Shooting color negatives

Hi all,
      This one came about because I am going through all of my 36 years of images this summer. Most of the commercial work was either black & white negatives or chromes (35mm-8X10") but I came across my pile of wedding negatives. They were shot by an assistant (big mistake) and a good number of them were way underexposed. The prints (4X6") were so bad that we never made an album or anything so I decided to scan the original negatives. I first tried with a 35mm scanner, but was unsatisfied with the results so I set up a copy camera using my D700, a 55mm macro lens w/ extension tube and an old MacBeth light box. This set up produced a 24.5 MB file that can be processed into a 72MB file with Camera Raw. The only problem was that the image was a color negative with the orange tint. This is difficult because the orange is not an even layer but different in different areas of the image. Here is how I finally did all 165 images from my wedding so many years ago:


#1. I shoot the negative and convert the NEF file to DNG.
#2. Next I open the image in camera raw and click the balance dropper on an orange negative edge.

#3. I then open the file and convert (Command-I) the colors. What then appears is a very over exposed but semi-normal image.

#4. In Levels (Command-L) I go through each of the 3 colors (red, green & blue)  and bring the shadows and highlights in to the visible histogram. I do this in red, green and then blue.

#5. The image is already looking much better. The orange cast is gone and the levels are good. I finally tweak the highlight slider while in the blue level and move it right and left until the file looks right.

You can go back in Levels if needed and tweak the final image as you normally might. After doing 165 rather quickly, I am delighted with this process.