paparazzi mano
Established
Hi'yall
I was wondering if anyone has used the old trick of using a camera to make scans of their negatives? a la copy stand method.
I don't have enough space for a cheap flatbed scanner and can't afford dedicated scanner.
Appreciate some advice.
G'day
I was wondering if anyone has used the old trick of using a camera to make scans of their negatives? a la copy stand method.
I don't have enough space for a cheap flatbed scanner and can't afford dedicated scanner.
Appreciate some advice.
G'day
DabCan10
Established
I have a V700 at home, but I'm in Paris for 6 months and couldn't take it with me. I've been "scanning" my photos with my digital camera and macro lens plus a holder made from a cardboard box and my laptop screen as a light source. I wrote a post on my blog:
https://craftcollective.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/diy-diaper-scanner/
Any of the recent film pictures in my flickr stream are from this method (titles start with DSC as they were scanned with my Nikon). You do have to do some editing in photoshop though, but it's quite quick Let me know if you have any questions.
https://craftcollective.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/diy-diaper-scanner/
Any of the recent film pictures in my flickr stream are from this method (titles start with DSC as they were scanned with my Nikon). You do have to do some editing in photoshop though, but it's quite quick Let me know if you have any questions.
Fujitsu
Well-known
Sure, has been tried a lot but will cost a lot of time and dedication (and a good digital camera and a macro lens).
I say you´d get easier and better results with a current Plustek 7600. (Quite affordable, good sharpness and probably better dynamic range than the digital camera method.)
paparazzi mano
Established
Many thanks
Many thanks
Thank you for your suggestions. The diaper methode is the way I was thinking. Would like a Plustek but the dimensions of my apartment and the current financial situation requires me to be more creative.
I was wondering if anyone have used the old "copy stand" methode?
BTW what was the software that was used to convert the negative to positive?
BBTW I would like to spend 6 months in France. How did you get such a gig?
Cheers
P
Many thanks
Thank you for your suggestions. The diaper methode is the way I was thinking. Would like a Plustek but the dimensions of my apartment and the current financial situation requires me to be more creative.
I was wondering if anyone have used the old "copy stand" methode?
BTW what was the software that was used to convert the negative to positive?
BBTW I would like to spend 6 months in France. How did you get such a gig?
Cheers
P
DabCan10
Established
I use photoshop to invert (cmd/ctrl + I), you then have to change levels (cmd/ctrl + L) and bring the light and dark points in a bit or it looks washed out. You can get fairly quick at it, but it's not going to match the quality or convenience of a good scanner.
The Paris gig is due to my wife becoming a pastry chef, 6 months of schooling and everything she makes comes home at the end of the day (poor me...). This leads to lots of daily walks where I take pictures around Paris. It was funded through many years of overtime at 3 different jobs for each of us, well worth it in my opinion.
The Paris gig is due to my wife becoming a pastry chef, 6 months of schooling and everything she makes comes home at the end of the day (poor me...). This leads to lots of daily walks where I take pictures around Paris. It was funded through many years of overtime at 3 different jobs for each of us, well worth it in my opinion.
randomm
Well-known
I use both Plustek and photographing negatives (both colour and b&w) using extension rings on 5D. The quickest and best way to invert the negatives is by using a Photoshop Colorneg plugin, for both color and b&w.
dbarnes
Well-known
Slide copier attachment
Slide copier attachment
About the same time that I started putting my Bessa R kit together, I sold a Nikon Coolpix 5400, which is a 5MP digital point-and-shoot circa 2005. Nice camera, quite rugged and deluxe for its day. Nikon made several attachments for it, including a slide copying rig that probably could have been used for neg scanning. Now that I'm accumulating negs again, I'm wondering if I sold the 5400 a bit too early. At its 5MP setting, the camera was sluggish in live picture taking. But that would be less of an issue in scanning negs.
Slide copier attachment
About the same time that I started putting my Bessa R kit together, I sold a Nikon Coolpix 5400, which is a 5MP digital point-and-shoot circa 2005. Nice camera, quite rugged and deluxe for its day. Nikon made several attachments for it, including a slide copying rig that probably could have been used for neg scanning. Now that I'm accumulating negs again, I'm wondering if I sold the 5400 a bit too early. At its 5MP setting, the camera was sluggish in live picture taking. But that would be less of an issue in scanning negs.
Jason808
Established
depends on what you want quality-wise, but there's a relatively inexpensive, small footprint negative scanner being sold for around $100 US in various guises. Produces a 5MP image. I've seen a few of the images, and they're OK for 4x6 or maybe an 8x10. I would argue that it's about as good as the old lens attachments for slides-especially if you just want something to put film images on the web.
http://www.adorama.com/VUFPSCAN.html
Again, very basic. Otherwise, I'd consider a service like scancafe.com.
