Hey, film dorks -- before I join a camera forum, what do you know about DIY DSLR slide/negative scanning?
I recently scanned ~2,000 slides. My DIY rig, using gear I had on hand, makes good images and is fast, but it's a PITA -- wrong tool for the job.
Meanwhile, I have a couple thousand more slides, plus negatives, that I want to scan...
What's your advice on a DIY, DSLR-based scanning rig for both slides and (35mm) negatives?
I'm specifically wondering about gear and an approach to holding the camera and media, and precisely adjusting camera-to-media distance and keeping the camera parallel and square to the media.
- Flatbed scanner is not an option.
- No camera advice needed -- I've got a full-frame sensor, good 1:1 macro.
- I'd like to be able to control the amount of light. I found that my flash in TTL does well, and it's easy to adjust when it occasionally blows out highlights, or add light to under-exposed shots that TTL struggles with (e.g., scenes on snow). I don't know if this is easily done with a light table (I know nothing about them).
- Ideally, for slides, I'd be able to quickly pull up the camera to shoot text on the mount, then drop it back down.
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Here's what prompted this post. That's three tripods, two flashes, three boxes of ammo (for slide alignment), a Pringles can (which is silver inside and thus a good flash snoot), picture-frame glass, and more:
Mr_Asa
UltraDork
1/3/21 6:24 p.m.
It used to be that there were dedicated negative/slide scanners out there, the best would take pics from two slightly different angles to allow you to differentiate dust and crap on the negative and remove it with photoshop or whatnot. No clue how the tech has advanced since I was last looking into them for my dad.
I've been using my DSLR to copy 35mm film for a while now. Here's what I've got going on;
That's a sub-$100 tripod, a wall power supply so I'm not using the battery in my camera, a remote shutter release, and an LED light box that I think was $40 at the most. It's bright. It's stone simple; plug it in to turn it on, unplug to power it off. A 35mm film holder meant for some negative scanner and a home-made mask. I'm using a Pentax crop DSLR (so that's a 1.5x crop) and a 105mm 1:1 f2.8 macro lens; most of my scans are done at f5.6, 200 ISO, 1/60 exposure. So, a little brighter would be nice, but far from a requirement. I capture to RAW files.
To convert negatives I use Negative Lab Pro; https://www.negativelabpro.com/
This software has made this process much faster and easier with results rivaling scans from a well regarded lab. I use it as a plugin for Adobe Lightroom 6. I don't know what options there are to best use it if you don't have Lightroom. The current situation with Adobe and their purchasing (well, rental, really) model makes me wonder if at some point I'll move away from Lightroom and Photoshop Elements but for now I'm still using both. In any case, I can't recommend Negative Lab Pro enough. It originally was most useful in dealing with color negatives but it's quite good with black and white negatives as well. If you're considering this software and don't have Lightroom, I would contact the software's creator, or poke around the forum on his website (I've no idea how useful/active that forum is, never had to find out, so grain of salt).
The only thing I'd want to change with my setup in the near term is the negative holder & mask. I kind of wonder if I even need the mask. Some sort of holder is all but required but my setup seems a bit fiddly.
Hope this helps gives you some ideas. Oh, and about dust/lint/etc, use a rocket blower or similar, and definately handle everything with cotton gloves. I also use Anti-Stat Film Cleaner and PEC Pads but that's usually just to get water spots off of negatives I've just developed, and if I'm not careful I'll scratch the emulsion with this stuff, so I try to use it sparingly. Water spots are kind of an ongoing problem for me.
For 35mm I'd suggest a Pakon scanner. They are fairly cheap and very easy to use.
for your setup- just use the flash in manual mode. Shoot in raw and adjust from there in post. You should have plenty of latitude there.
Thanks for the responses, everyone -- some great ideas here. Also, looks like Negative Lab Pro is the ticket for processing negatives.
