Slide Copying: Scanner vs Duplicator

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

Right, I've given up on the slide duplicator, although I finally found the perfect strip carrier - the Nikon FH-2.

I've used an Epson V300 for some time, but the resolution of 2400dpi scans are 1000dpi at best. So I've stumbled across a Nikon LS-30 on ebay. With a new SCSI card, I can even run it under Windows 7 64bit through Vuescan. Neat.

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

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

Kram · Joined: 06 Feb 2010 Posts: 1344 Location: Portland, OR

Revisiting this thread as I am looking for a Digital Slide Duplicator. Best options? Using it on a Canon 60d.

paulhofseth · Expire: 2018-06-28

I have found that to digitize, using my ancient, but very good Minolta filmscanner with the excellent Vuescan program, is very much slower than just photographing my old slides. Negatives in scanners do not need demozaicing, but have also strange orange filters, so they need mr. Hamrichs Vuescan) -.

For slides I use an Olympus bellows,a Rodenstock enlarging lens from my defunct darkroom and RAWs from a FF camerabody + appropriate software.

Much faster and reasonable quality, at least when one has too many old slides to make fit for digital archives.

p..

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

Kram · Joined: 06 Feb 2010 Posts: 1344 Location: Portland, OR

Wow, thanks for that, Michael!

I do have two macro lenses a Zeiss M-P 60/2.8 and a Micro-Nikkor 105/2.8 (in shop for re-lube). I was hoping those would get me 1:1 with a "digital" slide duplicator. I have extension tubes for the Zeiss. Somewhere, I have a reversing ring for the Nikkor.
My plan was to use studio strobes for light.

Think I'd better study your earlier posts.
Thanks again!
Very Happy

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

A single studio strobe that can be set to a fraction of fulll output is all you'll need. Currently I'm using a Nikon SB24 (my old Canon 240EZ finally gave up the ghost) set to 1/16 power for my flash. At ISO 100, I'm locating the front of my dupe setup about 18" to 2' away from the flash, sometimes more, sometimes less.

If I were in your shoes, I'd see if I could get the Zeiss to work. The 105 Micro Nikkor is an incredible lens, but it's just too much focal length, I've found. My 105 Vivitar/Kiron gets all the way down to 1:1 without extension and has a very long helical, but still it isn't long enough for the set I have. Not saying it can't be used, but the other items you'll need probably aren't in my personal inventory.

If you can find a threaded 52mm diameter tube to which you can fasten a flange, you can save a bunch of money over what I did -- having to buy the "digital" slide duplicator, only to toss away most of it a short time later.
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paulhofseth · Expire: 2018-06-28

http://forum.mflenses.com/userpix/20153/4029_slidecopy_1.jpg

This is a snap of my first rig; The OM-bellows to EF mount was a bit too long, so it was not possible to get absolutely 100% and the VF, although better than the fiddly Liveview in full daylight, was not satisfactory.

I now use the Canon remote control and focus on a laptop screen, so the rig looks slightly different. Daylight works as light source. I tried to solve the front bellows- to-lens clamping by using the front threads and an old 49mm filtermount so as to avoid clamping the aperture ring. That bit is slightly wobbly, but only has to fix the light shading device and has no influence on the optical path.

The enlarger lens gives adequate results for my purposes.

p.

Ramon · Joined: 01 May 2007 Posts: 71 Location: Kent, UK

To get the white balance correct when copying colour negatives take a shot of the film base (normally orange coloured).
Do a "click white balance" on this orange colour and it will turn white, save the white balance setting.
Copy your negative, use your previously save white balance correction on it, invert the copy to get a positive and you will get the right colours (the base then turns black)
If you get the exposure wrong when you do the copy then it can effect the accuracy of this but once a correct routine has been established then it is simple.

Obviously the previously saved white balance will be correct for every other negative on the same film.

VLR · Joined: 05 Mar 2015 Posts: 86

I recently experimented with converting negatives to digital. My setup is pretty basic but works nicely: White backlight from phone screen, negative 40 mm above screen, Minolta 50 mm f/3.5 macro on NEX-5T and tripod above the setup. All in a dark room. The PP I apply is slightly different from yours and works pretty great in terms of color restauration:

I work on PS CS6. Instead of using the Auto-WB, I copy my main layer and apply a gaussian blur with 10 to 15 px radius to get rid of most of the noise and film grain (this layer is only used for sampling colors). I then sample the orange border of the image from the blurred layer and create a fill layer with it. In the next step, I set the layer blending mode of the orange fill layer to "difference". The result is a positive of the image which usually shows not quite perfect colors, but is very close. Playing aroung with the fill layers color and opacity allows you to easily adjust how aggressive the orange cast is removed and get a neutral result. In the next step, I correct any remaining color casts by using a levels layer and the white point eye-dropper (using the blurred layer, again). Finally, I correct the black point. The latter is easier to set manually in each channel (R/G/B), because not every image has true blacks in it.

