So. After supper Iris gets down, grumbling a bit. And then sits in the corner assiduously writing.

This is what she hands to me.

“I have just eetn (eaten) the yoyos and I am still hungree”.

4 years old and issuing her first letter of complaint.

I am so proud.


Scanning 126 and 110 format negatives with a Plustek OpticFilm scanner

I’ve been taking photographs for a long time. I was a photographer as a primary school child, using the cheap cameras of the 70s that my parents would buy me. And that means I have a lot of negatives from very long-gone formats. In particular, my earliest photos are on Instamatic film, of the 126 and 110 varieties. You can see examples of both below:

126 and 110 format negatives

I’ve been progressively working my way through my much larger 35mm neg collection, but up until now, I’ve lacked a good way of scanning these older formats. I could scan the photo prints, but some of them are faded, and what’s the point of hanging onto these negs for decades if I’m not going to use them?

I did buy a cheap Veho scanner a couple of years ago that claimed to be able to do scan the negs, but the results were not good. I knew I could get better results from these negatives. I was contemplating sending them off for professional scanning, but the quality of the photos, in many cases, did not seem to justify the cost. Surely there must be a way I could use my existing film scanner?

Thankfully, when searching around the subject, I found a supplier of negative adapters for a variety of film scanner brands, including the Plustek OpticFilm model I use.

My Plustek OpticFilm 8200i

I put in an order, and waited impatiently for 10 day until they arrived. (They were shipped from the west coast of the US.) Here they are:

3d Printed neagtive adators for a scanner

My scanning setup

I scan using VueScan software on my Mac. It is also available for Windows.

I put the scans into cloud storage, and then edit on my iPad Pro, using a mix of tools. I start with Pixelmator Photo for tweaking colour, levels and so on. I then clean up the dust and scratches using the healing brush in the iPad version of Adobe Photoshop. I used to do both stages in Pixelmator Photo, but I recently discovered that Photoshop’s healing tool works much faster, saving me significant amounts of time.

126 film scanning

Scanning 126 film

Here’s some early results from the 126 film:

Mum & I in Venice in the 1980s Mum & Dad in Venice in the 80s Me and my parents in the Pula Arena, in 1980s Yugoslavia

110 film scanning

110 film scanning

And a first example of 110 film:

Me, on in a swimming pool, on holiday in Minorca in the 1980s

None of these are great photos. But they’re some of the only images I have from this period of my life, and so it’s great to have access to them digitally, at last.


A London hairdresser marketing its way through Coronavirus.

A chalkboard alliding to covid-19 precautions and impacts.

Cleaning up negative scans in Photoshop on my iPad is quite soothing.


Well, the course I was running today may have been cancelled (yes, Coronavirus-related), but the view early this morning on the way to the station was lovely…


Well, the panic buying is clearly still happening. This is Waitrose in Worthing a few hours ago - toilet paper and paracetamol sold out.


Post-Nature Tots babychino from the Woods Mill café.


After school beach club.


Spectacular sunset as storm clouds approached this evening.


This made me chuckle:


I was doing some site analysis for a client, when it occurred to me that I’d never registered my micro.blog account for search console, or anything like that. So I did. And then I ran it through Page Speed Insights.

Well played, @manton. Well played indeed.


A day of exploring with my girls. Making progress on a long walk.


Iris is having an artistic moment.


The girls appear unimpressed by my efforts to get them to go for a walk in the face of Storm Dennis


Watching the boats on the Adur rise as high tide approaches.


Plain old driftwood.


Beach sign


Actually getting out of the house to work – it’s far too rare at the moment.


After Ciara

This was the garden at 8am this morning, after the worst of Storm Ciara had passed:

Garden mess after storm ciara

Not too bad, although things aren’t looking great for the potted Christmas tree.

I was planning to sort this out around lunchtime, as a work break. But I ended up legging it to my daughter’s school in a hurry, to take her her water bottle before she went into class. And, as I had my coat and boots on anyway,…

Tidying in the storm's wake

20 minutes of quick tidying (and refilling the bird feeders) later:

My garden, tidied after Storm Ciara

We got off lightly, despite being in a coastal AND river location. We’re pretty luck about how sheltered we are from weather coming off the sea. (Gales blowing down off the Downs and along the Audr are a different matter entirely). In fact, much of the Quay is looking surprisingly tidy, and many of out neighhbours have been out sweeping and tidying. All very minor.

Others have not been so lucky.


Laterns above the Adur

The Shoreham Light Parade