What's Best Way To Cut Negatives?

A sharp eye and a steady hand. I don't think the tool has much to do with it. Most scissors will do the trick. For me, it's more about positioning the blade than the actual cutting. Good light, a white background and not too much coffee can help. If you can spare a roll for practice, I'm sure your scissoring skills will improve.

Good luck,

Dirk
 
Lots of things to look at. Nice. It's good to know others are also scissors-challenged. I'm left-handed and have never really been able to do something like cut across an 8x11 piece of paper without producing a jagged edge. Left-handed scissors don't help much. Go figure. Must be some gap in my childhood learning curve.
 
I've been using scissors for ages, but my fine motor skills are not improving. And since people practically throw away anything film-related on eBay, I picked one of these things up for a couple bucks a couple years back. (And even new, they go for 20 bucks or so).

I'm not sure that Hama products are available in the US, but there should be tons of similar stuff...
 

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The multi-format cutter already mentioned here. My near-sight is not very good anymore and I am not a big friend with scissors ... 😉
 
Scissoors or fine for neg, when you clearly see the blade through the inter-frame gap.
I find I have a hard time for slides.
Might give these gizmos a try...
 
narrow bladed scissors. I cut mine on the bed and it is fast and scratch free. I dont like the idea of sliding the negs through anything but thats me!
 
Dia Kut normally used for cutting slides. It is the very best way but a pain to drag out.

The back light is wonderful and I always get a perfect square cut edge to edge.

Scissors with as short a blade as possible is next best. Mine are one inch.
 
Sorrry to dig out an old thread - but I guess it's better to expand on a thread that already contains interesting content than to start afresh:

I'm using a device similar to the Kaiser Diacut referenced above to cut my negatives. This works ok most of the time for negs in which there's some exposure at the image edges because my cutting device features nifty end-of-frame marks for cut alignment.

My problem starts when I try to cut negatives with very dark image portions at the edge such as concert shots.

Then I have nothing to align the cut marks to. The Diacut device only offers visibility to the negatives themselves, not to the sprocket holes or the factory-exposed film numbering. But for my concert shots, I would need to find orientation based on numbers or sprocket holes!

Has anyone developed some kind of trick to solve this dilemma?

I'm at the verge of modifying my Diacut device for this task, but before I do, maybe someone can share his knowledge of having done something similar before.
 
For cheap, very short scissors with 1" blades. The shorter the better because long = wide and makes shadows and you can`t see. They are sold as moustach trimmers, but good sewing scissors for cutting thread will also work.

Long wide blades do not work well.

With a bit more effort to find, a Hamma slide cutter does a perfect job every time. built in back light so you cab see the frame with a guide line etched so I can see there the cutter will make the cut. The cutter is positioned on guide rails so it is always accurate.

Any slide cutter should do.
 
Interesting. I hate short blades (under 40mm) because it's two snips. Narrow, reasonably long blades (I use Fiskars) work best for me. But for the last 2-3 years I've found that I cut MUCH less precisely if I don't wear glasses, even though I think I can see OK.

I start at the perforations/film-between-perforations between the frames and end at the same perforation/film-between-perforation, without looking too closely at the image while I'm cutting. The image ain't gonna move, after all.

Incidentally, some cameras allow you to cut between perforations while others force you to cut through perforations.

Cheers,

R.
 
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