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digitising slide film

Rockmeister

pfm Member
I've been doing a lot recently but only today have I digitised a slide by my method A (see below) that had already been done by method B.

I thought it worth comparing the two.

The methods:

Method A.
Attach a specialist slide copier tube to the front of a Macro lens (or any lens that has close enough focus to achieve that distance). The Nikon unit has a sliding tube that allows you to vary the image size and rotate to fit. Here's the kit:

es1 fitted by John Dutfield, on Flickr

es1 by John Dutfield, on Flickr

I'm using a full frame sensor. Lowest ISO you have. Lens set to its sharpest aperture (f5.6 in this case), shutter speed don't matter since the slide moves with the lens so now just insert slide and get very close to a bright daylight temp bulb. Autofcus. No DOF needed. I'm shooting JPEG files but if you need to do some shadow detail retrieval then RAW may be better. (I always exposed,or tried to, to avoid blown highlights and to get more saturated colours and this did mean some loss of detail in the blacks).

Method B. Send slide to expensive studio to get a display print made. Scan this print. I'm using a cheap Epson do it all scan/print. This scan was done at 2400dpi.

The results are below.

Method A, the slide adaptor.

three wise men. Jaipur 1983 by John Dutfield, on Flickr



Method B. The scan from print.

3 wise men by John Dutfield, on Flickr

Both final JPEG images have had the same amount of PP in Affinity photo.
Both are about 8"X5" 300 dpi JPEGs.

Spot the difference (composition excepting obvs:)
 
buy a proper film scanner, it will do negatives and slides.
The results will be better than both of your attempts.

Took me about 3 sittings over 5 days to do all mine, saved as TIFF files.

Gary
 
Rock,

Do you have the scan of the slide? A scan of a print from the slide is one generation from the original, so it's a bit like comparing a record to a tape recording of a record played on the radio.

Joe
 
No Joe I don't have it. I sent it away to be a print, lost the slide (for a while) and scanned it to ressurect the image, then, found the slide and copied it:)

buy a proper film scanner, it will do negatives and slides.
The results will be better than both of your attempts.

Took me about 3 sittings over 5 days to do all mine, saved as TIFF files.

Gary
Thanks. In fact I'm very happy with what the Nikon does. It saves my original vision, does the colour perfectly and has plenty of resolution for me. What could be better? I can 'do' a slide in about 30 seconds. How long does a scan take?

The scan of the print is horrible but has better colours.

Why would you not use RAW ?

I don't need it. You can't 'retrieve' what isn't there. The original Ektachrome has over blown shadows. If there's nowt in there. there isn't. I prefer the speed of the smaller files and Nikon large JPEGS are 300dpi and virtually lossless...good enough for this job.
 
Yes of course. But as post 1 said, we here may find this choice of methods interesting, and seeing actual results might, I thought, be helpful for anyone wondering how to set out.
 
Both final JPEG images have had the same amount of PP in Affinity photo.
Both are about 8"X5" 300 dpi JPEGs.

Spot the difference (composition excepting obvs:)

Obviously method A yields a more dynamic and sharper image than method B, however, there is clearly detail in the white areas revealed in B that has not been retrieved - should be possible to get in back in PS but if not maybe the meter setting or exposure compensation needs tweaking ?
 
buy a proper film scanner, it will do negatives and slides.
The results will be better than both of your attempts.
Gary

I used to use a Nikon Coolscan 3000ED for 35mm negs/slides and a Canon 8800F flatbed for 6x6. The Nikon was much better than the Canon (should be - cost way more!!)
In both cases the process took so long and was so tedious that I only copied a tiny fraction of what I have

During lockdown last year I decided to go back to the rest.
Unfortunately the Nikon packed up on me so I set up a copy stand with light box instead using an Olympus M4/3 (16mp) - I was quite flabbergasted, the results were much better than scanning and the process so much faster.

No way would I go back ... does tempt me to buy a FF with a higher MP count though (as used here)
 
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Method C - for those who don't have/want/need a DSLR -

1. Buy Vuescan Professional
2. Buy one of these

71JgLlt2uUL._AC_SL1500_.jpg


This is a Plustek 8100.

If money is tight, you'll find the older generation (Plustek 7400/7500/7600) of these on Gumtree - they are identical in terms of hardware. Got mine for 100£. Fantastic results from my 7500 - 80-90% of what I get with my Nikon Coolscan.
 
Yes but, why would a photographer not have/want/need a DSLR of some description?
I'm not dissing scanners...great if you want that approach but just didn't get your 'headline'.
 
Yes but, why would a photographer not have/want/need a DSLR of some description?
I'm not dissing scanners...great if you want that approach but just didn't get your 'headline'.

I can speak for myself only. I have sold my digital kit and found I don't need it anymore, at least at the moment. I realise it's very personal, but I'm happy like this. For my digital family photos, my android phone is sufficient. For my other photography, I like using my film cameras.

