Oly Air + Panny 30mm macro + Nikon ES-1 slide copier?

I recently purchased an Olympus Air, and for my first ever MFT lens, purchased a Panasonic 30mm macro. One use I would like to put it to is to digitize some 35mm slides and negatives.

I'm planning to buy  a Nikon ES-1 slide copier and a 46-52 step up ring. I'm unsure of whether I will need additional extension to fill the frame. Can anyone help with this?

As for adapting it to copy from film strips, are there any suggestions? So far I've only found a Kaiser film strip carrier at B&H that would take weeks to receive.

tesilab wrote:

I recently purchased an Olympus Air, and for my first ever MFT lens, purchased a Panasonic 30mm macro. One use I would like to put it to is to digitize some 35mm slides and negatives.

I'm planning to buy a Nikon ES-1 slide copier and a 46-52 step up ring. I'm unsure of whether I will need additional extension to fill the frame. Can anyone help with this?

As for adapting it to copy from film strips, are there any suggestions? So far I've only found a Kaiser film strip carrier at B&H that would take weeks to receive.

I recently used a Nikon ES-1 with my GH4 with a Minolta 35mm/f1.8; I needed an extension tube. Here's a photo of my setup.

Scanned over 1,000 slides with this setup

From what I could tell from a quick lookup, your lens isn't a macro, so I can understand needing the extension on that side of the lens.

Have you used anything to adapt it to negatives/film strips as well?

Yes you are correct: the Minolta lens is not a macro. I never kept film negatives.

Tesilab, you want something we agree that is fixed and ready to go to work on your slides.

My choice-not the simplest but elegant- was to use a Canon Bellow FL. and later I bought a used Canon Auto Bellows. Both units come with a slide carrier if you get a complete outfit. I paid about $160.00 from Band H. The value of this is that you can attach any older macro lens or enlarger lens and see it on your screen. A lens of suitable enlargement capability encompasses many out there designed to work with the largersize film cameras. So my rig involved a Canon 50 mm macro and sometimes a teleconverter ( oldie) and a 50 dollar LED. In this photo I am really going for half frame. But it gives you an idea. Thing is to be able to slide your camera back and forth to obtain sharp focus. Use any WB that works. No reason an AiR cannot be uses. but I would not want to try such a rig. I would expect your 30mm macro could work, if the bellows allows it... Any bellows will do,I hasten to add, .Hope that offers a second opinion and and idea, sir...I wish you well, gs

I must add I considere an all in one tube like the Nikon gadget, but I wanted more flexibility and I think I achieved it....Well it is an idea to play with....the Auto Bellows has adjustments builtin the carrier and also a film strip module, nice gizmo for sure...if you are into gizmos. Once set up, it is pretty easy to employ..gs

Canon Bellows FL (early model replaced by Auto Bellows) with old 50 mm macro and teleconverter to shoot a 24 X23 mm slide chip

I found a shot of my Auto Bellows set up for 35mm slides with the 50mm macro lens and the GH 2 on a little slide. Set white balance to taste on the screen.....I knew I took a photo of this rig. I was lucky to get an Auto Bellows in complete boxed condition with the carrier and clean bellows and whatnot...so for you and any one else interested in duping slides to micro four thirds, this is not bad for the money. But I cannot compare it to the all in one Nikon  ES-1gadget for size. I happened to own a bunch of Canon lenses and converters and tubes...helped. I find this works to my satisfaction.. i will try to find an example of a small slide copied to digital to show you. Now where did I file that one//??

I use the Olympus 12-50 mm lens at its macro setting with the ES-1. It's just about perfect for the magnification.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNgAOSlaLSk

Dick

Here is a moderately but not extensively retouched 50 year old Kodachrome slide one of a stereo pair of 23 by 24mm using a bellows and a micro four thirds camera.  Either the GH2 or the G-1. I think not bad even at this low res web JPEG cy

Very helpful video, thank you.

tesilab wrote:

I recently purchased an Olympus Air, and for my first ever MFT lens, purchased a Panasonic 30mm macro. One use I would like to put it to is to digitize some 35mm slides and negatives.

I'm planning to buy a Nikon ES-1 slide copier and a 46-52 step up ring. I'm unsure of whether I will need additional extension to fill the frame. Can anyone help with this?

As for adapting it to copy from film strips, are there any suggestions? So far I've only found a Kaiser film strip carrier at B&H that would take weeks to receive.

I use the Lumix 30mm macro lens with the ES-1 and a 46 to 52mm adapter. I works perfectly fine without any additional extensions or hardware of any kind. Although I have the Olympus Air, so far I have only tried with the E-M5 MkII

Since I photographed framed slides, I cannot answer your question about film strips, but from what I can see, the slide holders in the ES-1 could damage the film unless you use some kind of protection. Not difficult to do, but may be more convenient to have them individually framed.

The results are truly gratifying, particularly if you shoot RAW (+ JPEG) and adjust the white balance, etc., which is necessary for optimum results.

