Digitizing slides with a camera

[Dick Roadnight]

Remember the slide copying attachments you could get to copy slides with a macro lens?

Scanning transparencies takes a very long time, so I was thinking that, with a decent macro lens or even a Schneider Digitar Macro I could copy/digitize slides.

You can correct for flash or tungsten, presumably you can do a profile for a type of film... would it be best to  use the enlarger's original bulb or use flash?

If 60Mpx or 48Mpx MS was not enough, there is always quadstitch.

Would my old enlarger be ideal for illumination, or is a diffuser better than a condenser, to minimize the appearance of grain?

With a Medium Format Digital View Camera you can do analog perspective correction while digitizing.

Has anyone tried this,,, and how did/would the results compare with £50 - £500 - £5,000 -£50,000 scanners?

Using camera software, can you successfully invert colour negatives?

I made a camera bracket for the enlarger to convert it into a copy stand.
 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Remember the slide copying attachments you could get to copy slides with a macro lens?

Scanning transparencies takes a very long time, so I was thinking that, with a decent macro lens or even a Schneider Digitar Macro I could copy/digitize slides.

You can correct for flash or tungsten, presumably you can do a profile for a type of film... would it be best to  use the enlarger's original bulb or use flash?

You'd want to use a lightsource that produces equal amounts of signal (= equal noise) with the sensor of your camera when it digitizes white areas in the slide. So that would probably be flash, or daylight filtered tungsten (but make sure you don't heat up the film or it will expand during the exposure).

If 60Mpx or 48Mpx MS was not enough, there is always quadstitch.

Would my old enlarger be ideal for illumination, or is a diffuser better than a condenser, to minimize the appearance of grain?

Yes, a diffuser will help in reducing graininess and dust/scratches. However, make sure you mask of all non-film areas, to avoid lens glare. Scanners use a light slit or a spot, so unwanted reflections can be lower (as will be the temperature of the film)

With a Medium Format Digital View Camera you can do analog perspective correction while digitizing.

Has anyone tried this,,, and how did/would the results compare with £50 - £500 - £5,000 -£50,000 scanners?

You usually get what you pay for, dedicated equipment is better suited for the job, but a copy setup can do a decent job for occasional use. Alignment can be tricky in a copy scenario, because you need to reach high PPI scans to avoid grain aliasing, and DOF is limited at these macro setups.

Using camera software, can you successfully invert colour negatives?

Software cannot compensate for the relatively unbalanced (under)exposure of the green and blue channels very well, you'd better adjust the color of the lightsource in order to neutralize the base mask color (between images or on the leader). The mask removal should be done by altering the exposure time /channel, fine-tuned if necessary in linear gamma space, before the image can be inverted. VueScan Pro it man's best friend in these scenarios as well. It'll take a TIFF as a Raw negative scan data file, and treat is as a scan of a negative.

Cheers,
Bart

[michele]

I do it sometimes... I use a simple flash with a softbox and a slide of plexiglass. It works for few slide but not for massive jobs. With slide and b&w it's great, but with color negatives is very hard to get good results, you can't just invert the photograph, you have also to apply a curve for color grading and the file is smashed. Perhaps with the new negatives from Ilford that have a transparent base is better...

[Kumar]

The Bowens Illumitran was designed for film duping, and can be bought for a fraction of its original price. Along with similar models from Beseler and Chroma Pro, they were standard equipment in most pro labs.

Kumar

[Dick Roadnight]

The Bowens Illumitran was designed for film duping, and can be bought for a fraction of its original price. Along with similar models from Beseler and Chroma Pro, they were standard equipment in most pro labs.

Kumar

...and do these pro systems use condensers, like in an enlarger, or a translucent Plexiglas?

It is a Beseler 23C enlarger I am thinking of using.

[Kumar]

In principle, they are inverted diffusion enlarger heads, with a flash tube added. Color control is with dichroic filters, exactly like a color enlarger. The Illumitran in particular was very popular in the UK, and you might find one in the back of a pro lab.

