digitising film

[David H. Hartman]

This is a very interesting thread. If I may ask a relaed question:

I've got an AF-S 60mm F/2.8 Micro on the D750 and would like to scan monochrome negatives.
What would be required as a Film Holder and Adapter to the lens?

I was also thinking of using a small light table instead of flash.

I tried and failed using a Nikon D300s and a 55/2.8 AIS and maybe an AF 60/2.8 Micro-Nikkor. I was using a Nikon PB-4 with a Nikon PS-4 for copying. This setup should work with any Nikon FX DSLR. It's shameful but I haven't tried since buying a D800. I expect the biggest problem will be pre-dusting slides and spotting after copy. The PB-4 offers rear focus by moving the camera and the PS-4 was designed for the PB-4. The PS-4 should include facilities for film strips and mounted slides. I'd use something like a 500 watt lamp for focus and a speedlight for exposure.

I've used a dichroic color head for an enlarger as a light to copy from film to film. I think that would be better than a light table. I did that so long ago I remember almost nothing about it.

The light from a light table could be a bit spiky. Other problems are mentioned above. I'm assuming a florescent light source in the light table.

Just my 2 cents here...

Dave

[dslater]

I've used a dichroic color head for an enlarger as a light to copy from film to film. I think that would be better than a light table. I did that so long ago I remember almost nothing about it.

Dave

I bet that dichro head would make inverting the image easier. Dial in some yellow & magenta just like for wet printing and there should be a lot less of a cyan cast when you invert the resulting image in post-processing.

[dslater]

Alternatively, I wonder if you could work the inversion just like in the darkroom. Import the image. Make yellow & magenta filter layers on top of it. Then add a curves layer on top of that to do the inversion. Now you should be able to go back and adjust the yellow & magenta layers until you get good color balance. Another curves layer on top of all that to adjust contrast.

[dslater]

Alternatively, I wonder if you could work the inversion just like in the darkroom. Import the image. Make yellow & magenta filter layers on top of it. Then add a curves layer on top of that to do the inversion. Now you should be able to go back and adjust the yellow & magenta layers until you get good color balance. Another curves layer on top of all that to adjust contrast.

Gave this a try with a negative scan I had. Didn't work at all. Much better to invert, choose grey, white & black points. Only problem is, what do you do if there aren't any good neutral colors to choose??

[pluton]

Would the clear(unexposed) film outside the edge of the picture area work for a white balance?

[dslater]

Would the clear(unexposed) film outside the edge of the picture area work for a white balance?

That would only work if the lit source used for photographing the negative matched the inverted color temperature of the original lighting. For example, suppose I originally photographed a gray card in daylight. The card would have a color cast that reflected the daylight color temperature. The color cast is then inverted sine the film is color negative film. Now, I use a flash to illuminate the film for reproduction. Even if the flash exactly matches daylight, the image of the gray card on the negative is reversed, so even after I remove the orange color of the film, the image of the gray card will still have a different color cast than the color of the flash coming through a clear piece of film.

[Bent Hjarbo]

Yesterday I eventually manage to use the B/W developer I bought at least one year ago.
The film that had to be developed was exposed in 2008 and 2019, one was kept in the fridge the other in the basement garage, not heated.
I used ADOX chemicals, ATOMAL 49 and ADOFIX Plus, development time 8 min, suggestion was 7-9 min.
At least I got some images. I digitized them using my D800 and the PB4 bellow with the slide copying device. the optic was an old 55 mm f3.5.
I Lightroom I can reverse to positive B/W, but I get a lot of gain, and very hard gradient. I photographed the film base side, not emulsions side.
The film is Kodak 100TMAX.

Any suggestions to improve, I stil have 3 films left

[Seapy]

Might be worth trying HDR, three or five exposures with the D800, I have had great success with colour Kodachrome slides which were somewhat wide range and managed to recover both highlights and shadow details which were almost invisible in the slide, even plant names on labels which were almost illegible came up with sufficient contrast to read them easily after Lightroom had HDR'd the five exposures.

[Bent Hjarbo]

Thank you Robert, might be worth a try 

[Seapy]

It won't cost anything and it's easy. to do.

I usually use an LED floodlight shining through the slide, I use a sheet of diffusing plastic, like ground glass, which I recover from a duff flat screen monitors, there are usually at least one in every monitor, to diffuse the edge lighting evenly across the entire screen.  They make good diffusers for this job.  Nothing wasted in this house! LOL

[Roland Vink]

Might be worth trying HDR, three or five exposures with the D800, I have had great success with colour Kodachrome slides which were somewhat wide range and managed to recover both highlights and shadow details which were almost invisible in the slide, even plant names on labels which were almost illegible came up with sufficient contrast to read them easily after Lightroom had HDR'd the five exposures.

It's interesting, one of the supposed disadvantages of chromes was its limited dynamic range, modern digital sensors are thought to be much better. Yet here we have a modern sensor and HDR is still required to capture the full range of detail in a slide. Maybe the old stuff wasn't so bad after all?

