Digitizing 35mm negatives using a macro lens

[ced]

Another feather ruffler!

 

[John Koehrer]

Also inexpensive slide duplicators. T mount for the camera & slide holder & translucent plastic behind the slide.
Some had a sliding tube to crop the image.

Want one for postage? It has Pentax thread mount.

 

[benjiboy]

The act of passing a ccd sensor under a negative or photographing it with a sensor within a DSLR is digital (and is off topic for Apug)

If the digital representation of the analogue photograph is then posted to Apug, digital scanning becomes on topic as it serves to advance the learning and understanding of analogue photography (but is still a digital technique)

If a concise tutorial on (digital) scanning for the gallery is posted on Apug, the advice could be used equally for scanning analogue photos not intended for the gallery but is on topic because it may be used for scanning analogue photographs intended for the gallery.

I understand now (I think). Correct me if I am wrong please

Besides any other considerations to submit work to the gallery you need to be a subscriber.

 

[pdeeh]

Bon hasn't posted at apug since 2014.
he got his digitising sorted out ok,but the "welcome" he received rather put him off

 

[M Carter]

I got a cheap slide duplicator from Amazon (polaroid brand, under $30) that attaches to your lens - it has a diopter (magnifier) but I didn't want cheap optics in the way. On my Nikon DSLRs, I use a 25mm extension tube and a 50mm lens, and skip the diopter - works fine and the only glass in the path is from Nikon. I shoot the images raw and tweak them in Photoshop's raw converter. Raw is 16-bit and holds more color info than a JPEG will, and you can dial in the file with a lot of control. Like, a lot - exposure, black levels, highlight recovery, fairly precise color balance, sharpness, etc.

For a light source, I used a daylight kino-flo style fluorescent with diffusion in front of it. You could just as well shoot with sunlight or a bright tungsten light on a white wall, set your color temp with a preset or do a manual white balance (manually white balancing sets the correct temperature, and the magenta-green axis). The duplicator has a diffuser built in. Though with raw images, you only need to get close to judge the image on the camera's LCD, color temp and tint aren't baked into the raw file and have sliders to control in the camera raw interface.

I've worked with very high-end film scanned files for decades in publishing - the DSLR isn't quite in the same league, but for most uses it's just fine.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

A duplicator with bellows and slide/film carrier has the attraction of staying conveniently aligned. There are also devices that are essentially inverted dichroic enlarger heads with a copy stand built in that allow you to filter the color of the light source, and adjust the color balance of the slide/neg, if that's an issue for you.

I use a copy stand with a 5000K lightpad as a light source, macro rail for fine focus, a neg carrier to hold the film, enlarging or macrophoto lenses, and extension tubes, which give you less control than a bellows, but stay in better alignment if you don't have a sufficiently heavy duty bellows (beware of cheap ones with plastic rails from eBay). The camera can be any format the stand will hold, so this arrangement works as well for analogue as digital duplicating, or use copy lights instead of the lightpad for copying prints.

 

[cooltouch]

I got a cheap slide duplicator from Amazon (polaroid brand, under $30) that attaches to your lens - it has a diopter (magnifier) but I didn't want cheap optics in the way. On my Nikon DSLRs, I use a 25mm extension tube and a 50mm lens, and skip the diopter - works fine and the only glass in the path is from Nikon. I shoot the images raw and tweak them in Photoshop's raw converter. Raw is 16-bit and holds more color info than a JPEG will, and you can dial in the file with a lot of control. Like, a lot - exposure, black levels, highlight recovery, fairly precise color balance, sharpness, etc.

For a light source, I used a daylight kino-flo style fluorescent with diffusion in front of it.

[ . . . ]

I've worked with very high-end film scanned files for decades in publishing - the DSLR isn't quite in the same league, but for most uses it's just fine.

You've essentially described my setup. I started off with a "digital" slide duplicator I bought off eBay, and it worked just OK the way it was designed to be used, but it was annoying in that the camera would focus with each slide, and I had to realign it. I didn't have any AF lenses of the right focal length with a non-rotating front element. I eventually came up with my own setup that worked much better. I use a different light source, though. I have an externally mounted strobe that I use -- either a Canon 540EZ or a Nikon SB24, set to fractional output, typically 1/16 or 1/32. Using a strobe is handy because it is very easy to control the amount of light the image receives.

Like you, I removed the diopter from my dupe tube because I didn't want anything between my Nikkor and the slide but air. My dupe tube is kinda long, though, so I wasn't able to use a simple rig like you describe. I first put together a rig that worked with my EOS DSLR, at 1.6x crop factor, which involved extension tubes on both sides of the lens in addition to the dupe tube. I also got rid of the slide holder on the end of the tube and just left a flange there. I bought a Cambron zoom slide duplicator off eBay for a few bucks and removed the slide holder from it (just held onto the duplicator's flange with metal clips) and slid it onto my dupe tube. I also found on eBay a roll film stage that also uses clips to attach to a dupe tube. This lets me dupe negatives and unmounted slides.

