Building a negative "scanner"

[Edcculus]

I'm giving this a shot tonight. I'm nearly ready to start printing B&W. Just a few things to set up in the darkroom. In the meantime, I'd like to share some of my images on the web.

I thought about buying a nice scanner. When I really thought about it, my intent was not to shoot film only to have a digital workflow. It was to do it totally analogue. I do enough digital stuff at work.

I'd still like to share images on the web though. I have a decent DSLR (Canon Rebel T1i). If I set up a negative carrier, I could put it in front of a bright light source and take a picture of it (if I can focus that small/close).

I drew up a negative carrier in our CAD program and cut it out of paperboard (after some trial and error). I forgot a piece of film, so I cut some vinyl material to make sure it was the right size.



I plan on trying it out tonight. I'll update on how it goes.

 

[Edcculus]

Here is the first attempt. OK. A little blurry, but not terrible for a first try. I'm going to have to try a different lens or spend a little more time focusing. To my credit, I did have a baby strapped to my front while doing this.



The picture itself was taken on a Nikon F2, 50mm 1.4 lens. Ilford HP5 Plus. Developed in HC-110

 

[Edcculus]

I was looking closer on my monitor at work and in Photoshop and found one problem. The monitor I was using for a light source has fairly perceptible pixels, which is causing almost a screened/halftone pattern. I was also not able to focus close enough and fill up most of the viewfinder. After cropping down the image, I lost a lot of potential resolution.

I'll try again tonight with a different light source and better focusing method or lens.

 

[Edcculus]

Used a different light source this time, and a different lens. I was able to fill up more of the viewfinder with the negative, which gave a slightly larger file. At 300 DPI, it comes out to be about 6X10. Not great, but good enough to share on the web.

After cropping, I adjusted the levels (bring white and black points up to where they should be), the same as you would do when scanning. I also converted to grayscale mode to take out any color cast.

Here is my latest attempt. I do have some light flare around the edges, so I'll have to work on getting rid of that. Otherwise, not too shabby IMO.

 

[Edcculus]

also, here is the before picture

 

[mdarnton]

I've been doing this for a couple of years using an old Durst enlarger as a copy stand, a Nikon 50mm Micro lens, and an LED movie light as a light source. Here's the setup, and most of the photos on my flickr site have been taken from negs this way. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdarnton/7183241686/in/photostream

It's a completely viable method, and some museums are using it to digitalize old film they have that's in all sorts of strange sizes, because it's much faster than scanning. Some folks on the photo boards have told me that my digitalizations are better than what their old film scanners can do. The dream here is to get a Nikon D800e, and bounce the quality up a couple more steps.

 

[Edcculus]

I should have thought about that. A copy stand is perfect for this. If I set it up do point down, I can skip the holder that I built and just use the negative carrier from my enlarger.