Scannerless Digital Capture and Processing of Negative Film Photographs

by Mark D Segal & Todd R Shaner
Remember the film era? It’s demise began setting-in roughly two decades ago, and about all that’s left is a reduced stable of good scanning hardware and those millions of negatives in countless personal and institutional collections that many people really intend to “do something about” - “one of these days”. The problem is that the truly high quality film scanners of yesteryear are discontinued or cost a small fortune, those that hit the resale market are also expensive, and those that people own will become increasingly difficult to service as time marches onward, parts become scare and experienced technicians retire or pass on. The “digital revolution” from capture to print has taken-over in a remarkably short period of time.
The technology that won’t be disappearing any time soon is that useful for photographing the film media with a digital camera and processing the files with imaging software. While there’s nothing new about this idea, Mark and...