JJC Film Digitizing Adapter // Pls confirm 10...10.5 cm working distance (for the Laowa 65/2.8)

So I have the JJC film digitizer "FDA-LED1". It comprises a LED light source and holders for 35 mm negatives and slides. The camera needs to be put in front of the film with a tripod or else.

In a parallel thread on 35 mm film digitizing, I became aware of the fact that there is an adapter from JJC that allows mounting that unit to the lens filter thread. This is super attractive IMO because such an adapter greatly facilitates operation - it makes the camera adjustment quick and simple. The adapter is called "ES-2" or "FDA-K1". I believe it is the same adapter, just different names for different regions, but I am not sure.

The whole set (digitizer + adapter) is also available and is called "FDA-S1" or "LED-S1".

I have the Laowa 65/2.8. Its filter thread is 52 mm, that is fine with the JJC adapter. But to get 24 mm x 36 mm on the frame w/o cropping, I need a distance between lens filter thread and film of 10...10.5 cm.

I do not fully understand JJC's documentation, there is the term "crop" indicated with the Laowa lens, and therefore I am concerned that I might be forced to a crop of the 35 mm negatives or slides because I cannot realize the required distance because the adapter is simply too short. In this case, the adapter is useless for me. But I am not sure.

Can someone please confirm that I can realize the required working distance of 10...10.5 cm with that JJC adapter for a lens with a 52 mm filter thread? Please also tell me the exact name of our JJC adapter because I am not sure whether there are different JJC adapters or not.

You don't need to own the Laowa lens to answer my question. Just measure the max working distance please for 52 mm thread diameter.

Btw, I hope the weight on the lens is not a problem. Comments from users?

Regards,

Martin

No experience here in the forum, so I wrote to JJC directly about my question and got a very friendly and detailed response. They really tried the adapter with a Fujifilm camera and the Laowa 65/2.8 lens and even sent me a photo of their setup. What a great customer experience.

I immediately ordered the adapter and now confirm: it is possible to scan 24 mm x 36 mm negatives and slides with the JJC Film Digitizing Adapter Set FDA-K1 in full, i.e., without cropping, with the Laowa 65/2.8. The adapter barrel is easily long enough and can be made even much longer. I only use one of the two #2 rings of the adapter set. There is no filter thread adapter needed (52 mm is also the adapter thread). My working distance (film to front lens) is about 10.5 cm.

For illumination, I use the JJC Light Set FDA-LED1. That one I had before knowing about the adapter.

The whole setup is about 29 cm long. The photos show my X-T20 with the complete digitizing equipment. Of course this setup is to be handled with care in order not to apply too much force to the lens - the simplest way is to put it on a table. No tripod needed. I use ES to avoid shutter shock.

I've done a few tests so far and will report once I have more experience. Lots to do I believe with this adapter, I will be quicker, more efficient, in digitizing my negatives and slides, I do not expect hassle with positioning.

Regards,

Martin

Hi Martin,

I ordered one of these devices shortly after discovering them in this thread, confident they would work with my Laowa 65mm lens, but due to a combination of circumstances I did not manage to actually try it out until today!

So today it was time to dig out this chat again and share my experiences with the negative-scanner!

I found that it works well with the Laowa 65mm lens. I did not yet try it out with the Fuji XF80mm lens.

The tubes are very much adjustable in length to get the right size of projection, this system is very flexbile.

I did find that there's a little bit of play in the sliding mechanism and you have to be careful that the negatives are straight in front of the lens.

Putting the negatives in was also a bit of a challenge, for reason that extra paper strips had been added to the top and bottom of the first ones we tried scanning, done when extra prints had been ordered back in the day... Had to carefully cut that off.

Once we figured that out, it was not a big issue, just took extra time.

Of course, now I have the issue of getting the colours right on the scanned colour negatives. 😂

Here is one of the first scanned images, from a vacation in Yorkshire, the UK.

I tried to fix colours somewhat but it still looks wrong! I still need to put more work in that.