All that said, if you can find the room (once I started thinking in the vertical, with shelving I found lots of room ;-) ) I just spent the $100 on an epson V300 - a very good flatbed scanner, and an OK negative scanner.
http://www.adorama.com/VUFPSCAN.html
Again, very basic. Otherwise, I'd consider a service like scancafe.com.
All that said, if you can find the room (once I started thinking in the vertical, with shelving I found lots of room ;-) ) I just spent the $100 on an epson V300 - a very good flatbed scanner, and an OK negative scanner.
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Colin Corneau
Colin Corneau
I copied a bunch of Kodachrome slides using a 1DMark IV, 100mm macro lens, a solid tripod and a window on an overcast day.
I was most concerned about reproducing K-64's unique colour, and it worked beautifully. Quite sharp, too.
I was most concerned about reproducing K-64's unique colour, and it worked beautifully. Quite sharp, too.
johannielscom
Snorting silver salts
Anybody ever try this with 6x9 negatives? Or larger?
I'd like to hear about your findings and experiences!
I'd like to hear about your findings and experiences!
Fujitsu
Well-known
julio1fer
Well-known
I've done it with old 122 negatives (aprox. 9 x 14 cm), used a lightbox and a P&S Canon A510. Takes a lot of tender loving care. You may want to take a look at:
http://luisalba.blogspot.com/
http://luisalba.blogspot.com/
DabCan10
Established
I've done it with 6x6 negatives, I don't have any cameras with me that take anything bigger though I'm sure it'd work very well.
ethics_gradient
Well-known
You're probably better off getting a dedicated scanner of some sort. I actually did build a DSLR-based slide digitizer at work last week, and while it works great for our uses (quick digitization of thousands of slides for free educational use), we went that route because:
1) we already had high end scanners (several Epson V750s, and even an XL10000), but not enough staffing to operate them
2) we already had a 5Dmk2 and a nice macro lens.
It otherwise wouldn't be at all cost effective versus paying $100-200 for a flatbed with a transparency insert. The results are not as nice as we'd get using the scanners, but in our case, the need to do bulk scanning in a relatively short amount of time made the 5D2 solution preferable. For someone at home, who is just digitizing what they're shooting contemporarily (versus a huge backlog of old stuff), it makes much more sense to just buy a scanner.
A quick write-up, for those who are interested:
LiveView is a godsend for this type of work. Typically I only focus once per day, when I'm getting set up, but this makes it so much easier. Zoom in to 10x, then use the macro rail to fine-tune it. Once you've got it locked down, the slide duplicating stage (and general construction of the station) keep the focal plane constant. Afterwards, I stop down to f/8. Something to watch out for: you need to turn off video mode if you're shooting tethered with LiveView; otherwise the camera will default to auto-ISO in stills mode.
Here's what the station looks like. The camera goes on a 4-way macro rail (generic Chinese brand, $40 or so on eBay), which makes setting it up pretty painless. The slide is held on an old slide copying stand, in this case an Olympus one. Height can be adjusted on the back where the slide goes in. A tube of rolled-up paper serves as a bellows. Overkill, but since I had an old light table at home (actually an X-ray viewer from a dentist's office that I picked up on Craigslist for $20), I brought that in to use as a backlight. It's handy for previewing the slides before I load them, and when I'm dusting. The lens is a Vivitar 90mm f/2.5 Series 1 Macro, it does 1:1 with the adapter it came with. The lens set us back about $150 at KEH, they go for more than that on eBay.
I shoot tethered using DSLR Remote. Right now we're using the free 15 day trial, not sure if we'll ultimately buy it. It crashes every once and a while, but that could be from running it on a netbook with a few other processes in the background. The LiveView window is helpful because it lets me see the slide on the stage in real-time; it helps me get it level for the shot. I keep the folder it's writing to open at the bottom, so that I can enter any information on the slide itself, which can later be added as metadata.
Here's a sample at random, straight out of the camera:
25%
Center crop
Corner crop
You can definitely see some sharpness fall-off in the corner, but whether this is from my lens or what was used to take the picture originally (picture is from the 70's, and I'm pretty sure the photographer wasn't using pro equipment) I can't say. At any rate, we're overall fine with the quality, and the speed over conventional scanners is a great asset.
1) we already had high end scanners (several Epson V750s, and even an XL10000), but not enough staffing to operate them
2) we already had a 5Dmk2 and a nice macro lens.
