Negative Holders for Flatbeds: Hacks, DIY, Homebrew Solutions?

[CGW]

Any ideas for getting flatter 35mm/120 negs/slides for sharper scans on Epsons or other flatbeds?

 

[gmikol]

Well, flatter slides is all up to who is doing your mounting.

35mm, I've never found flatness to be an issue.

For 120, a technique I've read about but never tried, is to use 2 pieces of flexible magnetic material, one on top and bottom of the film, in margins. They can't go full-width, the film rails won't close properly, but it should support the film quite well. And in the margins, you don't risk damaging the image area.

--Greg

 

[CGW]

Thanks, Greg. Worth a try. Used that trick when copying a pile of old photos, many curled/folded, with a DSLR on a copy stand(archive didn't dig scanners). Could be a problem with height messing up focus/sharpness? We should probably start a sticky with links/pix/advice/war stories on neg holders. Seems to be a perennial/recurrent question.

 

[gmikol]

What I'm suggesting doesn't change the height. That's was what my comment about having the magnetic strips not be full-width meant.

In the V700/V750 holders, for example, the film is sitting on the rails and the upper frame is closed like normal. The magnetic strips are cut to just fit inside the openings, one above the film, and one below in the gap between each frame. This should still provide lots of stiffness, but doesn't change the height of the film.

Hope that helps clarify.

--Greg

 

[WJJ3]

DIY wet mount

There is a really good cheap trick for this that is better than any of the commercially available stuff. I found it on a guy's blog one time (i wish i could find it again). What you do is get a cheap 8X10 clip frame, and take the glass out. Put little feet on each corner (i used some thick tape, i think it was like really thin weather stripping or something). Get some acetate. Get some scanning fluid. Spray some scanning fluid onto the bottom of the glass (side with the little feet). Put your film onto the the wet surface in a way that no bubbles form between the glass and the film. Put the acetate over the film in a way that no bubbles form over the film. Put the unit into your flatbed and scan.

This solution works REALLY good, but requires a lot of FIDDLING to get it set up right: you have to do a multiple scan test session to find the right height for your feet. You have to be careful not to get bubbles. You have to make sure your scanning fluid doesn't get all over the place. You have to make sure that the position of the unit is not covering the back edge of the scanning bed, as this is where the scanner does a brief calibration before it sweeps across the bed. You have to place your film in a way that it will be parallel with the edges of the scanner bed.

This might sound confusing or like too much trouble, but once you get the feet height right and your fluid-film-acetate preparation nailed down, it works better than anything you will find. I used this technique with an epson V600 and silverfast and got what i'm guessing was the best image quality the scanner was capable of.

If you look on the web for a while you may find the original post where I learned this technique. That guy is a genius for coming up with it, and does a lot better job of explaining it than I did.

 

[chuck94022]

The magnetic solution has been essentially done with the Digitaliza film holders for 35mm and 120 film. Check them out at Lomography.com. they are cheap enough, clever enough, and robust enough to be worth the purchase.

That holder grips the edges tightly, holds the film relatively flat, and is *fast* and *easy* to load. Slickest solution I've ever used. The holder can be shimmed (I use little blocks of post it note paper cut from a stack of postits measured to shim the proper height - one little stack in each corner. In other words, I figure out how high the holder needs to be. I select a chuck of postits that equal that height. Then I cut small chunks from that stack and tape a chunk in each corner of the holder. That way I have equal height shims in each corner. The Digitaliza holder has enough extra space in the corners for this to work. But get used to how it works first before you shim it to perfect height.

For perfect flatness, nothing beats the Betterscanning universal wet/dry mounting system. With the Epson, you can generally get away with just dry mounting if you make sure to get the wet/dry option. But while you have to fiddle with tape (use Scotch Magic Tape for dry mounting) it results in perfectly flat mounts. And the betterscanning holder can be adjusted to the precise plane of sharpest focus. You can't get a better scan with any other holder.