Projection scanning -- anyone tried it?

Donald Qualls · Friday at 9:02 AM

I've been shooting Minolta 16 format for many years, and I'll be getting a Minox and associated accessories soon -- but these days I mostly scan my negatives, and my flatbed scanner (Epson Perfection V850) despite having very high resolution for medium format or smaller negatives, can't get all that much out of an 8x11 mm frame.

However, many years ago I saw a copy shop making color prints from slides with a projector set up to throw its image onto the scan glass of a color copier (I think there was a Fresnel lens on the copier bed). Since I have an enlarger, and now have a computer that can (probably) operate my scanner in my darkroom, I'm interested in using projection to get more pixels out of a tiny negative (and no, I don't have and can't afford a high resolution digital camera, other than the one in my smart phone that gives me very little control over exposure, contrast, or color and saves only in JPG).

My overall idea is to use the widest lens I can afford for the enlarger (28-35 mm) or try to find my Enlahead (made for Minolta 16, but I think I can mask it for 8x11) and set the enlarger head to give something an 8x10 projected image. I think (in order to have ray direction compatible with the scanner's sensor) I'll need to get one of those "sheet of paper" Fresnel magnifiers; if so, it would be advantageous (I think) to match the head height on the enlarger to the focal length of the Fresnel. What I don't know is how badly the Fresnel's zones will interfere with the scanned image, or whether there's an alternative (a sheet of frosted acetate on the scanner glass, maybe?).

I'd welcome ideas and comments, anything from "You're an idiot, this won't work because X" to "That's brilliant! I'm going to set up my scanner and enlarger this way!"

koraks · Friday at 10:28 AM

I think you're better off with a camera scanning setup and a macro lens or bellows so you can fill the frame with your small negatives. In a projection setup, so much is lost in terms of contrast, degradation in the projection surface, optics etc. It's an uphill battle from the start. I'd not even bother.

ags2mikon · Friday at 10:30 AM

I concur with koraks.

Donald Qualls · Friday at 11:45 AM

koraks said:
I think you're better off with a camera scanning setup and a macro lens or bellows so you can fill the frame with your small negatives.

I'm sure I would be if I had (or had money to buy) a suitable digital camera, lens/bellows, and film holding setup. I don't, and likely won't since scanning submini film is probably the only use I'd have for it. The only digital bodies I have access to are Nikon D70 and D90, neither one of which will beat the pixel count I can get from my V850 scanning the negatives directly.

I have the enlarger and scanner already, and would have whether I had Minox negatives or not (the V850 is reasonably okay with a negative as large as the 13x17 frames of my Kiev 30 and 303).

I may try an app I have on my phone that's supposed to bypass all the "magic" smartphones work whenever you take a photo, but I still don't have exposure or color control and can't get an uncompressed image.

loccdor · Friday at 10:23 PM

What I can say is that I used small 5x7 enlarger prints in order to get higher resolution scans than I could get from 35mm film scanned directly. It got about 2x detail on each axis, or a 2x dpi increase in total detail or 4x overall.

No one here knows all the details of your system so it's worth a shot. You'll either get a good result or learn more about imaging.

isaac7 · Friday at 10:33 PM

koraks said:
I think you're better off with a camera scanning setup and a macro lens or bellows so you can fill the frame with your small negatives. In a projection setup, so much is lost in terms of contrast, degradation in the projection surface, optics etc. It's an uphill battle from the start. I'd not even bother.

I wonder if it would be better to reverse mount the macro or enlarging lens for such small negatives. I know the original poster isn’t interested but I might tackle scanning some of the many 110 negatives from my father’s collection at some point.

isaac7 · Friday at 10:46 PM

Donald Qualls said:
I've been shooting Minolta 16 format for many years, and I'll be getting a Minox and associated accessories soon -- but these days I mostly scan my negatives, and my flatbed scanner (Epson Perfection V850) despite having very high resolution for medium format or smaller negatives, can't get all that much out of an 8x11 mm frame.

