Slide Copying: Scanner vs Duplicator

darmodej · Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 11:37 am Post subject:

Great report, thanks!
Would there be any benefit from making several photos of a single slide/negative in HDR style ... +/- 1EV?

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Cistron · Joined: 25 Feb 2011 Posts: 238 Location: London/Vienna

Apologies for digging up such an old thread.

Does anyone know where I could find negative strip holders, so I could use them in my slide duplicator? I tried constructing something from paper and plastic, but I had to conclude that my cutting and gluing skills aren't the best.

Is there a specific name I could use to search via google? Film holder, strip holder, negative holder, etc. doesn't return anything useful, besides some flatbed scanner hits.

poilu · Expire: 2019-08-29

Cistron · Joined: 25 Feb 2011 Posts: 238 Location: London/Vienna

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

These people sell a variety of slide copiers and sleeves for them:

http://specialtyphotographic.stores.yahoo.net/index.html

If you click on the menu button on the top and then click on "Universal" on the right, this is the copier you see all over eBay these days.

They keep changing the design of these things, dammit. The last one everybody was selling was better in my view because it had an adjustable slide stage and some of them, if not all, came with a film strip adapter. Not anymore. Hopefully the film strip adapter they show on the home page will work with yours. If I were you, I'd email them a photo of mine and ask if they have a film strip adapter that will work.

Other than these guys, I don't know who to suggest.

Cistron · Joined: 25 Feb 2011 Posts: 238 Location: London/Vienna

Thanks, Michael.

I've stumbled across a few more things when you search for negative carrier. One is on ebay and I asked for the measurements. In order for it to fit into my "Peak" duplicator it mustn't be wider/higher than 5cm.

I've also found clear polycarbonate or acrylic sheets online. If I cut them to 5cm width, sandwich the film in between and clamp them together, I should be able to wedge it into the duplicator. A lot of work though...

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Well, good luck in your searches. I was reading through their site a bit more, and they actually offer more than one model of film strip holder. So they still may be your best bet.

To change the subject a bit, though. Are you planning on duping color negs as well as b&w? B&W are easy to process. But I have't had much luck with color. I've found that some will reverse and display fine with maybe one or two clicks in pp, while with others it's a real struggle to get the colors close to the original, and with others, it's just flat not possible . . . or maybe I should just say that I haven't figured out yet how to do it.

During previous discussions of this problem -- I don't know if it was here or at another forum -- somebody suggested taking a dupe of just a blank exposed portion of the film so I'd have that exact orange, and then subtract that orange from the negative, then invert the negative. I'll admit, I haven't tried this yet, and it may well be the answer.

So anyway, if you're able to successfully convert color negs, please let us know how you do it.

Cistron · Joined: 25 Feb 2011 Posts: 238 Location: London/Vienna

I'll try both and slide film. First I'll try to colour balance against my flash-gun. Inversion of negatives is pretty straight-forwards in LR - simply invert the end points in the curve settings. If the colour balance is still off, there is always the eye-dropper tool.

What software have you been using?

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

I have Lightroom, but I don't use it much. I also have PS, and I use it more, but mostly I use Paint Shop Pro X2. It does most everything I need and will do some things that I haven't figured out how to do in PS yet.

After I posted the previous message, I started getting curious again since it's been quite a while since I've messed with converting color negs, and after a lot of trial and error with both packages, I found a fairly simple way to get a decent result in PS and an even simpler way to get a decent result in PSP X2. So I'm kinda stoked by this. For very fine quality neg conversions, though, I wouldn't deem either acceptable since they both leave behind a bit of residual masking color that's really hard to get rid of and just don't seem to have the full range of colors one would expect with a well-crafted photo. But for QD stuff, they do a good job.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Revisiting this thread, I realize I didn't post what I did to get halfway decent results converting color negative images. Pretty simple really.

With Photoshop (CS5), I go to Images>Adjustments>Invert and then Images>Auto Tone and then Images>Auto Color.

With Paint Shop Pro X2, I go to Adjust>Color Balance>Fade Correction to come up with a reasonable representation. But with earlier versions of PSP I don't get as good of results. These earlier versions work better if you do Adjust>Color Balance>Grey World Color Balance and then maybe a bit of contrast adjustment. The routines get you close at least.

The PS conversions seem to work better than the PSP ones.

