Hey there,
For more then a year now I´ve been in the quest of scanning 35 mm film with my dslr with no previous experience with film scanning (either dedicated scanners, flat bed or dslr), so I just wanted to create a thread to share the process I went through, my mistakes and the shortcomings of my choices. Since I did a lot of research on how to do it, on blogs, this forum and youtube, I think the problem was not lac of information, but rather lac of experience to apply what I learned. Maybe this will help people starting with dslr scanning to make wiser decisions.
So all started with my wish to scann the family archive with almost 2k photos on 35mm negatives, since I was (or am) not in a hurry dslr scanning at home seamed to me like a great option, I could do it myself (I have a canon 60D), the image quality was fairly good and I could save some bucks comparing to buying a scann or sending all negatives to a lab to do it. After a lot research about different setups, my first try with it was a macro bellow with enlarging lenses plus slide copier. It didn't worked since with the set up I couldn't squish the 135 frame on the aps-c sensor of my camera using the bellow because it would require it to extend more then it could. With that, and more research I decided for a 'keep it simple, stupid' approach and went for a tripod and a light table using either my 28-75 mm lens or a 60mm with R mount adapted, with both I could squish the frame into the sensor but I preferred the second one since it has much better optics. To finish I got the simplest tripod and light table I could get, plus a remote shutter to avoid shaking. This worked in a sense but it was extremely labor intensive. First my tripod don't have a hard stop for 90 degrees, second I didn't got a proper film holder but used cardboard one instead (totally rookie mistake here). In the end it took me more then almost two hours to scann one film (36 photos) to get substandard results.
The main lessons learned for me were:
1 - As a thumb rule, money is direct proportional to quality. There is no free meal, you won´t get the best results investing less the $100 on it, not only the quality will be worse but equipment will require more work to set up and more adaptations will be necessary. For me it started by not having a full frame cameras, having one would probably allow for the macro bellows set up to work which in its turn would make my life much easier.
2 - If you are starting, avoid complicated equipment that you are not familiar with. I really think the bellows were a god option, but I didn't knew how to use it and I had to read and watch a lot f stuff to understand how to use it and what enlarger lens I would need. With that I almost lost a lot of money, luckily the ebay seller agreed with the return. Also avoid other funky set-up that you just saw one person using and there is not much information available.
3 - Don´t take the word of youtubers or bloggers for granted. Always question when they say something is simple, easy straight forward etc. First most of them have a lot of experience and and already tried a lot of stuff until they got to something they could post. Second the shortness of videos and articles deceive about how time consuming it is to scann film with a dslr
4 - Is it dslr really the best option for you? If you are already starting from a aps-c sensor, maybe a relatively low end flat bed scanner will deliver just as good results for an accessible price and much less headache, and any photo you really want it to be high quality you can send to a professional lab to do the job.
*DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying DSLR scanning is bad, or that is worse then any other option or that anyone should keep from trying it, I'm just sharing my personal experience so people (specially beginners) can avoid the mistakes I made
I hope some can benefit from this, or at least enjoyed the reading!
Cheers!
For more then a year now I´ve been in the quest of scanning 35 mm film with my dslr with no previous experience with film scanning (either dedicated scanners, flat bed or dslr), so I just wanted to create a thread to share the process I went through, my mistakes and the shortcomings of my choices. Since I did a lot of research on how to do it, on blogs, this forum and youtube, I think the problem was not lac of information, but rather lac of experience to apply what I learned. Maybe this will help people starting with dslr scanning to make wiser decisions.
So all started with my wish to scann the family archive with almost 2k photos on 35mm negatives, since I was (or am) not in a hurry dslr scanning at home seamed to me like a great option, I could do it myself (I have a canon 60D), the image quality was fairly good and I could save some bucks comparing to buying a scann or sending all negatives to a lab to do it. After a lot research about different setups, my first try with it was a macro bellow with enlarging lenses plus slide copier. It didn't worked since with the set up I couldn't squish the 135 frame on the aps-c sensor of my camera using the bellow because it would require it to extend more then it could. With that, and more research I decided for a 'keep it simple, stupid' approach and went for a tripod and a light table using either my 28-75 mm lens or a 60mm with R mount adapted, with both I could squish the frame into the sensor but I preferred the second one since it has much better optics. To finish I got the simplest tripod and light table I could get, plus a remote shutter to avoid shaking. This worked in a sense but it was extremely labor intensive. First my tripod don't have a hard stop for 90 degrees, second I didn't got a proper film holder but used cardboard one instead (totally rookie mistake here). In the end it took me more then almost two hours to scann one film (36 photos) to get substandard results.
The main lessons learned for me were:
1 - As a thumb rule, money is direct proportional to quality. There is no free meal, you won´t get the best results investing less the $100 on it, not only the quality will be worse but equipment will require more work to set up and more adaptations will be necessary. For me it started by not having a full frame cameras, having one would probably allow for the macro bellows set up to work which in its turn would make my life much easier.
2 - If you are starting, avoid complicated equipment that you are not familiar with. I really think the bellows were a god option, but I didn't knew how to use it and I had to read and watch a lot f stuff to understand how to use it and what enlarger lens I would need. With that I almost lost a lot of money, luckily the ebay seller agreed with the return. Also avoid other funky set-up that you just saw one person using and there is not much information available.
3 - Don´t take the word of youtubers or bloggers for granted. Always question when they say something is simple, easy straight forward etc. First most of them have a lot of experience and and already tried a lot of stuff until they got to something they could post. Second the shortness of videos and articles deceive about how time consuming it is to scann film with a dslr
4 - Is it dslr really the best option for you? If you are already starting from a aps-c sensor, maybe a relatively low end flat bed scanner will deliver just as good results for an accessible price and much less headache, and any photo you really want it to be high quality you can send to a professional lab to do the job.
*DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying DSLR scanning is bad, or that is worse then any other option or that anyone should keep from trying it, I'm just sharing my personal experience so people (specially beginners) can avoid the mistakes I made
I hope some can benefit from this, or at least enjoyed the reading!
Cheers!
