Instant positive view of black&white negatives?

[eiler m]

I have a lot of b&w negatives that I would like to look through in a convenient way before further work. Is there some equipment that instantly allows you to have a positive view of b&w negatives?
Eiler M

[Manfred M]

Scan them and use post-processing software to invert them to positives.

[eiler m]

Thank you for the answer. I am familiar with traditional scanning techniques - but I wondered if there was a way just to put the negative in some kind of viewer that instantly produced a positive image displayed on some kind of screen?

[Manfred M]

Thank you for the answer. I am familiar with traditional scanning techniques - but I wondered if there was a way just to put the negative in some kind of viewer that instantly produced a positive image displayed on some kind of screen?

I suspect you are looking for a digital light table and I have never seen anything like that. Short of lining all the negatives on a flatbed scanner and scanning them to a jpg and then using post-production software to do the reversal, I can't think of a way. I wonder if my old contract print maker sitting on a flatbed scanner might work?

So far as I can recall there never was any such device. Even the custom film and slide scanners that companies like Konica-Minolta, Nikon and Hasselblad sold 10 or 15 years ago are off the market. There are some fairly inexpensive units on the market now, but from what I have seen, the quality is terrible.

I have seen some attachments that work with macro lenses or bellows that do a somewhat similar job. If you hook that up to a computer and use Lightroom or Capture One to tether, you can probably get something like that to work.

[xpatUSA]

I have a lot of b&w negatives that I would like to look through in a convenient way before further work. Is there some equipment that instantly allows you to have a positive view of b&w negatives?
Eiler M

Something like these?

https://ca.dhgate.com/35mm-negative-film-canada.html

Or this method?

http://appinitio.com/picscanner/blog...ilm-negatives/


It says "Do note that this article is about how to view film negatives, not how to scan film negatives."

Not tried either method ... I just like searching for obsure info ...

[eiler m]

Thank you both for the answers - yes, it is to view film negatives as positives I am looking for, not scanning in the first instance. Thought that I more easily could cope with many negatives this way.

I have now tried the viewing procedure in http://appinitio.com/picscanner/blog...ilm-negatives/ with my iPhone 7 and it works VERY WELL! But instead of using an iPad as a lightbox I used my Medalight lightbox. The Settings in my iPhone 7 are a little different: Settings -> Accessibility -> Display and text size, - then choose 'Classic inversion'. And getting as close as you can with the phone you can photograph the inverted positive image as well.

An addition: In the bundled application 'Preview' in Apple computers it is possible to invert pictures, and save the changes, as described here: http://osxdaily.com/2019/07/27/how-i...e-mac-preview/
Eiler M