Does anyone have experience with converting old black and white negatives and slides over to digital? I plan on using my old Canon XS. I have an older X-ray veiwer to back-light the negatives and I'm getting extension tubes in leiu of a macro lens. I'm hoping to just get decent shots of the negatives and process them in GIMP after. Most of these negatives and glass slides are from the 40's and 50's. My Granfather, his brothers and their father were all into photography, so I have thousands of individual pics to do.

My main concern is getting the right settings when taking pics of the negatives. Would it be better to shoot in monocrome, or color? What light balance would be best? I'm shooting in RAW for sure but starting out with the optimal settings would save me tons of time in the long run.

I've tried a few sample shots without the extension tubes so I'm sure I can get a better, closer shot the negatives later when they show up in the mail. My first tries were at f8, 1/125, 100ISO and auto white balance.

Here's a sample of my first try:

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And after inverting the color and auto-balance in GIMP:

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I used a pacific Image "scanner" to take care of my slides and negatives, not the best idea available, but I was not
spending what they wanted for a good one, not by a long shot. I can't really "recommend" one, but they are the
cheaper alternative and they DO work.
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Young JEEZY-us, did you SEE what Canon stuffed into a DSLR this week?
50MP into a full frame sensor. I am just smacked in the a55.
Glad I don't mess with Canon. SOMEONE needs this camera, just not me.
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I did a lot of this with film, once upon a time: Copy stand, light box (your X-Ray viewer), monochrome (In case it's not daylight balanced), be viciously clean to avoid specks and be aware that those old emulsions were pretty thick; meter it out. Baring that, a lot of labs provide negative scanning services.
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It's too bad that equipment and chemicals for B&W printing have become pretty scarce. I could have a small cottage industry. B&W was actually pretty easy to do..
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Here ya go!

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/browse...2/N/4288586562
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I have given Photo-bukkit up, they are just awful now...of course they only did waht Flickr did and everyone else WILL do,
change to be someone other than who they are.

Got one window to bolt down to NOLA on a WEEK'S vacation where I wanted to shoot long days
in NOLA and long days in The Smokies. Got 6 days worth of my HOUSE. Everywhere there were
photos was icy and cold. Waste of vacation.

ImageHappy Behind the Mask by Brad-(OLS), on Flickr
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I setup a classy cigar selfie last night in my dining room. For the photography geeks, I have a 3' softbox with strobe camera left 45 deg, 1/200, f/8 ISO 200. Remote shutter...

Not bad considering I was guessing the focus spot. :-)

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Great job!
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at f/8 you can guess...

Another NOLA shot...why oh why did I not see the photo in the photo?
I would have loved to have a higher res shot of just the window with
the street sign shadow.
ImageUnfortunate Framing by Brad-(OLS), on Flickr
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Chickadee!

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Yep it's a rock! Been quiet on this thread for awhile thought we needed something to get it moving again.
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Tame squirrel:

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And a downy woodpecker:


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Goldfinches and a cardinal

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And the pesky pooping geese are back

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Went out to central Nebraska this weekend for the annual Sandhill Crane migration.

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Great pics of the cranes. We started seeing more and more of them up by me too. They sure are big birds.
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And loud. If you have never heard their call before, you wonder "WHAT the HECK was that?
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