The convenience of attics offers a certain disillusion. That we’re not really hoarders. At least not the conventional type you’d see on TV documentaries. Yet, when it comes to spring cleaning or clearouts, or moving home, the reality of all things in storage really hits home.
Black bags bursting with plush teddies from childhood, suitcases that were kept as spares (just in case) that have been used to store things like first baby bibs, mittens, Halloween costumes, and festive decorations from over the years.
Among the boxes of older homes are often secret photos. Stored on spools, or within the protective sleeves from yesteryear’s envelopes supplied by print stores. Accompanying envelopes of prints from around the 1990’s and earlier are negatives. Little strips of black film that are stored either within the envelope the photos came in or slipped into a protective sleeve of a photo album.
Those are film negatives and you can still get them printed without requiring access to a negative film developer with the equipment required to develop strips of negative films.
Negatives can be digitised for printing in the same way traditional prints can be transformed into digital files.
How to get prints from negative films
Negative film processing requires the use of a darkroom and specialist chemical solutions that the strip of films is bathed in. This is done in a photo lab, and they do still exist. Film processing is mainly used by hobbyists these days.
The alternative to printing directly from negatives is to make a digital copy. Digital copies of film negatives are created similarly to how digital copies of photo prints are done. By taking a photo of the negative, or more conveniently, using a flatbed scanner.
Any digital camera can make a digital copy from the photo of a negative. For best results when photographing a negative, apply a light source to the reverse of the film. The emulsified (shiny) side of the film is the front and that is what to photograph. You can do the same by taking a photo of the negative in daylight by setting it against a white background, such as a sheet of white paper.
Once the photograph is taken, it will not be ready for printing quite yet. Next, it needs to have the colours inverted using photo editing software, and then the colours balanced by adjusting the RGB colour levels.
The simpler method is to scan your negatives. Like photographing negatives, scanners achieve the same result. They create a digital file that can then be edited to restore the photograph to as close to its original quality as possible.
The process involved in negative scanning is to perform a raw scan of the negative film, apply colour and contrast adjustments to the digital file, and make any spot corrections to remove blemishes if required.
Once a copy of your negative(s) is created, digital prints can be made, and the added advantage is digital storage either on your computer or in the cloud.