Cheap digital photography!

[Ben]

I've been getting into photography lately, however, I mostly work with normal film photography. I recently took a roll of film and developed it at school. I did not have time to make large prints of my film, or do I have a dark room at my house.

Therefore, being inventive, I made a cheap film scanner with a small mirror and my normal scanner. I place the film down, put the small mirror over the image I wish to scan and scan it! Not the best quality, but for the price this is fun. My original idea was the use a light over the film, but that didn't work out at all. The mirror probably is about the best you can do.

Strange thing is that it gives it a LOT of noise, likely from the amount of dust in the scanner. I also have to adjust the levels and contrast, but that's no problem. You also can see any spots I should remove on the images, but then again, I've only had about the time it takes to develop these to work with them. Interesting effect this process adds, but don't do this if quality is your priority. I'd use a normal enlarger and a darkroom then (or a real film scanner).

If you have a film camera and the things needed to develop film, this might be a fun way to make digital prints! I'll be trying a few of my color images using this method later.

You'll need PS to view these files likely. Though I do use the GIMP (now 2.0!) to view PS documents as well.

http://www.sscentral.net/images/cheap/Untitled-7.psd
http://www.sscentral.net/images/cheap/Untitled-8.psd

First photograph is of my older (but smaller) brother at a track meet. Second is hard to distinguish but of a stuffed gorilla.