burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Thanks, Thomas! Great portrait work!

twb930s Loc: Aldie, Virginia

I have both an Epson V600 and Nikon LS-2000 scanners. The V600 does a decent job of scanning slides, negatives and prints. The software could be better, but Vuescan will take care of that. The Nikon scanner does an excellent job as well, but it requires a computer into which you can install the needed SCSI card. I use an old HP XP computer just for the Nikon Scanner. The Nikon is slower and only does one mounted slide at a time where the Epson does 4 and will do more than one strip of negatives at a time. The Epson also does medium format where the Nikon only does 35mm. The V600 is a relatively inexpensive scanner. The Epson V850 does a much better job, and scans over twice as much in one scan as the V600, but it costs nearly 10 times as much. I have scanned thousands of slides with my V600 along with hundreds of PDF's, prints and negatives and it is still working perfectly. For the money, you cannot go wrong.

MrBob Loc: lookout Mtn. NE Alabama

Thanks So much for your comment... Yes, I know I am slack about storage. They are coming out of the attic now. Thanks esp. for comments on GIMP... for free why not a try... looks interesting. Thanks again. Bob

Dalbon

I shot both 35 mm and 220 mm slides from the 1970's till I started shooting digital and even after digital so I have many, many thousands of slides. I purchased a Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 ED film scanner and it works very well with many different sizes of film and slides. I don't believe that Nikon makes the scanner any longer but it may be possible to fine one on ebay or amazon. The scanner has 4000 dots per square inch so it puts out a great digital image.
David

awis01

I have an epson perfection v-500 scanner. I digitized many years of 35mm slides and am very happy with it. I would be interested in hearing what other hogs have to recommend.

levinton

These comments remind me of a lingering question: how big digitally, is a medium format film image?

I recall a major 1970s photographic show by Richard Avedon, who was a glamour photographer but also took photos in the field of shall we say unusual folks, often with long-weathered reptilean skin, and various other characters. This show was spectacular, and photos were taken with a standard twin Rollei. The photos were generally printed as much as five feet high. As we entered the show I was with my 6 year old son and he (and I) saw the entry way photo which was of about 5 full frontal nude adults (again, five - 6 feet high - probably from an Andy Warhol "Factory" shoot). A glorious print but my small son literally yelled and ran the other way from the apparently shocking photo - and it was a bit of a shock in the Met - even for a second time. I wonder how many pixels he would need to match it in a digital.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

I believe that practically, for most cases, the number is actually reasonably small, because in most cases the viewer will sit/stand such that s/he can see the whole picture at once, so in practical terms a “FF” digital photo will do as well.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

The only camera I have with macro capability is the rugged Olympus TG-5. I recently bought an LED Lume Cube Panel Go for video lighting to use up a rebate I was given. I've had a Manfroto Pixi EVO table top tripod/grip for years.

Because of this topic, including Burkholder's "white paper", I put those three pieces together. I tried it on an old Ektachrome I shot when the Navy sent me to Iran for a week in the early '70s.

Even with the small sensor, the TG-5 image amazed me! If requested I'll share some samples.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Yep. Post away… the process works.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

OK! Now I have to go look for some slides that are in focus. My Nikkormats had an exposure meter but relied on me to get the focus right!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Here are a few from slides (some modified in Photoshop Neural Filters):

The hotel was photographed in August, 1983, on Kodachrome 64, and digitized 40 years later. The photo derivation is from the slide image.

Epcot Spaceship Earth was also photographed in 1983 on K64, then digitized and altered 40 years later...

The last two are from B&W film negatives made in the 1970s, copied with the same rig I used for the slides (using a negative holder instead of a slide holder).

These look a lot better in download mode…

(Download)


(Download)


(Download)


(Download)


(Download)

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

OK Bill B,

Here is a snap of my quick setup, two Kodachromes from Iran in the early '70s and two Ektachromes from the early 80's at what I think was an Ellensburg, WA Rodeo. This works better than it should given that the camera sensor is so tiny and the originals aren't perfect to start with.

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

Wow! I never thought of using my TG-6 for slide copying! Looks like a pretty simple set up. I like simple set ups!!

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I have several cameras but none with a macro lens or built in macro capability except my TG-5. So, the only way I can try the Bill Burkholder method of taking pictures of old slides is with that camera.

The hard part was the light. A year or so ago I built a slide copy stand out of wood. It had a slide holder and I could adjust the distance for the camera. I tried using a hardware store LED flood light. The captured images were vignetted. My brand new "Lume Cube Go" video light is much better with the same camera.

Compared to the digital perfection we expect now, I don't know what to expect from slides. When I used to view them it was from a distance on a screen so I don't remember pixel peeping like I might do now.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Bill, since you know Lightroom Classic and ACR, you should experiment with the sliders to recover shadow and highlight information — pull down the highlights and pull up the shadows. You'll be surprised how much you can recover from a raw file! I was never able to get a natural look in prints from slides until I camera scanned them to raw files and pulled the sliders around. Experiment with sharpening and noise reduction, too. You'll soon learn what works best with each film type and have starting points for each film family.

Anyone who gets really serious about it should follow the links in that white paper I posted. I'm a HUGE believer in the Essential Film Holder system (EFH). It's inexpensive, well-engineered, and easy to use for slides and negatives from 35mm to size 120 formats up to 6x9 cm. I feel the same about Negative Lab Pro, which I use for black-and-white and color negatives. Version 3.x is excellent. It works great with the latest version of LrC. Since I do lots of conversions, NLP is an essential part of my workflow and was a trivial (<$100) expense considering what it does — and the time it saves. The little Viltrox L-116t LED light panel is very good, about 95+ CRI, and only slightly deficient in the deep red portion of the spectrum. It runs cool and works great with the diffuser in the EFH.

Anyone working with negatives larger than 35mm (6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x8, or 6x9 cm) will benefit from a camera with more than 16MP. I'll probably switch to a 25MP Lumix G9 II soon, which also has a 100 MP mode on it that is made possible by stepping and repeating the exposure many times, moving the sensor slightly each time. Olympus OM-1 from OM-Systems has a similar feature. Of course, if you have the medium format Fujifilm 100MP GFX 100S, with a macro lens, you have sensor real estate to burn. Those big sensels resolve REAL 100 MP detail. That's a great solution if you do commercial work and need a scan from a 4x5 or larger film, so you can use the real swings and tilts on a view camera.