinion, is not nearly as good as having it professionally developed. However, the price is right and for informal web photo album usage ... it's just perfect.
This process should work well for all types of negatives (35 mm, 110 mm, etc.) as well as for slides (just don't invert). The only modifications would be to the mounting bracket assembly so it it hold the different mediums. The main support frame and reflector should be the same.
Try to move your webcam as close as possible to the negative while always maintaining sharp focus. Some webcams have a 'negative' capture feature built into the hardware. If you choose to use this feature it will eliminate the 'invert' step. My webcam had this capability, however I got better results by not using it (???).
Adjust your desk lamp's position to reduce 'hot-spots' in the final image capture.
My software and webcam choices are a result of using what I already had at hand. Your choices will differ based upon your availability options. Your final image quality may be less, equal, or better than mine based upon those choices.
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