Film scanning with a digital camera.: DIY and Photo Experiments Forum: Digital Photography Review

Film scanning with a digital camera.

Started Apr 20, 2019 | Discussions

American20 • Forum Member • Posts: 72

Film scanning with a digital camera.

Apr 20, 2019

Well, I tried to build a DIY film scanner with a digital camera like Pentax Film Duplicator. But it's not that successful. But today, I was able to get a clean image from one film.

However, without a proper system, it's quite tricky to scan tons of film negatives. Pentax Film Duplicator is very expansive and I can't afford it.

I would like to digitize 35mm, 120, and 4X5 film negatives and positives with Sony A7R2. not interesting in crappy DIY setup or an old film duplicator. What should I buy to make a complete setup for film scanning?

Any thoughts about just using Logan Electric A7A 4 x 5" Slim Edge Light Pad?

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jonby • Regular Member • Posts: 400

Re: Film scanning with a digital camera.

In reply to American20 • Apr 25, 2019

It really all depends on what quality level you want. It is possible to get really top-notch results using a DSLR, but this requires a lot of thought and investment of time and/or money. Getting a set up which will give you this level of quality quickly and easily is even harder/more expensive.

Assuming you don't want to invest this level of time and money, you can get 'good' quality results with reasonable speed and ease using a basic copy stand-based setup. A continuous light source such as a light box/panel can work well. Another option for the light source is one or two flash guns, which can also work well if you can find a way to diffuse the light evenly across the frame. Avoid anything which produces heat, as this causes film to flex.

The biggest challenge is holding the film flat and within the (extremely thin) plane of focus. This is extremely difficult to do perfectly, but a decent compromise solution is to use negative carriers designed for enlargers, which can be obtained for all of the formats you mention. Other options include flatbed film scanner holders.

Whatever you use to hold the film, you need to block out stray light from your light source to avoid flare and if you're using a continuous light source, you'll need to avoid any light falling on the film from above also.

With this type of setup, you will need to spend some time levelling, framing and focusing at the start of each work session, and also each time you change format. However, once set up, you can get through quite a lot of frames pretty quickly and get 'good' results in terms of capture. I say 'good', because getting absolute best results requires a lot of time adjusting level and focus to get it optimal.

It's a similar deal with post production - especially if you're doing colour neg. You can get pretty decent results using Auto Curves in Photoshop, but if you want really good results you will need to do a lot of work developing your own methods and approaches, or looking into ones other people have developed. In my experience there aren't any automated methods which give you great results every time.

It goes without saying that the camera and lens you use is important. Obviously a dedicated 1:1 macro lens is best. The better the lens, the better the results possible.

My own setup uses a Kaiser copy stand, glass support raised around 15cm off the base, with a mirror at 45 degree angle below, flash gun pointed horizontally at the mirror. A desk lamp can be moved in in front of the flash for focusing light. Enlarger neg carrier sat on the glass. I use shims to tilt the glass base (and therefore film) to match the focal plane. I have a piece of card with rectangular hole cut to block stray light from below. I tether the camera to a laptop and use live view to check focus across the frame.

With a Canon 5DS r plus Sigma 105mm macro (EX OS version), I can get results which match those from a Hasselblad flextight scanner with 35mm and 645. However, this takes a lot of work. To reduce the amount of work required I would need to reduce the tolerances and play in every part of the system so that the film plane stays flat and in focus on every frame once set up.

As I say, it all depends on what level of quality you are prepared to accept.

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D Cox • Forum Pro • Posts: 32,980

Re: Film scanning with a digital camera.

In reply to American20 • Apr 28, 2019

American20 wrote:

Well, I tried to build a DIY film scanner with a digital camera like Pentax Film Duplicator. But it's not that successful. But today, I was able to get a clean image from one film.

However, without a proper system, it's quite tricky to scan tons of film negatives. Pentax Film Duplicator is very expansive and I can't afford it.

I would like to digitize 35mm, 120, and 4X5 film negatives and positives with Sony A7R2. not interesting in crappy DIY setup or an old film duplicator. What should I buy to make a complete setup for film scanning?

Any thoughts about just using Logan Electric A7A 4 x 5" Slim Edge Light Pad?

I used an "old film duplicator", a Durst/Sickles ChromaPro, for duplicating 35mm slides and negatives, about 30,000 altogether.