Kumar

[jeffcpix]

I do it frequently using a Sony a900, a Minolta 50mm macro
and a TTL Minolta flash. I use a Sinar rail, Sinar P rear standard without frame,
Sinar F focusing standad (for negative carrier and diffusion plate), a Sinar accessory
standard to mount the flash and the four bladed Sinar Bellows mask to reduce flare. Works great though PP  negs requires judicious color adjustments. Images are grain sharp.

[Rob C]

I have done it by putting slides (6x6 and 6x7) onto my transparency viewer and simply copying with the D700.

Make a dedicated black mask to suit the format and large enough to cover the rest of the screen of the viewer, tape the tranny flat to the perspex and switch out the studio/office lights.

The problems are this: you are as good as your eye is to square the two up; the limitation is always the size of sensor on the copy camera.

I have posted some from this technique here and also on my website; they are the square(ish) colour shots and, if you want, I can give you their location within the site.

Rob C

[vandevanterSH]

Which method would give the better result in converting film to digital; 1) Camera: either 16MP MFDB or 16MP DSLR  2) Epson 750 flat bed scanner?

Steve

[John.Murray]

I've tried both with MF format transparencies and negs.  In my experience there is no comparision, a properly setup film scanner (in my case a Microtek Artixscan) is far superior.  Please note that for me, quality trumps time.....

[Rob C]

I've tried both with MF format transparencies and negs.  In my experience there is no comparision, a properly setup film scanner (in my case a Microtek Artixscan) is far superior.  Please note that for me, quality trumps time.....

I don't think there's any argument with that. I just don't own a 120 scanner and for the very few trannies I still have in that format, it would be crazy even to think of one. If I did have one, though, and a real use for it and the cameras, I'd love to get myself back into the 500 series again... My experiment with copying 120 formats on the D700 was limited to getting those pix onto the website; nothing beyond that, and the interest to see if it would work. It did, within the parameters I'd set myself.

Rob C

[Dick Roadnight]

Which method would give the better result in converting film to digital; 1) Camera: either 16MP MFDB or 16MP DSLR  2) Epson 750 flat bed scanner?

Steve

That would depend on the film format, the scanner rez etc.

[Dick Roadnight]

I don't think there's any argument with that. I just don't own a 120 scanner and for the very few trannies I still have in that format,...

Rob C

I have (somewhere) a Polaroid Sprint Scan 120...
I cannot remember if it does raw, but I do not think so... can you get drivers for this now?

[Bob Smith]

lots of extensive articles about equipment and workflow for using camera scans at:
http://www.dpbestflow.org/camera/camera-scanning#film

Bob Smith

[Dick Roadnight]

lots of extensive articles about equipment and workflow for using camera scans at:
http://www.dpbestflow.org/camera/camera-scanning#film

Bob Smith

That is interesting, thank you...

If they think results are adequate and compare to an imacon when they use a Canon, then using a 4 shot 48Mpx SinarBack and an Apo-Digitar macro should be good, and the Sinar system is a rail, and you can even use a spare standard to correct perspective.

It is interesting that there is no mention of Condensers,,, but I could use the Negatrans film transport from my Besler. I have the Hasselblad slide copier attachment.

[Bob Smith]

I have a Beseler slide dupe unit like what is described at the link I posted.  I purchased it years ago for making internegs in my color darkroom.  It's perfect for this sort of use.  The light source is essentially a Beseler color enlarger head turned upside down... so its the standard color enlarger diffusion light source.  They simply added a flash tube so that you can focus by continuous light and expose by electronic flash.  That unit will take any Beseler 6x7 neg carriers including a negatrans.  That setup should be extremely productive.  I also have an Imacon Precision II scanner.  Shooting with a 5DII on the Beseler rig with a good enlarging lens is way preferable to the Imacon in terms of productivity... and you certainly don't gain much if anything in terms of image quality on the Imacon.  By using the camera I can shoot tethered right into Lightroom and use more modern software tools for image processing and total workflow.  Better workflow and probably better image quality but I confess I've never tried the two side by side.  I could do hundreds of good camera scans in a day... a few dozen Imacon scans.

Bob Smith

[vandevanterSH]

That would depend on the film format, the scanner rez etc.

120 film.  Hasselblad CFV, Nikon D300 vs Epson 750 Pro.

Steve