Poor man's negative scanner

So, I have like a bazillion rolls of film from high school.... I don't want to continue to cart them around and would like to reclaim the massive amount of space that they take up in my garage.

Poor man setup:

1. set up my D70 on a tripod that was a couple inches off the ground
2. put a color balanced light box with the negative on it.
3. used Nikon 60mm AF f/2.8D macro on the camera
4. focus on negative so that it is close to full frame
5. take image in RAW
6. open in photoshop
7. pump up contrast in raw open dialog
8. invert image
9. levels and pick black and white points then adjust gamma and limits
10. remove dust specs if needed

Well.. it works.

But it's got poor contrast and isn't great color rendition off of color negative. The image is muted/cloudy/out of focus.

Color Neg:

B&W neg:

So, I've decided to bite the bullet and go buy a decent negative scanner... I'll have a Nikon Coolscan V ED as of next monday. :-) I think this will be a lot more workable solution.

It was worth experimenting with though.

-dq