Scan-It-Yourself Tips: Scanning with an Ordinary Scanner and a Tablet

Do you want to scan your negatives but don’t own a flatbed scanner? Do you have an ordinary scanner and a tablet? Look no more, I have a solution for you.

I’ve always wanted to scan my own photos. It gives you some kind of freedom and it saves you money. But to tell to truth, where I come from, flatbed scanners are quite expensive. I managed to save some money and bought a flatbed scanner for 35mm films and that saved quite a lot of problems I had but I still couldn’t do anything with 120 negatives. I tried posting them on my window and shoot them with my camera and I tried with a glass table but that takes quite a lot of time and you have to do quite a lot in post-production.

Then one day, when i was just surfing the youtube I saw a video with a tutorial how to do it with a scanner an a tablet. I immediately tried it and was impressed.

You need:

• an ordinary scanner ( I used a HP F380)
• negatives
• a tablet (I used an Ipad but you could also use others, maybe even a big enough smart phone)
• an app that gives you a white shiny page on your tablet ( I used a flashlight app)

The procedure is so simple it’s almost funny. Open your scanner, put negatives on the glass, cover them with a tablet with a white shiny page on, cover the scanner and scan with the program you usually use for scanning photos.

When you scan the negatives, invert colors and voila, that’s it! If you’re not satisfied with colors or contrast you can of course edit them a little bit. I didn’t do anything with mine, I was satisfied with them even though they might have a little bit of a blueish tone.

written by lomofrue on 2013-04-26 #gear #tutorials #negatives #tip #scanning #tipster #scan #scanner #tablet