Enlarging to Scanner

[JRieke]

Has anyone tried setting a flat bed scanner with the light disabled under their enlarger to scan negatives or slides? The reason I ask is that I have my grandfathers slide collection that I would like to archive digitally for the family. There are literally thousands of slides in this collection and I can't afford to pay to have them converted by a lab. I've looked at film scanners but since I'm back in school full time working on my ME I can't afford to drop the cash on a film scanner right now either. I do have a flat bed and an enlarger though. After reading about guys using scanners to take "large format photos" I thought maybe this could be adapted to use with the enlarger.

Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.

Thanks

Jeremiah

 

[keithwms]

Try it!

BTW an epson 4990 will probably not run you much beyond $300-400.

 

[palec]

I've been thinking about building camera with scanner, but I like the idea. However I'm not sure if it will work without ground glass to project the image at flat surface. And with ground glass the image quality will be impaired - but it's just my naive guess.

 

[nickandre]

that sounds AMAZING! You'd have to get the exposure just right and eliminate any stray light in the room.

 

[palec]

I've found this paper on bulding a camera: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~heidrich/Papers/EG.04.pdf
They removed scanner lens and focused the image right to the sensor. This eliminates the need of ground glass, but needs some scanner surgery. Also focusing and framing the image on enlarger will be more complicated unless an autofocus enlarger is used and calibrated to sensor position.

 

[Thomas Wilson]

JRieke, I like the way you think! The trick will be stopping the image (light in this case) from passing through the glass. You might try some slightly opaque mylar type material.

Who knows, you may create a new "Hybrid" analog/digital impressionist fad.

I tried using my G9 as a slide scanner last fall. I put the slides on my light table and set the camera to macro. The results were less than stellar (huge pin-cushion effect), but I managed to entertain myself for a while.

 

[domaz]

There was a website a few years ago where someone disabled the scanner light and attached a scanner to view camera, thus creating an affordable scanning back. It could probably be done with an enlarger too. If you built a big light trap around the scanner and enlarger you wouldn't even need to turn the lights off.

 

[archphoto]

Although this is not the right place for this discusion: it has been done before.
Years ago there was a scanning back for 4x5 inch, unfortunately you don't hear about it anymore.
I would give it a try with a 8x10 inch LF setup and seen what comes out of it.
You might have to adjust your focus a bit, because the scanning part will not be in the same place as your GG.
For landscapes and architecture you could come up with >200Mpix shots cheaply, providing you have the propper gear (camera + lens) allready.

Mind you, some scanners need a special light source if you want to scan negatives/slides this way, but what the hell, give it a try !

Peter

Peter

 

[Moopheus]

I haven't tried that, but I did try photographing my slides on a light box with a digicam. The results were not too bad--the limiting factor seemed to be that I couldn't get my camera to focus close enough to the slide to get the resolution I wanted.

There are services that will do bulk slide scans for cheap (under a dollar each), but even that could run into a lot of money for a large number of scans. Doing it yourself could take a lot of time, though, if you really want to scan them all.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

This is off topic for APUG, but would be an ideal subject to discuss at APUG's sister site, hybridphoto.com.