I photographed the negatives with the camera tethered and images imported directly into CaptureOne so that some basic colour corrections were instantly applied, but everything in editing is the other way round so I need to be a better solution for this!

(To raise the shadows I need to lower the whites...)

😂

I need to have an in depth look to the gear thx for sharing !

I can now confirm that the JJC film scanning adapter also works with the Fuji XF80mm lens, however the fit is not as good as with the Laowa 65mm.

With only 1 tube on front of the lens, the negative is very close even at maximum extension of the head and some edges might be cut off at the top or bottom edge. (It seems the negative holder is not perfectly centered on the lens and so a bit of the holder itself will always be visible at either the top or bottom, for me at least).

With 2 tubes on the front of the lens, the negative holder is actually a bit far away and there will always be a border around the image from the negative holder.

With the Laowa lens you have a bit more control over that to get the distance just right.

The AF of the Fuji XF80mm lens does make it easier however to get the focus just right and your scans sharp so I'm not sure yet which of the two I will prefer over time for the negative scans.

Additionally I found an article on how to process the resulting colour negative images in CaptureOne Pro and the method described in it seems to work quite well for the negatives which I scanned so far!

Here's the link to the article:

https://medium.com/@benjamin.bezine/scanning-film-negatives-with-capture-one-e707d52c9b7a

Excellent Bob

Martin

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

Hi Martin,

I ordered one of these devices shortly after discovering them in this thread, confident they would work with my Laowa 65mm lens, but due to a combination of circumstances I did not manage to actually try it out until today!

So today it was time to dig out this chat again and share my experiences with the negative-scanner!

I found that it works well with the Laowa 65mm lens.

Great.

...The tubes are very much adjustable in length to get the right size of projection, this system is very flexbile.

Yep.

I did find that there's a little bit of play in the sliding mechanism and you have to be careful that the negatives are straight in front of the lens.

Confirm. I also adjust every frame. It is not like push/fire. But I need to manually focus anyway with the Laowa. Well, it is a few seconds per frame. I tend to leave a bit of the edges and crop in post.

Putting the negatives in was also a bit of a challenge, for reason that extra paper strips had been added to the top and bottom of the first ones we tried scanning, done when extra prints had been ordered back in the day... Had to carefully cut that off.

Exactly the same issue here. I also have those strips on my negatives from the 1980s and 1990s.

Once we figured that out, it was not a big issue, just took extra time.

Yep.

Of course, now I have the issue of getting the colours right on the scanned colour negatives. 😂

With darktable so far not bad. But I need to do more before I can make a serious statement. Never find the time...

Here is one of the first scanned images, from a vacation in Yorkshire, the UK.

Very nice image.

I tried to fix colours somewhat but it still looks wrong! I still need to put more work in that.

Bob did a great job

Cheers,

Martin

Thx Martin Since I am most interested by this gear I just wanted to check and know if PP was difficult or not , too much time consuming or not, and found rather easy and reasonably fast. Once settings are ok, I assume a batch processing will be possible.

Did my experience with camera Raw filter in PS, mainly with the Color Mixer

You can see color bleeding in 3 parts of the sample :

some  green of the tree on the border of the roof, some red on the wall of the house, some bleeding from the trousers of the woman on the right.

For owners of the gear, checking if aperture could be responsible from some reflections that could account for the phenomenon ?

Thx

Bob

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

I photographed the negatives with the camera tethered and images imported directly into CaptureOne so that some basic colour corrections were instantly applied, but everything in editing is the other way round so I need to be a better solution for this!

(To raise the shadows I need to lower the whites...)

😂

Hey Tim, just came across your note here.

