Thread: Film/slide scanning

Hi Fred,

I have undertaken the task of digitising all of my slides just recently and did it by using my Canon EOS DSLR camera.

I made a light box - well cut a hole in a cardboard one, shoved a bright white LED in it, cut a hole in the top and fitted an opaque filter over the hole. I mount the camera on the tripod over the box and it is that simple. I use a 60mm prime macro lens and the results are outstanding.

If you were to google 'photographing colour slides' you will find a wealth of info.

There will always be a bit of work to do to the saved image but with Photoshop it is fairly easy. Doing colour negatives is a bit more drawn out but again fairly easy once you have the technique down pat.

Hope this helps

Originally Posted by Big Shed

Thanks Ian, yes I have read quite a few reviews on that site, including this one and the Epson V700. Also the Canoscan 8800 and 9000

I was thinking less about the scanner performance and more about these quotes at the beginning

"I've just retired and I've got a lot of old slides and negatives I want to digitize," this frequent request starts. "What scanner do you recommend?"
Frankly, we don't recommend a scanner at all. Figure an hour for every roll of film on your high-end flatbed scanner or even a dedicated 35mm scanner and, well, you retired too late. If the tedium doesn't kill you, something else will.

in the second round of the exchange, we try to explain the difference between a cheap flatbed scanner that can handle Jumbo prints and a real film scanner. That doesn't discourage anybody either.
Not that they'll buy a scanner that can handle film. No, no, no. They'll grab a multifunction printer or an inexpensive flatbed with a transparency unit on top.

Originally Posted by BazzaDLB

Hi Fred,

I have undertaken the task of digitising all of my slides just recently and did it by using my Canon EOS DSLR camera.

I made a light box - well cut a hole in a cardboard one, shoved a bright white LED in it, cut a hole in the top and fitted an opaque filter over the hole. I mount the camera on the tripod over the box and it is that simple. I use a 60mm prime macro lens and the results are outstanding.

If you were to google 'photographing colour slides' you will find a wealth of info.

There will always be a bit of work to do to the saved image but with Photoshop it is fairly easy. Doing colour negatives is a bit more drawn out but again fairly easy once you have the technique down pat.

Hope this helps

Thanks for that, funnily enough I made a copy of a professional slide copier, the one with the extra flash at right angle to the copying path to reduce contrast, quite some years ago. I think it went when I sold most of my still cameras and darkroom gear.

I still have a Soligor Flexomatic bellows with slide copier attachment, might give that a try. But, as mentioned above, I always found that slide duplicating in that manner increased contrast on an already contrasty film medium. Might be different with digital though, haven't really investigated, but will do so now.

Originally Posted by ian

I was thinking less about the scanner performance and more about these quotes at the beginning

"I've just retired and I've got a lot of old slides and negatives I want to digitize," this frequent request starts. "What scanner do you recommend?"
Frankly, we don't recommend a scanner at all. Figure an hour for every roll of film on your high-end flatbed scanner or even a dedicated 35mm scanner and, well, you retired too late. If the tedium doesn't kill you, something else will.

in the second round of the exchange, we try to explain the difference between a cheap flatbed scanner that can handle Jumbo prints and a real film scanner. That doesn't discourage anybody either.
Not that they'll buy a scanner that can handle film. No, no, no. They'll grab a multifunction printer or an inexpensive flatbed with a transparency unit on top.

Yes Ian, I did read that part, in fact all 4 reviews I mentioned started with the same "warning'. The time factor doesn't seem to faze SWMBO, it would be done over an extended period of time, not in a concentrated burst. At the end of the day no matter which method we settle for, other than having them done professionally, will involve a fair bit of time, even the slide copier idea above.
She is doing all our printed photos at present and has so far managed to do about 1500 and there is still a far more than that to go.

Virtually all film duping systems I have used, had the ability to double expose the receiving film. The idea being that the first exposure was a controlled amount of diffused flash, then the next exposure was of the film being duped.

Doing this lowered the contrast quite measurably and you are able to maintain total control.

I have a complete Vivitar slide copying and film duping system, brilliant system. It has a Nikon T mount adaptor ( think that is what it’s called) which allows me to directly couple my Nikon bodies to the first bellows. One then uses any optics deemed suitable enough to copy whatever you are copying. Normally I use my 55 2.8 micro Nikkor with excellent results.

I haven’t used it in years, still have some bulk Kodak SO-399 duplicating film and a few rolls of standard SO-399 dupe film.

Almost all light sensitive material is able to have it’s inherent contrast lowered by pre-flashing. Be that in camera with film or in the darkroom on paper and sometimes film. I would think that the electronic receptor thingy in your camera, probably works along the same lines as light sensitive material coated to cellulose acetate.

A hybrid system using your electronic camera plus a manual bellows copying system and a good lens, may be a viable solution.

I still use film, mainly large format these days.

Mick.

Thanks Mick, as I said in my reply to BazzaDLB above, I too have a bellows and slide copier, one of the few things still left over from a mountain of photographic gear.

