BEOON the Leitz Copy Stand

wintoid said:
I got my 50mm f2.8 APO Rodagon-N today. I was able to get almost 100% framing with B+C+D, but I noticed the absolute corners of the 35mm frame had some light falloff.

I've swapped to using B+D+17675X with the 17675X closest to the camera, and the light falloff has disappeared. I seem to get light falloff whenever I use one of the original BEOON tubes closest to the camera.

Anyway, with B+D+17675X I am getting almost 100%, with just a little latitude left in terms of focusing, no light falloff, and finally I am happy. Expensive, though, but will last forever.
Click to expand...
I've these parts as well but still cannot get the lens close enough to the negative. Can you take a picture of your rig so I can see if I've got it wired up correctly? I would appreciate it. Thank you
 
wintoid said:
I got my 50mm f2.8 APO Rodagon-N today. I was able to get almost 100% framing with B+C+D, but I noticed the absolute corners of the 35mm frame had some light falloff.

I've swapped to using B+D+17675X with the 17675X closest to the camera, and the light falloff has disappeared. I seem to get light falloff whenever I use one of the original BEOON tubes closest to the camera.

Anyway, with B+D+17675X I am getting almost 100%, with just a little latitude left in terms of focusing, no light falloff, and finally I am happy. Expensive, though, but will last forever.
Click to expand...
Glad to learn you've found a solution and a way forward.

I'm interested and hope you don't mind a couple of questions.

"Almost getting 100%" - does that mean you're unavoidably cropping the negative, or capturing some of the mask in addition to the full 36x24?

And in relation to the 1:1 marking on the BEOON column, where does a "little latitude left in terms of focusing" sit. Are you close to bottoming with just a turn or possibly two of the focusing knob?
Many thanks.
 
I mean to say that I am getting a tiny (really tiny) bit more than just the negative.

I haven't looked at markings on the column, but there is plenty of room to focus beyond and before the negative, but only just. Probably about a turn.
 
Sounds as though you're sorted, Wintoid.

I like film photography, but it does bring a number of issues for those wishing to digitise, and invariably compromises along the way. I have a plustek 8200i, it does the job both B&W and colour, but it's painfully slow. That's what drew me to the BEOON, but the time (money aside) spent trying to sort it out to my satisfaction would have allowed me to plustek scan a few hundred rolls of film.
 
eBay is probably your best bet. Once I had decided on a BEOON, it only took a few weeks to find a nice one in its original box. If you get one, make sure all the parts, extension tubes (3) and M mount converter are there plus all three of the masques. If you are not using with a digital camera with live view, you will also need the focussing chimney. I would suggest leaving a worldwide search running in the background on eBay. As far as I can see, there are no BEOON's for sale at the moment.

Wilson
 
Gadfly21 said:
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I was looking into the BEOON and wanted to ask if anyone here knew where I could source one.
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I can't see where you're based. Here in the UK I purchased mine from Red Dot Cameras of London. The loupe (chimney) was missing but not a great problem as I use an M240, or sometimes an MFT with an adapter for quick and dirty 'scans'.
 
I'm interested if anyone using a digital M has dust problem when working with a BEOON.

I went through all the thread nad did not read about it. Guess it should be not a problem.

PS: I know it is an old thread, always interesting.
 
robert blu said:
I'm interested if anyone using a digital M has dust problem when working with a BEOON.

I went through all the thread nad did not read about it. Guess it should be not a problem.

PS: I know it is an old thread, always interesting.
Click to expand...
It’s a while since I’ve used a BEOON and for that matter some time also since I last scanned negatives. I became lazy and reverted to digital, plus camera scanning colour negs is a non starter unless you have access to a slick post processing package.
The alternative method for me is using a Plustek that’s more than adequate for both colour and B&W. Each physical scan takes longer, but the faffing in post is almost eliminated.

Risk of dust is proportional to the length of time the negative is exposed in free air. In the case of the Plustek it’s a quick blow with a rocket, then scan, blowing each negative as you go. In the case of the BEOON I think it could be argued that the negative is exposed to free air, and potentially dust, far longer.

