We've talked about sending in our old slides or negatives for scanning or even doing it ourselves. That way, we get to use our film images in this digital age.
How do we choose which chromes or negs to use? Well, you'll have to look at them.
An easy way to do this is with a light table and a loupe. Even when we were loading slide trays or printing our own enlargements, we still needed to know which slide or neg was sharp enough, had the right details, had good focus, and so on. Holding up a kodachrome or a tri-x neg to the light would hardly tell us anything. A light table (aka light box) with a color correct lamp (daylight, 5000K) and a good loupe what what we used then. That will work well for our current needs, too.
A camera store was where we needed to go then, and it's where we go now for these specialty accessories.
One place I've used for years is B&H Photo.
I found a small battery powered light box. And a larger, plug in light box/table. That's the light source and flat surface. To see the film's image, we need some magnification. 8X is a good standard, with 6X to 10X also being very usable. Here's a nice one and a better one.
You spread your slides (chromes) on the table/box, turn on the light, and check them through the loupe.
We don't want to waste our time and money sending unusable film out to a scanning service, or spend time on our own scanner for an image not worth considering. So, use the light box and a loupe to find only our best shots.
As we have seen in previous scanning posts, the time and effort we spend doing this task is well worth it.
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