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pixl-latr Film Holder
- Thread starter Gesture
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Nice solution if you have a large range of neg sizes.
If you want to digitize a single size, just buy an old negative carrier from eBay. Probably cheaper and works just fine.
Plenty of cheap old enlargers on eBay, although they will need 1/4"-20 capability to hold a cam.
Overrank
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The Lomography Digitaliza is very good for 120, and you can get them second hand. Has a magnet mechanism to get the film flat. I use one on my Epson rather than the stock holder
"Good for the money" is my overall opinion. I got one months ago from the original UK website, and am very happy to see it being sold by Freestyle now (though Freestyle's shipping costs are annoying). My list of cons is going to be longer than my list of pros, but the pros count for a lot!
Pros
- It's cheaper than other options
- It holds the film flat (at least for 35 and 120)
- Generally, it does what it's supposed to do.
Cons
- It holds the film directly against the diffuser, which can be annoying in terms of dust
- There's one small insert that lets you block out a frame to one side of the 35mm frame you're shooting. That isn't enough to isolate the lens from the light panel, so I had to cut out a piece of cardboard to lay over the whole thing. Not a huge deal.
- The little optional rubber feet don't create quite enough friction, so you should really get a light panel with a textured face.
- The most annoying thing: scanning strips can be a pain in the butt. This is down to two reasons: 1. In order to (comfortably, at least) insert a film strip into the holder, you have to partially or completely remove the black top piece of the pixl-latr, put in the film, then push the holder back together. This is annoying if you've got a lot of strips. 2. Because of the way that top piece is designed, you can't easily push the film strip all the way through and out the other side, as it gets caught on the lip of the holder. That means that you typically have to open and the pixl-latr twice to do one strip. Thankfully, both of these issues are nonexistent if you do a whole roll at once.
Anyway, for $55 I think it's a good buy. It's served me well so far, and I even just used the diffuser to do four slides at a time without the top cover.
Pros
- It's cheaper than other options
- It holds the film flat (at least for 35 and 120)
- Generally, it does what it's supposed to do.
Cons
- It holds the film directly against the diffuser, which can be annoying in terms of dust
- There's one small insert that lets you block out a frame to one side of the 35mm frame you're shooting. That isn't enough to isolate the lens from the light panel, so I had to cut out a piece of cardboard to lay over the whole thing. Not a huge deal.
- The little optional rubber feet don't create quite enough friction, so you should really get a light panel with a textured face.
- The most annoying thing: scanning strips can be a pain in the butt. This is down to two reasons: 1. In order to (comfortably, at least) insert a film strip into the holder, you have to partially or completely remove the black top piece of the pixl-latr, put in the film, then push the holder back together. This is annoying if you've got a lot of strips. 2. Because of the way that top piece is designed, you can't easily push the film strip all the way through and out the other side, as it gets caught on the lip of the holder. That means that you typically have to open and the pixl-latr twice to do one strip. Thankfully, both of these issues are nonexistent if you do a whole roll at once.
Anyway, for $55 I think it's a good buy. It's served me well so far, and I even just used the diffuser to do four slides at a time without the top cover.
DrBormental
Forum Enthusiast
Except you are forgetting that in addition to holding a negative this thing also comes with a light diffuser which you absolutely need to avoid seeing the LEDs pattern in your photos.
Prior to using a dedicated film-scanning setup, I was indeed using a regular negative carrier (DigitaLIZA), but I had to build a contraption that raised it two inches above the light source to blur the LED pattern. This was awfully inconvenient because it complicated film plane alignment to the camera.
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Barry Twycross
Veteran Member
It works well for 4x5, I haven't tried smaller formats yet.
It really needs clips to hold it together, and a better stand to stand vertical, which is my workflow. Some 1.5" binder clips solve both of those issues.
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The most annoying thing I found was that if you put an uncut roll of 35mm through it, there is nothing to keep the film from skewing away from the guide lip to the opposite side. I wind up with needing to straighten the film against the side lip each time I advance the strip. Maybe there is a way to do this more easily (I had contacted them about this), but the design constrains the side of the film on only one side, allowing it to get out of alignment.
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