I did notice an increase in sensor dust bunnies as I played around with the BEOON, swapping spacer rings and trying out different enlarger lenses (they’re optimised for flat field reproduction) but that’s the downside of opening the lens chamber when changing a lens.
 
robert blu said:
I'm interested if anyone using a digital M has dust problem when working with a BEOON.

I went through all the thread and did not read about it. Guess it should be not a problem.

PS: I know it is an old thread, always interesting.
Click to expand...

I'm not using a digital M (just a lowly Sony NEX-5T) to digitize my negatives, but I've not had much issue with dust. Almost all the photos I've shared on this forum were digitized with the Sony camera on a BEOON. Once you mount the camera on the BEOON with the proper extension tube and taking lens, it's all enclosed. So if you do it in the right order, you shouldn't expose your sensor to any more dust than when you change lenses normally.

For the negatives (or positives), I keep a rocket blower next to me while digitizing. With live view, you should be able to see the biggest bits of dust and be able to blow them off right away. Focus peaking on the Sony cameras really helps to highlight dust in live view. I think only the new M10 has focus peaking. Any smaller bits of dust that aren't easily blown away, I just clone out in post processing. Hope that helps!
 
robert blu said:
I'm interested if anyone using a digital M has dust problem when working with a BEOON.

I went through all the thread nad did not read about it. Guess it should be not a problem.

PS: I know it is an old thread, always interesting.
Click to expand...

Although I haven't used it lately, I did quite a good bit of scanning with the BEOON using various cameras ... Leica M-P 240, M-D 262, SL, CL, and Sony A7. So far, my best results scanning with it have come from using the Color Skopar 50mm f/2.5 at f/11-f/16. I think I bought the complete, in the box, BEOON set for $230 or so back in 2012 or 2013.

I haven't seen any indication that using the BEOON with the digital cameras has led to more sensor dust, nor have I seen any indication that the BEOON scans have more than the usual amount of dust that scanning any film will record.

Lightroom has an excellent workflow with the spotting tool that makes it easy to clean up any scan pretty efficiently and quickly. (In Develop mode, set the view to 1:1, enable the spotting tool, and then press the Home key on your keyboard. The view will jump to the upper right corner. Spot, then press the Page Down key and the view will jump to the next section. Keep doing that... when you get to the bottom of the neg and press the Page Down key again, it will jump up to the top of the next column. With just minimal care to keep from scanning a lot of dust, you can clean a 24 Mpixel image in about a minute and a half this way.)

G
 
Just use an air compressor to eliminate dust from both sides of neg..and a cam w/tilt screen for easy viewing..
Not a Leica M to be sure..as in..no tilt screen..
 
Thank you all for the comments.

Tehe question is because I have opportunity to buy one in a local store and could be an alternative in case my Nikon 5000 ED should die. At least as an emergency solution.

I know that changing lens in a digital M is the way to let dust enter and because I am always worried the few times I have to clean my sensor (I'm not very good in manual operations!) I try all what possible to avoid it.

I'm less concerned for the dust on the film which is a common problem whern scanning as well and I can remove with LR.

Anyway I'll try it and maybe I can use it to "scan" my polaroids. Thanks again.
 
May have mentioned this before... with a 50mm enlarger lens, with appropriate spacer tubes as defined by Leitz for the 50mm camera lens, the Beoon column runs out of height adjustment in that it bottoms out.
I’m wondering if a 63mm enlarger lens would be better in terms of column height adjustment whilst at the same time producing 1:1 reproduction of a 35mm negative.
 
Ricoh said:
May have mentioned this before... with a 50mm enlarger lens, with appropriate spacer tubes as defined by Leitz for the 50mm camera lens, the Beoon column runs out of height adjustment in that it bottoms out.
I’m wondering if a 63mm enlarger lens would be better in terms of column height adjustment whilst at the same time producing 1:1 reproduction of a 35mm negative.
Click to expand...

Hm... maybe not all 50mm enlarging lenses are exactly 50mm? The BEOON manual says it can be used with all model Leica cameras and all 50mm Leica lenses, but I wonder if there's also some variation in the exact focal length of Leica 50mm lenses. I have the BEOON manual, so I'll try to post some scans of it later.
 
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