However, many years ago I saw a copy shop making color prints from slides with a projector set up to throw its image onto the scan glass of a color copier (I think there was a Fresnel lens on the copier bed). Since I have an enlarger, and now have a computer that can (probably) operate my scanner in my darkroom, I'm interested in using projection to get more pixels out of a tiny negative (and no, I don't have and can't afford a high resolution digital camera, other than the one in my smart phone that gives me very little control over exposure, contrast, or color and saves only in JPG).

My overall idea is to use the widest lens I can afford for the enlarger (28-35 mm) or try to find my Enlahead (made for Minolta 16, but I think I can mask it for 8x11) and set the enlarger head to give something an 8x10 projected image. I think (in order to have ray direction compatible with the scanner's sensor) I'll need to get one of those "sheet of paper" Fresnel magnifiers; if so, it would be advantageous (I think) to match the head height on the enlarger to the focal length of the Fresnel. What I don't know is how badly the Fresnel's zones will interfere with the scanned image, or whether there's an alternative (a sheet of frosted acetate on the scanner glass, maybe?).

I'd welcome ideas and comments, anything from "You're an idiot, this won't work because X" to "That's brilliant! I'm going to set up my scanner and enlarger this way!"

I don‘t understand how that could work but you said you’ve seen it done so reality trumps my confusion lol. I would think the challenge would be getting the scanner to focus on something. You mentioned a fresnel, wouldn‘t that have to be focused somehow? I can imagine projecting onto something and scanning that something but I can’t think of anything that would both allow an image to be projected on it and not degrade the sharpness.

Harry Callahan · Friday at 11:12 PM

Donald Qualls said:
...

However, many years ago I saw a copy shop making color prints from slides with a projector set up to throw its image onto the scan glass of a color copier (I think there was a Fresnel lens on the copier bed).

...

I don`t think that a fresnel would work, as a fresnel only would refract the light into a different direction... i think you rather needed a ground glass to project the picture on.
I would try to put a normal piece of paper onto the scanner, project the negative onto this paper and have the scanner scan this (without the scanner having its own light on, the scanner had to be in negative-scanning-mode).
If this works to some extend you could try with a real ground glass.
But you also may run into brightness problems, as when scanning a negative you have a rather strong light right behind the neg - when enlarging a neg onto the scanner it will be less bright (a lot less) so your scan should be very dark.
Therefore i would try a magnification of only 3x or 2x - this still would increase sharpness of the scan, assuming the ground glass or paper doesn`t add its won structure to the scan (it will) - without giving you a too dark scan.
They probably used a slide projector because slide projectors (usually) have stronger bulbs than enlargers.

Andrew O'Neill · Saturday at 2:52 AM

I think a piece is frosted Mylar would be better than paper. Paper has too much texture.

250swb · Saturday at 3:30 AM

If using Silverfast the Epson V850 top optical resolution before files simply become bloated is 2600ppi and if scanning a 35mm negative this would equate to a file of 8.6 megapixels. Given your D90 has 12 megapixels it's still going to beat the Epson. In the scheme of things a 1+1 micro lens isn't a lot of money.

koraks · Saturday at 3:44 AM

Donald Qualls said:
The only digital bodies I have access to are Nikon D70 and D90, neither one of which will beat the pixel count I can get from my V850 scanning the negatives directly.

Not all pixels are created equal. While theoretically you may be able to get the same number of pixels from both systems representing the same small image size, in practice, the odds are still that you'll get much better resolving power with the camera setup.

isaac7 said:
I wonder if it would be better to reverse mount the macro or enlarging lens for such small negatives.

Yes, that would be a nice low-budget experiment.

Of course, with an absolute zero budget it's difficult to come up with something; perhaps you could borrow some hardware from a friend or something.

