I'm building a large format scanner-camera

[DarioMorelli]

Hi, I'm Dario, from Italy, and I went to this forum in search for experts in medium and large format photography, because I have some dilemmas about my project, and I hope you can help me.
Like the title says, I'm building a large format camera, using a flatbed CCD scanner instead of film.
At the moment I'm having trouble to decide the shape of the final version of the chassis:


The rail in the front is for the lens, with vertical rotation, and the back can move up and down. the big central plate is where the tripod will attach.
generally i'm not interested in perspective control, the vertical shift is only for stitching the various scans. Also I think I don't need the orizontal rotation, or maybe I will need it but it's just too difficult to manage all of these movement without a real ground glass(i have to scan the image to see if it's in focus).

Here it is the gallery with all the photos of the work in progress CLICK
and this is a video I've made some time ago, about the camera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXxjsz6J5Bg

Am I doing it wrong? Do you have some suggestions about the shape and the features of the chassis? Any idea about how to make a "working" ground glass? any suggestion about how improve the overall design? any feedback of some sort?

Also I''m searching for a wide angle lens, or at least something wider than the Industar 300mm.. but I don't have thousands of euros to spend in this project.. there are dozen of large format lenses on ebay under 300$ but I'm not an expert, I don't know what is good or bad.. so again: ...any suggestion?

Thank you in advance.

Oh by the way, is this the right section of the forum for a topic like this?

[feppe]

Can't really help, but if you don't get good information here try the forums on largeformatphotography.info - I bet they would love that project. I sure do.

[Kirk Gittings]

By all means post on the LargeFormat Forum. There are many experts in lenses who participate there and camera builders too. LFF

[EricWHiss]

Cool project - keep us posted on how it goes!  
and I'm sure you've seen these links on building scanner cameras already?

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/09/w..._scanner_c.html


http://golembewski.awardspace.com/

[framah]

Have you thought to try using a Betterlight system?
It is a scanner that works in a 4x5 camera.
Way easier than reinventing the wheel.

[DarioMorelli]

Have you thought to try using a Betterlight system?
It is a scanner that works in a 4x5 camera.
Way easier than reinventing the wheel.

yes, but you know.. a scanner cost about 100€, a betterlight scanning back is something like several thousand €, and I'm not a professional photographer, so cannot be an investment.

And this system provide images probably not much accurate in terms of exposure(compared to betterlight), but very, very much larger in terms of resolution(we are talking about gigapixels).

[BobDavid]

Excellent project!

[EricWHiss]

What kind of software are you using to bypass the scanner manufacturer's checks, turn off the scanners light, and stuff like that?

[DarioMorelli]

What kind of software are you using to bypass the scanner manufacturer's checks, turn off the scanners light, and stuff like that?

I can't bypass anything(i'm on Windows). The light is working, but modified, I can turn it off in any moment with a switch (later will be a sliding contact) and tune the power of the light. this scanner checks the light only on start and stop of the ccd, and decraising the light power, the ccd compensate increasing the amplification, so it works like an ISO knob.

[Fine_Art]

Hi Dario,

I'm glad to see your project worked out on large format forum. I didn't make a login there so I will make my comments here. I wanted to do this years ago but never did due to dust blocking the sensor strip. I didnt want to take apart my scanner until the warranty was over. My understanding was that CCDs are very charged so they draw dust. A ccd strip with dust would scan with black bars. I could not figure a way to have both a hepa filter and no light leaks in.

How are you dealing with dust?

[feppe]

Hi Dario,

I'm glad to see your project worked out on large format forum. I didn't make a login there so I will make my comments here. I wanted to do this years ago but never did due to dust blocking the sensor strip. I didnt want to take apart my scanner until the warranty was over. My understanding was that CCDs are very charged so they draw dust. A ccd strip with dust would scan with black bars. I could not figure a way to have both a hepa filter and no light leaks in.

How are you dealing with dust?

Here's a link to the thread for those interested. And here Dario's flickr page with samples.