Film Scanning: Which Side Is Up?

How to Load Film Into a Film Scanner/DSLR Holder Correctly and Get the Best Image Quality

8 min read by Dmitri.
Published on January 9, 2024. Updated on April 13, 2024.

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Four ways to insert film into a scanner.

There are four ways to insert film into a scanner’s film holder: right side up (A)/upside down (B) and emulsion facing (C)/away (A) from the scanner lens.

The first choice (A or B) is easy to make once you scan your first image. It’s also not particularly consequential to the results as it’s easy to flip images using software like Adobe Photoshop.

It’s harder to spot mirrored images than the upside-down ones, but those, too, can be inverted. But what about the image quality?

Does it matter which side the film is facing in a scanner for image quality?

To find out, I tested samples of colour, black and white, and slide films with my PrimeFilm XAs scanner with manual focusing at 5,000 DPI or 34MP on both sides.

TL;DR: Inserting the film emulsion (matte) side facing the scanner may show a very slight improvement in sharpness but you will need to flip your images as they’ll be mirrored.

The first thing I noticed was that the focus distance for my scanner was different for each side of my Kodak Portra 160 film scan. So, to get the best grain sharpness, I had to make adjustments depending on which side the film was facing in my scanner.

(Most consumer film scanners won’t let you make focus adjustments, though many will have an autofocusing system. You may need to make focus adjustments on your digital camera scanning rig.)

I scanned the film and inverted the image that was mirrored and compared the grain in extreme close-ups.

The results show little to no significant difference in image quality when viewed normally:

View this image in HD with GOLD

Scanning emulsion side up vs. down: comparing grain detail and resolution in colour negative film (Kodak Portra 160).

Colour. Upon closer inspection, I noticed a slight difference in colour between the scans. The version that had the emulsion side face the scanner (shiny side down in my case) showed a little less blue cast in the clouds — though I wouldn’t call it a significant or an important difference.

Scanning emulsion side up vs. down: comparing grain detail and resolution in colour negative film (Kodak Portra 160, enlarged ).

Grain detail. In an extreme close-up, the version that had the emulsion face the scanner appeared to have a little more sharpness around the grain. Still, the difference is so small that I can’t be sure whether it’s the side the film is facing or a slight curl in the film that causes blurring in various places. I doubt that anyone can spot this difference when looking at an image normally.

So far, it seems that there’s no definitive change in image quality for classic colour negative films. What about the much thicker slide (reversal) film? To find out, I scanned a sample of the excellent Kodak Ektachrome 200 film:

View this image in HD with GOLD

Scanning emulsion side up vs. down: comparing grain detail and resolution in colour slide film (Kodak Ektachrome 200).

As before, there was no apparent difference in detail or colour for the frame scanned emulsion up vs. down. However, the slide frame had some text and fine detail that I thought would demonstrate the difference a little better when enlarged:

Scanning emulsion side up vs. down: comparing grain detail and resolution in colour slide film (Kodak Ektachrome 200, enlarged).

If you’re reading this article on a large monitor with a high-resolution screen, you may be able to spot a very slight difference in sharpness. It appears that scanning with the emulsion facing the scanner (which usually results in mirrored images) gives a slight edge in sharpness.

But to get that edge, you need a powerful scanner with manual focus control like PrimeFilm XAs or a digital camera capable of taking 40MP exposures of perfectly flat film with a good light source. And then, you need to zoom far and hard to notice the difference:

Scanning emulsion side up vs. down: comparing grain detail and resolution in colour slide film (Kodak Ektachrome 200, extreme enlargement).

It’s also worth noting that this slight difference in sharpness won’t mean much for images shot on soft lenses, or images that have motion blur. All the samples above were made with the excellent Carl Zeiss Tessar T* 𝒇3.5 lens on my Yashica T5/Kyocera T-Proof camera. The next colour set was shot on Olympus Mju II, and the black and white set was made with Konica Big Mini BM-201.

Though it seemed clear by this point that a very slight edge in sharpness can be achieved by facing the emulsion side towards the scanner head, there are two more tests that I wanted to run for a definitive answer: film with indeterminate emulsion side and monochrome film.

By now, you may know that your film’s emulsion side is the one that may appear matte when looked against the light (as opposed to the shiny non-emulsion side). However, some films are shiny on both sides — this includes the majority of Lomochrome films (i.e., Purple, Color’92) and Kodak Aerocolor IV:

View this image in HD with GOLD

Scanning emulsion side up vs. down: comparing grain detail and resolution in colour slide film (Kodak Aerocolor IV).

The best way of identifying the emulsion side with this type of film is to look at the images and see if the text or familiar objects appear mirrored. The side that shows them as such is the emulsion side.

Your film’s curl may also reveal the order as it’ll often curl toward the emulsion side (though this is not as definite, especially with Aerocolor IV that dries flat).

Scanning emulsion side up vs. down: comparing grain detail and resolution in colour slide film (Kodak Aerocolor IV, extreme enlargement).

As with the other colour films, Aerocolor IV shows no apparent difference in image quality when flipped in the scanner. Even the focus values were similar for both sides.

Similarly, zooming in shows a very slight edge in sharpness when the film is scanned with its emulsion side facing the lens.

I expected the same results from black and white negative film:

View this image in HD with GOLD

Scanning emulsion side up vs. down: comparing grain detail and resolution in colour slide film (Ilford Delta 100).

Indeed, when viewed normally, there was no noticeable difference in image quality between the scans with emulsion and the film’s shiny side facing the scanner head.

Scanning emulsion side up vs. down: comparing grain detail and resolution in colour slide film (Ilford Delta 100, extreme enlargement).

However, an extreme close-up of both scans surprised me this time. Not only was there no difference in image quality at this resolution, but some spots showed more blur in the emulsion-side scans! This was most likely due to the curl in the film strip, thus the crop that you see here centers on the part where I set the scanner’s focus for each pass.

It’s possible that the direction you insert your black and white film into your scanner matters less than with a colour film. Colour film has more layers and they are arranged in a particular order.

Some discussions on the topic online suggest that the emulsion side towards the scanner is the manufacturers’ recommended method. But given that testing this rule isn’t difficult, I’m glad that I’m now able to come to my own conclusion: it probably does not matter.

I’ve been scanning my film the other way around to save time on flipping the images; I might change this up to feel a little more confident in my results.

Identifying the emulsion side on film.

Photographic film consists of an acetate or polyester film base that’s usually the thickest layer. That’s the shiny side.

1. Film base; 2. Adhesive layer; 3. Red light-sensitive layer; 4. Green light-sensitive layer; 5. Yellow filter; 6. Blue light-sensitive layer; 7. UV Filter; 8. Protective layer; 9. Visible light/lens.

Several light-sensitive (emulsion) and accessory layers coat the base and face the lens when the film is loaded into the camera. The lens inverses the image vertically and horizontally, which is why looking at the emulsion side of a film strip shows mirrored text and faces.

Placing film emulsion side up before scanning with a digital camera is then as plain as ensuring that the images look mirrored. Most dedicated film scanners will have the lens on the top, the same as you would when you scan with a DSLR. However, flatbed scanners have the scanning head below the glass, thus you should do the opposite (shiny side up/images not mirrored).

Most scanning software will have a way to invert your images horizontally automatically — this is a good setting to enable if you plan to face your film’s emulsion side towards the scanner lens. Or, simply scan the film the other way around — as you’ve seen from the samples above, the difference is negligible.

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Does it matter which side the film is facing in a scanner for image quality?

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Dmitri