Taking the Time to Scan and Print Slides and Negatives. The Easy Way.

The gear I used...
ES-2: amzn.to/2VR0YRu
Nikon 60mm Macro lens: amzn.to/2SYhflO
Nikon D780: amzn.to/2xJYa0C
My review of the ES-2: • Nikon ES-2 Film Digiti...
Find the paper I used here: amzn.to/2Bi0Jcp
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Filmed with...
Camera: amzn.to/2ExBQso
Lens: amzn.to/2wgHEkI
Music: share.epidemicsound.com/tJDbZ
#filmphotography #film #photography
Hi! I’m SnapChick. My channel is about photography as an art form and as a lifestyle, with a healthy dose of technology thrown in! I post new videos every week so subscribe here on KZbin, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+, and join in on the conversation!
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[@MartianCitizen]

I love your trip down memory lane....for anybody going there, It never gets old. As always, keep up the good work and keep'em flying...

[@ddmandd]

I bought a Magnasonic digitizer online with adaptors to copy anything from 110mm to positive slides...many hours later I have a library of almost 7000 images to admire and reminisce. Well worth the effort. Really enjoy your videos btw.

[@MikeLikesChannel]

I home develop and scan my black&white Tri-X and HP5 on an Epson V600, nothing too fancy, but it’s very zen and a lot of fun.

[@hikingsteven7665]

❤ today i have the es-2 and i have a fun evening thanx

[@josephcole3187]

I have a binder full from college and i did see Sean Bagshaw do this in a different way, this seems so simple. I think its time to look into getting my old images back.

[@juancarlosguzman2827]

Awesome! I want to buy this Digitalization kit from Nikon but wasn’t sure until I watched your video seems like easy to use. Thanks for doing this video 👍😘

[@ronaldsiverd4212]

Thanks for the video. I have been wanting to digitize my own photo collection (several thousand from as far back as the early 70's) as well as the images I inherited from my parents going back almost 70 years. These I want to share with my siblings. I bought the ES-2 and the 40mm Nikkor lens to use with my D7200. (I couldn't justify the expense of the 60mm lens.) I found the D7200 a little limited for what I wanted to do, but found that by putting the lens on my D800 I am able to get the full frame. I am also able to attach the camera to a flat screen TV and by using Live View able to do the focusing much easier. I use a cable release and mirror-up to reduce any vibration. I'm sure the 60mm full frame lens would probably give a better image, but for copying everyday family photos (that were not always the highest quality to begin with), this setup is great. I do post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop.

[@clarkackerman8725]

Ok, I'm convinced. Back in the day - we're talking the decade of the 1970s - when using either my Minolta SRT-201 or XD-11 all I shot was 35mm slide film (cue Paul Simon and Kodachrome). I had several made into prints over the years but can certainly relate to "boxes of slides" sitting in a closet. Literally thousands. The Nikon 60mm macro and ES-2 have been sitting in a "wishlist" for some time. Thanks for motivating me to move forward and capturing the images digitally. And a trip down memory lane reviewing all the photos to boot!!

[@bfs5113]

Yeah, far too many Kodachrome 25 & 64 and Vericolor negatives, but luckily I had converted them two decades ago with a Minolta Dimage scanner (after getting rid of my wet color darkroom stuffs). Now, I have almost finished shredding them. 😊

[@HappyGrl41]

Timely video. I have boxes and boxes and boxes of slides and negatives and have wanted to start this project but never got around to it. I will check out the Nikon gear you are using since I just switched back to Nikon recently.

[@MrMarkpoole]

I have several methods.The flatbed scanner,an Olympus bellows and 80mm macro lens adapted to my mirrorless camera,an old zoom slide copy attachment,and a small stand alone film digitizer.For medium format a macro lens and a light box work.

[@FlyFishVideo]

I’m doing this now with a 40mm DX macro on a D7200. I find the DX macro has backlash in the focusing and that at times I have to manually focus the slide but the backlash makes it difficult. Do you see the same with the 60mm full frame lens?