Don_ih · Saturday at 5:57 AM

Look up how people adapt a scanner to the back of a large format camera. I'm pretty sure you end up scanning the image on the ground glass. So you get the texture of that as well.

If I really wanted scans of the small negatives, I'd likely go with the camera-scanning setup. A quick look shows a Canon T3 with no lens for $50 on ebay. You can get a macro bellows for EF mount on Amazon for $10.

bernard_L · Saturday at 10:54 AM

Donald Qualls said:
The only digital bodies I have access to are Nikon D70 and D90, neither one of which will beat the pixel count I can get from my V850 scanning the negatives directly.

My guesstimate of the actual resolution of the V850 is 1600dpi. Sure, Epson can generate many more marshmallow pixels if you ask. Applied to a 13x17mm negative this delivers ~0.88Mpx. The D70 has a 6Mpx sensor. With suitable optics (reversed enlarger lens?), if the negative is imaged to the sensor size, you will get a lot more resolution. Granted, some of the data from the Bayer matrix is massaged to deliver 6Mpx RGB data, but that has been done for quite some years well enough to fool human eyes.

wiltw · Saturday at 11:42 AM

isaac7 said:
I wonder if it would be better to reverse mount the macro or enlarging lens for such small negatives. I know the original poster isn’t interested but I might tackle scanning some of the many 110 negatives from my father’s collection at some point.

Reverse mounting a lens is done because the usual lens-to-focal plane distance is short, whereas the film-to-subject distance is usually > 9*FL in the typical non-macro lens design.
(for example, 50mm (2") lens has MFD of 18") Better optical performance with a reversed lens.

Chan Tran · Saturday at 11:49 AM

Donald Qualls said:
I'm sure I would be if I had (or had money to buy) a suitable digital camera, lens/bellows, and film holding setup. I don't, and likely won't since scanning submini film is probably the only use I'd have for it. The only digital bodies I have access to are Nikon D70 and D90, neither one of which will beat the pixel count I can get from my V850 scanning the negatives directly.

I have the enlarger and scanner already, and would have whether I had Minox negatives or not (the V850 is reasonably okay with a negative as large as the 13x17 frames of my Kiev 30 and 303).

I may try an app I have on my phone that's supposed to bypass all the "magic" smartphones work whenever you take a photo, but I still don't have exposure or color control and can't get an uncompressed image.

So which camera are you going to use to capture the projected image?

Harry Callahan · Saturday at 10:09 PM

Andrew O'Neill said:
I think a piece is frosted Mylar would be better than paper. Paper has too much texture.

I meant to do the first test with paper to see if it works at all - and then go to a better suited material.

One problem with ground glasses is that they cannot collect all the light that is shining on them, some of the light will pass through. The more light a ground glass does collect the brighter the image gets - and vice versa.
If you project a negative onto a scanner it highly likely will be too dark for the scanner to properly scan it - so the "ground glass" on the scanner should collect as much light as possible. I think paper would collect more light than Mylar, so doing the first test with paper was better to see if it works at all. Also paper is something most have at hand.

Harry Callahan · Saturday at 10:13 PM

Chan Tran said:
So which camera are you going to use to capture the projected image?

He wants to project the image on a scanner, not a camera.

On the other hand, using the enlarger as a slide projector and take a picture of the projected negative with a camera surely was more fruitful than trying to project onto a scanner.

Chan Tran · Sunday at 6:36 AM

Harry Callahan said:
He wants to project the image on a scanner, not a camera.

On the other hand, using the enlarger as a slide projector and take a picture of the projected negative with a camera surely was more fruitful than trying to project onto a scanner.

I don't know but I tried that with my flatbed and it doesn't work.

Don_ih · Sunday at 8:14 AM

@Donald Qualls -- a year or so ago @NB23 made a thread about using his enlarger to project directly into a digital camera. Here's the thread. maybe you could accomplish something similar using whatever digital camera you can get and your own enlarger (he used a Focomat II).

ags2mikon · Sunday at 9:49 AM

The first time I tried using a digital camera to digitize some slides I used a Nikon D40x and my nikkor 55mm 2.8 micro nikkor. The D40x was a real pile, but the "scans" were better than I was getting with the scanner I was using at the time. And faster.

