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By the time I retired a couple of years ago I had accumulated over 50 years of photography some 6.000 slides and an unknown number of negative films. All these treasures were boxed up in our basement and we hadn't looked at it for years. And then I dicovered Panoramio, a photo sharing platform, which allows to geotag photos and place them on Google Earth. I decided, that this had to be my thing and I started scanning and uploading my slides. Scanning was done with an available Canon 3200F, slide by slide by slide. Looking back the quality was lousy and it took ages, but what the heck, I had the time ...
After I finished the slides I started with the negatives. Again, the quality was lousy and it took ages again and in the back of my head nested the nagging idea, that there must be a better, faster and foremost sharper way to scan my negatives. However, I was not even sure, if the mediocre results of my scans (meanwhile by a Canon 5600F) were due to the quality of the negatives or the scanner just couldn't do better. That question was settled last year, when I tested another cheap scanner, which was not really a scanner but simply took shots of the negatives. The results were much sharper than those of my Canon scanner, however, the scans/shots were extremely noisy. So I had traded one problem for another, but at least I knew, that there is still potential.
Of course I did review the market various times in order to find out, which scanner would solve my problem. The result was discouraging: poor quality or far out of budget and all rather slow. But that cheap and noisy scanner I tested last year did it differently and having that in the back of my head I made up my mind, to find out, if I could build a device like that with little money. And, yes, I know, a lot of people have tried and failed already. On the other hand ... it's fun:-). Let's wait an see what is coming out of this.
First I wanted to find out, if this is feasible at all and decided to set up some kind of a demonstrator based on my Tablet PC as a light source, the negative holder from my old Canon 3200F and my EOS 70D with the 15-85 mm zoom lens and of course a tripod.
To be continued ...
Jan, 21st 2016
From the demonstrator I learned, that in principle it can be done, however, as always, the devil is in the details. While working with the B-Model I encountered a whole bunch of nasty problems. The B-Model consists of a simple cardboard box with a cutout for the negative holder, a battery powered LED video light and a diffuser (for the time being a sheet of white paper until the ordered frosted glass will arrive), EOS 70D with 85mm, f/1,8 and extension tubes on a tripod. See photos.
- Paper does not work well as a diffuser because it’s not homogenous and leaves a cloudy image, hope I can fix that with the frosted glass.
- Given the extremely shallow DoF the film must be very nicely flat. Especially my old Kodacolor II films are heavily bent along the longitudinal axis, which makes it even difficult to feed them into the holder. Therefore some areas of the image are always out of focus. To fix that I may have to build another negative holder. The problem does not exist with my old AGFA films.
- Focusing is a mess. To fix that I may have to invest in some more expensive gear, which I wanted to avoid. Moreover Camera and lightbox must be fixed to each other.
- The scans of the Kodacolor II come off extremely blue. The backlight has a color temperature of 5.400 K, nevertheless I have to adjust the camera WB to 2.500 K to get acceptable colors. Again, this problem does not exist with the AGFA negatives.
- The workflow will be rather complicated.
- But the worst one is repeatability or rather non-repeatability. Each and every photo needs it’s own set of corrections, which is extremely time consuming.
By now my investment in this project israther limited:
• LED Video Light 14€
• Frosted Glass diffuser 5.90€
I don’t count the extension tubes; they have been on my wish list anyway for quite a while.
To be continued ....
January 26th, 2016
It can be done …. but not by me ;-)
Being an engineer you have to know, when to call it quits and limit your exposure. My little project seems to be a problem with an unknown number of unknowns. But what did I learn? First and foremost, that my negatives are much better and sharper, that I thought. I have to thank Norbert here, who volunteered to provide a sample scan of one of my negatives on a Plustek 7600 scanner. And secondly, that my B-Model provided excellent results regarding noise, much better than all my previous scanners and level with Norbert’s Plustek. Other findings were:
- Focussing is a mess, mostly due to the extremely shallow DoF.
- Frosted glass performed much better as a diffuser then my plain sheet of white paper
- Illumination of the diffuser from the back is extremely sensitive to geometry inaccuracies (whereby geometry is a general problem also with respect to axes etc.) and distance of the light source.