[Seapy]

No Roland, you misunderstand, I think...

Because of the relatively narrow exposure range of exposure latitude of chromes, taking a bracketed series of exposures while copying the slide allows one to regain the range captured more realistically.  I am struggling to explain it (I am not good on this technical exposure stuff) but shadow detail requires a long exposure to 'see' the shadow detail, the nicely exposed areas respond as expected but the bright areas, like sky and brightly lit parts of the original need much shorter exposures to help recover the details there.

I began to realise this when I was copying some of my fathers slides taken with a Zeiss Contaflex, with no meter and working by guesswork he had quite a few slides which he had rejected but kept in a separate box, I worked through these first, working on the assumption that I would develop my technique with the difficult ones, the better exposed ones would be a doddle.

On some slides I had to feel my way using a wide series of manual exposures to finding an optimum exposure for the slide.  Examining the exposures in the computer, I began to realise that the longer exposures were revealing (hitherto) invisible shadow detail and the shorter exposures were revealing much better detail in the bright areas, allowing texture and shades to be shown which didn't appear in the mid range exposures.  By combining some of the longer, middle and shorter exposures in the Lightroom HDR process, I was able to create a single, very acceptable image from a slide with poor shadow detail and relatively blown out sky.  I tend to make quite a few bracketed exposures and choose just some of them for the HDR set, deleting the ones where no advantage is seen.  I have also found turning down my illuminating light helps reveal a better range in the bright areas but poor colour saturation eventually calls a halt there.

Hope that makes it clearer, I still don't completely understasnd it. LOL

Edited for clarity.

[Asle F]

It's interesting, one of the supposed disadvantages of chromes was its limited dynamic range, modern digital sensors are thought to be much better. Yet here we have a modern sensor and HDR is still required to capture the full range of detail in a slide. Maybe the old stuff wasn't so bad after all?

The chromes had limited dynamic range, but made high contrast output of it. That is why you need high dynamic range for digitising the film. This is just a result of the limitation of the chromes, not anything else.

[CS]

No Roland, you misunderstand, I think...

Because of the relatively narrow exposure range of exposure latitude of chromes, taking a bracketed series of exposures while copying the slide allows one to regain the range captured more realistically.  I am struggling to explain it (I am not good on this technical exposure stuff) but shadow detail requires a long exposure to 'see' the shadow detail, the nicely exposed areas respond as expected but the bright areas, like sky and brightly lit parts of the original need much shorter exposures to help recover the details there.

I began to realise this when I was copying some of my fathers slides taken with a Zeiss Contaflex, with no meter and working by guesswork he had quite a few slides which he had rejected but kept in a separate box, I worked through these first, working on the assumption that I would develop my technique with the difficult ones, the better exposed ones would be a doddle.

On some slides I had to feel my way using a wide series of manual exposures to finding an optimum exposure for the slide.  Examining the exposures in the computer, I began to realise that the longer exposures were revealing (hitherto) invisible shadow detail and the shorter exposures were revealing much better detail in the bright areas, allowing texture and shades to be shown which didn't appear in the mid range exposures.  By combining some of the longer, middle and shorter exposures in the Lightroom HDR process, I was able to create a single, very acceptable image from a slide with poor shadow detail and relatively blown out sky.  I tend to make quite a few bracketed exposures and choose just some of them for the HDR set, deleting the ones where no advantage is seen.  I have also found turning down my illuminating light helps reveal a better range in the bright areas but poor colour saturation eventually calls a halt there.

Hope that makes it clearer, I still don't completely understasnd it. LOL

Edited for clarity.

I would like to see some shots of your setup, including the illuminating light that you are able to turn down.

[Seapy]

Not sure if I have any of my current setup, it's very basic, D800 mounted conventionaly onto my PB4 Bellows, atop my heavy surveyers tripod, AIS micro Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 with the slide copy attachment in it''s normal configuration.  This allows me to get 1:1 or better, so I can actually crop if I want to but I seldom do.  The illumination is a 10 Watt LED floodlight about 2 feet away, screwed to a plank of wood on top of a filing cabinet.  I tape the diffusing plastic screen to the plank about 6 inches away from the lamp.  To turn the light down I add pieces of toilet tissue draped over the LED floodlamp, two pieces usually get the job done, the LED floodlamp is very cool so there is no risk of fire.  It's all very basic, I used to be an avid fan of Blue Peter, a kids teatime TV show where they did projects with bits of paper and glue, they always had the next stage of the project ready under the desk and would pull it out announcy this was "one they made earlier"!.  It became a catch phrase at school.LOL

I have also focus stacked with a particularly difficult slide which was curled, I took a couple of shots focused differently and the result was an improvement, getting both areas of the slide in focus. I have tried taking the slide out of the cardboard holder and mounting it free in the negative carrier, but once buckled or curled they are hard to get straight. Maybe a glass carrier?

I will dig out some images made with this setup so you may see the results.