My Slide Film Catalog

[Roland Vink]

I don't own a drum scanner, they are very expensive. There is a used one on eBay for $5000 USD. I imagine they are not easy to use and the scanning process takes a long time. I had a few of my best images scanned professionally. I will, eventually, like to find a quicker, more affordable, and practical way of scanning the rest of my images to the best possible quality, but I can't see that happening for a while yet.

[Zang]

I see... Then using digital cameras is another handy option. I can't imagine the results from the cameras are up to those from a drum scanner, but they are really good as well. I did a home made copier for my negatives and it works pretty well. Unfortunately, I lost my slides when I moved from Eastern Europe to Canada more than a decade ago. I am currently modifying my negative copier and will continue scanning the rest of my negatives. I'll share some results when it is done.

[ColinM]

Many years ago, I bought a Minolta Scan Dual III film/slide scanner.
It was helpful as it let me scan 35mm and 6x7 film & slides and it didn't cost too much at the time

However the results from one or two few negs & slides weren't as good quality as the 12x16" prints i'd made or the professional scans I'd had done from the same sources. This may partly have been caused by my limited PP skills.

Nowadays I understand many of these old used scanners are in demand again, as people butcher them to remove the lenses to use for macro work!

The image below was taken on Kodak Technical Pan (ISO 25 and some of the most detailed B&W negs I ever managed) in Morocco in 1984.
I had a beautiful print of it, but the scan doesn't seem to quite be in the same league. I suspect the wide contrast range was beyond my PP skills

[golunvolo]

This is very interesting with those beautiful images to boot. Thank you for sharing it. Even thou I have no slides to scan, I'll follow up with interest.

[JJChan]

Thank you Roland for your scans and insight into you lens use using 'manual' EXIF data!

I have thousands of clinical slides which I want to scan but have yet to work out a quick way. I have experimented with Coolscan 5000ED, Epson V800, D850 with micro 60mm and ES-2. For film I have a Pakon F135.
For me the Coolscan gives the best results albeit slow and the software still works with Windows 10 with initial workarounds. The V800 takes just as long, quality not great and has too many issues for me with warped and variable thickness slides as there is no auto focus and I didn't want to mess around with wet mounting. The D850 is really fast but the results are not as good (although probably good enough for work - not for private photos). I also have Vuescan software which is very powerful but hard for me to get the right colours without a lot of messing around.

Here are 2 of the same slide:

(DSC_2673.jpg) with D850 and ES-2 NEF converted in NXStudio, (23.jpg) with Coolscan 5000ED with NikonScan. From 1999 in Kyoto Nikon F501, AF35-70mm on Velvia50

[MEPER]

In my opinion the first image 23.jpg has far best mid-tones and details.
In the other the contrast is too high with some blown high lights?

[Dogman]

My limited scanning has been with the ES-2 and a D810 or D800 with 60/2.8 Micro lens.  My "technique" is simple--I've only wanted to do some photos of friends from the past.  These were shot on Kodachrome and I softened the images in Lightroom.  Sharper images could be done with better techniques and post processing skills but I've mainly been copying snapshots, not works of art.

Two lovely ladies:

[Ian Watson]

but I've mainly been copying snapshots, not works of art.

These are lovely portraits.

[golunvolo]

Indeed. Lovely portraits, timeless beauty

[Dogman]

Thanks so much.

[Erik Lund]

Roland - Amazing images Wow!
Also interesting statistics - Thank you for sharing

[paul hofseth]

 A comment inbetween scanning and lenses:
I find the Minolta 5400scanner quite good with Vuescan sioftware, but very slow, so to digitize  diapositives I use the excdellently solid Olympus copying bellows with a 50mm Rodenstock Apo-something enlarging lens giving fast and accurate reults.

p.

[ColinM]

A comment inbetween scanning and lenses:
I find the Minolta 5400scanner quite good with Vuescan sioftware, but very slow....

Yes I'd agree Paul.
When I got it, it was grateful for my Minolta scanner.
But over time I gradually grew discontented with the long-winded process and what seemed to be like lower quality than I was hoping for.

[Wally]

A dual approach is probably required for finding the best tradeoff to maximize quality and speed.
Personally I am using a D800/Df with the 60mm G Micro (and increasingly Z6/7 with the Z 105mm Micro) for slides with correct exposure and reasonable contrast, everything else more challenging is done with the Nikon 5000 scanner. For the former I pay close attention to optimal exposure extracting the maximum (working w histogram and profiles). It's not the fastest approach but still way quicker than a scan.
With the scanner I was able to recover completely underexposed slides from a wedding in the sixities to the extreme delight of the couple. The family had never seen these pictures before. What a joy!
Nevertheless I almost prefer to work with the NEF files than with TIFFs from the scanner.
YMMV

[Bernard Delley]

Wally, what setup do you use with Z 105mm micro ? I would guess that the longer working distance of the 105mm lens would not work with ES-2 and require some DIY for the setup.

I use a vintage PB-6 slide holder and normally a D7200 with the AF-S 60mm without bellows. I use typically picture control std, and  take NEF images. With cold (<4000K) white LED illumination, WB gets color balance good enough right away in most cases, and I can simply extract the full size the jpg from the NEF (dcraw -e) and have slide copy safely on par with a Coolscan image. With the raw, I can  conveniently extract detail  in deep shadows that one might more forebode than see in the slide projection in a good dark room. The D7200 24 Mpixels is slightly more than the Coolscan image  size from a 35mm slide.  The D850 can do much more resolution, but there is not that much real detail even in a Kodchrome ISO 25 slide, so the D850 mostly provides better detail on the slide or file "grain".

The Kyoto comparison before is interesting. The scan is as expected, good. The D850+AF-S 60mm performed far below expectations: is it due to overblown picture control vivid and contrast settings ??

I attach a slide copy done with D7100 + AF-S 60mm, the Kodochrome II slide likely was taken with the AI 55mm f/3.5 lens and Nikon F2 quite a while ago.