Converting Negatives

Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash

I have inherited a photo box full of black and white negatives from the 1910s to 1950s. Most are two inches by four inches and not the standard 35. And of course, now, regular films and negatives are becoming outdated. Are all of these negatives genealogical treasures? No but I was having a challenge sorting through these negatives to determine which ones to convert and print. I recently took a class about converting negatives and wanted to share what I learned. Let’s look.

First for the sake of brevity, I will say that after the instructor talked about five different apps that can be used to convert your negative to a positive scan, I went with the program that was free and provided the best quality. No one wants to do all that work and end up with blurry photos. That’s not to say that this program doesn’t have its quirks but overall, I found it to do a reasonable job on these old negatives. In the past I’ve resorted to using my light box and trying to take a picture of the negative and then converting it to positive using Microsoft Paint or some other program.
 
So, the program that I’ve been using and experimenting with is Kodak Mobile Film Scanner app. It is available in the Google and Apple stores. You can also view videos to learn about other people’s experiences.
 
I like that the app is simple. It has you choose if you are using a Color Negative, Color Positive or Black & White Negative. I have only used this with Black & White Negative so far.
 
Steps

• Attach Phone to tripod. (If you have a steady hand, you can try holding the phone to take the photos.)
• Place Negative on a light box
• Open the Kodak Mobile Film Scanner
• Choose Black & White Negative
• You will immediately see a positive version of your negative.
• Select the camera icon to capture the image.
• If you are happy with the image, select the green check mark in the upper right-hand corner.

 
There are editing tools, but I haven’t had much luck with them. I plan to do some editing with Microsoft photo if needed. The app appears to be a little unreliable for activity beyond the capturing of images.
 
As you can see it is a very easy process and relatively fast. Sadly, I cannot use my remote clicker with this program. Using the remote clicker would help prevent occasional blurring of the photo due to touching the phone to take the picture. However, this is much easier than some of my past attempts at converting negatives and the program is free.
 
I hope this has given you some ideas for converting your negatives to positive photos. We probably all have boxes of these than need to be converted. Enjoy tackling this activity.