Hello there, finally I made this video! Many have asked for it and I'm happy to show you how I do it :) However... of course I forgot to mention one little detail, so just another tip: before you slide your negative into the holder you will need to decide which side to scan. If you look carefully you will see that one side is shiny and the other is matt (it's still shiny, but less). On B&W film it is obvious, on colour film you will ususaly need to look a bit closer. Anyway, as far as I know it is best to scan the matt side to capture maximum detail and also avoid reflections. And btw. just want to thank Urth again for partnering with me in the video - their adapter has really been a wonderful tool for me, but something I didn't mention is that you can not only use these for scanning, but of course they are a great way to adapt unique stylistic lenses to your digital cameras to get make use of the pleasing characteristics many old lenses have :) You can check out their adapters here: actv.at/VYd/84770 Have a good week, Teo
I’m interested you say scan the Matt side, never thought of that. Two things though, first - the picture will need flipping. Not had reflection issues if overhead lights turned off. When I scan next time, I will try both ways - thanks for the suggestion.
There's a trick to level your camera, you can use a small mirror and place it on top of where the film will be and once the reflection of your lens is in in the middle of the frame of your camera, it is perfectly leveled.
I did this myself two years ago to capture slides and negatives. I'm not a regular Gimp user, but I found that Gimp's Color->Invert function worked very well to get regular images back from the negatives.
I love how concise you are in your videos! As someone who is new to the world of film photography, it is super overwhelming! But you really take the time to organize and explain everything in a way that’s super approachable! Thank you so much!
For anyone that doesn’t have a macro lens, check out the vintage Nikon 55mm 2.8ais or 3.5ai lenses. You can find them below a $100 or even dirt cheap and they are magnificent for this purpose. Very weird for me to get that level of sharpness from a late 70’s lens. Mind that they’re 1:2 magnification but with Nikon’s own tube they become 1:1. I scan 35mm negatives with a crop camera and at the minimum focus distance the film frame almost covers the whole picture. Either use a Nikon body or any mirrorless one with an adapter for the Nikon F. Cheers!
Oh man, so cool to see you shouting out Urth. You're spot on about the build quality. I have a bunch of their adapters including their Canon EF to Sony E mount adapter. I use it with a 40mm 2.8 canon pancake and the autofocus is so fast and so precise despite the adapter. Love their stuff.
If you want a cheap stand get a used photographic enlarger. They can be had for a song. Most enlargers let you take the head off and you have a baseboard, a column and the mechanism that was originally used to move the head up or down. Fix your camera instead of the head and there you are. Far easier to handle than a tripod and, above all, far easier to adjust.
you don´t understand how this video helped me, I´m working in a Photostudio and we don´t have any scanner, but we have macro lenses, a lot of tripods and lights. THANK YOU
The problem with the macro rings (extension tubes they're also called) is not the tubes themselves (unless you're getting uneven sharpness from side to side) but with the lens. Modern lenses are wonderful, but they are not normally corrected for flatness of field at very close range. As other people have mentioned, if you don't have access to a macro lens, a simple (but good quality) enlarger lens will be very good. As you're working at a fixed distance, it should be not too difficult to get some tubing that gives you sharp focus and satisfactory framing.
After all the videos with computer-generated voices, I have to compliment you on your rich, deep, voice, enhanced (for those of us on the left side of the pond) with a cultured British accent.
The problem with Extension tubes with a regular lens of some sort is that the field of sharp focus is not flat at close focus distances while a macro lens is designed to have a flat field of focus up close. Ie when the centre is sharp the edges are not and vice versa. Stopping down would reduce the problem but I chose to buy the Olympus 30mm macro which was quite low priced lens even for a M4/3. My solution for a negative holder was to use an old enlarger negative carrier. I built my copy stand from a old enlarger base. I got my led backlight from the hardware store. For software I use Affinity photo and Pixelmator Pro on my Mac and can invert them quickly. Mine are mostly old B&W negs from the 60s. Interesting to see how you went about it.