It otherwise wouldn't be at all cost effective versus paying $100-200 for a flatbed with a transparency insert. The results are not as nice as we'd get using the scanners, but in our case, the need to do bulk scanning in a relatively short amount of time made the 5D2 solution preferable. For someone at home, who is just digitizing what they're shooting contemporarily (versus a huge backlog of old stuff), it makes much more sense to just buy a scanner.
A quick write-up, for those who are interested:
LiveView is a godsend for this type of work. Typically I only focus once per day, when I'm getting set up, but this makes it so much easier. Zoom in to 10x, then use the macro rail to fine-tune it. Once you've got it locked down, the slide duplicating stage (and general construction of the station) keep the focal plane constant. Afterwards, I stop down to f/8. Something to watch out for: you need to turn off video mode if you're shooting tethered with LiveView; otherwise the camera will default to auto-ISO in stills mode.
Here's what the station looks like. The camera goes on a 4-way macro rail (generic Chinese brand, $40 or so on eBay), which makes setting it up pretty painless. The slide is held on an old slide copying stand, in this case an Olympus one. Height can be adjusted on the back where the slide goes in. A tube of rolled-up paper serves as a bellows. Overkill, but since I had an old light table at home (actually an X-ray viewer from a dentist's office that I picked up on Craigslist for $20), I brought that in to use as a backlight. It's handy for previewing the slides before I load them, and when I'm dusting. The lens is a Vivitar 90mm f/2.5 Series 1 Macro, it does 1:1 with the adapter it came with. The lens set us back about $150 at KEH, they go for more than that on eBay.
I shoot tethered using DSLR Remote. Right now we're using the free 15 day trial, not sure if we'll ultimately buy it. It crashes every once and a while, but that could be from running it on a netbook with a few other processes in the background. The LiveView window is helpful because it lets me see the slide on the stage in real-time; it helps me get it level for the shot. I keep the folder it's writing to open at the bottom, so that I can enter any information on the slide itself, which can later be added as metadata.
Here's a sample at random, straight out of the camera:
25%
Center crop
Corner crop
You can definitely see some sharpness fall-off in the corner, but whether this is from my lens or what was used to take the picture originally (picture is from the 70's, and I'm pretty sure the photographer wasn't using pro equipment) I can't say. At any rate, we're overall fine with the quality, and the speed over conventional scanners is a great asset.
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TareqPhoto
The Survivor
I did a test but the scanner won the game for now until i can do it with DSLR much better way, you can see an example or 2 here:
Scanner
DSLR
DSLR
Scanner
Scanner
DSLR
DSLR
Scanner
Chris101
summicronia
Negatives look better scanned with the Coolscan 5000, but I had a job with about 200 post cards to digitize, and just set up the copystand for that!
TareqPhoto
The Survivor
I really wait the time when i can upgrade to film scanner or a drum scanner for MF negs/slides, my V750 doing the job but i feel there are hidden details still there and needed better scanner to show it.
doolittle
Well-known
I have scanned both slides and negatives using an inexpensive lightbox, dSLR and macro lens. Using tripod, mirror lock up and shutter release cable and watching out that get no reflections from other light sources. Usually need to crop and straighted a tad. Simple inversion (ctrl-I) in photoshop, followed by a few tweaks. Results are passable once get camera absolutely still. It's fine if you don't have too many frames to scan, otherwise it gets old pretty fast!
Chris101
summicronia
You can vastly inprove the performance of the V750 (or any flatbed) by wet scanning. Here is a p.net article that provides several links to sources and descriptions.
healyzh
Well-known
I haven't tried this yet, but need to put together a setup to do this with slides that aren't practical to scan. I finally got a lightbox a couple weeks ago. I'll be attempting this with some of the ViewMaster reels I made in the late 80's (I own several ViewMaster cameras).
I have seen a very interesting take on this method using an LCD monitor as light source for copying 4x5 negatives. It gives it a rather pixelated look.
Right now for 35mm, 120, and 4x5 I'm using an aged Epson 2450 that I recently picked up used to replace my Epson 2400 (the 2450 adds the ability to scan 120 and 4x5). I keep hoping Epson will upgrade the 750.
I have seen a very interesting take on this method using an LCD monitor as light source for copying 4x5 negatives. It gives it a rather pixelated look.
Right now for 35mm, 120, and 4x5 I'm using an aged Epson 2450 that I recently picked up used to replace my Epson 2400 (the 2450 adds the ability to scan 120 and 4x5). I keep hoping Epson will upgrade the 750.