Need a Loupe for viewing negetives - HELP

[burstintoflame81]

A family member asked me what they could use to view negetives so that they can weed out the bad ones before wasting time scanning. I know that they use a loupe to do this, but can anyone recommend what specifications the loupe should have? I do not need something fancy. Something under 10 bucks to view 35mm negetives/slides. Also, does anyone have a quick and easy way to make a light table to set them on? I was thinking a box with a light and some frosted glass , but maybe there is like a really popular way to do this. ( could you just hold them up in front of a lamp in your hand and view using the loupe? Thanks for the help.

 

[burstintoflame81]

Also, what magnification would you guys recommend? It would be an older woman using this that commonly uses reading glasses. Thanks again.

 

[Derrel]

It takes an *exceptionally* trained eye to evaluate color negatives and the way the picture will look. Unless a particular shot is grossly out of focus,or horrifically blurry, a color negative held up and looked at by a middle aged woman who is not a photographer is just as likely to be evaluated erroneously as me evaluating ad copy in a Chinese woman's magazine.

 

[Joves]

You are better off having them scanned to a CD then letting her use a computer to look at them. Derrel is correct that telling from the negatives is diffcult to an untrained eye. I never held them up myself because I had a light table and, a magnifier when I used to develope my film.

 

[burstintoflame81]

Well its not really details she needs to see. Just determine if its an old picture she wishes to scan and print etc. I just don't have any film/slide/negetive experience since I come from the digital age and never learned. So thats why I asked. She really just needs a way to view the pics roughly. Like the old viewmaster toys used to do.

 

[dhilberg]

For the most accurate viewing, you're going to want a daylight-balanced light table and a good loupe. I have a Peak 8x loupe and a Porta-Trace 1417 light box that I use for viewing my transparencies. Both work very well. The loupe is a little soft in the corners, but I just move it over to the edge of the film and it's fine.

Without a proper light source and good loupe it's going to be hard to see which frames are good or not, especially negatives like Darrel said.

It might be best to just have them all scanned, but that can be expensive. Also, consider renting a scanner and doing it yourself. I just rented a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED a couple weeks ago from Pro Photo over in Portland and scanned about 130 frames, only cost me $45. The alternative was $3 per scan to have them do it, and they only do it in 8-bit jpeg.