Prints from very old 3.25 x 5.5 negatives -who would you trust this to?

[Foggy]

Hi all

I have about uncounted 100 negatives in this format (type 122). Potentially a hundred years old, so not sure of their condition. They have been stored in Eastman negative albums.

Who would you trust to print from them or maybe convert to digital? Which option would be best?

Any company or individual you would recommend to look at them and judge whether worth going ahead and the doing the job?

As you can tell, I am clueless on this but would love to see the images.

Thanks in advance.

Foggy

[learningtofly]

I'm pretty sure you can pick up a digital scanner for converting negs to jpegs for about £60-70.

[JasonM]

A few years ago I used a guy called Peter at this email address to convert around 100 old family 35mm slides to digital:

photocreations@live.co.uk

I was very happy with his service, the slides were only 45 years old so can't comment on how he would be with proper old ones but might be worth a ask?

[GRK]

I've used these folk in the past although not on very old negatives. A couple of years ago they rescued a ten year old exposed but unprocessed film from a camera my dad had forgotten about. They do image restoration work but best thing is to give them a call and explain what you are after, contact details are here.

http://www.peak-imaging.com/htmls/company_profile.html

regards
grant

[Mr.D]

I'd make sure you get someone who can scan the full dynamic range of the negative at a good high resolution.

Also either use uncompressed jpeg or better yet a 16bit uncompressed tiff format.

[Foggy]

Thanks all

I will report back if I get anywhere with this and if there are any interesting images, share them.

Cheers

Foggy

[RickChard]

My wife is a studio photographer and has all the equipment necessary to convert negatives to digital.

TZ rates will surely apply. PM if you'd like her to take a look.

🙂

[bobbee]

This is the results from Max Spiellman, an old negative I found of my father and his baby brother, mother and sisters in the 1940's, it had been very badly stored.
I was charged a small amount, and had four 10X8's made of it, plus a cd copy and a 6X4 for less than £20.
They told me the blemishes and damage could be photoshopped by their expert for around £35.

[JGJG]

If there's significant concern re loss or damage (whether in transit or while scanning) your best bet might be to pick up a pro quality flatbed (e.g. Epson v750), do them yourself, then resell. Just make sure the scanner still has its transport plugs and make sure the seller refits them for shipping :)

[33JS]

I bought a Canoscan flatbed photo scanner does negs, slides, pics etc. Unbelievable quality!