Robert Ley

I am in the process of digitizing a color slide collection of 1000+ slides. I would like my kids and grand kids to be able to see them in the future.
I am using an old Bowens Illumitran and my Nikon D600. My plan is to record them as Raw and medium jpeg's.
Most of the images will not need raw processing as most are of historical purposes.

I am interested in getting the opinion from members who use Nikon as to what settings I should use for my jpeg's as I would like to do a minimum of corrections.

So far I have been getting good results and my setup seems to work well and it is much faster than scanning.

Thanks in advance for any insights you may be able to impart, even Canon users could respond

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

What settings are you using to get your good results?

R.G. Loc: Scotland

If you're referring to Picture Control settings for the jpegs, the two obvious choices would be Standard or Natural. Standard gives the jpegs some vividness whereas Natural leaves them looking a bit flat - which may or may not be to your liking. Typically the colour in slides was quite well saturated so you may not need any extra vividness. It's impossible to predict so unless someone has prior experience of those options your best option is to experiment and see which option suits your needs.

BebuLamar

I assume that the one you have has a flash as the light source for exposure.
I would do at least 2 things.
1. Set the color balance for the light source only without any slide
2. Set the exposure also for the light source only and set it so that it just hit the point where it washed out.
I would try in picture control setting the contrast neutral/standard or slightly less not more.
My goal is to have a digital image that looks like the slide.

Robert Ley

My settings are:

Standard, Sharpening 6 out of 10, contrast +1, brightness 0, saturation 0, Hue 0, Active D lighting High.

Robert Ley

I have the color balance set to flash and control set to standard

There are several ways to control exposure, either the f stop on the lens (a very nice 60mm f:5.6 Componon enlarging lens) or moving the flash tube up and down inside the Illumitran (my preferred method)

Robert Ley

Thanks for your reply.
I am presently using Standard, but your idea using Neutral might work out better. Do you think that Active D Lighting would be beneficial? At present I'm using High on the Act D Lighting.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

If what you're shooting has a high dynamic range - and back-lit slides could easily have that - then Active D-lighting would be a safe option as well as keeping the luminosity levels more eye-friendly. It's a long time since I used ADL and it may have changed since then, but I do remember preferring the more moderate levels. But if it's working for you so far I don't see it being a risky alternative. You probably know this already but I'll mention it anyway - it's only the jpegs that are affected by ADL.

BebuLamar

The slide would have less dynamic range than the OP digital camera so there is no need to compress the dynamic range.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Thanks!

DaveyDitzer Loc: Western PA

Thanks in advance for any insights you may be able to impart, even Canon users could respond [/quote]

Even using a daylight (5600) LED unit, I found differences in color rendition required PP so I shot RAW. I used a Nikon slide holder screwed onto to a 40mm macro lens on a both crop and FF bodies. I ended up using mostly the FF.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

If you’re getting "good results", stick with what you’re using. RAW ignores most in-camera settings like you’re using so stick with JPEGs.

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

Raw does indeed ignore the basic picture settings, but enables wider range adjustments for color correction.

Having digitized a few hundred old slides a while back I found that color correction needs to be done on many of the old slides that have faded or changed color balance with age. Using raw made that process easier for me. If the jpg from the camera turns out well, you can use it, but have the raw available if you need it.

JimRPhoto Loc: Raleigh NC

I’ve been doing this slowly for a year now, using a camera and Nikon ES2 slide copy rig with a fixed focal length macro lens. It works great.
My thinking is to use the maximum resolution and file size because the subject is such a small image. By doing that, when it is enlarged to show on a tv or monitor, there is minimum loss of sharpness.
Hope you have success with this project. By the way, I e posted I. The past some photos of my setup.
JimT

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Hi, Robert. You might be interested in the attached PDF white paper I wrote a couple of years ago.

I had an Illumitran 3c back in the 1980s. I used Kodak SO-366, a special order version of Ektachrome 5071 slide duplicating film with reciprocity characteristics suited to electronic flash exposure. It worked quite well! There is no reason why the Illumitran can't produce excellent results with slide-to-digital copy work, just as it did with slide-to-slide.

To start, use the Photo Style or Picture Style of the camera that is called Neutral or Natural.

Use FULL manual exposure when testing (and copying).

White balance a correctly exposed slide of a Delta-1 Gray Card, if possible.

If possible, test color with a correctly-exposed and color neutral slide of a Calibrite ColorChecker chart or equivalent.

Adjust Hue, Saturation, Color Tone or Tint, Sharpness, Contrast, and other parameters in your JPEG engine menu on the camera until the slide of the ColorChecker chart looks correct on your freshly-calibrated and ICC-profiled monitor.

Keep careful records of what works and what doesn't.

I never use auto-exposure or auto-white balance when duplicating. Auto features "want" the entire world to be 18% gray, and will shift exposure or white balance in the opposite direction of any color or exposure bias. If you feel you need a brighter JPEG or a better color balance, make changes manually.

I never use the camera's Electronic Flash White Balance setting, either, because electronic flash color temperature and spectral output characteristics vary WILDLY from brand to brand of flash. Camera manufacturers calibrate that setting to their OWN flashes.

You may need to make adjustments differently for different film emulsions. Kodachrome is inherently warmer than Ektachrome. Slides taken from different decades may have a different base tint and spectral response, depending on their process and structure.

Camera Scanning.pdf opens in your favorite PDF reader.
Attached file:
(Download)