Scanning film with a camera

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Keep in mind that this article encourages you to spend money on a solution.

https://www.keh.com/blog/how-to-scan-film-with-a-digital-camera?

 

[Cholentpot]

I do this but it's far more complex and there's a large learning curve. Once you get it down the results can be really really good. Once thing though, that lomo holder is really really bad. Waste of money.

 

[Luckless]

Haven't read their article in full detail yet, but man that tripod setup looks like an alignment nightmare...

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.

[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?]

 

[radiant]

[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.

 

[osella]

I thought about going down this avenue for a while. It sounded good at first, but when I really got down into the details(alignment, problems with stitching etc.) I ended up buying a Nikon 9000. Granted an old scanner could potentially have issues, but I would rather spend my time taking pictures and printing than I would messing around trying to get the results I expect.

 

[wahiba]

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.

My Lomo frame for 120 film came today. I do not know about the 35mm holder but the 120 works well. As a quick trial I placed it over an Led mains ceiling light that I have made into a basic light box. I thought it might be too bright but as the frame with the negatives fitted nicely on the lamp I gave it a try using an older digital camera hand held both colour and black and white. Well the results were surprisingly good.

Light by the way was meant to fit on ceiling but by mistake bought one requiring a big hole cutting. I just made a box for it. Light actually has three colour temp options activated switching off and on. I reckon good results with a fixed set up.

I reckon for quick test snaps a hand held camera is more than adequate though. Certainly the results are the same as from those cheap and cheerful 'scanners' one feeds film through but actually is just a basic camera system.

 

[Cholentpot]

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.

Been looking for something like this for a while. Aligning the frames is the most time consuming part.

 

[AndyH]

Alignment of the tripod, if it's done right, is an extensive process. And once you've done it, you still have to be careful not to jiggle or move either part of the setup. Once you're set up, you can scan many at a time quite easily, but I think I'll go for the Canon V550 instead. Setup should be a breeze, and you can do other things while the negatives are scanning. The lomo negative holder is flimsy and probably won't last very long. I'd be dubious about its initial alignment as well as keeping it from warping in the future.

Andy

 

[rst]

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.

 

[etn]

Haven't read their article in full detail yet, but man that tripod setup looks like an alignment nightmare...

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.

 

[etn]

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.

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.

 

[MattKing]

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.

Ruediger:
Welcome back - you have been missed these last three years.
Lego is a great idea!

 

[rst]

Ruediger:
Welcome back - you have been missed these last three years.
Lego is a great idea!

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).

With the "Lego-Scanner" setup it is as it was with my darkroom ... there is always a way to work-around some missing gear and in the end I found a way that works for me.

Cheers
Ruediger

 

[Cholentpot]

I use a copystand and a lightpad that's masked off with tape. I shoot the film with an 18mp camera and a 100mm macro lens. It's good enough for me to print 8x12 with zero issue. I'm confident I could go far larger. Each roll is about an hour of work, scanning and post.

 

[PhilBurton]

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.

Your setup sounds interesting and Lego blocks are relatively inexpensive. Can you post some photos?

 

[Dusty Negative]

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.

 

[rst]

Your setup sounds interesting and Lego blocks are relatively inexpensive. Can you post some photos?

Sure, I will show something over the weekend. But be warned it is not the High Art of Lego

Cheers
Rüdiger

 

[Cholentpot]

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.

 

[Dusty Negative]

I take two photos of 120 and stitch together.

I suppose as long as your negs are completely flat this isn't too complicated?

 

[Cholentpot]

I suppose as long as your negs are completely flat this isn't too complicated?

Snap one photo of half, move it down and snap the other. I use a negative carrier from my enlarger. I let Photoshop do the work and it tends to do a great job. I get massive resolution off of it.

 

[Dusty Negative]

Nice. Will have to try that soon. I'll post any successes...but will be oddly quiet should things not go to plan.....

 

[Cholentpot]

Nice. Will have to try that soon. I'll post any successes...but will be oddly quiet should things not go to plan.....

The secret code...

 

[Grim Tuesday]

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.

What concerns you about this? The DoF issues are very significant at the magnifications we are "scanning" at.

By the way, I use my enlarger stand to DSLR scan, it is a Durst 606 and the condensor head comes off and can be replaced with a camera. It fixes alignment issues in most dimensions. Since this is a film forum, this enlarger-based setup could be useful to many people. Personally, I use a D5500 with nikkor 55 2.8. I tested the 55 3.5 as well and it has noticeable softer corners at high magnifications. I experimented a lot with negative carriers (including straight on top of glass) and found that to not much surprise, a negative carrier from a Beseler enlarger I happened to have lying around is best for 6x6. I use a negative mask that came with my Durst straight on glass for the 35mm and have had surprisingly few newton ring problems.

I have been very satisfied with the results, almost to the point where I'm willing to sell my V700. An example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/132764966@N03/48666330146/in/dateposted-public/

 

[GLS]

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

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.

 

[etn]

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.

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 also switch off the room's lights so as to avoid reflections on the film.

I now manage to scan an entire roll in 5-15 minutes - the longest part being getting the neg out of the sleeves and back into them again.
Thanks for the comment on lens hood, I should use that too (I just need to find one... don't have one yet)