I don't dislike digital photos mind you - I do like a digital end product.

It's just that I enjoy the film photography process (shooting-developing at home) and the film 'rendition', and like to leave the 'digitalisation' part of the workflow on my desk at home, rather than taking it always on the road with me in the form of menus, batteries, many buttons, bigger cameras, bigger lenses, many added complicated decisions to take before firing the shutter.
 
I have an Epsom V750 that I haven’t used for a long time but was intrigued to learn I can put a macro lens on the EM1 Mk2 in high res mode if I want to over a lightbox. Once I know this camera and have time it’s one of the things I look forward to trying.
 
I still have my Polaroid Sprintscan medium format film scanner and have not used it for a couple of years but it was rather good. Also I kept the Imacon 848 film scanner that has been my best scanner for a good few years and may be returning to scanning legacy transparencies and negatives as I too enjoy the analog shooting experience.

Phone cameras have improved a lot and even though still not as good as the serious full frame DSLR's etc they are surprisingly handy, I have thought os selling on my Leica M9 and lenses as I like to travel light these days.
 
I use Method A also, with a 24 MP Canon. The results I get are better than on a Nikon Coolscan 8000 which sits in the cupboard unused. Finer grain, comparable sharpness (maybe slightly better) and excellent tonality. Also easier to use and massively quicker to digitise each slide or neg. Last year I bought a medium format version of Method A and similarly the results, with a 30 MP Canon, are excellent.
 
The results I get are better than on a Nikon Coolscan 8000 which sits in the cupboard unused.

What a pity - do send it in for a CLA. Based on what you are saying yours is faulty or has a dirty mirror.

I've recently purchased a Coolscan 8000 myself, and got it CLAd by Frank Phillips in the USA. Highly recommended - the mirror is now clear of dust, the unit now focuses perfectly on the film plane and the line sensor works as it should. The difference from my initial tests is like night and day. The results are nothing short of extraordinary. They blow away anything else I've seen (including DLSR-based negative reproductions, by large amount - not surprising given the inherent limitations of Bayer/Xtrans sensors for this kind of work) and approach the results a colleague gets from his Heidelberg Tango drum scanner.

I agree that the 8000 is definitely slower (and way noisier) than a DSLR setup - but it's a small price I'm willing to pay for scans like these.
 
What are the limitations of Beyer / x trans sensors’ exactly? And what does CLA involve and at what cost? Thanks.
 
What are the limitations of Beyer / x trans sensors’ exactly?

It's a long topic - in essence, the raw output of Bayer-filter cameras consists of a so-called Bayer pattern image: an arrangement of colour filters on a square grid of photosensors. In the Bayer arrangement this filter consists of a matrix of repeating 2x2 pixel patterns, one coding for red, one for blue, and two for green. Importantly, each pixel is filtered to record only one of three colors:

Bayer_filter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter#/media/File:Bayer_pattern_on_sensor.svg

So the key thing here is that each pixel of the sensor is behind a color filter and the output is an array of pixel values, each indicating a raw intensity for one of Red, Green or Blue. This arrangement needs an algorithm to estimate for each pixel the color levels for all color components, rather than a single component.

This is called `demosaicising'. There are different implementations of this - think of it as a type of signal interpolation. Now compared to the initial, raw intensity images, the reconstructed image is typically accurate in uniform-colored areas, but will have a loss of resolution (detail and sharpness) and edge artifacts. This is a big topic and one that is valid for the output of X-trans sensors too (perhaps even more valid as the output of an X-trans array has historically been found to be more difficult to demosaicise).

But to go back to scanning, scanners (even flatbed) do not rely on Bayer (or equivalent) pattern matrices and the raw output they produce does not require demosaicing. The so-called `line CCD sensors' in a scanner are, at a very raw level, better than any camera sensor because they do not interpolate and because they use only a single line using the best part of a sharp dedicated lens, so there is no optical distortion or other lens flaws added.

One consequence of the lack of a Bayer array+demosaicing is that when a scanner like the Coolscan 8000/9000 is scanning 90mp, those are 90mp of full color data. Digital camera color data is only 1/4 of the stated resolution due to the above. So even, say, a Fujifilm GFX 100 (a 102mp sensor, 10K$ camera) is only getting 25mp of full color data (and another 25mp of extra green [luminosity] data) from its 100mp of photosites. There are workarounds to limit that: eg pixel shift, but you are still left with the limitations of digital camera color, lens flaws, having go through the hassle of stitching when scanning 120, plus any other issues inherent with the specific home-made scanning setup used (vibrations of the repro stand? imprecise sensor/film alignment? poor quality/evenness of the retroillumination; and much more). Orange mask removal is another story and so is the lack of IR (infra-red channel) for dust removal in home made DSLR scanning rigs.

Hope the above can be of help.
 


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