Scanning Large Format Negatives

A new scan of one of our earlier shoots

A big part of creating analogue images is producing a final usable result.
When working with large format, this is further complicated because the equipment for mechanically enlarging the negatives is harder to find, more expensive, and harder to accommodate.
We’ve been looking into doing contact prints, which would give us a physical copy made entirely using the old methods, but this would be limited to prints of 4x5 inch size.

So, we also need to scan the negatives so that we can print them digitally. Our first attempts at this process involved using a flat-bed scanner and then reversing them in software to produce a positive image.

We thought the results were passable, but blamed our analogue process for the quality of the results:

Initial attempts at scanning were less than perfect!

Although this method captured the essence of the old process, it really doesn’t reflect the quality that is possible from a large format camera.
So…we kept looking.

Our scanner can scan 35mm negatives as well as medium format, but there’s no option for large format…but photoshop can stitch images together, so we thought we’d try that.

The mask is just a big piece of black card, roughly cut to shape

And it works!
I had to make a mask to put on the glass of the scanner, and we have to move the negative twice for each scan then feed the two images into photoshop.

The results are night and day between the two methods (the new scans are shown after the old ones):

The Escott Family

Over the weekend we had brilliant fun with the Escott family who wanted some pictures to send to relatives during the strange times we are having at the moment. We had to arrange this a bit in advance as getting diaries and weather all matching was a bit of a nightmare. Finally, we had a day with some sun and we thought the trees would be lovely at this time of year, so we all met up near a local monument at Burton Pynsent to have a family shoot.

The location is perfect as the monument provides a bit of interest and texture for group photos while the woods below is gorgeous at all times of year, but particularly now with the explosion of autumnal colours in full effect.

It was a lovely time as they were all so happy and full of smiles - although getting them all to look at us at the same time was, as usual, quite challenging!

We are still taking bookings for socially distanced family photo shoots before Christmas so don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Press the button below to take you straight to our contact page!