tim_fastle

Thanks Perry, Darin and Michael. The information is helpful. First I should say that the majority of the pictures are black and white but many are also color and I would ultimately like to work with them all and multiple size negatives. He also had a bunch of 35mm negatives.

I am getting a better understanding of the process and it sounds like a good, relatively simple flatbed with the standard film holders including the 4x5 would make the most sense for my needs. I did do some reading on the Epson 4990 that Perry mentioned and it sounds like it would work well for my needs but it seems it is discontinued and no other refurbished units are currently available. Is there an upgrade or follow up to that model that might make sense or, another one I should look at that might fit the bill and be reasonably affordable? Is buying a more expensive scanner going to make the process easier? One other question. Darin mentioned running a photo-negative process if I were to photograph the negatives. More out of curiosity (not sure my knowledge of photography would get me where I needed to be to pull that off)is this process (run a photo-negative process) a component included in most photo software or is it something else? Thanks again!

My father was a photographer in World War II and went on to be a photo

instrumentation engineer for 40 years at Sandia National Labs. Unfortunately he

passed away in 2001. I have recently gone through all of his possessions and

found an amazing archive of negatives from his time in World War II as well as

the eras of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Most of them are on what I have been told

are large format negatives (about 4" x 5") but some are on negatives of about 2"

x 2". I would like to make digital scans of all of these for historical

purposes as well as to print copies to get to some of the families of people in

the pictures.

I am something of a novice at photography. I did pull up past questions on the

subject in the photo.net archives but they did not clarify the issue for me. I

am not clear on how one might scan negatives. From reading the other forum

items I gather that a "film scanner" basically makes it easier to do because it

has a pre-sized negative holder and probably pre-formatted sizing. And that a

flat bed scanner is more flexible because it can accommodate many, if not all

sizes. Is this correct? And if so, does it still have to be a special flat bed

scanner to scan negatives? I assume all or most cannot -- that there has to be

a "negative" setting and capability to the scanner? There are probably close to

1000 of these negatives (4"x5"). Would a flat bed make this way to labor

intensive or is there a way to set one up to be efficient or new ones that have

jigs or a better way to scan different size negatives? This is all guessing

that my assumptions, that you preview on a flat bed and then crop all but the

negative before scanning, is correct (thus why it is so slow).

If anyone could give me the low down on how a film scanner might be different

than a flatbed for this purpose and also tell me what might be a good scanner

for what I have (multiple size negatives and many of them). I want to be able

to do decent quality but am not overly concerned about it being the absolute

tops in resolution and so forth. Also, any input regarding good yet easy to use

software for this would be a great help.

Sorry to be so ignorant but ... I just is!

Thanks in advance.

Tim