Negative Into A positive

I have been experimenting with scanning old negatives and then manipulating them into real pictures.  An inexact process considering I'm using equipment that wasn't designed for the task.  I usually get a washed out blurry picture with a lot of background noise and a fingerprint or two.

Well no longer.  Check this baby out.

The secret?  Well, I noticed the scanner wasn't picking up the detail that I could see on the negatives.  I was sorting negatives by holding them up to the window...  picture against a clear blue sky...  Just like...  X-RAYS!

So.  I took a sheet of white paper and placed it over a spotlight.  Placed the negative on the paper and details were plainly visible.  I then took a picture of said negative, uploaded it to the computer, clicked on negative image and...  instant picture.  almost no fuss, no muss and a MUCH clearer image.  In fact I can now tell that this young lad is holding a 1950's model Sawyer Viewmaster.

Possibly, if my educated guesses are right, the very same Viewmaster that was once used to view this particular disk:  Adventures of Sam Sawyer, Sam In The Land Of Ice.  Sam was a character (clay without the mation) invented by Sawyer to increase the sales of Viewmasters.  Disk 1 had him off to the moon long before NASA...  Sadly not a disk I have.

Last trip home, Ma gave me MY old Viewmaster, itself probably a Christmas present.  Now I can view my old disks of Tom and Jerry, The Six Million Dollar Man and Treasure Island as well as the disks that once belonged to the one in the picture of Sam Sawyer, Roy Rogers and baseball stars of the Major Leagues ca 1953.