[@MontrencoPerez]

I converted to digital all my negatives and slides (several boxes) using a "Wolverine F2D Super 20MP Film to Digital Converter". The process took me few months. Before converting the negatives I clean them. If the image requires it I process it with Photoshop Elements Raw processor (even though the pictures are jpg). They came great. Note: I took most of the pictures with my Olympus OM-G and later with my Minolta Maxxum 8000i.

[@bobpollack6894]

The ES2 is on my bucket list for new gear. I have slides going back thirty years in photojournalism and commercial work. Just one question what did you use for lighting?

[@harrycovair9893]

Hello. I have a D7100 and D500 with 40mm macro. Will NX-D convert the negative to positive? If not, suggestions.

[@AdrianBacon]

Funny you should bring this up. I own and operate a film processing lab (yep, those are still around) and scan *a lot* of film using a custom made for the purpose camera/software setup. My scanning software outputs Adobe DNG files that you can import into LR and treat just like raw files shot on a digital camera (including negatives, which are output as positive images). The DNG files are 16 bit floating point, so you get all the dynamic range and color fidelity that the film has, and each frame is 30+MP, so you have plenty of resolution. In short, film has never looked so good. It’s pretty sweet.

[@MartianCitizen]

I use to watch slides of family vacations, ( to your blue green planet ), taken by my uncle and father. Our two families would howl when we would get together and watch the slides followed by a great meal...no internet, no youtube, no cell phones, good fun....miss those days.

[@Robert-ko6wr]

What I have of most value to me are my Dad’s 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 glass positives/slides from around 1954 - 1985. Those are the photos I want to print. This video was very helpful. Any idea where to locate a 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 mask for copying glass positives and slides? I write “glass positives” but they are simply two pieces of thin glass with a color slide in between and enclosed in a small aluminum frame.

[@christopherbgriffith]

This is so great! Scanning film on a flatbed is a huge pain and very slow. I wish such an adapter was made for Fuji cameras.

[@barthonhoff5547]

Christopher Griffith You can use the Nikon ES-2 or ES-1 on a Fuji XF 35mm 1.4 and two extension tubes

[@HGR693]

Enjoyed the video, and many others that you have put together. Best channel out there for photography. ???? I have both a Cannon EOS 50D and the newer Sony a6300 mirrorless. Need to take print negetives over to Digital....BEST ADVICE? Thank you.

[@hungryandfearless]

how did you convert the negative to color?

[@Missbagpipernorthwest]

My husband has about 1000 Kodachrome slides his dad took touring Europe for 7 years in the 1960's. I have put off doing this for years, now that I've got the D850 I have run out of reasons to avoid this project. So far I haven't seen any demos using the Nikon 100mm f1.8. Any suggestions or advice would be much appreciated!

[@garydmorris]

This comment might be a little long. Sorry but the info might help. When my father died early 2008 I took many grocery bags of slides from his home. I estimated there were about 3000+ in total. He started shooting slides just after my sister was born, May 1955. NOTE… NO eye auto focus; just a Japanese range finder camera. How did he do it? I did a first pass of the slides and kept about 500 and sent the rest to my sister for viewing or disposal. 2012 I bought a slide scanner (Plustek) with the intention of scanning the remaining 500 slides. BIG MISTAKE! The slide scanner was painfully slow; it could take several minutes to get a scan. I then set this aside for better options. Fast forward to early 2019 and I was recovering from a fractured ankle and I decided to fire the project up again. Between 2012 and 2019 I had done another pass of the slides and narrowed the original 500 down to 120; what I considered the best examples by year (1955-1967). I bought a Nikon Z6, Nikon micro lens and the ES2 gadget. In short the Z6 was terrible. The ability to focus on the small slide just inches away from the camera sensor was way beyond the capability of that camera. I sold everything except the ES2. I bought a D7500 and the DX micro lens. Night and day better than the Z6. I was able to shoot the 120 slides over several mornings. For my light source I aimed the camera at a neutral surface outside; natural light seemed to be the best. I processed each slide image in Photoshop to adjust color and clone out some of the scratches and dust (I wiped each slide prior to shooting with a microfiber lens cloth which worked very well for most of the dust). I wanted to print the slides and wanted the prints to be the same as if it were 1955 and I had taken the film to my local drug store for processing. I bought a small Canon printer that makes 5x3 dye sub prints. The prints are nice and saturated, glossy, can be handled just like one would have done in 1955. All in all I am very happy with the results from this project.

