Film photography can be such a rewarding process. While digital photography is the faster and more convenient option, the recent resurgence of film photography has shown that this art is far from being replaced. One of the major parts of film photography is developing photos from negatives, which can be done in ways such as using professional services that can develop and digitise your photos or photo scanning at home.
No matter how you would prefer to have your negatives developed into photos, the most important thing is that you’re building on and improving your film photography skills!
What are Negatives?
Negative images occur when the images you’ve captured on your film camera are processed. The tones of the subject are reversed and therefore where the subject was light, the image is dark and vice versa. From a negative, the prints are made by reversing the image another time to restore the original tones of your subject. They are typically in the form of strips or sheets of transparent plastic film and can last for a long time if properly taken care of.
Now that you have your negatives, it’s time to start developing them. So, how are you going to do it?
Professional Negative Scanning Services
If you want a hassle-free process of developing negatives into photos, then professional scanning services are the way to go. The process of developing photos from negatives, differs between the types of negatives you have such as black and white or colour, so the best way to guarantee a flawless result is to use a professional service for developing negatives and have the confidence that your photos will turn out right.
With professional services, you can also choose to have your developed photos as physical copies, in digital formats or both. Digital formats are a great option to consider, to ensure that you can have all your photos in one place, making them shareable with friends and family, all without the fear of damaging or losing them.
While developing at home isn’t completely impossible, it can be a difficult process for a beginner. Therefore, expert services are the best option to consider especially if you’re a novice photographer, have recently discovered some old negatives laying around, or are interested in scanning particularly important or sentimental photos.
Our negative photo services include scanning of 35mm negatives using a professional scanner neg scanner utilising Digital-ICE, which produces the highest quality results in developing your negatives into a digital format. We have over 30 years of experience handling media and can even create a video slideshow of your collection of photos, which adds an extra special touch to your memories.
Developing Photos from Negatives at Home
While using professional services is the easier route to take, you can still scan your photos yourself at home.
Firstly, you need to consider investing in a film scanner, which can be an option for those with lots of photos you want to develop, or if you’re particularly interested in photography.
Scanning at home gives you more creative control to develop your negatives in the way that you would like or have a play around with the looks that you can create from one negative. Additionally, buying a photo scanner may not seem as expensive as you first think; however, this is only the case if your shooting enough film to use it regularly. For those interested in developing negatives that they’ve found randomly laying around the house, investing in a photo scanner is definitely a more expensive option compared to using professionals.
It is also important to note that when buying a photo scanner, you need to make sure that you have a computer in order to use the photo scanning software to start developing photos from negatives. Your computer doesn’t have to be anything top of the range, but a good judge is to make sure it has the ability to run similar types of software such as Photoshop.
When you start to scan, you have the options for document type, film type, resolution etc. Obviously, this all depends on what you’re using and as mentioned previously scanning black and white or colour negatives work differently.
You can then adjust the different variables on your scan such as contrast, exposure, and different colour tones. This is where home scanning allows you to be a bit more flexible and have more creative control when developing negatives; however, it does take practice and knowledge to start creating the looks that you want and also depends on your initial skills when shooting.
Investing in a photo scanner is a commitment, so you need to weigh up whether it will be more beneficial than the convenience of professional scanning or if you’re actually going to get enough use for it to be a cost-effective alternative.
Deciding how you prefer developing photos from negatives is completely up to you and the main thing is that you’re creating photos and memories that will last!
If our professional scanning services are the way for you to start developing your old negatives, then let us do the work and download an order form today!
Photo Credit: Shannia Christanty
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