I replaced the lamp with one of half the power and disconnected the fan, to avoid vibration. For colour originals, I used an 80A filter.

The one I bought came with only a carrier for slides, so I used carriers from my Beseler 5x4 enlarger to hold film. It would be better to get one with a range of carriers.

The advantage of a device like this is that it holds the camera rigidly in place, parallel to the film. I find that cameras on copy stands tend to tilt , even when you use a remote control. A tripod is useless.

D Cox's gear list:D Cox's gear list

Sigma fp

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Bernard Delley • Senior Member • Posts: 2,041

cool setup for large format

In reply to D Cox • Apr 29, 2019

D Cox wrote:

American20 wrote:

Well, I tried to build a DIY film scanner with a digital camera like Pentax Film Duplicator. But it's not that successful. But today, I was able to get a clean image from one film.

However, without a proper system, it's quite tricky to scan tons of film negatives. Pentax Film Duplicator is very expansive and I can't afford it.

I would like to digitize 35mm, 120, and 4X5 film negatives and positives with Sony A7R2. not interesting in crappy DIY setup or an old film duplicator. What should I buy to make a complete setup for film scanning?

Any thoughts about just using Logan Electric A7A 4 x 5" Slim Edge Light Pad?

I used an "old film duplicator", a Durst/Sickles ChromaPro, for duplicating 35mm slides and negatives, about 30,000 altogether.

I replaced the lamp with one of half the power and disconnected the fan, to avoid vibration. For colour originals, I used an 80A filter.

The one I bought came with only a carrier for slides, so I used carriers from my Beseler 5x4 enlarger to hold film. It would be better to get one with a range of carriers.

The advantage of a device like this is that it holds the camera rigidly in place, parallel to the film. I find that cameras on copy stands tend to tilt , even when you use a remote control. A tripod is useless.

cool setup and a good starting point for the OP ! I think that this Logan viewer may be OK in illumination uniformity for the more demanding transparency and film duplication. If not, illumination can be evened out by adding a second matte screen at a small distance in front of the viewer.

An old enlarger stand and two LED flat light panels serve well here to duplicate old (positive) photographs of the family.

For 35mm film and slides, I prefer a bellows with slide/film holder, or just the bellows rail. For the 35mm format it takes a normal FL (40-60mm) "macro" lens one that is designed to work well up to 1:1 repro ratio for good quality. for the bellows mate screen an IKEA LED light works well. For 4x5 inch film you might want to consider a high rez body with more than 24Mpix.

35mm file/slide setup. This old macro lens could also be used with bellows. A modern lens with internal focus is not used optimally with a bellows as the built in close focus correction gets mislead.

a backlit setup with LED panel and double matte screen for uniform illumination. A stand from an small enlarger is used here.

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ThrillaMozilla • Veteran Member • Posts: 7,673

Re: Film scanning with a digital camera.

In reply to American20 • May 4, 2019

American20 wrote:

Oops, no good. You must use backlighting. You don't want to pass the light twice through the film, because that will double the optical density.

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Jan Steinman • Senior Member • Posts: 1,015

Re: cool setup for large format

In reply to Bernard Delley • Jul 9, 2019

Bernard Delley wrote:

For 35mm film and slides, I prefer a bellows with slide/film holder

Agreed. Here's mine:

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D Cox • Forum Pro • Posts: 32,980

Re: cool setup for large format

In reply to Jan Steinman • Jul 12, 2019

Jan Steinman wrote:

Bernard Delley wrote:

For 35mm film and slides, I prefer a bellows with slide/film holder

Agreed. Here's mine:

That looks like the 80mm macro lens that I use. An excellent lens.

D Cox's gear list:D Cox's gear list

Sigma fp

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Jan Steinman • Senior Member • Posts: 1,015

Re: cool setup for large format

In reply to D Cox • Jul 18, 2019

D Cox wrote:

That looks like the 80mm macro lens that I use. An excellent lens.

Yes! They all are! I have the whole set of bellows lenses.

They were certainly sharper than almost any film you could put behind them. I'm trying to get some time to do some OM-D E-M1.2 hi-res 80 Mpx images with them.

If not for the slide holder, I prefer to use them on the incredible Olympus Telescoping Extension Tube. "twist, slide, twist" is so much faster and easier than the "twist, twist, twist, twist…" that you do with either a long helicoid or a bellows.

