Hi all,

I have two questions:

1) I have a plethora of archived negatives and I'm ready to take the next step and set up a digital darkroom. I'm thinking about buying a second-hand Nikon Super Coolscan 2000 (LS-2000) as I hear the Nikon product is the best engineered out there (except for the software interface). Does anyone have any experience with the Nikon scanner and if so... is the software really a horror and are there alternatives? Also, I am running in a Windows 2000 environment so is the scanner compatible? Are there viable alternatives to the Nikon in the sub-$1000 price range?

2) I have recently started to shoot more chromes and color neg to supplement my B&W stuff but unlike B&W I don't really know how to archive the pos and negs properly to preserve them. Freezer? Does anyone archive alot of color? I'm also thinking about doing some B&W with Ilfords XP-2 C-41 compatible B&W (for convenience of processing at foreign locales) and do you have to archive it like color stuff?

Thanks.

-- John (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), July 29, 2001

Answers

Where's the connection with Leica Photography?

-- Phil Stiles (Stiles@s-way.com), July 29, 2001.

Connection is this message will be archived under Leica Photography - Darkroom and I'm looking for a digital darkroom setup that will do my best Leica-glass-generated chromes/ negs some justice.

-- John (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), July 30, 2001.

John,

The best way to archive color materials is in a frost-free refrigerator. This is standard practice at museums. See Willhelm's book "The Care and Permanence of Color Photography" for the last word in archival storage of color (and B&W) materials. C-41 materials (including XP-2) are not archival, but the aging process can be slowed down through proper storage.

Phil, the connection is that one photographer has a question and, hopefully, another has the answer.

-- Steve Wiley (wiley@accesshub.net), August 01, 2001.