Scanning Negatives
Provided for unrestricted use by the
THL Toolbox > Scanning & OCR > Scanning Negatives
Scanning Negatives
Contributor(s): Jama Courtney
Is scanning negatives much better than scanning prints from the negatives?
This goes against all current "archival wisdom". Yes, almost all sources would say that the negative is a better source. In my experience, I find that sometimes the prints are a better source than the negative, especially on newer material. The process of creating prints often corrects for incorrect exposures, under contrasted images, etc. A lot of the answer to this question lies in the quality of the originals. My recommendation is to scan both and see which one has a)more detail when zoomed in, and b)most closely resembles the actual thing photographed.
