I had been quietly embarrassed about my negative scanning setup for a while. People kept asking how I scanned my film for the channel and I kept dodging the question because what I was actually doing was holding negatives down on a cheap LED panel and pressing the shutter on a digital camera. Genuinely lo-fi. Not the kind of professional workflow you would expect from someone who shoots as much film as I do.
Then Hamish Gill (of 35mmc.com fame) sent me one of his PIXL-LATR negative holders to try, and I have to be honest about something: I was reluctant.
I had tried the Lomography Digitaliza some years ago and found it slow, fiddly, and irritating. I am extremely impatient with kit that slows me down. The whole reason I had ended up holding negatives by hand was because every accessory I had tried to make the process more “proper” had actually made it worse.
The PIXL-LATR turned out to be different. It actually sped up my workflow rather than slowing it down, a thing I had not seen from a piece of kit in genuinely a long time.
This article is the full story of how I scan negatives, the kit I use, my workflow, and the role the PIXL-LATR now plays. If you have a backlog of negatives to digitise and are looking for a sensible approach, this should help.
What “scanning” actually means now
A quick terminology note. “DSLR scanning” is the established term for what we are doing, but the term has two things wrong with it.
1. It is not really scanning. A flatbed scanner moves a sensor across an image line by line. What we are doing is taking a single photograph of a negative, then digitally inverting it. Closer to digitisation than scanning.
2. It is not really DSLR. Almost nobody buys DSLRs anymore. Mirrorless cameras are the modern equivalent, and the workflow is identical regardless of which you use.
“Camera scanning” or “camera digitisation” are more accurate. I am going to call it camera scanning for the rest of this article.
The principle: take a high-resolution photograph of the negative on a light panel with a macro lens, invert and process the image in software, end up with a positive digital file you can share online or print.
Why camera scan rather than flatbed
A reasonable question. Flatbed scanners are slow but they give you everything: high resolution, dust removal, multi-pass scanning for shadow detail, dedicated negative scanning software with proper colour profiles.
The honest answer is speed. A camera scan takes seconds. A good flatbed scan of a single negative can take fifteen to thirty minutes including setup, dust spotting, and post-processing.
If you have a huge backlog, camera scanning is the only realistic option. I shoot enough film that I will sometimes develop 10-15 rolls in a single session. No flatbed scanner makes that workflow possible. I would never get through the volume.
The image quality is genuinely competitive for most uses (sharing on social media, web publication, modest-size prints). For massive enlargements or fine art reproduction, a proper drum scan or high-end flatbed beats camera scanning. For everything else, camera scanning is fine.
The kit
Here is the full setup I use, with the honest reasoning behind each choice.
The camera and lens
Camera: a Sony A5100. This is a small APS-C mirrorless camera that I picked up specifically for scanning. It is not my best camera. I have used the same setup with an A7R II and an A7 III in the past, both of which produce better files. I sold those off recently as I have shifted away from full-frame digital, and the A5100 has taken over scanning duties.
For camera scanning purposes, you do not need an exotic camera body. Any modern interchangeable-lens camera with around 16+ megapixels will give you files larger than 99% of users actually need. The lens matters far more than the body.
Lens: a 7Artisans 60mm f/2.8 Macro. This is an excellent manual-focus macro lens for less than £200. I had been using a Pentacon Electric 50mm f/1.8 with extension tubes before this, but the results were strange in ways I could not quite diagnose. The 7Artisans 60mm fixed the issues completely.
Quick honest confession: the scans you see in the video itself were not actually taken with the kit I show. They were re-scanned with the 7Artisans because the original Pentacon scans came out weird. That is why the 7Artisans now lives in my scanning rig.
For a macro lens specifically for scanning, the 7Artisans 60mm f/2.8 is excellent value. Manual focus is fine for this kind of work (you are not chasing moving subjects), 1:1 macro reproduction handles 35mm and most 120 formats easily, and the price is reasonable for what you get.
The rig
Monitor stand: clamped onto the desk, supports the whole vertical arm of the scanning rig. About £30 on Amazon. Almost any cheap monitor stand will do. You need rigidity but not precision optics.
Manfrotto Super Clamp: attaches to the monitor stand arm and holds the macro slider. About £40. Worth the money for the clamp. Cheaper alternatives exist but the Manfrotto is solid and adjusts smoothly.
Neewer Macro Slider: lets you move the camera fractionally up and down for fine focus adjustment without changing the focus ring on the lens. About £30. Genuinely useful because precise focus is critical for sharp scans, and adjusting focus on the lens itself can shift the image position.
Camera mounted on the macro slider via standard tripod thread.
LED light panel: a cheap Chinese A4-sized panel from Amazon. One real complaint: the panel has feet at the four corners and sags slightly in the middle under its own weight. That sag, while tiny (fractions of a millimetre), causes focus problems if you are hand-holding negatives directly on the panel. More on this below.
Total rig cost (excluding camera and lens): roughly £100-120. Including a budget camera and macro lens, you could be set up for under £400. Substantially cheaper than a decent flatbed scanner.