After some time, I grew weary of duping images at my EOS's lowly 10.1mp level, so I decided to wait until I could afford something better. Almost two years ago, I bought a NEX 7, and one of the things I use it for is duplicating. It's 24.3mp provides images of 4000x6000, which is up there in high-end Nikon CoolScan territory, but it's way faster and way cheaper. Like Nikon, the NEX's APS-C crop factor is 1.5x. This small difference between the NEX and the EOS required that I redo my dupe rig because the images were about 20% less than 1:1. It involved adjusting the amount of extension before and after the lens, and I was good to go again.

Since getting my NEX, I've essentially had to start all over with duplicating my film images. I have several thousand, so it's taking a while.

Like you, I also use Photoshop's raw converter. It is so good that often the images require no addition processing once they've been converted. I've been able to convert slides that looked almost black to normal looking images. It's amazing.

All the images I've posted here have been film images I've duped using either my EOS or NEX cameras, except for medium format, which I scanned on my Epson 4990. Personally, I think the entire topic of scanning or duplicating emulsion based images should be on-topic for discussion here at APUG. Yes, we're using digital tech, but only to digitize film images so they can be displayed and shared here, on the Web and elsewhere (I have sold duped slide images to publishing houses, and all they wanted was a hi-res scan of the image). Also, if you go over the DPUG and look at their "Scanning and Scanners" forum area, you have to go all the way back to October, 2015 before you find a thread on duplicating with a digital camera. The topic is pretty much dead over there. Even the Scanning and Scanners forum area is very quiet.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

If you want the topic to be discussed on DPUG, then discuss it and there will be responses. DPUG generally has a better signal-to-noise ratio than APUG--less chit chat and more real discussion with experience behind it. Enjoy it before it changes, as all internet forums seem to do.

 

[cooltouch]

Noted. I guess I should just try to gin up some interest over there next time I have a question about the process.

 

[ph]

I went through the first page on this topic at DPUG, sampling&reading headlines, not all posts. One matter that I have found which is not covered there:

The denser bits of my old FP3, Panatomic X etc. b&w negatives, as well as my Kodachromes are difficult to scan. Using bellows give better yields.

It also seems to be faster. For old glass- mounted slides, however, the scanning time is irrelevant. Dismounting or cleaning the glass is the major time factor.

p.

 

[Cholentpot]

I do this extensively. I was unhappy with scanners and through trial and error I came up with a workflow. My scanning workflow feels very much like my darkroom work, it is very important to my shooting film. Without digital scanning I would not shoot much film, if any at all.

I have el-cheapo macrotubes from ebay. I mount a Pentax 50 1.8 on the end and stop it down to about f/8. Negatives get put in a carrier on an Amazon lightpad and the camera gets tethered to lightroom on the computer. Camera is on a copy stand pointed at setup. From lightroom I crop and in photoshop it gets inverted and cleaned, back to lightroom for white balance and final touch up. I get very nice results.

I'm new here, and I understand this place is for Analog. However I do believe that hybrid is the only way film will survive for the future. Most of us if not all want to post our photos in the digital realm but not all of us can afford HQ lab scans.

Pentax ME / Expired Eastman Vision3 500T @ 800 / Home developed / Macro Scan

Canon A2 / Ultrafine Xtreem 400 @ 800 / Rodinal 1+100 / Macro Scan

 

[flavio81]

I do this extensively. I was unhappy with scanners and through trial and error I came up with a workflow. My scanning workflow feels very much like my darkroom work, it is very important to my shooting film. Without digital scanning I would not shoot much film, if any at all.

I have el-cheapo macrotubes from ebay. I mount a Pentax 50 1.8 on the end and stop it down to about f/8. Negatives get put in a carrier on an Amazon lightpad and the camera gets tethered to lightroom on the computer. Camera is on a copy stand pointed at setup. From lightroom I crop and in photoshop it gets inverted and cleaned, back to lightroom for white balance and final touch up. I get very nice results.

I'm new here, and I understand this place is for Analog. However I do believe that hybrid is the only way film will survive for the future. Most of us if not all want to post our photos in the digital realm but not all of us can afford HQ lab scans.

What camera were you using? was it a full frame?

I am planning to do the same but using an enlarger to project the image into the camera.

I understand this is APUG but I don't know why this topic is not discussed here.

 

[Cholentpot]

What camera were you using? was it a full frame?

I am planning to do the same but using an enlarger to project the image into the camera.

I understand this is APUG but I don't know why this topic is not discussed here.