BTW, you'll need a bright like source (I use a 100W-equivalent LED light bulb and shoot very close to it with very good results).

Go for it and have fun!

Ricky

This is very good to know. I'll pick up this combo today and start with slides till I sort out the film holder issue.

As for light source, I'll have to experiment. I was wondering if it worth trying longer exposures against my MacBookpro LCD set to pure white display. But perhaps it won't penetrate the denser parts of the slide?

Gerry Siegel wrote:

Here is a moderately but not extensively retouched 50 year old Kodachrome slide one of a stereo pair of 23 by 24mm using a bellows and a micro four thirds camera. Either the GH2 or the G-1. I think not bad even at this low res web JPEG cy

That's impressive.

Trevor Carpenter wrote:

Gerry Siegel wrote:

Here is a moderately but not extensively retouched 50 year old Kodachrome slide one of a stereo pair of 23 by 24mm using a bellows and a micro four thirds camera. Either the GH2 or the G-1. I think not bad even at this low res web JPEG cy

That's impressive.

Thanks. I am pleased with the bellows and slide copier that was part of the original outfit.  It takes some jury rigging if one uses a legacy lens of the FD macro list, and an adapter to attach it to a micro four thirds camera. Which gets into the use of adapted lenses.  For slide copying they are the perfect choice. We do not care about automation nor auto focus. We do care about the qualit of the adapter.  The one I have used is by Vello, but I am going to buy a Metabones glassless FD to m43 adapter which I see fits snugly with little chance of rotation. When on goes from a 35mm format to a 4:3 one leaves some room. Same room permits one to do a little in camera cropping if one chooses.  And as shown to copy half frame or smaller objects. Now with the slide copy attachment that came with the Auto Bellows one can move the SLIDE HOLDER easily and smoothly in an axis, as I suppose moving the slide in the Nikon. A miniscule movement makes a lot of difference.  I point this out to anyone interested in the tradiitional bellows copying advice.  To buy a new kit today is more than we want to consider.  To that end the Nikon ES-1 may be a decent solution.  Just not the only one, for the record. I am not copying a whole collection. Why copy the junk, let my survivors look through the poly sleeves, they need something to discover on their own.  I hope this add on adds some value to the whole business of archiving and mailing family history.  Or one could pay a commercial outfit,I guess.  Happy trails, gs

I tried it out tonight, I was able to copy a 3-4 slides a minute, and that including cleaning, with >1sec exposures (f5.6, ISO 200, using MacBook LCD screen for illumination).

The issues I encountered are as follows:

I had to collapse the ES-1 to the shortest length, but even then couldn't fill the frame. My step-up ring seems fairly thin, but maybe I could find a thinner one, don't know how much that'll help.

I couldn't center the slides. I could barely get the top edge of the slides into the frame.

The spring on one side has almost no curve-back on top, so it was hard to get each slide into place--I had to pry one side open to get each slide in.

(On top of all that, Lightroom was giving me grief and not importing the raw files, and then Creative Cloud was hanging when I attempted to update.)

Well it was a good try. Back to the drawing board. Does tesi need a longer lens or a longer tube, too late for me to figure. I figured that a FD 50mm macro  full frame lens circa1973 with FD 25-U tube gave 1to 1 nicely.....and even allows cropping and movement in two planes with the auto bellows nifty copier gadget....that was a coup d'etat to find the works in A-1 shape after a long search. Velbon makes a bellow, a so so bellows. RRS is unaffordable but swell... Getting a good rail system or a bellow with rail  is a job to find- read will take patience, sorry- but they are out there. I am sorry this expenditure did not pan out. Now what? I await other ideas. I got my slides fine res with JPEGs using 12 megs, it all you need unless you have great archival ambition, beyond just preservation. I wonder what the pro copy outfits use, just for fun....I will follow this with interest. Kind of a production operation, and can be boring. Idea: Buy a Lumix G-something with a fold out screen Life will be easier, and set WB by eye- less fuss later. I wish you well, sir..

tesilab wrote:

I recently purchased an Olympus Air, and for my first ever MFT lens, purchased a Panasonic 30mm macro. One use I would like to put it to is to digitize some 35mm slides and negatives.

I'm planning to buy a Nikon ES-1 slide copier and a 46-52 step up ring. I'm unsure of whether I will need additional extension to fill the frame. Can anyone help with this?

As for adapting it to copy from film strips, are there any suggestions? So far I've only found a Kaiser film strip carrier at B&H that would take weeks to receive.

I just got the ES-1 but haven't set it up yet.  I do however plan on occasionally copying from film strips.  My plan for that is to dig through my darkroom equipment.  I'm pretty sure I have some unused cardboard slide mounts there.  If not, I'll probably cut my own with a mat cutter.  I've done something like that before when I couldn't find glassless negative carriers in the size that I needed.  I won't cut the film strip apart, I'll just use the slide mount as a frame around the negative I want to copy, to support and protect it in the copier.