Lightbox and Digital Camera instead of flat bed scanner?

[pharyngula]

I recently picked up a Plustek 7600 for scanning old slides and my current B&W and color negatives. I'm pretty happy with it so far. However, I've been thinking about using a flatbed scanner mostly to complement the dedicated Plustek for creating digital contact sheets.

But I'm wondering whether it is instead worth trying to use my Nikon D700 and light box to make contact sheets? I'd be happy to hear any pros and cons process-wise (workflow vs flatbed) and whether the quality is likely to be acceptable for this purpose. I mostly want a way of quickly seeing what I've got on each roll - I'd still inspect "candidates" for scanning with the Plustek using a loupe and light box.

I have the camera (and a right angle finder) and a nice copy stand from the old days but would need a light box (otherwise I would have just tried it already). I know that I can get a scanner for pretty cheap but it isn't so much the money as the workflow, convenience and the desk space that I am thinking about. By the way, I can can preview and control the D700 tethered in live view with my Mac.

 

[wblynch]

Isn't that basically what those $89 scanners do? Put a light box behind the negative and snap it with a digicam. Might be a quick and easy solution to your 'contact sheets' idea.

 

[tokengirl]

I am about to try this with my 5DMkII and 100mm macro lens, a small lightbox and an old Beseler negative carrier. I probably won't get around to it until the weekend, but I'll post results once I try it.

 

[pharyngula]

I am about to try this with my 5DMkII and 100mm macro lens, a small lightbox and an old Beseler negative carrier. I probably won't get around to it until the weekend, but I'll post results once I try it.

Thanks, I look forward to hearing what you think.

Isn't that basically what those $89 scanners do? Put a light box behind the negative and snap it with a digicam. Might be a quick and easy solution to your 'contact sheets' idea.

More or less I suppose, I guess it depends on the scanner. I realize a suitable flat bed would do the job well as many have reported. The hassles I see have more to do with the bed area available for scan and how many of your film strips/slides will fit in that area. Then there is the hooking up, capture software, desk space, etc. and scan times. I've got nothing against a flatbed and, in the end, that might well be the better solution. But I've been planning to get a light box in any event so I figure I might as well just try it out with the camera first.

 

[md2008]

See my post here for an example of making a crude contact sheet on a lightbox - I used my D700 hand held. It helps to stop down to f/8-11 due to the curling of the negs on the lightbox.

 

[pharyngula]

Thanks - that is exactly the experience I was hoping to hear. And I do like the fact that the film edges are visible - reminds me of the old days with silver print contacts! I also think the quality is fine for what I intended.

I was hoping to leave my negatives in the the looseleaf clear plastic storage sheets I use and then hold everything flat on the lightbox with a sheet of glass.

It doesn't look like you had much obvious light fall-off at the edges even with a bargain light box?

What lens were you using on the D700?

thanks,

Doug

 

[tokengirl]

Ok I tried it out this morning with a Kodachrome slide. It worked like a champ! I was having trouble scanning the Kodachrome with my Epson V750, getting the colors anywhere near correct was next to impossible, and I tried the Epson, software, Silverfast and Vuescan.

I used a Canon 5DMkII with a 100mm macro lens at f8 set on a tripod, with the slide in an old negative carrier placed directly on top of a cheapo Hakuba 5X7 lightbox. I focused manually using 10X Liveview.

I am happy to say that with only very minor adjustments in Lightroom, I now have a "scan" that looks pretty much exactly like the actual slide.



And here are a couple of crops so you can see the detail:





The slide was originally shot with a Fuji Klasse W point & shoot camera.

 

[Arjay]

Taking a digital macro shot to reproduce a simgle film frame looks like a fairly viable way, because it only requires even lighting on a small portion of a lightbox.

Shooting an entire film in its storage archival sleeve is a different thing altogether. I use a Hama LP 5000 K light table to do just that, and while I get reasonable 'contact sheets' for reference purposes, I would not want to rely on that technique to crop out individual frames for anything more than just rough viewing. This is because a light table with such a large surface (13.8 x 16.5 in / 35 x 42cm in my case) most likely does not provide a sufficiently even illumination.

@ md2008: What kind of light box did you use? The lighting quality of your light box looks very impressive - it's orders of magnitude better than what I am getting.

 

[Jamie123]

In the past I've done 'quick and dirty' contact sheets using my Canon 5DII on a tripod and my computer screen with a white document opened as a light box. My main reason for doing this was speed so the set-up was anything but careful. For preview purposes the results were decent for medium format film and just about useable for 35mm. Of course the quality was nowhere near any kind of standard for web viewing let alone print but it did give me a rough idea of which ones I should scan properly.
If you use a computer screen as a lightbox, make sure to place some kind of diffusion foil between the negs and the screen otherwise you'll see the pixel pattern.

I'm sure the quality will be much better if you use a proper copy stand. If you have some plexiglass and a flash that can be triggered wirelessly you might not even need a lightbox. You can light the plexiglass from the bottom with the flash. Just make sure the light is even enough. One idea would be to place a white sheet of paper at a certain distance under the glass and bounce the flash off that paper onto the plexiglass.

 

[spanish_inquisition]

I am about to try this with my 5DMkII and 100mm macro lens, a small lightbox and an old Beseler negative carrier. I probably won't get around to it until the weekend, but I'll post results once I try it.

I have been doing this with a canon 50D and a 100mm macro on a light table. It works for BW, but not for color. The problem is extracting all the color from C41 film is a PITA because of the orange hue of the base. Scanners have good color-cast removal algorythms. My canon 9000f beats the dSLR+macro scanning solution for color negative film but the dSLR provides sharper BW film scans. the dSLR solution works well for slide film, but watch out for blowing out highlights and watch your shutter speed. You want to be at 1/50th of a sec or 1/25th of a sec to catch a full cycle of the AC current that drives the lamp (otherwise you will see weird color banding in due to the lightbox).

Ghe