Canon T2i, it's an APS-C but the photos end up about 16megas RAW. I would love a FF and a macro lens but eh, I'm not in the money for that. I found a guy floating around who even made a photoshop action that inverts and balances the film. It's alomost perfect but it over sharpens it.

As to why it's not discussed here? I have no clue, I'm new. I've scanned almost 100 rolls with a DSLR. There's always room for improvement and innovation though. It takes me about an hour to scan, clean and balance a roll of 36. Longer if it was T balanced and I didn't use a filter.

 

[cooltouch]

I've been duping my slides and negatives for about six years now. My Epson 4990 has been collecting dust except for when I need to scan 120. And I'm working on a way to dupe my 120 images also.

One of the things I've found to be surprising is just how much information my camera can pull out of a poorly exposed image, using the right software. The camera is a Sony NEX 7 and the lens is a Nikon 55mm f/2.8 AIs Micro-Nikkor. One of the things I do with it when I dupe slides and negs is I turn the contrast down to -2. This prevents blocking up of the shadow areas, which is even a problem in the analog world. I shoot in raw mode and use Photoshop's outstanding raw converter to convert the images. It is so good that, often, I don't need to do any further correction once the image has been imported into PS.

Here are two examples of images that looked hopeless. Both images were shot by my dad when he was stationed in Korea during the conflict. His camera was a Kodak Pony 135, which was a fairly cheap, amateur-oriented, range-focus camera.

The first is a severely damaged negative that was extremely thin. It is almost transparent, with just the ghost of an image when looking directly at the negative.

This next one was some sort of Christmas pageant, put on by a Salvation Army orphanage that was close to my dad's installation. The Kodachrome slide was severely underexposed. Once again, my camera shooting in RAW, along with Photoshop's RAW converter worked wonders, and pulled an amazing amount of detail out of the slide.

 

[farmersteve]

Canon T2i, it's an APS-C but the photos end up about 16megas RAW. I would love a FF and a macro lens but eh, I'm not in the money for that. I found a guy floating around who even made a photoshop action that inverts and balances the film. It's alomost perfect but it over sharpens it.

As to why it's not discussed here? I have no clue, I'm new. I've scanned almost 100 rolls with a DSLR. There's always room for improvement and innovation though. It takes me about an hour to scan, clean and balance a roll of 36. Longer if it was T balanced and I didn't use a filter.

What lens are you using? I tried using my Canon T3i and my Sony a6000 with a 50mm macro lens and I had a hard time getting the corners to come into focus and I tried a whole bunch of different things. Where it's in focus in the middle it's much sharper and detailed than the flatbed so I can see the promise since the workflow is much quicker...

 

[M Carter]

Yes, a raw file from a good camera gets an amazing amount of detail and dynamic range. Just watch the extremes of highlights.

I've just used whatever Nikon body I was up to at the time, always APS-C though. Recently got a Samsung NX1 (APS-C with 4K video - it's changed my life for video interviews, being able to reframe on a 1080 edit and punch in up to 200% is a massively awesome tool for delivering a great interview edit!) and that thing is also a stills beast (28mpx), I use all my old Nikkors on it. RIP Samsung camera division (you bastards...)

I shot a lot of music videos on the lowly T2i, it was really the camera that democratized film making, I feel moreso than the 5D.

For medium format, probably some kind of opal glass rig and extension tubes would get you there. Plenty of those macro-focusing gear racks from china on eBay, too. Don't imagine it would be difficult. The slide-duplicators seems designed to make it all hand-holdable, I'm sure we could all be digi-duping 4x5 and 8x10 should we get the urge.

 

[Cholentpot]

What lens are you using? I tried using my Canon T3i and my Sony a6000 with a 50mm macro lens and I had a hard time getting the corners to come into focus and I tried a whole bunch of different things. Where it's in focus in the middle it's much sharper and detailed than the flatbed so I can see the promise since the workflow is much quicker...

I use macro tubes from Ebay, they were like $10. I use an old manual Pentax 50 2.8 with an adapter that hooks it up to the EOS. I have the camera on a copy stand pointing straight down. The negative is in a carrier so it's as flat as I can get it. I even anchor the carrier down with some old junkie heavy lenses to get the negs flatter. I use the live preview on x10 to get the shot as sharp as possible, its almost like using a grain enlarger.

It's amazing how much you can pull out of an almost transparent negative. I find I need about 1.6 seconds for C-41 and 1/4 for B&W.

 

[farmersteve]

So when you say the Pentax 50 2.8, is that a Macro lens or standard lens? I have mine on tubes. Maybe I need to fiddle with it more. I got a cheap set from china and there are three different widths. I have a copy stand and even rigged up an old light box with a bunch of led lights and I can see the potential but not quite there.

 

[Cholentpot]

So when you say the Pentax 50 2.8, is that a Macro lens or standard lens? I have mine on tubes. Maybe I need to fiddle with it more. I got a cheap set from china and there are three different widths. I have a copy stand and even rigged up an old light box with a bunch of led lights and I can see the potential but not quite there.

