[Wonder if I'll ever get around to building a rapid scanner out of my old DSLR, some rail mount gear, and the guts of a 3d printer or something... Really want to be able to load sheets or film strips into holders that get fed through a magazine, and have the whole scanning system automated to the point of being hands off. That or I could spend more time playing with darkroom stuff. But this is coming from the guy with like a six month development backlog on a few dozen rolls of film at this point. How much do art interns cost?]
Same here. I would like to do a "contact" scan for the whole film when it has dried - before cutting. Maybe like pull the film through some track and snap the frames in few minutes with DSLR. Just to get a contact-sheet-style preview images to select the ones to print.
Same here. I would like to do a "contact" scan for the whole film when it has dried - before cutting. Maybe like pull the film through some track and snap the frames in few minutes with DSLR. Just to get a contact-sheet-style preview images to select the ones to print.
Indeed. A copy stand where you can easily adjust height is much better. (Needs extra gear at extra cost, though... pretty much everyone has a tripod, not a copy stand.) Also, the light box around the film should be masked, so as not to cause stray light into the lens. I have seen stray light causing massive image degradation with the scans I did. This is easy to do with a piece of dark cardboard or cloth.Haven't read their article in full detail yet, but man that tripod setup looks like an alignment nightmare...
Wow, that's cool! I imagine that doing an automatic film advance for batch scanning of a full roll is probably also doable with Legos.When I first tried to digitally photo-scan my negatives I also started with a tripod setup and it was a pain. I now solved it with a setup I built myself out of a piece of wood, a quick load plate and ... Legos.
Ruediger:When I first tried to digitally photo-scan my negatives I also started with a tripod setup and it was a pain. I now solved it with a setup I built myself out of a piece of wood, a quick load plate and ... Legos. I use a Nikkor macro lens which does not have inner focusing. To get the negative in focus I set the lens to infinity and place the Lego-rig right in front of it so that the negative plane and sensor plane are aligned. Then - while focusing - the lens pushes the Lego-rig ahead and this keeps the negative and sensor plane aligned. I built the Lego setup so that once I can see the grain I do have the full negative in the frame. The negative carrier is built out of two pieces of cardboard with a window in it I can open it a bit or squeeze the neg between the two pieces of cardboard which flattens the negative.
It all sounds more complicated than it really is. But with this setup I have the negative easily aligned and I am able to scan a roll of 36 exposures in less than 5 minutes. Setup time is less than a minute.
With this setup and a 24MP camera, what I get is photo-scanned images of around 20MP. I could change the setup slightly to get a bit more, but that would slow down the scanning and the 20MP are enough for my purposes anyway.
Thanks Matt! Yes, it is good to be back. Although I no longer have a darkroom which keeps me away from the cool exchange projects. But I am back in using film (besides digital).Ruediger:
Welcome back - you have been missed these last three years.
Lego is a great idea!
Your setup sounds interesting and Lego blocks are relatively inexpensive. Can you post some photos?When I first tried to digitally photo-scan my negatives I also started with a tripod setup and it was a pain. I now solved it with a setup I built myself out of a piece of wood, a quick load plate and ... Legos. I use a Nikkor macro lens which does not have inner focusing. To get the negative in focus I set the lens to infinity and place the Lego-rig right in front of it so that the negative plane and sensor plane are aligned. Then - while focusing - the lens pushes the Lego-rig ahead and this keeps the negative and sensor plane aligned. I built the Lego setup so that once I can see the grain I do have the full negative in the frame. The negative carrier is built out of two pieces of cardboard with a window in it I can open it a bit or squeeze the neg between the two pieces of cardboard which flattens the negative.
It all sounds more complicated than it really is. But with this setup I have the negative easily aligned and I am able to scan a roll of 36 exposures in less than 5 minutes. Setup time is less than a minute.
With this setup and a 24MP camera, what I get is photo-scanned images of around 20MP. I could change the setup slightly to get a bit more, but that would slow down the scanning and the 20MP are enough for my purposes anyway.
Sure, I will show something over the weekend. But be warned it is not the High Art of LegoYour setup sounds interesting and Lego blocks are relatively inexpensive. Can you post some photos?
I use my Fujifilm X-T2 and an old Canon FD macro 100mm. It works just fine, particularly with 120 film frames which fit about 80-85% of the frame (eyeball measurement). It's not particularly painful if you're doing the occasional roll of 120, but I cannot honestly say I've never thought about buying an Epson V850 to save me the hassle of clearing off the dining room table.
I take two photos of 120 and stitch together.
I suppose as long as your negs are completely flat this isn't too complicated?
Nice. Will have to try that soon. I'll post any successes...but will be oddly quiet should things not go to plan.....
Also kind of worried that they had a section that appeared to be suggesting that film flatness and position was more about avoiding depth of field issues, rather than about ensuring your copying isn't introducing any alignment skewing that might need correcting in post.
Also, the light box around the film should be masked, so as not to cause stray light into the lens. I have seen stray light causing massive image degradation with the scans I did
during my earlier experimentations, I had film holders which did not mask much around the picture. I experimented with various devices, cardboard, empty slide mounts (to hold the film flat), Lomography's Digitaliza, etc with various results. All light entering the lens around the image created flare. On top of that, handling was poor. I ended up recycling an enlarger's neg holder which has enough black frame around the image, and the issue is gone. I think that as long as no bright light enters the lens around your picture area, there won't be any problem.I have seen many people recommend this, but I have never seen issues of flare and I do not mask out the lightbox. To hold the film I use a negative carrier which has roughly 1.5 inches of black frame all around the aperture, and I use a lens hood on the macro, but that's it.
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