A few months ago I was going on about how I reckoned I could scan negs by just photographing them – anyway, today I finally got around to it and voila:

Dave generously and kindly lent me his 100mm f/2.8 macro to have a look at (I’m looking to buy one) – attached to it is my K-7, and a cactus set is triggering a sunpak flash, firing directly into a box with a window for the neg. The negs slide along in a ‘V’ shaped channel of cardboard.

I shoot them as 24-bit RAW files and have made a simple action in PS that inverts the curves, then desaturates. I can tweak the curves and then save back into lightroom.

Even by hand, the process is really quick, I just ‘scanned’ three rolls in about 10 minutes. The photoshop bit takes ages; it would be good to just leave it running for a few hours.

These first ones are a bit dodgy, but I’ve refined my technique now. The camera’s exposure of 1/180th, f/3.5 at ISO100 seems to capture heaps of dynamic range.

There is a bit of a ragged edge, but that doesn’t really bother me.
Someone with the right gear could easily knock something like this together, with reproducible distance and light, and really burn through a few rolls. I’m convinced that this is possible.
This was just a proof of concept, really – though I’m happy enough with the scans, there’s a few too many variables. Call it ‘artistic’.