I've recently faced the same obstacle and found a Capture One forum post from 2020, which shows a hack how to unlock B&W, colour and slide film modes normally reserved for a "Cultural Heritage" version of C1. All that needs to be done is insert one (or two, depending on whether you want to "bake in" flipping) lines into a style file. The following is a quote from the forum post, which I've confirmed to be working with C1 22 Pro :

If you want to have this enabled on your style you can add the following line in your text editor to the end of the style. [note: as far as I can tell the location of the text string is irrelevant]

<E K="TechnicalProcessingMethod" V="2"/>

V=1 is B&W
V=2 is Colour
V=3 is Slide Film

Also a flip function exists too:

<E K="Flip" V="1"/>

V=1 is Mirror on Horizontal
V=2 is Mirror on Vertical

I'm not quite sure of all the processes that go on under the bonnet. E.g. B&W film processing mode doesn't automatically convert into B&W (which gives more control to the B&W conversion). But certainly the mode inverts the image - no need for a criss-cross curve tool - and, hallelujah!, all sliders work in their ordinary directions.

baobob wrote:

You did quite a good job editing out the people at the edges, I think! I didn't manage to do a very good job of that.

I did more on the colour processing and this looks reasonably neutral and not unrealistic to me, although perhaps still a bit too desaturated:

FTOG wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

I photographed the negatives with the camera tethered and images imported directly into CaptureOne so that some basic colour corrections were instantly applied, but everything in editing is the other way round so I need to be a better solution for this!

(To raise the shadows I need to lower the whites...)

😂

Hey Tim, just came across your note here.

I've recently faced the same obstacle and found a Capture One forum post from 2020, which shows a hack how to unlock B&W, colour and slide film modes normally reserved for a "Cultural Heritage" version of C1. All that needs to be done is insert one (or two, depending on whether you want to "bake in" flipping) lines into a style file. The following is a quote from the forum post, which I've confirmed to be working with C1 22 Pro :

If you want to have this enabled on your style you can add the following line in your text editor to the end of the style. [note: as far as I can tell the location of the text string is irrelevant]

<E K="TechnicalProcessingMethod" V="2"/>

V=1 is B&W
V=2 is Colour
V=3 is Slide Film

Also a flip function exists too:

<E K="Flip" V="1"/>

V=1 is Mirror on Horizontal
V=2 is Mirror on Vertical

I'm not quite sure of all the processes that go on under the bonnet. E.g. B&W film processing mode doesn't automatically convert into B&W (which gives more control to the B&W conversion). But certainly the mode inverts the image - no need for a criss-cross curve tool - and, hallelujah!, all sliders work in their ordinary directions.

Wow, this is really intersting, I'll be experimenting with this!

Thanks a  lot!

baobob wrote:

Thx Martin Since I am most interested by this gear I just wanted to check and know if PP was difficult or not , too much time consuming or not, and found rather easy and reasonably fast. Once settings are ok, I assume a batch processing will be possible.

Did my experience with camera Raw filter in PS, mainly with the Color Mixer

For Lightroom users there is the plugin "Negative Lab Pro":

https://www.negativelabpro.com/

Which is very good according to a friend of mine and which will make all this processing a lot easier!

FTOG wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

I photographed the negatives with the camera tethered and images imported directly into CaptureOne so that some basic colour corrections were instantly applied, but everything in editing is the other way round so I need to be a better solution for this!

(To raise the shadows I need to lower the whites...)

😂

Hey Tim, just came across your note here.

I've recently faced the same obstacle and found a Capture One forum post from 2020, which shows a hack how to unlock B&W, colour and slide film modes normally reserved for a "Cultural Heritage" version of C1. All that needs to be done is insert one (or two, depending on whether you want to "bake in" flipping) lines into a style file. The following is a quote from the forum post, which I've confirmed to be working with C1 22 Pro :

If you want to have this enabled on your style you can add the following line in your text editor to the end of the style. [note: as far as I can tell the location of the text string is irrelevant]

<E K="TechnicalProcessingMethod" V="2"/>

V=1 is B&W
V=2 is Colour
V=3 is Slide Film

Also a flip function exists too:

<E K="Flip" V="1"/>

V=1 is Mirror on Horizontal
V=2 is Mirror on Vertical

I'm not quite sure of all the processes that go on under the bonnet. E.g. B&W film processing mode doesn't automatically convert into B&W (which gives more control to the B&W conversion). But certainly the mode inverts the image - no need for a criss-cross curve tool - and, hallelujah!, all sliders work in their ordinary directions.