This process results in a very color neutral but slightly dark and flat image that is very usable after correcting bightness and contrast with a curves adjustment layer. In my opinion, the results come very close to what the image should look like in terms of color. Try it if you have PS and let me know if this is easier for you, or if you like your original PP process better Smile

Note: I didn't 'invent' this technique, but read it on the net years ago. Sadly, I don't remember where.

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

Thanks, guys, for your input. This helps all of us who are working at perfecting duplicating negatives.

Kram · Joined: 06 Feb 2010 Posts: 1344 Location: Portland, OR

Thoughts on this? Seems to have glass in it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004S7C4LY/ref=gno_cart_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1P9QRDRYY6FXL

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

Yes, it has a correction lens inside the tube so that you can focus closely. I bought an Opteka "Digital" slide duplicator from the same people a few years ago. Mine looks different from this one -- It didn't have that tray that you put the slides into. It just had a holder for a single slide.

These slide duplicators are made with the idea that you'll mount it to a zoom, like a 28-85 for example, and then use the zoom to bring the image to a 1:1 ratio, or you can crop, if you want. Actually, if used with a sharp zoom, it does a decent job. Better than you'll get with any flatbed scanner, in fact.

Or you can go off the deep end, like I did, and build your own. Go back to the first page of this thread and you'll see an image of the rig that I use, which includes a stripped Opteka tube. I've changed it slightly since then, but the basic rig I show there will definitely work, and work well.

redguy22 · Joined: 23 Feb 2015 Posts: 33

Wow what a very usefull thread!

I'm looking into this as I recently came across 1500+ slides from my inlaws. Girlfriends dad used a minolta set-up 15+ years ago and there's a massive collection of slides and no one has a clue what's on them apart from several holiday photos and possibly some of my girlfriend + sister when they were kids.

We found some dodgy slide scanner with terrible not working drivers.

But the using my digital camera thing to photograph the slides sounds interesting, I'm going to see what I can come up with!

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

Yeah, it is very useful, considering that a 24 megapixel camera renders the equivalent scan resolution of a Nikon CoolScan -- 4000 ppi.

As for what you want to accomplish, it all depends on how deep you want to get into it. If you have a sharp zoom in the 28-85 range, then it might work best for you to go with one of the digital slide duplicators, like those sold on eBay. Like one of these:
Click here to see on Ebay

If you type into the search panel "digital slide duplicator" you'll get a lot of hits, and you can decide on which is best for you, if you want to go that route. Digital dupes just using one of these come out pretty good, and may be all you'll need.

If you want more resolution, things start getting rather involved. If your digital camera is a full frame model, then you're best off using a set of bellows with a slide duplicator attachment. If you have a crop body camera, bellows won't collapse small enough for the image not to exceed 1:1 and you'll end up with a crop. It isn't the part in front of the lens, but the bellows behind the lens that's the problem. Too much extension. That's why I use extension tubes -- about 25mm worth -- attached to the rear of the lens.

As for the stuff in front of the lens, I got lucky with that digital slide duplicator I bought. I was able to strip it down to just a simple flanged tube. I had also removed the close-up element from within the tube. The tube is 52mm in diameter, so it will thread onto the front of the lens. And the flange allows me to slide a duplicator stage onto the front. That is the key -- the flange. And all of the digital slide duplicators I see now on eBay (haven't looked at all of them yet, though) don't have that same thin, flat flange. So, coming up with a tube of the right length (about 3") and 52mm in diameter to which a flange can be attached -- that's gonna be the challenge. Like I said, I got lucky. Although I had to pay over $50 just so I could strip down the tube to its bare components.

It might end up working better for you to see if you can just rig up a bellows slide duplicator to your setup. Most bellows slide duplicators have a metal post that slides into the bellows unit, which can be clamped down at a given distance. Perhaps there might be a way to attach it somehow to your setup so you can use it instead of a digital duplicator tube. I havent' given this method much thought yet, but it could end up being the more practical way to go if there were a secure way to cobble together some sort of attachment method.

With my design, at the core of the rig is a sharp macro lens around 50mm focal length. I prefer the Nikon 55mm macro, but I'm sure any other 50mm macro will work. I haven't tried a longer macro, like one in the 90-105mm range, but I suspect that it won't work because you'll probably end up with too much enlargement.

There may be other ways to get this done. If you have a good macro and a lot of adapters and stuff, give it a try, mixing and matching. That's what I've done, I even have refined my rig from the one pictured at the beginning of the thread. I did it because, when I switched camera systems, I went froma 1.6x crop body to a 1.5x crop body. So using the new body with the old rig, there wasn't quite enough magnification. I was wasting about 20% of the available resolution. So I tried changing out some adapters and rings and came up with a new method that provides me with almost exactly 1:1.

I recommend that, if your camera shoots raw files, that you archive the raw files. That way you can always go back to an original if/when you want to do some processing to the images. And, of course, once you have a large archive, then you get to figure out how to keep it secure and safe. Which can be a set of worries all by itself.

Whichever way you decide to go, good luck!