Several years ago, one of the leaders of the Bible study I attended when I was assigned to Keesler AFB lost her battle with acute leukemia. Upon learning of her death, it prompted me to finally get started on scanning my negatives.

I have an Epson Perfection V500 PHOTO Scanner which scans both negatives and photographs. It took a few attempts of trial and error and phone calls to my local photo shop for me to achieve the right settings to get my scans just right. Before making those calls, though, I did some research on the internet. The information I found on the website x-equals.com is where I started with my settings. The original scans I did consisted of the following: setting Epson Scan to the Professional Mode, choosing the document type as Film, Film Type: Color Negative Film, Image Type: 48-bit Color, Resolution: 3200, and unchecked the following: Unsharp Mask, Grain Reduction, Backlight Correction, and Dust Removal. I only used the Color Restoration and DIGITAL ICE Technology settings with the Speed option. Once that was set, I chose my target size as 4×6, chose to save as a TIF, and I did a preview scan.

Those scans turned out OK, but the files were HUGE and quite a bit grainy! With those scans, I used the film adapter that came with the scanner. With the second set of scans I did, I followed the advice of my local photo shop. I was advised to only use the color restoration setting, ditch the film adapter, and place the negative directly onto the platen. Those results turned out pretty good, but again, I wound up with huge file sizes and grainy images.

The final set of scans I did, I scanned my negatives at 300 DPI with a target size of 8×10. Those prints turned out great and didn’t have a huge file size.

Do you have a box of negatives laying around? How can I help with getting your negatives scanned and looking great with the proper settings?