[@fluisi2781]

What were you using for a light for slides to kep the color.

[@LeighAndRaymond]

We used the daylight coming in through a window.

[@philprocter]

I've not had great luck with eliminating the color mask. A simple invert almost always ends up with a blue cast, sometimes so strong that I can't eliminate it in PS. Is there an add-in or action that can automate it. It would seem a fairly easy thing to pick out the unexposed edge and bring it the neutral black.

[@nickmatthews4939]

Check out software called negative lap pro. It works with LR

[@doplinger1]

I am curious as to whether shooting those negatives in RAW really makes a difference? It seems to me like most of the "flexibility" you have when shooting in RAW is wiped away by the film developing process itself (dynamic range, recovering highlights, etc.). Did you find that you really had lot more control that way?

[@scraymond5597]

We did very well with both jpeg and raw. The arch in the video was done in jpeg, the desert photo in RAW. The harder we pushed shadows/highlights in RAW, the more we were limited by film grain. Would be fine for most people most of the time to do all of this in jpeg only.

[@sijilo]

❤️

[@macadoodle100]

Too bad Amazon doesn’t stock the es2. It would be easier to fo them myself. I have been sending them out to be done. Since I have slides and negatives dating back to the 50’s, I have to be very selective or go broke. 😉

[@gyrgrls]

B&H photo has them in stock for $140 USD

[@macadoodle100]

Thanks John but I checked with B&H after post and they added me to a notification list.

[@gosman949]

For those of you, like me, that don't have a Nikon, how do you scan your slides and negative? This would be the more important video.

[@LeighAndRaymond]

We also have a Canon flatbed scanner that came with some negative and slide attachments... amzn.to/2wZR5ci It is no longer available at that link but you can at least see what it is.

[@christopherbgriffith]

I use the Epson Perfection 1660 Photo with the special slide scanning backlight. I got it used on the Facebook Marketplace for less than $100. It does a good job, but it is SLOW, particularly if you want to get high resolution scans.

[@kenny6491299]

I haven't tried it yet, because I recently got the stuff. But I'm going to scan my negatives using a film holder, light table, tripod and my Nikon Z6 & 24-70 f4 lens + extension tubes to get 1:1 magnification. Results are yet to be seen...

[@rogerdallman4383]

Jay G. You can also attach your camera and macro lens to a copy stand. It isn’t the fastest or most elegant setup, but it works. This gives you added flexibility for old prints, as well.

[@christopherbgriffith]

Doing some more digging, I found some examples of people using small LED light tables to backlight their negatives. Then they use a smartphone (and apps that provide the same color inversion Leigh mentioned) or normal camera to photograph them. I found one on Amazon for ~$25 that will arrive in a few days. I'll post back here once I've tried it out.

[@tomhughes5123]

haha ha wow the bad memories ,, i set my caravan on fire 28 years ago with all my negatives and fuji velvia slides in it .years of developed negs and cibachrome chemicals ..wow thanks for the memory 😂😂😂😂😣😣😣😣😣 .

[@gyrgrls]

Wait just a cotton-pickin' minute! With the plethora of dedicated film scanners on the market (and yes, they are making a comeback), I find the idea of a glorified film holder sporting rather limited lens support to be utterly absurd. A decent quality mid-level scanner can be had for a fraction of the cost of a D850 body alone, although, conceivably, almost any decent DSLR body could be used, provided the body accomodates the required macro lens. Now, if I'm going to go that route, why not use a smart phone adapter, since most smart phones already have quite good macro capabilities. This is insane!