If you try these things out, let me know if you come out with better ways of doing things. We all learn from each other, you know.

poilu · Expire: 2019-08-29

DigiChromeEd · Joined: 29 Dec 2009 Posts: 3460 Location: Northern Ireland

This may be of help:

http://www.photosolve.com/main/resources/pw_film_conv/index.html

Cistron · Joined: 25 Feb 2011 Posts: 238 Location: London/Vienna

Another useful software is VueScan. I've just won an Epson V300 off the bay and will give this a try as soon as I can. Maybe the film strip carrier fits the slide duplicator, so that would be two birds with one stone. We'll see.

visualopsins · Expire: 2025-04-11

The Epson V500 bundled (Epson) software has color-negative conversion that works pretty well!

Wherever two flat surfaces meet there can be moire patterns produced. Better to us ANR glass than clear glass or acrylic.j

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

A scanner that comes with a negative carrier should do a decent job of inverting a negative to a positive image or else it's pretty useless, isn't it?

The topic of this thread has mostly been about how to use a DSLR to dupe images. But duping negs is tricky.

Thanks, DigiChromeEd, for that link. The very last method discussed is the one that I think will be the most useful. However, please note where he states, "If your inversion results in a not quite right color leveled picture, simply try using Image, Adjust, Auto Levels." I note that the curves box he has displayed is from a Mac, and I don't know if the commands are different or if this is just an old web page and is calling out for commands that have changed in a later version of PS. I have CS5. And in mine this sequence appears to be identical to that which I called out above, namely Images>Adjustments>Invert and then Images>Auto Tone and then Images>Auto Color. I didn't do anything at all with the orange mask to invert and get very close.

I'll post some examples in my next message using both PS CS5 and PSP X2. I'd post them here, but my computer dual boots between Win 7 and XP and right now it's in Win 7 and I don't have PSPX2 loaded on Win 7 yet. So I have to boot to XP.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

To show how I've been doing the conversions, I decided to start fresh and do a few from the beginning. It was while doing this that I reminded myself that Kodak Ektar responds quite differently from other color negative films when being scanned and that perhaps some of my difficulties have been because I've been trying to get accurately colored duplicates from Ektar. And I think this has been my stumbling block, by and large because most of the negatives I've been working on have been Ektar. But even so, with a few of the Ektar negs, I've finally managed to do a decent job and it ended up not being all that difficult. Just a lot of trial and error.

Okay here is a scan of a photo of a caboose. Nikon F2, 24mm f/2.8 AI-s, exposure unrecorded. It was scanned on an Epson 4990 and I'm sure I didn't do any special tweaking within the EpsonScan software. I don't recall, but I may have adjusted the colors after the scan because grayish-browns tend to take on a purple hue with Ektar when scanned with my 4990.

I have tried dozens of times to get an accurately colored duplicate of the above image. Even using the routines I suggest above doesn't do a very good job. I wind up with something that looks like this:

BTW, I know the two images are different size-wise. For some reason I cropped the dupe of this negative.

I have found that, in PhotoShop, after I do the Auto Color and Auto Tone stuff, if I bring up the Image/Adjustments/Color Balance and then Image/Adjustments/Hue-Saturation, and tweak the image with these settings, I can finally get pretty close. Still some residual cyan that I can't entirely get rid of.

And in Paint Shop Pro X2, I can achieve even better results with less work. With PSP, I invert the negative then go to Adjust/Color/Fade Correction, which takes care of most of it, although there's still some residual cyan. But next I import the image into PSP's "Express Lab" where the default state when you enter it is with the eyedropper being active. So I select an area that is closest to 18% gray and click on it, and voila. Done. With PSP almost all the cyan is gone, but the sky is not the right color now. Oh well.

But wait, there's more! Just thought I'd also show you some results from non-Ektar negatives. These are considerably easier and in their cases all I have to do is the original steps I outlined above.

Fuji Superia 400

My daughter's cat, whom she's named "Squirrel" but whom I call "The Brat Cat" because that's what she is.

First Photoshop just doing the Auto Tone and Auto Color steps only:

And then PSP X2, doing the Fade Correction. I had to make an additional step and bring it into the Express Lab to get rid of some green tint that shouldn't have been there. Just one click.

Kodak Gold 200

A train trestle along the coast in Ft. Bragg, CA. First is a scan done with my Epson 4990.

Then PS:

And then PSP X2:

There are still slight color variations, but at least I'm getting close.

iangreenhalgh1 · Expire: 2014-01-07

Nice work Michael, I am paying attention as soon I am entering the world of scanning myself.

Scheimpflug · Expire: 2011-11-18

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Interesting way to handle this. I'll admit that I haven't pursued the orange mask since I've gotten non-Ektar negs to work acceptably. I should still give it a go, though.

visualopsins · Expire: 2025-04-11

Hey I missed some of this thread.

Fort Bragg?! That's near my neck of the woods! Very Happy