![PLACEHOLDER: the complete scanning rig with the camera on the macro slider, the light panel below, and the PIXL-LATR holding a negative in position]
The problems I had before the PIXL-LATR
Two specific issues that I had been living with.
Problem 1: negatives curl
120 negatives, in particular, refuse to lie flat. Cut a roll of 120 into strips and you get curved pieces of plastic. Put them on a flat light panel and they buckle and lift in the middle.
The result: focus is fine in the centre of the frame but soft at the edges, because the centre is touching the panel but the edges have lifted slightly. Or focus is fine at the edges but soft in the centre. Or any combination of mixed-focus across the frame.
For 4x5 it is fine because large format sheets are stiff enough to lie flat by themselves. For 120 and 35mm, you have a real problem.
Problem 2: Newton’s rings
When a negative is in direct contact with a light panel (or glass above the panel), you can get Newton’s rings, a colourful interference pattern that appears on the scanned image. It looks like oil on water and ruins the frame.
The cause is partial contact between two smooth surfaces with a tiny variable gap between them. Light reflecting off both surfaces interferes constructively or destructively depending on the gap, producing the rings.
The solution is to keep the negative off the surface entirely. Suspending it in air just above the light panel eliminates the contact problem.
Problem 3: the Lomography Digitaliza
I had tried the Lomography Digitaliza as a solution and hated it.
Specifically, the Digitaliza forces you to load your film in strips and you can only scan three or four images before the whole device needs to come apart and the next strip loaded. For a roll of 120 (three strips), that is two complete reload operations per roll. For a roll of 35mm (multiple strips), it is a constant disassemble-and-reload cycle.
I lost patience with the Digitaliza inside two rolls and never used it again.
The PIXL-LATR: the gadget that actually works
Hamish Gill designed the PIXL-LATR to solve exactly the problems I had been living with. He sent me one to try after I met him at the inaugural Analogue Spotlight event and we got chatting about scanning workflows.
I was sceptical. Genuinely sceptical. Reluctance based on the Digitaliza experience. Worried about another gadget that would slow me down.
I was wrong.
What it is
The PIXL-LATR is a 3D-printed plastic frame that suspends your negative above a light panel at a precisely controlled height. The negative is held flat between two thin masks so it cannot curl. The whole assembly sits on the light panel.
The clever bit: the design includes a slider mechanism that lets you feed an entire uncut roll of film through the holder one frame at a time. Push down on the bottom, slide the film along by one frame, release. Camera takes the photograph. Push down, slide along, release. Next frame.
For 120 film, you do not have to cut the roll into strips. Feed the whole roll through, scan frame by frame, done.
For 35mm film, same thing. Whole roll fed through, frame by frame, done in minutes.
For 4x5 sheets, the PIXL-LATR has a sheet film insert that holds individual sheets flat.
The accessory ecosystem
This is what really sold me. Hamish has designed inserts for almost every film format:
- 35mm standard (with and without sprocket holes)
- 35mm panoramic
- 127 film
- APS
- All the 120 formats (645, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9)
- 4x5 sheet film
- 3.25 x 4.25 inch glass plates
- 6x6 slides
- 3.25 inch square glass plates
- 110 film
Each insert is somewhere between £6-8. The base PIXL-LATR is around £36. The full ecosystem covers literally every format I shoot and costs less than a single decent piece of camera equipment.
I have a 3.25 x 4.25 inch glass plate I wanted to scan, which would have been almost impossible with my previous setup. The PIXL-LATR has an insert that fits it perfectly. First time I have ever properly digitised a glass plate.
Speed in practice
The thing that surprised me most: the PIXL-LATR is genuinely faster than my previous “hold the negative by hand” workflow.
A 24-frame roll of 35mm scanned in about four minutes including the occasional pause to check focus or position. Three or four minutes for a full roll of 120 (which only has 8-16 frames depending on format).
The rhythm becomes muscle memory: push down, slide, release, click, push down, slide, release, click. No reloading. No re-positioning. No re-focusing (the holder keeps the negative at the same plane every time, so focus stays consistent).
Compared to the Digitaliza, this is night and day. Compared to my hand-holding workflow, it is still faster because the holder eliminates the time I used to spend wrestling with curling negatives.
What it does not do
Two limitations worth knowing.
1. The frame mask covers the edges of the negative. You cannot include the rebate (the area beyond the actual image, including the film maker’s markings and frame numbers) in your scan because the holder borders cover it.
For most uses, this does not matter, since you only want the image area. For some artistic styles where the film edge is part of the aesthetic (with the sprocket holes visible, the frame number, the brand name on the rebate), the PIXL-LATR cuts these off.
2. The base PIXL-LATR does not handle larger glass plates. The inserts that exist go up to 3.25 x 4.25 inches. Larger glass plates need different equipment. Not a problem for me but worth knowing if you shoot larger formats.
What it does fix
To be specific about the problems the PIXL-LATR solves:
Newton’s rings: gone. The negative is suspended in air, never in contact with the glass or light panel. No interference patterns.
Negative curl: gone. The holder masks force the negative flat. Sharp focus edge to edge.
