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Track 4 · Film2 min read

LESSON 18

Scanning negatives

From strip to file: a scanner, or a camera over a light, and then the colours turned the right way round.

CAMERA SCANNING · FROM THE SIDE

A camera on a copy stand points straight down at a strip of colour negative lying on an even light panel.

Three ways in

A film scanner passes a line sensor across the film at about 2,000 to 4,000 dpi. Some flatbed scanners have a lit lid for film, with lower resolution and contrast. The third way is a digital camera with a close-focusing lens over an even light; some newer film scanners are essentially that, in one box.

Why negatives look orange

In a colour negative every colour is reversed into its opposite: red shows as cyan, green as magenta, blue as yellow. The whole strip also carries a dull orange tint, a built-in mask that improves the colour of the final print. Inverting the file has to remove the orange as well.

Dust and scratches

Blow the film clean before you scan. Some scanners make a second pass in infrared to find dust and scratches; it does not work on ordinary black-and-white film, because its silver blocks infrared just as dust does.

Keep the master

Scan once at the best quality you can, keep that file untouched, and make copies to edit.

Try it today

  1. 01Lay a negative strip on a tablet or light pad showing plain white.
  2. 02Set the camera square above it and focus closely.
  3. 03Switch the room lights off; shoot RAW at a low ISO.
  4. 04Invert the file and set white balance on the clear film edge.
  5. 05Compare it with a lab scan if you have one.

Figures from Wikipedia, 'Film scanner', 'Negative (photography)' and 'Digital ICE', read 2026.10.16. The steps under Try it today are working practice, not a standard.