When life gives you lemons, make a scanner

[Avotius]

I need to get a scanner as the lab in town quadrupled their prices. But in the last week I have found that scanners here in China have an anywhere between 50-300% premium on them. Yikes!

So as I also have some other equipment purchase obligations now and I only need basic scans for reviewing and online use, and then just get the lab scans of what I need later....I just made my own scanner rather then spending money on it.

I used my Olympus EP1 and an old film holder for another scanner and set them up in front of my computer LCD with a white background and it works great, though when I am actually "scanning" I cover up the sides and top of the area between the scanning plate and the camera to cut reflections because I found the chrome body of the EP1 was reflecting on the film (especially the slides). The toothpick is for moving the negative in the holder without touching it which worked great. That is the kit zoom lens on the EP1 which focuses pretty close and though I cannot fill the frame with the negative, the quality is acceptable for my reviewing and online uses!

I can do black and white with reasonable quality, slides so so and color negatives I have not been able to figure out yet, they dont scan well this way it seems. so I may still end up buying a scanner but in the mean time, a decent way to save money!

ps. you might notice what I am using to hold the scanning plate in place, so technically this scanner is really bloody expensive but the old brick will to the trick as well.

pps. I should mention my settings for scanning. I was just using max quality jpg (as there is no inverse color option in camera raw it turns out) with the two second time on and the in camera profile set to normal with everything on zero. Center weight metering, f8, aperture priority, and auto focus on center point. I had the camera on a tripod in front of the desk and the USB plugged in so I could check my results on screen without having to move the camera.

 

[Avotius]

Here are photos I used this thing to "scan"

*all taken with Leica M6, Zeiss 21mm f2.8, Ilford HP5

 

[FS Vontz]

They look great, might do this myself you know.

 

[venchka]

Cool. I guess my next "scanner" will be a Micro 4/3 camera.

Very strange about scanner pricing: They are made in China yet they are seriously more expensive at home. Go figure.

 

[Tsai]

nicely done, great images as well

 

[Avotius]

Cool. I guess my next "scanner" will be a Micro 4/3 camera.

Very strange about scanner pricing: They are made in China yet they are seriously more expensive at home. Go figure.

Yeah who would have guessed that a lot of those things that say made in China on them are a lot more expensive here then they are in say America. It is mostly a "luxury" tax that gets slapped on things like this, for instance, a friend of mine recently spent 1,980,000 Yuan on a well to do BMW 7 series, that is over 291,000 dollars if you can believe it!

I guess you could do this kind of scanning with a DSLR too, I had a 20D and a 5D on hand but could not get close enough with the lenses I had and using my macro bellows got me way too close to where I could only scan about 25% of the frame.

 

[David William White]

"necessity is the mother of invention"

Two thumbs up: one for these great photographs (seriously!), and one for your resourcefulness.

 

[johannielscom]

This might be my solution for scanning 6x6 and larger negatives. I only want my B&W scanned like this, if I'm shooting color its 35mm.

Do you find you absolutely need the Pen's resolution to get files of sufficient quality, or do you think lower resolution would also do the trick?

 

[dfoo]

Looks good! I tried this with my 5D and 100mm macro lens, and I never got anything that looked decent. Looks like you've got much better results!

 

[charjohncarter]

I did the same thing:

 

[matt352]

Sweet! Any tips for exposure or reversing the black & white sections in pshop?

 

[Avotius]

Looks good! I tried this with my 5D and 100mm macro lens, and I never got anything that looked decent. Looks like you've got much better results!

I found the hardest part of this was the light source. I tired a table lamp but it was too bright and uneven which led to blocked up highlights and shadows not to mention all the other problems of uneven lighting, then tried my iPod touch with screen brightness turn to max and one of those free flashlight apps set to white but found that I could see the lines between the pixles on the LCD because it had to sit so close to the negative. My computer LCD worked best, could be far enough away so no visable LCD and even lighting but had to watch for reflections off the camera.

 

[Avotius]

I did the same thing:

Wow that is a lot nicer looking then mine. Have you been able to figure out color negatives with that thing yet? Mine all come out really faded and blue with all the colors way off. A white balance issue maybe?

 

[charjohncarter]

Yes, also I do 6x6 and 6x7 with another adapter for copying. For color I use a flash triggered by radio remotes. Color adjustment is done with the custom color balance within the camera. You really only have to set it once. I do a 24 roll of 35mm in 4 minutes, but it takes longer to batch convert from RAW, and batch invert for positive. Then treat like any other positive in PS or PSE. They come out fine for any size print file (TIFF). The quality is good too.

Here is a photo I made in Turkey with a P&S 35mm, using Tmax100, and then a blow up of a section:

and:

 

[oftheherd]

Both good ideas. Avotius, had you considered any of the old slide copiers that were really just a single extention tube with an adapter on the end to take either slides of film. They also had a frosted glass behind them to even out the light. I think some had paper tapes for placement of small flash units that could be set off with long coiled cables or slaved flash. Since all would be used, perhaps the tax to import wouldn't be too much? Or would it?

 

[amateriat]

Nice rig, Colin. Hopefully, a good film scanner will come your way before long (still getting my head around the higher cost of Chinese-manufactured gear stuff in China, as opposed to the same thing sold here, but that's economics for you), but it looks like you can cope for a while.

(And, as usual, great photos!)


- Barrett

 

[robklurfield]

avotius & charjohncarter, kudos to you both for inventiveness. I'm impressed. Nice results, too.

 

[__hh]

I use a GRD/GRDII with the GT-1 teleconversion lens. Set camera to ISO 80, macro focus, auto AF. Press the whole kit against a 135 negative against even-backlit glass/clean window. Works quite well as the GT-1 conversion lens perfectly accommodates the physical size of a 24x36mm negative.

 

[adrianzg]

here's mine:

and results:

100% at the center:

 

[adrianzg]

full frame colour neg:

u'll have to adjust levels in photoshop. invert the photo, select the black, unexposed area as shadow, then select highlight, and tweak the individual channels till it's satisfactory.