Transparency to digital format incompatibility... ideas?

[hepcat]

I have an Epson 4490 flatbed scanner. It's slow and tedious and not very effective for 35mm. Years ago, I bought a "pretty good quality" T-2 mount 1:1 to 2.5:1 zoom transparency duplicator that I've used successfully for years. It works great for 1:1 copying using 35mm.

Now it's confession time... my 85 year old father gave me cases of our family slides to duplicate in digital. Thinking blithely that I'd just tripod mount my Panny GX-1 body and slam them through quickly using the slide duplicator, I bought a T2-m4/3 adapter and all is well... until I tried to copy the first slide. Yes, you guessed it, 1:1 really means 1:1. So I'm getting about 60% of a 35mm frame on the 4/3rds sensor. Duh. Never crossed my mind. So what I need is probably about a .7:1 ratio...

I've racked what's left of my brain this morning to figure out how to reduce the image from the duplicator to the sensor using this thing and I'm coming up empty. Does anyone have any grand ideas besides abandoning the idea of using this duplicator with this body altogether? I suspect that there are no solutions, but I thought I'd ask to see if any of our creative folks here have conquered this.

Thanks!

Roger

 

[daveleo]

Roger,

a few years back my solution to this same problem was to use a light box. I made a black mask with a slide-sized hole in it. taped that over the light box (do a white balance first). I had a micro lens, but I think any modern zoom witha macro camera setting will work fine. Set a homemade copy stand (1X3" pine wood) above it. Set manual focus and exposure and leave it there.
Popped a slide into the opening, hit the shutter . . . next slide . . . etc etc

Slides record with high contrast so you may want to tweak that in your camera settings (if you can).

They came out okay. Nothing like a reall projected slide in a dark room (what is ???), but they are okay for monitor vieing.

 

[hepcat]

Roger,

a few years back my solution to this same problem was to use a light box. I made a black mask with a slide-sized hole in it. taped that over the light box (do a white balance first). I had a micro lens, but I think any modern zoom witha macro camera setting will work fine. Set a homemade copy stand (1X3" pine wood) above it. Set manual focus and exposure and leave it there.
Popped a slide into the opening, hit the shutter . . . next slide . . . etc etc

Slides record with high contrast so you may want to tweak that in your camera settings (if you can).

They came out okay. Nothing like a reall projected slide in a dark room (what is ???), but they are okay for monitor vieing.

Thanks, Dave. That's a good solution. I know I have other options... I've even got a copy stand and lightbox I could set up properly, and the appropriate macro gear to do it. But I want to be lazy. This goofy slide copier I bought is absolutely the easiest, and foolproof. I just want for it to magically record the entire 2x3 slide frame onto 4/3rds at 1:1. There MUST be a jury-rig for that... or an app? 🙄

 

[willie_901]

Send them to India.

There are several US companies that outsource scanning. They have different costs for different quality scans. You just send them off in a box and download the digital images on-line. Then your slides show up on your door step later.

Also, 60% of 16 MP is still 9.6 Mp. You said, "slam them through quickly". So why isn't 9 + MP good enough for computer-screen viewing? You can make a nice 4X6 print with 9MP. You can always send a few percent of them to a local lab if someone wants big print or higher quality scan.

 

[hepcat]

Send them to India.

There are several US companies that outsource scanning. They have different costs for different quality scans. You just send them off in a box and download the digital images on-line. Then your slides show up on your door step later.

Also, 60% of 16 MP is still 9.6 Mp. You said, "slam them through quickly". So why isn't 9 + MP good enough for computer-screen viewing? You can make a nice 4X6 print with 9MP. You can always send a few percent of them to a local lab if someone wants big print or higher quality scan.

The "scanned" image quality isn't the problem. It's that I'm only recording 60% of the image. 24x34 is a much different aspect ratio than 4:3. I'm getting a 1:1 copy of the 24x36 but in 4:3 format. What I was looking for was a way to reduce the 24x36 image just enough that it would fit into a 4:3 frame... I recognize that would have black on the top and bottom. The other thing I could do is to get a T2 to M mount adapter and shoot it on my M9, but it could take a couple of frames per slide to get the framing right as the slide copier allows for a fair amount of movement on the stage for cropping.

I don't know of a way to do that... so I'll probably break out my copy stand, make a tape jig on the light table and shoot them using the M9 and the Visoflex ala' Dave's solution.

 

[charjohncarter]

I had an easier time as I used an APS-C camera. And with my device I could back it off and have black area framing the 2:3 slide. My biggest problem was getting the color balance correct. But that is another story.

Here is the DIY device I built:

 

[hepcat]

I had an easier time as I used an APS-C camera. And with my device I could back it off and have black area framing the 2:3 slide. My biggest problem was getting the color balance correct. But that is another story.

Here is the DIY device I built:

Wow... that's a pretty snazzy setup!

I broke out my copy stand, lightbox, Visoflex and my 90mm Summicron in the standard focusing mount (on the Visoflex, the lens barrel becomes its own extention tube.) Works like a charm. It's not as elegant as just being able to use the slide duplicator, but it works.

 

[Vics]

Think about out-sourcing to get a big job done quickly. I used Scan Cafe.
http://www.scancafe.com/

 

[Godfrey]

I have an Epson 4490 flatbed scanner. It's slow and tedious and not very effective for 35mm. Years ago, I bought a "pretty good quality" T-2 mount 1:1 to 2.5:1 zoom transparency duplicator that I've used successfully for years. It works great for 1:1 copying using 35mm.

Now it's confession time... my 85 year old father gave me cases of our family slides to duplicate in digital. Thinking blithely that I'd just tripod mount my Panny GX-1 body and slam them through quickly using the slide duplicator, I bought a T2-m4/3 adapter and all is well... until I tried to copy the first slide. Yes, you guessed it, 1:1 really means 1:1. So I'm getting about 60% of a 35mm frame on the 4/3rds sensor. Duh. Never crossed my mind. So what I need is probably about a .7:1 ratio...

I've racked what's left of my brain this morning to figure out how to reduce the image from the duplicator to the sensor using this thing and I'm coming up empty. Does anyone have any grand ideas besides abandoning the idea of using this duplicator with this body altogether? I suspect that there are no solutions, but I thought I'd ask to see if any of our creative folks here have conquered this.

Thanks!

Roger

Roger,

Forget the old duplicator.

Buy an Olympus ZD 35mm f/3.5 Macro lens and a Nikon ES-1 Slide Duplicating Attachment. (I'm assuming you have an Olympus MMF2 or MMF3 or Panasonic MA1 mount adapter.) With this setup on any FourThirds or Micro-FourThirds camera, you can capture the whole slide very easily and very quickly. With an E-M1 body, a full frame capture like this one

​

created an ~11 Mpixel image file (once the unused area was cropped out) that took literally a second to do with no setup to speak of ... I just fitted the slide, used autofocus to focus it, and let auto white balance and auto exposure do their thing after pointing it at my desk lamp. The raw file took very very little processing.

The ZD 35 Macro is a bargain ... typically $170 new, I bought mine for $165 years ago. The Nikon ES-1 cost $65 from a Japanese seller through Ebay ... delivered in 5 days. Works perfectly together, and produces image quality on par (or better than!) my $2500 Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 ED film scanner at 20x the speed.

G