questions about scanning Polaroid 55 film

[Brian Ellis]

Sorry, I didn't mean lay the negative on the "ground glass," I just meant lay it on the glass. I guess that's what happens when you're posting to a large format group.

[Ed K.]

Hey Brian - can you recite the special anti-newtonian chant you must do to avoid rings, or is it just because you might have a newtonian ancestor?

4990 - Emulsion side toward glass works best, however I've had some negs that get rings either side, using 8x10 and 5x7. Cleaning DOES help avoid them, but not always. The Polaroid film is thin and sometimes curls a little bit - that actually may help prevent the rings. Making a spacer or taping the neg to a mat with a hole cutout works nicely, however it still won't show the entire edge. The only way to know for sure is to try it.

I only get rings on negs that I really wish I could do a quick scan of for proofing and web purposes. Shots that don't matter always come out great! Not to start an AZO rant or rave, when really printed well, an AZO print seems to show an awesome amount of detail under a 10X loupe, so the contact print approach is not too far fetched if the end result needs to only be a small print. The Microtek setup sounds good. Even though I have a 4990, I wouldn't recommend it when quality matters.

[C.A]

I work exclusively with Polaroid 55 film, and although I prefer traditional darkroom printing of this film, when ever I wanted to make a scan, I simply lay the film on my flat bed scanner, reduced it's light output, and lay a light box over the scanner so the film is back lit. You can reverse the scan to a positive at the scanning stage or later in Photoshop, you'll also need to play with the contrast and brightness at one of these stages to.