After playing around a bit with this, I think I might actually prefer to use the method described in the article on Medium which I linked -- basically: invert the curves, then fix colours with the levels (there's a bit more to it than that but that's the basics).

However I will probably be experimenting more with both methods and decide more or less on a case-by-case basis what method I will actually apply for a given photo so I'm glad to have learned this trick!

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

FTOG wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

I photographed the negatives with the camera tethered and images imported directly into CaptureOne so that some basic colour corrections were instantly applied, but everything in editing is the other way round so I need to be a better solution for this!

(To raise the shadows I need to lower the whites...)

😂

Hey Tim, just came across your note here.

I've recently faced the same obstacle and found a Capture One forum post from 2020, which shows a hack how to unlock B&W, colour and slide film modes normally reserved for a "Cultural Heritage" version of C1. All that needs to be done is insert one (or two, depending on whether you want to "bake in" flipping) lines into a style file. The following is a quote from the forum post, which I've confirmed to be working with C1 22 Pro :

If you want to have this enabled on your style you can add the following line in your text editor to the end of the style. [note: as far as I can tell the location of the text string is irrelevant]

<E K="TechnicalProcessingMethod" V="2"/>

V=1 is B&W
V=2 is Colour
V=3 is Slide Film

Also a flip function exists too:

<E K="Flip" V="1"/>

V=1 is Mirror on Horizontal
V=2 is Mirror on Vertical

I'm not quite sure of all the processes that go on under the bonnet. E.g. B&W film processing mode doesn't automatically convert into B&W (which gives more control to the B&W conversion). But certainly the mode inverts the image - no need for a criss-cross curve tool - and, hallelujah!, all sliders work in their ordinary directions.

After playing around a bit with this, I think I might actually prefer to use the method described in the article on Medium which I linked -- basically: invert the curves, then fix colours with the levels (there's a bit more to it than that but that's the basics).

Appreciate the feedback. For colour it might be a very different story - especially because of colour tweaking. For my exclusively B&W Film photography, the hack is all that I needed.

However I will probably be experimenting more with both methods and decide more or less on a case-by-case basis what method I will actually apply for a given photo so I'm glad to have learned this trick!

FTOG wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

FTOG wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

I photographed the negatives with the camera tethered and images imported directly into CaptureOne so that some basic colour corrections were instantly applied, but everything in editing is the other way round so I need to be a better solution for this!

(To raise the shadows I need to lower the whites...)

😂

Hey Tim, just came across your note here.

I've recently faced the same obstacle and found a Capture One forum post from 2020, which shows a hack how to unlock B&W, colour and slide film modes normally reserved for a "Cultural Heritage" version of C1. All that needs to be done is insert one (or two, depending on whether you want to "bake in" flipping) lines into a style file. The following is a quote from the forum post, which I've confirmed to be working with C1 22 Pro :

If you want to have this enabled on your style you can add the following line in your text editor to the end of the style. [note: as far as I can tell the location of the text string is irrelevant]

<E K="TechnicalProcessingMethod" V="2"/>

V=1 is B&W
V=2 is Colour
V=3 is Slide Film

Also a flip function exists too:

<E K="Flip" V="1"/>

V=1 is Mirror on Horizontal
V=2 is Mirror on Vertical

I'm not quite sure of all the processes that go on under the bonnet. E.g. B&W film processing mode doesn't automatically convert into B&W (which gives more control to the B&W conversion). But certainly the mode inverts the image - no need for a criss-cross curve tool - and, hallelujah!, all sliders work in their ordinary directions.

After playing around a bit with this, I think I might actually prefer to use the method described in the article on Medium which I linked -- basically: invert the curves, then fix colours with the levels (there's a bit more to it than that but that's the basics).

Appreciate the feedback. For colour it might be a very different story - especially because of colour tweaking. For my exclusively B&W Film photography, the hack is all that I needed.

For the B&W negatives that I have scanned so far, it works very well indeed!