Slide copier?

[John Wiegerink]

Did anyone ever make a medium format slide copier? I can't ever remember seeing one before.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Yeah, but they were expensive pro units that worked hokey anyway. The best way to do it is either by contact or projection under a good colorhead.
The quickie lab conveyor versions are what gave dupes a bad rap. Then they switched over to film recorders requiring drum scanning first, and charged and arm and a leg. The big problem now is that dupe films are gone. CDUII was simply tungsten balanced Fuji Astia. I considered the late
Astia 100F sheet film to be better than either CDUII or Kodak's E-Dupe. I went to the trouble of masking the originals for the sake of very high quality
8x10 copies, but the labs all simply pre-flashed the film. The current Provia would work so-so. You might be able to tame Kodak E100G if you can still
find any of it frozen; but probably all the Astia 120 is long out of date and will probably have highlight crossover as well as general mudiness.

 

[macfred]

Two solutions by Novoflex Dead Link Removed http://www.redravenphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/SLIDE_DUPLICATOR.pdf and by
Pentax http://pentax67.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/6X7_slide-copier.pdf

 

[AgX]

Dedicated slide copiers (with controllable light source) going to MF, even to LF had been made indeed. (IFF, Bowens)

There also was something as a means to invert an incandescant MF colour head to be used under a reprostand. (Kasiser)

And those simple bellows apparatus without light source hinted at above by macfred.

 

[Ian Grant]

Most of the labs I used had De Vere copy heads, essentially similar to a normal De Vere colour enlarger head but designed to be used as a light-table a camera 35mm, 120 or LF would be mounted on a copy-stand over it.

The better Bowens 35mm/120 slide copiers had built in flash exposure and had variable pre-flashing exposure as well for contrast control. It was very common for Kodachrome 25 to be copied onto Kodachrome 25 and this method worked very well.

Ian

 

[John Wiegerink]

I did some searching on the big auction site and did come across the bellows+holder for the Pentax 67. Slightly more than I want to pay even if I do have a nice Pentax 6x7 outfit, but nice to know they are out there. The reason I ask is that I wanted a fast way to view on-screen results for transparency and negative film. What I was after was something like the Pentax bellows slide copier I could mount a certain 36mp digi camera on and take shots of my slides and negatives for a very fast view by then downloading to a PC. Or it could be used to do the same for a quick post on a forum like this even. I suppose I can make my own with a little trouble since I have several Canon and Pentax 35mm slide copiers. For serious stuff I have a Nikon LS8000 scanner, but it's certainly not what I call fast. Good, but not fast.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Camera-attached copiers, Novoflex, etc are basically toys incapable of sharp high-quality duplicates, but OK for casual usage. A couple of months ago
I could have salvaged an expensive pro duplicator from the storage area of a former lab, worth around 40K back when it was new, but it has since
gone to landfill for lack of interest. The easiest way is just to have this commercial done on a film recorder. There's just no way any pro lab, even back when this was a routine request, would do it correctly on an analog basis - too labor intensive. If I had to charge someone else for the 8x10 dupes I made for myself, I'd expect a minimum of five hundred bucks apiece, and way more today if the right films were still available, which they
aren't. Special copy carriers were made for the Durst 138 enlarger which allow a degree of precision. If you have a truly high CRI properly corrected
light box you can tape your original fairly flat onto this and copy from above, using your enlarger like a camera, in reverse. This is more tricky than
it initially appears. For example, I had to order expensive tubes from Germany intended for color matching devices, with a CRI of 98. Then I had to
make a special diffuser for the light box itself sufficiently even with high transmission rate, then a special paint to offset the color temp imbalance cause by the diffuser itself. None of your typical camera store light boxes have this level of performance, though outfits like MacBeath can do it for
a price. Just looking at a chrome over a box is far less stringent than serious copy work. If you have a colorhead on a Durst 138, the copy film carrier
itself is called a LARKA. I have the advantage of a custom additive head on mine for the sake of very high color accuracy, but use it for projecting
the light, making most of the dupes in a registered contact frame. If you enlarge them, you need a graphic copy lens efficient at small magnification.
Most enlarger lenses aren't that good for this particular application, though specialty types like the Rodagon D do exist.

 

[DREW WILEY]

OK. Now the low tech method. Let's say you have a decent copy tube from Nikon or for a P67. You can mount your original in Gepe anti-Newton glass
mounts to keep it flat, then be certain you have a diffuse rather than point light source so the AN texture doesn't show. You'll obviously need a proper
macro lens with no distortion, which Nikon obviously offers, and Pentax has a 120 for its 6x7. The next problem is that the P67 does not offer this lens in leaf shutter or have a multiple exposure option on the camera body itself, allowing for preflashing the film for shadow reproduction and then
the main exposure without advancing the frame. They do have a funny little key for this, if you haven't already lost it! The degree and exact color
temperature of any flashing diffuser is very critical or you'll muddy up your midtones too. I helps to have a color temperature meter on hand for
initial setups and bracket testing etc. But handling lighting temperature is a subject on its own right, requiring either corrective gels over the lights themselves or filter on the lens, understood by most studio types already.

