Projection scanning -- anyone tried it?

[250swb]

All these wild ideas about how to make a copy setup when the principle and practice are already established, and the OP has pretty well all the bits to do it already. The only thing missing is a light source. He has a heavy tripod, so take the centre column out and gaffer tape it securely to the top of the tripod at right angles so the camera points down. That is your copy stand. Set everything level with a surface level or using a free bubble level app for a phone. Set the camera to self timer to make the exposure so there is no vibration. I can't believe it can be made more complicated than that? Even with a dedicated rig using a proprietary copy stand etc. the principle is the same.

 

[ags2mikon]

When I did my first "camera scans" I used my color head upside down on the enlarger base board and used the negative carriers to hold the film. I removed the enlarger body that has the negative stage, bellows and lens stage and made a bracket that mounted to the enlarger chassis. Then I mounted the camera with my macro lens and an extension tube and went to town. I added cyan to get closer to daylight. The camera was a Nikon D-40X 10mp low quality unit. The "scans" were better than what I was getting with my plustek or my epson. And faster. The bracket had holes that were larger than needed to allow adjustment to make it level and square. I borrowed a machinist level from a friend to square it up.

 

[bernard_L]

All these wild ideas

He has a heavy tripod, so take the centre column out and gaffer tape it securely to the top of the tripod at right angles

Sooo... Gaffer tape. When the camera motion should be a small fraction of the desired on-target resolution --say, 2500ppi ==> 10µm.

 

[250swb]

Sooo... Gaffer tape. When the camera motion should be a small fraction of the desired on-target resolution --say, 2500ppi ==> 10µm.

If you are practising your Irish dancing class at the same time that could be a problem, but if something doesn't move, it doesn't move. How simple is that? Mind you you shouldn't be limp wristed applying your Gaffer tape, do it tight which should be as good as a clamp.

 

[reddesert]

I wanted to make some digitized "contact sheets." So I got a USB lightbox - you can find these on ebay or wherever sold as a lightbox / tracing box, for about $20, a flat thing about 8x11 or 9x12" area. It's basically just a backlight. It doesn't have an LED/LCD display so no pixelation. The color / CRI would be terrible for color slide/negatives, but it's fine for black and white.

I put that on a table, the negatives on it, and a piece of window/frame glass on the negatives. Then I put a tripod over it and a DSLR pointing down with a macro lens, and used a bubble level to get it level. I didn't use gaffer tape or improvised whatever or some complicated variation of an enlarger. On many tripods, you can reverse the center column if you really need to get close to the table.

This all works fine, and apart from the lightbox, was stuff I had already. I did not try doing a 1:1 scan of 35mm because I do have a film scanner that does 35mm, but I think it would have worked for that with some attention to parallelism. It is possible to make this as complicated as one wants, but it doesn't have to be too complicated.

It occurs to me that Donald's original goal of digitizing submini negatives might be doable with an old zoom slide duplicator, if you can clamp the negatives in it. Most people set aside old zoom slide dupers because to duplicate 35mm onto an APS-C digital camera, you need less than 1:1 magnification, which they can't do. But for digitizing submini onto APS-C digital, you need 1:1 or a little greater, which a 1:1 or zoom slide duper can do.

 

[Donald Qualls]

On many tripods, you can reverse the center column if you really need to get close to the table.

I just remembered my newest tripod (a knockoff carbon fiber unit I bought for my RB67 kit) does in fact have a removable/reversible center column, so mounting the camera under the legs would be possible (it would require space I don't have, but that might be negotiable).

an old zoom slide duplicator

I've seen these -- but I don't think I've ever seen one that wasn't made for mounted 2x2 slides. I"ll have to check eBay.