My daughter loves theater, and this made me want to pull out some photos I shot during college at East Carolina University’s theater doing Show Boat.

To scan my negatives, I used the Nikon Coolscan V-ED [Adorama has one for $739]. On Amazon, it sells for $2,000.

A high-performance dedicated film scanner from Nikon, the CoolScan V ED offers high-quality scanning of 35mm slides, 35mm film strips, APS film (with optional IX240 film adapter), and prepared slides (with optional medical slide holder). The Scanner-Nikkor ED glass lens offers a 4,000 dpi optical resolution, while the 3,964-pixel linear CCD image sensor and 14-bit A/D input (8-/16-bit output) provide true-to-life, brilliant results.

Nikon’s own LED illumination technology ensures accurate color with no warm-up time or risk of heat damage. Scan times are as fast as 38 seconds including image transfer to display, and as fast as 14 seconds in preview mode. Automatic color/contrast compensation helps you achieve accurate results, while the ICE4 advanced digital image correction suite of technologies helps to restore old slides to their original glory. Additionally, the included Nikon Scan 4 software provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use interface for managing your scans.

The CoolScan V ED has a convenient plug-and-play USB interface, while one-touch scan and preview buttons will have you scanning film in no time. PC and Mac compatible, the CoolScan V ED also comes backed with a one year limited warranty.

Pentax K1000 and 50mm lens, Kodak Tri-X

If you have scratches and spots like in this photo, you must use PhotoShop to clean up the image.

SilverFast 8

Now Nikon has stopped supporting it, so to make it work on my Macbook Pro, I bought the software SilverFast 8.0. This software is even more advanced than the original Nikon software I used years ago.

There are a lot of videos already made that you can watch to help you step by step. Just Google SilverFast 8 and look for just the videos; there are many to choose from.

Pentax K1000 and 50mm, Kodak Tri-X

There is one this great about the scanner. Compared to the time spent in a darkroom working on print forever burning and dodging, with the scanner and PhotoShop, you can get far superior results.

I hope this inspires you.