The bowing light panel problem I mentioned: solved as a side benefit. The PIXL-LATR sits on the light panel but the negative is held at a fixed plane regardless of any panel sag, because the negative position is determined by the holder, not by the panel surface.
Consistency: every scan is at the same height, same plane, same framing. Far fewer rescans needed because of inconsistent focus or framing.
![PLACEHOLDER: a roll of 120 film loaded into the PIXL-LATR, showing the slider mechanism that lets you advance frame by frame without cutting the roll]
My full workflow now
A walkthrough of what I actually do.
Step 1: Develop the film. Standard development, hung to dry. No special preparation for scanning beyond making sure the negatives are dust-free.
Step 2: Set up the rig. LED panel on, camera switched on, lens set to its 1:1 macro distance, two-second self-timer set on the camera to eliminate shutter-press shake.
Step 3: Clean the light panel. A quick wipe with a microfibre cloth. Dust on the panel shows up in every scan.
Step 4: Load the negative into the PIXL-LATR. Wear gloves if you can be bothered (I sometimes do not). Open the holder, position the strip or whole roll, close.
Step 5: Position the PIXL-LATR on the light panel. It just sits there. No clamping.
Step 6: Frame the first negative in camera. Adjust camera position via the macro slider to fill the frame.
Step 7: Set focus. With a manual macro lens, focus is set once and stays consistent for every subsequent frame.
Step 8: Turn off the other lights in the room. This is genuinely important. Stray light reflecting off the negative surface ruins the scan with subtle hot spots.
Step 9: Shoot. Press the shutter, wait two seconds, click.
Step 10: Advance. Push down on the PIXL-LATR slider, advance the negative by one frame, release. Camera focus stays correct because the negative position has not changed in the axis perpendicular to the camera.
Step 11: Repeat steps 9-10 until the roll is done.
Step 12: Switch to the next roll. Open the PIXL-LATR, remove old roll, load new roll, close. Total swap time: roughly 30 seconds.
Step 13: Once all rolls are scanned, import into Lightroom (or your editor of choice). Invert the negatives using Negative Lab Pro or similar. Adjust colour and tone. Export.
A typical evening session: scan 8-10 rolls of mixed format in about an hour. Process the files in another hour or two. Eight to ten rolls digitised in an evening that would have taken a flatbed scanner several days.
Files and post-processing
A few quick notes on what comes after scanning.
File format: I shoot RAW (Sony’s ARW format) for the scans. You want maximum tonal range for the invert and colour-correction process.
Inversion software: Negative Lab Pro is the standard recommendation and what I use. It runs as a Lightroom plugin and does a remarkably good job of inverting and colour-correcting negative scans.
Manual adjustment: after the automatic inversion, I usually do some manual colour correction, contrast adjustment, and occasional dust spotting. A few minutes per frame on average.
Final files: typically end up at around 20-24 megapixels for 35mm and the smaller 120 formats, scaling proportionally for 4x5. More than enough for any web or modest print use.
What I learned
In order of importance.
1. The PIXL-LATR genuinely speeds up my workflow. This is the surprise. I have rarely seen a piece of kit improve workflow rather than complicate it. The PIXL-LATR is the exception.
2. The cost is reasonable. Around £36-40 for the base unit plus £6-8 for each format insert. The full ecosystem can be built up incrementally as you need different formats.
3. Hamish at 35mmc deserves credit for designing something that solves real problems for real photographers. 35mmc is also worth reading regularly. It is one of the best film photography sites on the internet, with a strong sense of community.
4. Camera scanning is the right answer for most film photographers who shoot in volume. The image quality is genuinely good and the speed is far better than any flatbed.
5. Macro lens choice matters more than camera body. The 7Artisans 60mm f/2.8 is excellent value and turns a mediocre digital body into a perfectly capable scanning setup. Spend money on the lens.
Useful links (no affiliates)
I am not organised enough to set up affiliate links, so all of these are direct.
- PIXL-LATR (the negative holder): pixl-latr.com
- 35mmc (Hamish Gill’s photography site): 35mmc.com
- 7Artisans 60mm f/2.8 Macro (the lens I use): search Amazon, B&H, or your preferred camera dealer
For the supporting rig, search Amazon for:
- Monitor stand for desk-clamp mounting
- Manfrotto Super Clamp
- Neewer Macro Slider
- A4 LED light panel (Chinese off-brand is fine)
A note to readers
If you have been camera scanning by hand and have been quietly embarrassed about your setup like I was: the PIXL-LATR is the upgrade that finally works. I tried the alternatives. I dismissed them. This one is different.
If you have not been camera scanning at all and have been struggling with a flatbed for years: make the switch. The speed difference is genuinely life-changing for anyone with a serious film habit.
If you have been using a flatbed and want the highest-quality reproductions of single negatives, stick with the flatbed. Camera scanning is the right answer for volume. Flatbed is the right answer for specific frames where quality is paramount.
Drop me a comment if you have your own scanning workflow or have tried the PIXL-LATR yourself. Workflow nerdery is genuinely interesting and I would love to hear what other film photographers are doing.