Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/06/10

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Subject: [Leica] Scanning odd size negatives.
From: lrzeitlin at aol.com (lrzeitlin at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:42:49 -0400 (EDT)
References: <mailman.213.1370875489.1363.lug@leica-users.org>

It is pouring out today. No photo ops. Just plenty of time to read 
neglected LUG postings.

While cleaning out my photo closed I stumbled on a box of Robot 
negatives taken about 1970. There were several dozen neatly coiled 
rolls, each containing about 50 B&W images. Probably about 1500 
pictures in all. Normally I would have scanned the negs in my Minolta 
5400 scanner but that has been acting terminally flakey and I have not 
found a repair site willing to work on it. Additionally, I don't have a 
negative carrier for Robot sized images. I usually have to do them one 
at a time.

I stumbled on a workable solution. I have an Epson V500 flat bed 
scanner with a negative carrier that takes two 9" strips of 35 mm film 
side by side. (6 frames 35mm, 9 frames Robot, 12 half frames). By 
slipping two strips of Robot negs into the holder I managed to scan 18 
Robot frames at 6400 dpi every 25 minutes. Not bad. It would have taken 
me much, much longer to do them individually. I'm not sure that the 
6400 dpi that the Epson claims is the equivalent of the same scanning 
resolution in a true film scanner but the images look OK.

Each strip is saved as a long 9" x 1" picture on my Mac computer. Using 
iPhoto, I can look at each strip, select the individual images I want, 
adjust and frame them properly, and export them as JPG files. Then I 
can burn them on disc or make a print. The quality may not be as high 
as actually printing them with an enlarger but for small prints it 
doesn't matter much. Next I'll try it on a much greater cache of 1/2 
frame negatives. Works for me.

Larry Z