NYjoe Loc: US/UK

I have been reading accounts of dslr owners using their cameras and lenses to scan negatives with possible results rivaling those of a good (Imacon) drum scanner. I am using a Nikon d800e with a Tamron 24-70mm VC‎ but not sure what I would need to adapt it for scanning 35mm and 120 roll film. Has anyone had any experience with this? Any info much appreciated. Thanks

blackest Loc: Ireland

Its a little tricky depending on how you do it, there are what they call slide duplicators which actually may be quite good with a full frame camera. With a aps-c you get the middle of the frame.

Black & White and Slide are fairly easy to do well color negatives, so hard to get a good white balance. I messed around a lot and in the end a dedicated machine produced a fair result. It was smart enough to be able to produce positives all on its own. Still a long and tedious job, i did around 600 in a couple of days.

Set aside the best for post processing, maybe cleaning. The memories are there even if they were not the best photographs ever taken.

NYjoe Loc: US/UK

thanks Blackest....I have about 30 35mm b&w negs of various quality that are very eager to get unto the latest algorithyms of photoshop cc. Some folks are just taping the edges down to a small light box and rigging up some sort of camera mount..some just using a wierdly positioned tripod. My Tamron is a very nice clear lense with accurate AF...but I don't think I'll be able to get close enough to the negative. A good macro primary lens might be necessary. I'll just go to bed and look forward to any other ideas on the subject. Nite.

J.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

For 35mm film:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/37453-REG/Nikon_3213_ES_1_Slide_Copying_Adapter.html
Works with a 55mm macro lens:
Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens and PK-13 Extension Tube.
I prefer a dedicated slide scanner like the Nikon LS 4000.
Sell it when you are done.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I've copied 35mm, 120 film (6x6cm & 6x7cm), and 4x5" negatives and transparencies with a APS-C camera. I use a tripod with a 90-degree side arm, and a color balanced light-box. Various light boxes are sold for slide sorting and tracing and other art activities. I'll use a 35mm or 50mm Macro prime lens. It works pretty well with Black & White films or Color Reversal (Slide) films, but not so well with Color Negative films. I also have to do a bit of PP with Ps CS6 to get positives and what I want. The problem with Color Negatives is likely three-fold. They have a red-orange mask, negative (usually printed with two color filters, not all three), again requiring a Reverse; the film is old and probably color shifted and/or faded from age; and the white balance is off when copied. Most of these issues are in the processing or software though. Because when I copy such Color Negatives with my Epson V500 Scanner or other scanners owned by others, I get a fairly nice positive image right out of the scanner. And I usually can adjust that fine with Photoshop if needed.

Surprisingly I often get better results from copying a print (when I don't have a negative or can't find it).

I've tried using a optical Slide Copier with a CF camera. I agree it would work MUCH better with a FF camera. I have a slide copier rig with one of my Bellows but the focal and working lengths are never right with any of my (20+) lenses. I found I can rig it up using de-glassed filters as spacers. But it is so much trouble that it is better to use the scanner now that I have one. The Bellows / Slide Copier gadget is a Pentax one made for film Pentax cameras, 24x36mm format not APS-C FC sensors. So it might very well work better with a FF DSLR camera (if Pentax made one).

Your Nikon Nikon D800e with its massively HIGH resolution will show the limitations of any technique you use to copy images. And you've probably heard this before, use a good prime lens for close-up work. For that camera, a Nikkor 55mm or 105mm Micro.

Dik

DSLR negative & slide copying can be very fast, and better than scanners.
If working with 35mm film, a Rodagon D 75mm (expensive flat-field 1:1 optimized) lens on a bellows with slide/film copying attachment works extremely well, and is super fast.
Slightly lower quality, for much less money would be your choice of 1:1 macro lens, with Nikon ES 62 Slide holder & adapter ring(s).
A film strip holder can be made from a GEPE plastic slide mount, and I recommend three spots of hotmelt glue on the ES 62 tube, once you have perfected its adjustment.

The Canon Bellows with Slide and Roll Film holder allows horizontal and vertical sliding of the film stage. Combined with the rare 35mm Macro Canon (optimized for 2-3x), you can do 4 or 9 shot stitches of your 35mm film.
Better than any available scanner.

As to converting color negatives and white balance - just start with a white balance done on the clear film base. Adjust from there.
A heavy cyan filter over a flash will give a better color result than tungsten or unfiltered flash for color negatives.

NYjoe Loc: US/UK

Thanks....great suggestions!!

silver Loc: Santa Monica Ca.

I have an Imacon scanner and it does an amazing job of scanning slides. The 24-70 lens is not designed for copy work, you really need a 1-1 macro lens for this. You also will need a translucent piece of opaque white plastic to mount the slides on and you will also need a good tripod to mount the camera on because your focusing is very critical. The light source illuminating the slide will influence color with daylight being the best. Even with extension tubes the 24-70 lens will not be a good choice for this.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Don't believe those accounts, they're just not true.

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

Some years back I bought a film scanner intending to scan several hundred negs. But now there are many good companies that will do it very reasonably--including your neighborhood Costco store.

NYjoe Loc: US/UK

Silver, I have a 55mm AF coming from Amazon as I text....its a lens I should have anyway. I will just have to live with scanner envy for your Imacon. With the exception of extension tubes, all other items you mention are on hand so let the experimentation begin.

silver Loc: Santa Monica Ca.

Good luck and have fun.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I got a slide copier from B&H several years ago and used it to copy a few hundred old slides. I can't say it was fast and easy, but i got it to work.

The first problem I had was variability in the setup. I started out just using a bare bulb to light up the diffuser behind the slide. That gave variable results each time I set it up, due to variations in the placement of the lamp.

Eventually I tied the lighting to the copier so that it would be consistent. I put a few photos on flickr to show what I did. http://www.flickr.com/photos/photofarmer/sets/72157603904635429/comments/

It wasn't hard to copy the slides, but it took somewhere around half a minute each. I had to insert the slide in the holder, get it fairly straight, and take a shot. Then I had to take the slide out and write down the image number and all the information written on the slide. Good thing I wrote on the cardboard slide frame because I remember very little about how I took the photos from 1950-1966.

After copying, I ran the image files through postprocessing. Cropped the edges where the slide didn't fill the field of view, straightened the images that were crooked, and tried to improve the color balance (some of the slides were pretty faded). Postprocessing took the largest fraction of time spend on the project.

Aside from that, getting the slides clean was a problem. They had collected a lot of dust over the years (many of them were stored in slide projector magazines).

The images are nothing that would win any prizes, but they're family pictures so they're useful to me.

A slide from 1951, taken in Yellowstone Park. I believe it's the Castle geyser. If you look at the download version you can see a lot of dust still on the image.

PS: The EXIF data is from the copying camera, not the old Kodak 35mm I took the picture with. I didn't copy the EXIF data from the film.

(Download)