I have some old family negatives & slides, most of the negatives are 35mm but others are 2"x2" and 3"x 2". '

I've read somewhere you can photograph them.

Has anyone any tips or advice, I do not want to spend mega dollars on buying another scanner as I will not be using it after this exercise.

Help appreciated.

PopT

So your wanting to digitise in 35mm, 6x6 and 6x9s? You'd need a really high end flatbed scanner or dedicated neg scanner to get a printable result, or a 35mm scanner built in to a flatbed, but theyre still around £40 and you wouldnt be able to do medium format. It is very much dependant on what you want to do with them. If you're wanting to print big, or enlarge then you'll need that quality, but if you place them on a lightbox and photograph with a macro lens (providing you have that kind of equipment), there are actions on photoshop you could download to invert the negatives to positive images and maybe salvage a small "viewable" image... But I wouldnt want to be the one to faff around doing it! I don't think a photolab for scanning is a viable option, as the only dedicated one round here I can think of is peak imaging and they charge £10 a film I believe.

There's a reason why neg scanners were invented!

Pay a photography student at the uni or college to scan them for you? Someone on here might help you out if they have one too. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful

Thanks for your advice James.

popT

James is wrong about Peak. They charge £14.00 per film and only digitise at the point of processing. Then they charge vat and £2.95 postage. A better alternative is to go to Calumet in Manchester. For £80.00 you can hire a Flexlite dedicated scanner for the whole day.
This thing will scan 35mm. to 5"x4" negs, and it is so easy that a child could do it.
You could easily scan more than six films in a day there.

I use a HP Scanjet G4050. This is a normal flatbed scanner, but it has a negative scanner built into the lid.

The quality is good, but you do have to keep everything dust free, as the smallest hair gets magnified magnificently.

K.

James is wrong about Peak.

Yeh, okay, £14 not £10. Who cares :loopy:

Aw!
I didn't mean to embarrass you James, I was only pointing out that the case was worse than you thought. After all, if you have six films d&p'd and digitised then that would cost
£116.00 instead of the (quite misleading) £60 you would have had us believe.
So you can see that a trip to Manchester can be very appealing.