Photographing instead of Scaning negatives

[Ewoud]

I've just met a guy who says he prefers photographing his slide's and negatives with a macrolens on his dSLR, using a lichtbox with daylight temperature.


Like this thing:
http://www.photowarehouse.co.nz/product.php?i=127488

Has anybody gotten any experience with this.. ?

It sounds kinda cheap but could spare me like 300 euro's for a nice scanner.



I found one of those lichtboxes for like 70 euro's somewhere..

 

[kbg32]

A better solution is to see if you can find an old slide duplicator, such as Soligor, and see if you can adapt it to your camera.

Or these- http://slidecopier.com/

http://www.bugeyedigital.com/product_main/bow-sdd.html

 

[charjohncarter]

I have done DSLR macro photographing the slides and negatives. It is a hassle, but the if you get it right you will get a very good result. The big problem is you have to set up the negative or slide after each shot for the next (they are always sliding around, not to mention post processing). The light box can be a problem too. The light has to be just the right intensity, or you will get a very narrow histogram. I suppose you could open or close a stop but that is difficult with a DSLR even in manual mode. I agree with kbg32 get a slide duplicator, it will give, I think, equal quality and will be much faster.

 

[Finder]

With slide dupe film, I used a view camera and a light box to make exellent 4x5 slides of some medium-format slides. The light box was a Fujicolor panel. Naturally with dupe film there is a certain amount of testing as it has no actual color temperature. But once you get a good filter pack, it is quite easy. I also know this can be done with a color enlarger.

 

[Bryce]

I've done this with a 6mp dslr, bellows unit, slide copier and enlarger lens.
It would take a week to explain how I grafted all those pieces together, but anyway it works reasonably well. Any macro lens could work. Here are the limitations as I've found them.
1) Not nearly enough exposure latitude to scan a slide. This might be overcome with HDR software and multiple exposures, but I never tried it.
2) Tricky conversion from c-41 negatives to positive images. I even tried "neutralizing" a negative of a gray card, everything was still whacky. That said, I struggle with color balance any way.
3) Resolution rather limited, but noise much less a problem than scanners. So not nearly enough to capture grain in B.W.

Pluses-
1) No filter pack required. Set your white balance in the camera, manually.
2) No scanner to buy.
3) I tried both a light table and a flashgun against a white card as a light source. Both work.

Hope this helps.

 

[Ewoud]

Tnx, everyone I will try it first using custom wb on my dslr(Canon 20D 8MP) with a light box.
If that isn't good enough or to much of a hassle I wil look into the slide copier.

I guess it will have a better dynamic range then the Plustek 7200 scanner I was thinking about..

 

[vicmortelmans]

Before I bought me a filmscanner and also lacking a DSLR, I tried to do this using a (quite advanced) digital P&S (canon powershot G2). To get the proper focusing, I required a close-up filter in the range of 7 dioptry to 10 dioptry. With 7 dioptry, image quality was quite good, but I had to crop and with 10 dioptry, I had massive chromatic aberration.

So that's the reason why I got the scanner. I found one that can batch-scan a complete roll unattended, which was my main requirement. I hate fiddling with negative strips and fragile plastic holders.

But some day, I'll probably revive the P&S-negative-shooter, to try it on my occasional 120 film (because the scanner only takes 135 film)... because it's bigger, it won't require that much close-up-effect.

Groeten,

Vic

 

[pvdhaar]

I use a D50 plus 90mm 1:1 macro plus flash bounced on a white sheet of paper. Not really ideal for getting large amounts of negs to digital, but for the occasional scan it's not bad at all..

 

[HuubL]

I'm interested too. I've been contemplating a Nikon film scanner for a while, but the 9000, able to scan 35mm and MF is way to expensive. I've got a 20D and a 100 mm macro lens. Could you show us some results?
Groet,
Huub

 

[Rico]

You must set up a rig and establish a workflow, but then scanning proceeds rapidly. Here is my extremely crude setup, and the processed result:

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Equipment was Canon 1Ds with ambient light and some random lens. Because of loose framing, I cropped out 90% of the pixels! I also have a Canon FS4000 film scanner, but the tedium is beyond words...

 

[Joao]

Hello
Very informative posts in this thread. I will have to make some decisions on this and I am planning to use a digital camera to photograph 120 B&W negatives. Questions: 1)Can someone recommend the ideal camera for this? 2) Any tips concerning building a homemade lightbox 3) Do the negatives need any sort of frame/holder/carrier to keep them flat, or is it advisable to place them under glass ?
I will be using mainly 6X6 negatives, but would like to be able to photograph also 6X9 negatives in the future.
Thanks for any opinions
Regards
Joao

 

[charjohncarter]

You got me thinking about DSLR copying. One thing I did notice with my DSLR copying is that grain is not as much of a problem as with scanning. Here are three images: full frame DSLR copy, cropped DSLR copy, and cropped scan of the same image. There is no sharpening of the first two images (from RAW), the third was sharpened.

 

[Twigs]

Before I got my scanner I photographed my negatives with an old DC (the Sony T1)

The set up is simple:

camera
v
a piece of black paper with a 24x36mm cut out
v
film
v
glass
v
paper (as a diffuser)
v
lamp

(The picture was of the original set up, with the film between the diffuser and the glass, big mistake.)