I have a microtek scanmaker X6 USB scanner and I would like to make contact sheets using colour/b&w negatives. I'm getting nowhere with it. Any help on this would be appreciated.

-- Alty Benjamin (abphoto@hotmail.com), February 29, 2000

Answers

you need a transparency head unit (if the scanner you have supports it). basically you need something backlit to light up the negative.

-- Keat Lim (keatlim@my-deja.com), February 29, 2000.

I haven't done this for several years, but I used to lay the negatives on the scanner, face down if I remember. Then I would use a small light box that would cover the area that I needed to scan and then I would turn on the light box to back light the negatives and then make your scan. I would take out some of the background in photoshop so that the image would print easier.

-- Michelle Gross (jayme@itctel.com), March 01, 2000.

The lightbox answer is on the right track but I do it a little easier. But -- you will also need Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop LE or other pretty heavy duty manipulation program that can correct color, contrast and most important, change a negative image to positive (called invert in Photoshop.

As noted elsewhere, place your negatives down on the scanner's glass. This is the hardest part of the job -- lining up the negs, making sure they are all right side up and emulsion up. If you want to go 1st class you get a sheet of heavy 8.5 x 11 glass to place over the negs. I use an 8x10 glass from an old contact sheet proofer. The glass topper helps flatten the negs and keeps them from shifting when my clumsy fingers bump anything. Now figure out how to keep the scanner lid up. A stick might do it. I use a paper clip bent into a hook attached to a rubber band that hangs off a hook on a shelf above my scanner. Get a piece of white poster board from any art supply store -- I got mine from a Walgreen's drugstore stationery section. What you want to do is make a tent over the negatives by bending the white poster board over the negatives. You can tape the board down on the ends of your scanner or devise a set of clips if you're going to do this a lot. Now take a 100# bulb in a reflector (the kind photographers use in a studio or that you can get in a hardware store with a clamp). As you start your scanner, play the light at the mouth of the tunner that was created by making the tent over the scanner. You are playing the light so as to even out the brightness of the light you are shining down through the negs. When the scan is complete you will need to go through several correction steps. As mentioned at the beginning, you need to invert the scan, correct levels or curves, color, etc. The best information I have found on this is from my mentor whose name I lost but his website is in the URL below. You need to click on each indvidual arrow, one at a time, at the left for all the information. His URL is:

http://www.interlog.com/~pinkster/photo/neg2pos/neg2posb.html

Good luck.

-- Strat Simon (strat@southernet.net), March 11, 2000.