DSLR "Scanning"

Another kick at the "DSLR-as-scanner" can. Some interesting techniques suited mostly(?) to 120 film:

Digital camera scanning technique: comparison against an Epson v700 (and a drum) - Photo.net Digital Darkroom Forum

I've used my D700 and Nikkor 60mm Macro lens with great results. I use an Omega neg holder on a daylight calibrated viewing table.

They bring up some interesting possibilities in that thread and with the right setup, technique and patience some people have proven to be able to produce some great images. With that said, I am not convinced that the V700 test created with skill/techniques to get the maximum potential out of the scan, plus I also don't think you are seeing an apples to apples comparison in terms of post processing with that first set of images. That first set of comparison images is tweaked to show maximum sharpness but at the expense of other ugliness in the image.

I think this recent thread about the V7xx versus the new Plustek 120 is a more realistic comparison:
Plustek 120 vs Epson V700/750 - Rangefinderforum.com

Doug

Interesting discussion but it doesn't actually include any examples I could see from the new Plustek OpticFilm 120.

Sorry. There are a couple additional threads over there. One is a festival of whining that goes on for a billion pages and then this other one that has some actual 120 images... along with a lot more whining to sift through

The OFFICIAL Plustek 120 post your scans - Page 6 - Rangefinderforum.com

Doug

I just thought I would throw these in for the sake of discussion. I use 2 1/4 and 4x5 and mostly print in the darkroom silver-gelatin and pt/pd but I frequently scan my negatives rather than making proof sheets. I do print digitally up to 13x19 with some of the scans. The examples here are an un-altered positive of a 2 1/4 negative and a 1/2 inch section enlarged to 6 inches using my (old) Epson 4870 with Silverfast Ai studio software @ 1200 and the standard film holder that came with it.

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Doug Fisher said:

Sorry. There are a couple additional threads over there. One is a festival of whining that goes on for a billion pages and then this other one that has some actual 120 images... along with a lot more whining to sift through

The OFFICIAL Plustek 120 post your scans - Page 6 - Rangefinderforum.com

Doug

Click to expand...

Thanks. Tedious stuff, indeed. Waiting for more/smarter evaluations of the OpticFilm 120. Still think it's over-priced for what it apparently delivers. Few seem to get that Nikon sank the 9000ED due to poor sales. Parts and service are pretty much over in N. America for all Coolscans.

I'm still thinking someone will crank-out a carrier+light source thingie that allows film scanning with a DSLR. Have seen surprising good 120 results from Mickey Mouse/homebrew set-ups.

Does anyone have a good solution to the alignment issues? What I always find is that my segments are always slightly rotated in relation to the others. Maybe a stitching solution more sophisticated than my ancient copy of Photoshop CS would take care of this? The other problem, of course, being stitching areas with little to no detail like sky, sea, background and so forth. I find this DSLR thing is a bit of a siren song. It sounds good on paper but I always end up back at my scanner older and wiser.

Sam

Well...I use Hugin for my conventional (panoramic) stitching. I know it can be used for "flat" stitching and easily handle rotation of the individual segments, though I've never done it. It can also correct for any geometric aberrations in your macro lens.

Featureless areas will always be a concern, but the advantage is that a program (like Hugin or PTGui) with a robust control point generator should be able to grab any minor defects or grain clumps in the original and use them as control points. This is very different when shooting panoramas, because the featureless sky will pick up different noise from the sensor, even for the same position in the sky (if that makes sense). And clouds don't move once they're on film!

Another option would be to place a couple of very small marks on your light table, have the original taped down, and then you can use the extra marks on the light table for alignment, and then clone them out.

--Greg

Just another note for those following this thread...

If you're using a light table with fluorescent lights for this, remember that the output of a fluorescent tube varies much more than an incandescent (Edison) type bulb.

So if you live in a country whose electricity is 60Hz (60 cycles per second) be sure to use a shutter speed that is a integer multiple of the frequency (1/60, but preferably slower, like 1/30, 1/15, etc.) If you live in a 50Hz country, that would be (1/50, 1/25, 1/12). High frequency fluorescent ballasts and LED light boxes don't pose this same issue. Depending on the brightness of your light table, you might need to use a neutral density filter to bring down the exposure into that range while keeping the aperture somewhere between f/4 and f/8 for most macro lenses.

--Greg

Good point Greg.