Negatives

My great grandfather in the negative

There is something very odd going on in the world around me.

Some time ago, a neighbour told me he had taken some glass plate negatives to Dublin's Favourite Printing Company in town and asked them to scan/print them. They tried but said they only came out black. I subsequently printed them for him (or rather scanned them and gave him positive digital images which he got printed).

What had clearly happened here was that they tried to scan them in a conventional reflective scanner (how you scan documents etc.) and did not realise that the light had to go through negatives rather than being reflected off them.

A few days ago, the same neighbour brought an old negative into town to get it scanned and printed. Dublin's Favourite Printing Company, who by this time had clearly got the message, said they didn't do negatives. A well known camera shop, which I used to patronise in my own youth and which he contacted by phone, said they'd need to see the negative, which was not entirely unreasonable. Another well known camera shop (which has been around for yonks) took one look at the negative and said it couldn't be scanned and that there was no point in going anywhere else because they all had the same machines. It would have to be done "manually" which my neighbour took to mean in a darkroom with an enlarger.

My neighbour then (belatedly) contacted me to see if I might have any luck with this amazingly difficult negative. I asked him if he could see an image on it. Yes, a family group. So.

I got the negative from him and scanned it - no problem. It was unusual, but not in any way that affected it being scanned. It was harder than normal film; it looked silver on one side; it had signs of deterioration around the edges. Interesting but irrelevant. And I gathered it was quite old.

I'm not sure what was going on here. Is it possible that photo shops have scanners that don't scan negatives? Is it that in this age of digital some people, even in photo shops, don't know what a negative is (consigned to the fate of the old phonograph tubes)?

It's only as I am writing this that I remember doing a (very reasonable) deal with Hacketts (Baggot St) about 10 years ago to scan a load of rolls of negative film onto discs for me. Maybe that is the solution. Go to a sophisticated provider like Hacketts and forget all this photo shop thing.

Nothing like the digital age to deprecate the past.

My love affair with the camera

My great grandfather in the positive