Film to digital on the cheap

[StevenS]

I have an Epson V800 (remaindered by Park when the 850 came out), which I find a hassle.
Thought I'd spend half an hour building a proper rig to see if I can speed it up and get better results.

Bought a MiniSun LightPad for £35. Made a transport from some foamboard stolen from my son and some masking tape, to keep negs nice and flat.
Lens is the Leica R 60mm/f2.8 macro at f5.6 and camera at ISO250 1/45th on 2s delay.
Tripod is a 3 Legged Thing with the middle bit reversed.
Took the first negative at hand, 30 years old, tone curves inverted in LR6.

Easy easy and pleased.

 

[BrynBoru]

I do something much the same, as I realised printer/scanners are a dead loss.

 

[StevenS]

I do something much the same, as I realised printer/scanners are a dead loss.

So you won't be buying my V800 then?

Using a foamboard sandwich (hinged with masking tape at the back and closed with a 35 Summicron paperweight) keeps the neg nicely off the lightpad and 5 layers of guide tape inside allow the strip to slide through. Need to trim a bit off both sides.

 

[StevenS]

A bit more playing around.
Optimised film mount with improved sliding facility.
I could get carpal tunnel with all the spot removal.
Quite a different set of LR6 adjustments needed, and reducing highlights works for removing vignetting.

When a neg is really crap like the last one, do I need photoshop? Is there a fixing tool?

 

[Paul-H]

I use a similar setup for digitizing my medium format negatives but settled on quite a long winded conversion process but it does produce near perfect conversions, that are much better than I used to get from the Minolta Medium format scanner I used to own.

I shoot in RAW, then drop the RAW files into CFSystems MakeTIF program, then run the TIF files through Silverfast which does a fantastic job of the conversion.

For 35mm I use a butchered Onhar Slide Copier with it's internal optics removed attached directly to my 60mm Macro lens (I am on m4/3) that gives excellent sharp copies as well although most of my 35mm stuff is on slide film, but it works.

 

[StevenS]

I use a similar setup for digitizing my medium format negatives but settled on quite a long winded conversion process but it does produce near perfect conversions, that are much better than I used to get from the Minolta Medium format scanner I used to own.

I shoot in RAW, then drop the RAW files into CFSystems MakeTIF program, then run the TIF files through Silverfast which does a fantastic job of the conversion.

For 35mm I use a butchered Onhar Slide Copier with it's internal optics removed attached directly to my 60mm Macro lens (I am on m4/3) that gives excellent sharp copies as well although most of my 35mm stuff is on slide film, but it works.

I have Silverfast 8. Is there a way of importing TIFF files?

 

[ianp5a]

I used to do exactly the opposite. Photograph the colour monitor of our mainframe computer with my TLR, and get the negatives printed. This was before the days of JPEGs and USB sticks. Even if I could get an image file out of the mainframe onto a floppy disk, I'm not sure what could be done with it in 1987.

 

[Sejanus Aelianus]

Thought I'd spend half an hour building a proper rig to see if I can speed it up and get better results.

A really good idea.

If you don't mind spending a bit of money, you could always keep an eye out for an old Bowens Illumitran, which will make the job really easy. You have be patient as people sometimes ask lots of money for them but I managed to pick up a very nice one for £65 from a dealer. It really does make the job easy - I can copy a whole film in less than five minutes (I've timed it).