 

[ic-racer]

Rollei made a system for both the SL66 and 6000 cameras.

 

[John Wiegerink]

Drew, I was only after a quick copy/download method and thought the use of a 24mp or 36mp DSLR and bellows slide copier would be the cats meow. I know it probably wouldn't live up to your standards, but your standards and mine are not the same when it comes to quick and easy. I've seen some very acceptable work done by folks with just a light table and DSLR. Heck, I've even seen nice work from a fellow using a cellphone for a light table and a DSLR. Some folks will say I shouldn't mention DSLR's, but it is another way of transferring your analog image to this site so they'll have to just get over the DSLR thing.

 

[darkroommike]

The Beseler unit can be converted to do 6x7.

 

[John Wiegerink]

Rollei made a system for both the SL66 and 6000 cameras.

Yes, that would work with an adapter for the digi camera in place of the Rollei mount.

 

[DREW WILEY]

So here's another low-tech method, which you can adapt nearly any SLR, provided it has a decent rectilinear macro lens: Get or make a suitable vertical copystand and place your lightbox on the baseboard. Crop off stray light with cardboard or velvet, and a lens hood. Since you are copying a transparency, you don't need any copy lights per se. If you don't want to pre-flash the film, you could try slightly overexposing and E6 pull-processing
for half a stop; but in my experience, the current generation of chrome films don't respond as well to this as older versions, though it's easy enough
to experiment.

 

[M Carter]

I've had good luck with various ghetto setups. For MF to MF, frosted glass, speedo heads and diffusion, extension tubes. For 35, even DSLR, similar setup.

I've enlarged 35mm E6 to Velvia and EPP by using my enlarger and taping an old camera flash in the condenser box. Polaroid did help when I did that, but I got some pretty glorious 8x10's, back when everyone showed their product portfolio on light boxes. (I had a set of work that was shot on Tungsten 400 35mm, pushed three or four stops, and then duped onto velvia. Grain was gorgeous.) There are ways to do this, especially if you're not doing it for a magazine or something.

 

[Diapositivo]

Drew, I was only after a quick copy/download method and thought the use of a 24mp or 36mp DSLR and bellows slide copier would be the cats meow. I know it probably wouldn't live up to your standards, but your standards and mine are not the same when it comes to quick and easy. I've seen some very acceptable work done by folks with just a light table and DSLR. Heck, I've even seen nice work from a fellow using a cellphone for a light table and a DSLR. Some folks will say I shouldn't mention DSLR's, but it is another way of transferring your analog image to this site so they'll have to just get over the DSLR thing.

There is something I don't get. If you are prepared to go the numeric road, what about a decent quality scanner?
Wouldn't that save you a lot of problems regarding planarity of slide, lens planarity of field, anti-Newton glass and rings, control of contrast?

If the purpose is the publication on APUG galleries, or internet in general, a good document scanner should do the job properly and you would also have a scanner for your documents. Just go for one with a decent quality in scanning film.

Taking a numeric picture with a slide duplicator creates a lot of problems that scanners don't have.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Apples to apples, you'd still need antinewton glass, the mess of scanning fluid to clean up, etc etc, with even a dedicated slide scanner. For more moderate quality, like that in question, you just feed an ordinary slide through. Consumer-grade flatbed (document) scanners are miserable with anything really small like 35mm. Wrong forum to discuss why. Film to film duplication builds contrast, so unless you flash it, mask it, or pull process
it, anything contrasty to begin with is going to lose some content. Likewise, discuss elsewhere which if any DLSR's can handle these kinds of issues best for copy applications. Nonetheless, a basic copystand is a wonderful convenience.

 

[John Wiegerink]

There is something I don't get. If you are prepared to go the numeric road, what about a decent quality scanner?
Wouldn't that save you a lot of problems regarding planarity of slide, lens planarity of field, anti-Newton glass and rings, control of contrast?
Taking a numeric picture with a slide duplicator creates a lot of problems that scanners don't have.

I have a pretty decent scanner (Nikon LS8000 with glass anti-newton Nikon carrier) and it does a very, very good job for which I have no complaints. I usually scan all my negative or slides when I have time set aside so they might be filed away for awhile before I get to them. That's why I wanted to use a "numeric" camera(I like that term) and copier to possibly pull a negative/slide or two and get a quick dupe for the web or whatever. I realize this isn't drum scan quality or even Nikon LS8000 quality, but I can live with that in turn for speed and ease of use. I think I'll do some web searching and maybe some experimenting myself and see what I come up with. Thanks for all your input. John w