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ProfHankD • Veteran Member • Posts: 9,147

Spiratone Rapid Rail Bellows

In reply to Jan Steinman • Jul 19, 2019

Jan Steinman wrote:

If not for the slide holder, I prefer to use them on the incredible Olympus Telescoping Extension Tube. "twist, slide, twist" is so much faster and easier than the "twist, twist, twist, twist…" that you do with either a long helicoid or a bellows.

The Spiratone Rapid Rail Bellows has a similar feature. Fine adjustments are made with a typical rack and pinion, but press in on the focus wheel and you can slide to any position. Great feature... in a long extinct bellows that's sometimes cheap on eBay.

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Kulibertnelson • New Member • Posts: 11

Re: cool setup for large format

In reply to Jan Steinman • Aug 26, 2019

Dear all:

For reproduction I am using my old Vivitar VI enlarger so that I can make use of the negative holder and the light source. I mounted my camera on a sturdy MDF board via a stable ball head and shoot tethered from the base plate into the enlarger. The Vivitar light source is quite bright such that at f/8 one still arrives at pretty short exposure times and even enables operation under daylight. The camera can be aligned to be perfectly parallel to the film plane (this would be a problem when using a tripod) by putting a small mirror in the negative plane (instead of the film holder) and adjusting the image of the front lens such that it appears centered (grid lines of the tethering software help). A permanent power supply to the camera is useful if operating the camera in life view (re-focusing via the software is just a click).

Using this setup I have already digitized about 200 rolls of 35mm film. The only thing I am afraid of is dust may more easily accumulate on the sensor due to the orientation of the camera (for a long time) and may become visible at f/8 in even regions of the image. But usually, it is no problem.

Best,
Hendrik

My setup with D800, 105mm Macro, Markins ball head and Vivitar VI enlarger (enlarger lens removed).

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Sailor Blue • Forum Pro • Posts: 15,536

Re: Film scanning with a digital camera.

In reply to American20 • Aug 27, 2019

The usual reason for copying slides and negatives with a digital camera is to get high resolutions, higher than you get from a slide/negative copier. Then most people print out these scans at 8"x10" or smaller or simply display them on their computer or TV.

A 14 Mp digital image from this cheap JPG scanner look great on my 49" 1080p TV or on my monitors. Higher resolution simply isn't necessary for most uses.

eBay - 14MP/22MP HD Photo 35mm 135mm Negative Film Scanner Slide to Digital File Scan

Scanning B&W negatives or color slides that still have good color works well but you really don't need 20Mp or higher images.

When photographing color negatives you have to contend with the orange base color and with fading. Some color slides also exhibit color changes or fading.

If you copy a color negative with a flash and the camera set at the Flash WB setting and the orange base color will screw up the dynamic range for all three of the RGB channels. Correcting for the base color is relatively simple but none of the RGB histograms will be full range. Using an 80A filter as D Cox said will help with the base color but you will have to increase the exposures if you use the filter.

If the negative is faded things are even worse.

Even after correcting for the base color you will find lots of problems with the RGB histograms. None of them will be full scale and they can all be at very different positions on the scale. You now have a digital image with three different dynamic ranges, one for each of the three RGB images, and almost certainly one or more of the histograms will be less than 1/2 of the scale. Expanding all RGB histograms to full scale helps the color but doesn't recover the real dynamic range.

Here is an example of a scan of a faded color negative after removing the base color. Check out the blue histogram.

If I stretch out the B channel to match the R and G channels I get better colors but I still get a poor quality image because of the lack of dynamic range in the B channel.

Basically it is extremely difficult to get an image with good color from the a digital image taken with a digital camera.

With a proper scanner you can correct the colors as part of the scan so that each of the RGB channels of the digital file has a full dynamic range. A good scanner will even correct for the base color of a color negative.

The way this is done is that the time spent scanning each of the three RGB color channels can be varied so that a full dynamic range can be acquired for each channel.

The color results with a proper scanner still aren't perfect, but they will be the best you can get from a faded color negative.

VueScan software is great for this purpose if it can be used with your scanner. Unfortunately it can't be used with my cheap 35mm scanner but the scanner's built-in software will automatically remove the base color and allow RGB channel corrections during scanning.

VueScan Scanner Software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux

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