Here's my kit. Missing is the copystand and the lightpad. You'll need to crop a bit either way you do it unless you have a nice autofocus macrolens.

Here's my rig scanning 120

Here's a scan of 120

and a scan of 35mm run through a TLR

My setup is dismantled as of now, but it'll be up again in a few weeks. This is the end product of lots and lots of trial and error.

 

[farmersteve]

Thanks! that's exactly what I wanted to know!

 

[cooltouch]

Here's a pic of v1.0 of my dupe setup. At its core is a 55mm f/3.5 Micro-Nikkor. The dupe tube threads directly into the lens. This tube is a stripped down "digital slide duplicator" I bought off eBay. The slide and roll film stages slide on the tube's flange. The slide stage came off a Cambron zoom side duplicator I bought on eBay for about 8 bucks, and the roll film stage I also found on eBay for about 8 bucks. Some of the later model "digital slide duplicators" come with an adapter for film strips, so if one goes with one of these, the roll film stage is probably not necessary. This arrangement gave me almost exactly 1:1 dupes with my 1.6x crop Canon. Note the Nikon to Canon EF adapter attached to the lens. Not shown are about 25mm of exension tubes mounted between the lens and the camera.

Here it is mounted to a 1.6x crop body Canon. Note the added extension tubes.

Here is the same setup adapted to my 1.5x crop NEX 7. Getting to 1:1 required a few additions. The 1.4x teleconverter can be substituted with extension tubes.

Canon FTb, Canon FL 35mm f/2.5, Kodachrome 64

Canon F-1, Vivitar S1 28-90mm f/2.8-3.5, Kodachrome 64

For exposure, a variety of light sources can be used. I prefer to use an off-camera flash, set to fractional power, like 1/16 or 1/32. I've been very happy with the results, especially with my NEX 7, which gives me 6000 x 4000 pixel resolution.

 

[flavio81]

For exposure, a variety of light sources can be used. I prefer to use an off-camera flash, set to fractional power, like 1/16 or 1/32. I've been very happy with the results, especially with my NEX 7, which gives me 6000 x 4000 pixel resolution.

This is very good information for me, thanks Mr. "Low temperature tactile sensation".

The colors from your K64 scan are saturated to the max. Which is a good thing since it means you can really capture color with this setup.

 

[Cholentpot]

Here's a pic of v1.0 of my dupe setup. At its core is a 55mm f/3.5 Micro-Nikkor. The dupe tube threads directly into the lens. This tube is a stripped down "digital slide duplicator" I bought off eBay. The slide and roll film stages slide on the tube's flange. The slide stage came off a Cambron zoom side duplicator I bought on eBay for about 8 bucks, and the roll film stage I also found on eBay for about 8 bucks. Some of the later model "digital slide duplicators" come with an adapter for film strips, so if one goes with one of these, the roll film stage is probably not necessary. This arrangement gave me almost exactly 1:1 dupes with my 1.6x crop Canon. Note the Nikon to Canon EF adapter attached to the lens. Not shown are about 25mm of exension tubes mounted between the lens and the camera.

Here it is mounted to a 1.6x crop body Canon. Note the added extension tubes.

Here is the same setup adapted to my 1.5x crop NEX 7. Getting to 1:1 required a few additions. The 1.4x teleconverter can be substituted with extension tubes.

View attachment 163955
Canon FTb, Canon FL 35mm f/2.5, Kodachrome 64

View attachment 163956
Canon F-1, Vivitar S1 28-90mm f/2.8-3.5, Kodachrome 64

For exposure, a variety of light sources can be used. I prefer to use an off-camera flash, set to fractional power, like 1/16 or 1/32. I've been very happy with the results, especially with my NEX 7, which gives me 6000 x 4000 pixel resolution.

What would I search for on ebay for that roll film holder thing? It looks useful.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Flash, the colour temperature of daylight is too inconsistent. There used to be at one time low contrast slide duplicating films.

I remember those days of duping slides and the contrast issue along with flash color temperature. But since he's copying with a digital camera, those are no longer issues. I dumpster dove a slide duper years ago and never used it. It had a 50mm flat field enlarger lens. Maybe I'll bring it out and put a digital camera on it.

 

[PinkPony]

I use my regular enlarger for duplication. The particular model supports removing the enlarger head from the column and screwing a camera there so it becomes a copying stand. On the base plate I have a 5000 kelvin light source where i place my regular negative carriers.

Adjusting the camera to be parallel with the base board is quite simple. I simply lower the camera enough so that I can use a CD cover (pretty square) to see that the lens is parallel with the board. It's very similar to regular darkroom work except much faster. I plan to do some real darkroom work again soon. Winter is coming.