Q: How has our Negative Supply tools helped your workflow?
“I’ve invested so much time over the last 10 years into experimenting with different scanning equipment and softwares and feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the current solutions for 35mm, 120 and 4x5. The idea of camera scanning was always intriguing to me for a few different reasons. I’ve never been a big fan of flatbed scanning 35mm because they never seemed to be able to resolve grain and seemed to be better solutions for larger formats. Keeping negatives flat was also a giant pain. On top of that, flatbeds are pretty big and somewhat delicate, which made them horrible to travel with in my vehicle (especially bouncing around dirt roads). 35mm dedicated scanners were great alternatives to the flatbeds but that meant carrying a second scanner that used antiquated software and still took forever. So the idea of repurposing equipment I was already carrying with me, like my digital camera, and not having to carry around scanners was what inspired me to look into camera scanning. After a few months of using a tripod and laying negatives directly on my light source, I knew I was onto something as I was getting much, much sharper images (across all formats) and had more control over color, but the process was still slow and without negative masks I was getting weird light artifacts. After discovering Negative Supply, all that changed. The riser makes adjusting camera height a breeze (which was the hardest part of my process pre riser) and the Pro Mount MK2 and 4x5 mask provides a perfect solution for controlling light when photographing my 4x5 negatives. Now I just have to save up for the 35mm and 120 holders! With both of those my digitizing setup will be perfect and I’ll finally be able to ditch my scanners once and for all.”
