Scanning on nozense

Better negatives in Darktable

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0200

Revised, better, simpler, faster

way to work with

Black & White negatives in Darktable

During a couple of development / scanning cycles I’ve been less than satisfied with the result from my scans - so I started to revise my Darktable methods.

With the help of an AI-agent, yes I use AI when it feels relevant, I found a procedure that seems to render a lot better results than my previous.

Scanning Negatives

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 13:45:55 +0200

I scan all my negatives myself using my digital camera.

The cheap LED

I started out using a small led light, JJC FDA-LED1, to back-light my negatives and take photos using my Canon EOS R50 with a RF 85mm f/2 Macro IS STM. The LED-light thing was doing it’s job but I have replaced it. I want something a bit easier to work with and I want to be able to “scan” overlapping frames, panoramas and also get the sprocket-holes – all of which is not possible with the holder included in the JCC light. I have settled for Lomography DigitaLIZA+ hoping that will do well if I venture out trying 120 and 110 film on day.

Another roll through negadoctor

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:45:55 +0200

This roll is scanned brighter than my previous rolls (6 of 10 brightness on the JCC led).

This time I used a lot of the auto-features in darktable/negadoctor on the first frame and then used that preset on all of the negatives.