Large Format Negatives

The following scans are examples of large format black and white negatives which we've scanned into digital images. The typical physical size of large format is a negative measuring approximately 4" x 5" but can be as large as 8" x 10". If you're finding photos on large format negatives, they are likely from the 1950's or earlier. Although 35mm roll film cameras began to appear in the 1930's the large format film camera was commonly used well into the 1950's.

Although degradation occurs across all forms of film photograph it is far less marked on black and white negatives. The problem with all old film is that it can become brittle. In order to preserve these images, the sooner the photos are professionally scanned into a digital format the better.

The blue outlined bubble pointing to the finished "customer ready" scan gives you details on the file. This gives you an idea of the specifications of the completed TIF formatted files you'll expect to receive. Of course you will also receive the same image in JPG format, reduced in resolution by 50 percent. These reduced JPG files will be suitable for printing your images if you'd like at your favorite photo printing retailer. Alternatively, these JPG images give you more than enough resolution for displaying on your phones, portable display devices, computers, digital frames... any device that supports JPG format images. The possibilities are endless. Even e-mailing to your friends and family. As discussed elsewhere on the website, the TIF format images (as shown beside the blue outlined bubble) are given to you because they contain ALL of the data from the original scan. Retain these as they are a permanent copy of all of the photo information that was captured at the time of scanning with no compression or loss of data.

Large Format Scanned Sample - Number 1

This group of negatives were shot on November 7th, 1951 in St. Paul, Minnesota putting them at approximately 60 years old. As you can see the quality of these photographs are astonishing given their age.

Although the sample shown on this page is quite small as we're constrained by the limitations of the website in what size of photo we can display, the actual size and printable size of these scans are massive! Because of the size of the negative huge reprints could be made from these finished scans.