At one time I was State Manager of a photographic importing business and sold some major brands. I also obtained a Diploma in Photography and was quite active in APS, functioning as a competition judge on both state, national and international level. Taking part in photographic exhibitions/competitions meant I had to be familiar with slide duplicating as well as colour printing. I had a rather well equipped darkroom with a 4x5 dihroic colour enlarger and full colour film and print processing, as well as doing black % white printing.

Your Vivitar bellows and slide copier would be very similar, if not the same as my Soligor one, I actually got it out today but haven't fired a shot in anger yet. I normally used my Rodenstock enlarger lenses with this, as they give very good results with this sort of setup. Incidentally, one of those Soligor bellows with slide copier sold on Ebay this week for about $12

I have yet to find my other slide copier with contrast reducing flash facility, but will hopefully tomorrow. We have lived here for nearly 11 years and we still have stuff in boxes If I can find it, and it works, it would probably cover all my film copying requirements as I built it to handle all formats from 35mm to 4"x5".

I am not convinved that the increase in contrast with digial copying will be as severe as it was with the old colour emulsion film, but we shall see.

The quest continues.

This all started as a simple desire by SWMBO to dgitise our photo collection, a task that I thought would be relatively simple with all the new digital technology now available.
I am however rapidly finding, in no small measure because of the excellent responses to my orginal qaustion, that things are not as simple as I imagined. They never are, are they?
SWMBO has always hated my preference for slides rather than prints, as she is now reminding me ever so gently

Could be that in another life for both of us, we may have crossed paths a bit.

Mick.

Originally Posted by Optimark

Almost all light sensitive material is able to have it’s inherent contrast lowered by pre-flashing. Be that in camera with film or in the darkroom on paper and sometimes film. I would think that the electronic receptor thingy in your camera, probably works along the same lines as light sensitive material coated to cellulose acetate.

Originally Posted by Big Shed

I am not convinved that the increase in contrast with digial copying will be as severe as it was with the old colour emulsion film, but we shall see.

AFAIK, most decent DSLRs allow you to adjust the image contrast at capture -- but I'm unsure whether the contrast adjustment occurs at the point of image capture (by changing the some aspect of the receptor) or whether it's a software "fiddle" as the data is read off the receptor and written to the storage media.
either way I can't see how pre-flashing would do anything other than generate a blank shot

However, I'll follow your adventures with digital slide duplicating with interest

Originally Posted by ian

AFAIK, most decent DSLRs allow you to adjust the image contrast at capture -- but I'm unsure whether the contrast adjustment occurs at the point of image capture (by changing the some aspect of the receptor) or whether it's a software "fiddle" as the data is read off the receptor and written to the storage media.
either way I can't see how pre-flashing would do anything other than generate a blank shot

However, I'll follow your adventures with digital slide duplicating with interest

Ian, the slide duplicator I am talking about was based on one sold commercially by Elinchrom and Bowens(?), a lot of the professional labs used them.

http://members.bitstream.net/tlmartin/copiers.html

It doesn't use pre-flashing, nor does it use double exposure, the (adjustable low power) flash is introduced in to the imaging path by way of a special piece of glass placed at 45deg. As the slide is copied the flash is fired through the glass, which introduces a samll, controlled, amount of flare in the image path, which reduces the contrast.

The contrast control is done via "F" in this link

http://members.bitstream.net/tlmartin/parts.html

Here are some more pictures of this unit

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Bowens-Il...item19c785d46c

I am dredging my memory here as I haven't done any "real" photography for about 20 years, sold off all my photographic gear in the early 90s.

I was reading up on image quality manipulation on my Canon DSLR last night and will do some tests with the various settings.

Didn't really want to get this involved in this subject, but there you go.

Thank you for those links Fred

it occured to me today thet the most efficient way to scan moubnted slides might be to get a dedicated photo scanner and enough extra slide holders so that an entire box of slides can be "processed" in one hit. load all the slides into the mounts, scan the lot, then put the slides back into their box.
Might be a little less debilitating compared to nursing teh scanner 4 slides at a time

That's what I can offer.

Hey Waldo, Is that a commercial service you are offering? I could bring my boxes of slides next time I come down to Melbourne.

G'day Fuzie,

It's a Microtek Artixscan 1100 A3 scanner with flatbed and full slide/tranny capabilities. I bought it when I had photographers shoot on film for me. I recently upgraded it with SCSI-USB stuff. I used to use a professional Photshop retoucher from Heaven Pictures who worked with the big ad agenices in town, and he put me onto the scanner.

I could help out if you'd like.

Hi Waldo, I'll be driving down to Melbourne at Christmas. I've got about 6 boxes of slides I really want to scan and maybe twice that number all up. I'll have time on my hands while I'm in Melbourne so maybe we can arrange to do it then.

It seems pointless buying a new scanner for such a small number of slides and I'm perfectly happy with my Epson 1650 for everything else.