How to scan 35mm panoramic photos (eg widelux, horizon, xpan) on a Coolscan 5000?

[papasnap]

Hello all!

I've been using a Nikon Coolscan 5000ED very happily for the last couple of years, to scan my regular 35mm rangefinder shots (eg taken on my M7). I'm using Nikon Scan 4 as the scanning software.

I've now ordered a Horizon Perfekt 35mm panoramic camera (I've wanted a 35mm panoramic for a while now, especially after seeing such brilliant recent work as this: http://www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com/#/en/gallery/jens-olof-lasthein/1).

Does anyone out there have any tips they could give me on how I can use my Coolscan 5000ED to scan the nearly double-wide panoramic positives/negatives? Any advice would be great!

My rough plan at the moment is to scan the left and right halves of the photo seperately, then join them together in photoshop (from memory I think photoshop has a built in function for this?). Hopefully this is actually a feasible plan 🙂 I seem to remember finding a blog where someone was doing exactly this.

If I had more cash to spare, I'd simply upgrade to a Coolscan 9000ED or buy a seperate Epson V700/V750. But I'd rather not spend money on more scanning equipment when the 5000ED is such a terrific scanner, and my main use will still just be regular 35mm scanning.

 

[cjcm]

I have read a lot about the 5000ED in the forums, and I didn't find any tips to scan negatives larger than one 24x36 picture. Photoshop (CS3 and above) has a merge function (file->automate->photomerge). You may want also to try Autopano Pro which is a great software to merge pictures and get a panoramic view.

 

[ItsReallyDarren]

What holder are you using to scan your negatives? With the MA-21 there is a film strip holder that has little protruding holders that will block out parts of a panoramic picture. You might have to make 3 scans to get everything for stitching in PS.

 

[Arjay]

+1 to what Darren said.

You could use an FH-3 film strip holder which can go into the MA-21 slide mount adapter.

The strip film holder is specifically designed to hold flat curly film strips, but I think you could modify it to scan doubhle-wide (two frames) pictures, or maybe even triple-wide pictures (three frames, but then keeping the film flat might become a problem).

The FH-3 can take film strips of up to six 24 x 36mm frames.

The FH3 consists of a two-part inner film holder (two film strip frames - top & bottom - that are six 35mm frames wide). Each of these inner film holders is sliding in guides that are held by an outer clam shell style holder. The outer clam shell consists of two parts that are hinged together and can be opened like a book.

The inner film holders have transversal bars that are positioned where the normal 35mm frame borders are. An inner film holder is divided into three pairs of 35mm frames,with the transversal bars in the middle of each pair not running all across the film strip - only the bars separating the pairs actually run across the entire strip height.

So it would be easy to file away the studs, giving you the possibility to move the film along the scanner windows w/o having any bar inside two 35mm film frames!

If you want to be courageous, you could also file away the bars that extend all across the strip height (the ones that separate the frame pairs), but then the inner film holder would have less mechanical stability, and the film would only be held by the outer rim (where the sprocket holes are). Maybe this is not such a bad problem because when the film holder is closed after inserting the film strip, the outer clam shell type parts are locking together, offering further stabilization for the entire holder assembly.

Anyway, this modification might make sense because the inner film holder can slide inside the outer clam shell for three frame widths, so that you could scan a panorama that is three 35mm frames wide completely without the usual frame separating bars.

Naturally, film frame positioning must then be done manually, because the scanner (when used with the MA-21 slide mount adapter) thinks it is scanning individual 35mm slides. The FH3, however, features click stops for every frame position, so advancing the film should not be too difficult.

I have never scanned slides in my Coolscan V ED, so I can't tell you precisely how to control your scanner for panorama fractions via scanner software. Nikon Scan has an automatic function to determine frame borders, and this function can go astray if there are dark shadows extending across the entire film strip height near a theoretical frame border. Maybe you should try the scanner under Viewscan control instead with Nikon Scan because Viewscan treats frame borders differently and offers more freedom to manually determine frame borders..

But anyway, I think this is how you could scan you panoramas.

PS: The FH-3film strip holder is not part of the scanner's standard scope of delivery and must be bought separately. Prices for the FH-3 on ebay vary between US$ 30 and 80.

 

[janosh]

IMO the FH3 won't stand up very well to modification. It's inherently fragile. It might be expanded to more closely approximate 35mm but I doubt very much that it would hold film adequately if width was expanded to come closer to 24 mm.

One solution does involve thin anti-newton glass, which has been available cut to the right size by a specialist (sorry...you'll have to Google) He's said it works but that it is a severe hassle, perhaps not worth the effort. Presumably the glass would allow the FH3 aperture to be expanded since the plastic would have less film holding responsibility.


I think the best approach, if one could afford it, would be to have FH-3 duplicated in aircraft aluminum or other hard metal by a precision machinist...that would be stiffer so might work better and would probably allow the bigger apertures we want.

 

[lewis44]

I seem to remember a thread similar to this some time ago and the result was to get a LS-8000 or 9000, because the software for the 5000 will not allow "no spacing" in either the Nikon Scan or Vuescan.
You may want to contact Ed Hamrick @ Vuescan to verify.