250swb · Sunday at 4:39 PM

Todays solutions to 'scanning' a negative are getting increasingly simpler and less tribal, so not like the old school 'my Nikon Coolscan 9000 is better than your Plustek 7400 and I'll make war on you if you contradict me'. Yes it has happened. Almost any modern digital camera with a good macro/micro lens is capable of beating any old school scanner, but as the law of returns says, if you have a 4x5 negative to scan use the appropriate camera. But for a 35mm FX (or even DX) camera made this side of 2010 get you have enough of a camera that you don't need to waste your life thinking outside of the box scanning 35mm, or half frame.

Chan Tran · Sunday at 6:05 PM

250swb said:
Todays solutions to 'scanning' a negative are getting increasingly simpler and less tribal, so not like the old school 'my Nikon Coolscan 9000 is better than your Plustek 7400 and I'll make war on you if you contradict me'. Yes it has happened. Almost any modern digital camera with a good macro/micro lens is capable of beating any old school scanner, but as the law of returns says, if you have a 4x5 negative to scan use the appropriate camera. But for a 35mm FX (or even DX) camera made this side of 2010 get you have enough of a camera that you don't need to waste your life thinking outside of the box scanning 35mm, or half frame.

But the OP doesn't want to buy any camera better than his D90 which he already has.

250swb · 2025-06-02T03:17:09-0400

Chan Tran said:
But the OP doesn't want to buy any camera better than his D90 which he already has.

And previously I did say his D90 would be 'good enough', you need to read the thread.

Chan Tran · 2025-06-02T05:29:19-0400

250swb said:
And previously I did say his D90 would be 'good enough', you need to read the thread.

But he said "I have access to are Nikon D70 and D90, neither one of which will beat the pixel count I can get from my V850 scanning the negatives directly.". But I do agree that either 6 or 12MP is much more than you want out of such a tiny negative unless all you want is grain. Yes he already got more than 12MP out of his negative scanning normally with his Epson V850.

Donald Qualls · 2025-06-02T07:24:44-0400

250swb said:
If using Silverfast the Epson V850 top optical resolution before files simply become bloated is 2600ppi and if scanning a 35mm negative this would equate to a file of 8.6 megapixels. Given your D90 has 12 megapixels it's still going to beat the Epson. In the scheme of things a 1+1 micro lens isn't a lot of money.

I use Vuescan (it has a Linux native Appimage; AFAIK Silverfast is Windows/Mac only). The software tells me I'm getting 6400 ppi, which comes to about but I've seen many conflicting reports on what the actual optical resolution of the V850 might be. My math says 5.5 or so megapixels from the 8x11 frame. That's just about what the D70 can do. We have a Micro Nikkor for the Nikons (don't recall what focal length, but it gets pretty big images on the crop sensor); maybe I need to try it.

koraks said:
perhaps you could borrow some hardware from a friend or something.

I don't like borrowing stuff, least of all if I can't afford to replace it if the house full of dogs and cats causes a problem.

250swb said:
modern digital camera

Modern digital cameras are more than I can afford to spend any time soon. Maybe after I overlap my Social Security with working full time for a year or so (that starts in 2026) -- especially since I'd really only want it for this one application (I've tried DSLRs -- the D70 and D90 mentioned above -- and I don't like them).

For those who didn't understand the point of the Fresnel, the idea is to make the diverging rays from the enlarger lens parallel so the scanner's sensor will pick them up most effectively without brightness falloff at the corners of the frame. It would also increase the brightness of an image focused on frosted mylar or similar, the way an Ektalite Fresnel would on a large format ground glass.

Projection scanning -- anyone tried it?

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