- Camera color temperature setting may have to be established for every film. Color management in general seems to be a big problem.
- The box needs to be plain white, grey or black inside. Any colors inside the box compromise the result.
10 comments
Gudrun said:
Ich weiß, dass ich sowas wahrscheinlich nie hinbekommen werde. Ich hab's ja noch nicht mal fertiggebracht zu testen, ob mein alter Scanner überhaupt mit dem Notebook kompatibel ist. Bei mir harren noch sehr viel Dias des Scannens, von den Negativen mal gar nicht zu reden.
Hast du übrigens gesehen, was George (tiabunna) gemacht hat? www.ipernity.com/blog/tiabunna/4248640
LutzP replied to Gudrun:
Ko Hummel said:
vg Ko
LutzP replied to Ko Hummel:
VG Lutz
Berny said:
LutzP replied to Berny:
Also hab ich hier erst mal abgebrochen. Spaß hat's aber trotzdem gemacht! Dein Nikon ist natürlich ein Traum, der mein Budget bei weitem sprengen würde. Ich denke jetzt über einen Plustek 8200 nach. Norbert hat mal mit seinem eines meiner Negative gescannt und das kommt schon recht gut. Dias habe ich nur noch ganz wenige, da ich fast alle aus den Gläsern brechen musste. Damals glaubte man, die müssen unter Glas sein. Heute weiß ich, dass die Ungeglasten die Jahrzehnte wesentlich besser überstanden haben.
Diane Putnam said:
LutzP said:
Erhard Bernstein said:
Ich habe zwar einen Scanner mit Durchlichteinheit (Medion/Tevion MD90090), den ich jetzt nach langer Lagerung wieder unter Windows 10 in Betrieb nehmen konnte. Aber dessen Ergebnisse sind bei Dias grauenvoll!
Also habe ich, angeregt durch deine Schilderungen hier, eine Alternative aufgebaut.
Im Unterschied zu dir brauchte ich mir ja keinen Diffuser zu basteln - hier verwende ich die Durchlichteinheit des Scanners einfach weiter. Schon mal eine Erleichterung.
Dann folgte die Frage, welche Kamera mit welchem Objektiv und mit welchen Einstellungen zu wählen sind.
Spontan habe ich auch zum 15 - 85 mm gegriffen, wegen dessen Makrofähigkeiten - denn damit man eine akzeptable Auflösung bekommen will, muss man schön ganz schön dicht an das Dia herangehen.
Weiter habe ich - wegen der von dir beschriebenen Schärfentiefeproblematik - im ersten Ansatz versucht, mit möglichst geschlossener Blende zu arbeiten.
Und noch eine Herausforderung: im ersten Ansatz wollte ich "aus der Hand" fotografieren und eben keinen Aufbau mit Stativ die Wohnung blockieren lassen.
Die Konsequenz war nun, dass die nötige Empfindlichkeit anstieg. Mit den Parametern 85 mm, F20; 1/13 sec und ISO 1600 erhielt ich dann ein Bild vom Dia mit 1234 * 1852 Px. Das war aber nicht viel besser als vom Scanner, sondern recht verrauscht. Letztlich auch unbrauchbar!
Nun gut, das war ja der erste Ansatz - und auch mmit schon vorher klar erkennbaren Mängeln. Aber eine Variation der Parameter brachte keine Besserung.
Eher aus Verzweiflung als aus analytischer Überlegung habe ich dann meine klene "point-and-shoot"-Kamera, eine Canon Canon Powershot SX 260 HS, eingesetzt. Und, siehe da, hier konnte ich mit der Makroeinstellung und den Parametern 4,5 mm (ca. 25 mm KB), F 3,5, ISO 100 (!), und 1/125 sec schon deutlich bessere Ergebnisse mit einer Auflösung von 2528*1685 erhalten. Keine sehr hohe Quallität, aber brauchbar, um ältere Familienfotos digital verfügbar zu haben - und einfach in der Erzeugung. Die verblüffend kurze Verschlusszeit lässt das Fotografieren aus dar Hand problemlos zu.
LutzP replied to Erhard Bernstein: