DSLR Slide Copiers?

Hi everyone,

Based on some advice here, I've been shooting B&W film, developing myself, and I bought an Epson V500 scanner. So far, MF scans really well. Very, very happy with 120 film scans.

35mm has been really bad...for some reason, when I scan 35mm B&W film, I get inky blotches in the shadows. Anyone know what causes this? I think it may have to do with the film holders that don't seem to hold the film very well. For 120, I ended up just putting the film straight on the glass. Didn't work for 35mm...probably because of curved film.

Had anyone tried DSLR slide copiers for negatives? like this one...

Just wondering if this would be a decent way to handle 35mm while I save for a real film scanner...?

Any input would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
risk

You should be able to get *acceptable* flatbed scans from b&w 35mm. Let me suggest throwing everything you can at the film as a test: high res 48 bit colour, 9600 or so, just scan a small part of a 35mm frame with representative density range and see what that brings. The results should be decent... not great, perhaps good enough for 5x7 or 8x10, and not blotchy or obviously bad. By blotchy, do you mean banded/posterized? Can you post an example? Sounds like an issue of bit depth to me, offhand.

I think what you'll find, quite generally, is that a top-of-the-line dedicated 35mm scanner will harvest more real information per scan size than a flatbed. In other words, a piece of 35mm film scanned to the max on a flatbed will produce a whopping big file that may in the end produce no more real detail or tonal information than a much smaller scan on a dedicated Nikon or Minolta....

thanks. I'll give that a try tonight.

By blotchy, I mean it almost looks like the shadows are blurred and running, like ink. I think it may have to do with the dust removal/noise reduction feature of the scanner...will have to experiment.

I may also need some ANR glass to flatten the negs.

I plan on using my MF camera most of the time, but I'd love to get this 35mm thing figured out so I can take along more portable cameras.

I've had some issues with dust removal or other processing algorithms spuriously introducing posterization, which sounds like what you are seeing. Definitely try with no automatic post-processing.

Let me suggest trying vuescan as well, it may help, though for b&w you should do okay with the Epson software.

Doing 35mm with a flatbed requires great patience; it can be done, but once you see the results from a dedicated 35mm scanner.... my honest assessment is that the flatbed results from 35mm aren't worth the time and disk space.

What I would suggest is this: get someone to scan a 35mm frame for you to the max on a Nikon scanner, or better yet drum it. Just do that once to find out for yourself how much info is actually there that you are missing with the flatbed. It is painful but essential knowledge!

I'd love to get a dedicated film scanner. Unfortunately, that will have to wait. Getting married next month so I don't have much money to throw around at the moment. Are there any good dedicated film scanners for a couple hundred dollars? I've seen some scans from the Nikons and they're great, just way out of my price range. Also, when prices get that high, I start questioning whether I should be spending that to upgrade my digital equipment...which is why I asked about slide copiers.

I would love to just get an enlarger and print the old fashioned way, but my working space is quite limited. So, scanning seems to be the only alternative for the moment. I just wonder how long it will be before mainstream companies abandon film scanning technology...

risk

Are you attempting to use Digital ICE with black and white film? Stop it immediately.

I tried one of those dslr attachments, the results were sub-par. When the resulting image was projected at even a moderate distance, the image was slightly sharp in the center and very unacceptable at the edges. Don't waste your money or effort.