Idk why but the shot at 10:21 was one of the most beautiful shots I’ve ever scene. The tripod being in focus and you being out of focus looks really interesting. Also the painting adds a pop of color with a creative feel. The coolest aspect was the soft lighting coming from the window(I think) giving the wall a nice gradient and you a flattering look, whilst giving the tripod legs a nice reflective slim line of light.
I see that your at 99 comments on this video… I thought I’d make it an easy 100, this video was super helpful, im just getting into film, I love it and your channel had helped a lot!
Nice work. To add to that ... In "digital photography" the elephant in the room is the "Bayer paradigm" (conspiracy?). Colour film has 3 layers on top of each other with subtractive filtering between them and consequently we have RGB at ~every coordinate. That idea is extremely hard to copy in sensors, at serious resolution, with excellent low light sensitivity and dynamic range. It has been attempted by Foveon, but they tanked, got taken over by Sigma, who released a couple cameras with a Foveon sensor but this also was a dead end street. None of Sigma's promises have been delivered on. And it remained "crop". In the Bayer paradigm, we use a colour-blind sensor (it's analogue, by the way) that sees the entire humanly visible spectrum (more). Each photocell (light sensitive diode) has a circuit to store a charge that builds under exposure, as an analogue value, and taking a photo means that all these values are measured and Digital-to-Analogue (DA) converted. Each of these cells with a circuit is a "photosite". In old black & white film terms, the Bayer sensor is panchromatic (pan=call, chromatic=colour), but we have no "colour" yet. Mr. Bayer solved this by proposing a colour filter grid over the sensor that precisely aligns with the sensor grid of squares. Each 2*2 "photosites" would be filtered (counter) clock-wise red, green, blue, green (RGBG). This makes each photosite monochrome in that it only sees one colour (mono=one, single) and this also applies to the raw file. Each photosite measures a light level and the data elements in the raw file are labelled with one of R, G, B. Neither the sensor nor the raw file, in this sense, have pixels (PICture ELementS), because to display a picture we want RGB pixels. Note that shooting B&W with a camera like this, we still start with a raw colour file of monochrome data elements and the B&W conversion makes the RGB conversion first. We can call the raw file "Bayerised" and Mr. Bayer proposed a simple form of guessing the missing colours as "deBayerisation". The Bayerised raw file is extremely noisy - 100% noise in fact and we can call this "Bayer noise". Mr. Bayer's deBayerisation works well at rather low resolutions, but deBayerisation based on old-school AI generates "digital artefacts" that become visible at higher resolutions. The best known is "Moiré", but crinkly lines at the pixel peep level, and colour cross-bleeding at edges between colour blobs are in there as well. These effects are called "mosaic" and with increasing resolution, it became opportune to remove them in "demosaicking" - or I would argue it is better to prevent them in the deBayerisation. The challenge with this entire process is that all RGB pixels we create are 100% the result of "guessing", even when we can do that without generating digital artefacts. There are two deeper phenomena here and that is that cameras may use a second filter layer over the sensor to help this colour guessing: OLPF (AKA Anti-Aliasing or AA-filter). The OLPF disperses a bit of light travelling to photosite [x,y] so as to hit the direct neighbours. This OLPF aspect makes colour guessing with less noise easier. It, AA-filter aspect, also helps reduce jagged lines/edges following from the grid of rectangles in the sensor. Second there's the question of Bayer noise. As the assumption is that we get "perfect" RGB pixels after deBayerisation and demosaicking, we still may see grain or noise in our images. I would call this, generally, "failed or inadequate deBayerisation". When you shoot the Milky Way, it is valid to talk about not enough photons, maybe, but in most other photography a discussion about photons distracts from the Bayer paradigm. We see the failed deBayerisation more in the blurry zones, low contrast zones, darker zones of our images. And call it colour noise and/or luminance noise, thus by blaming the camera helping lazy software developers that need to give us better raw processing (conversion). Applying inadequate deBayerisation, you will see the Bayer noise more in images from cameras that have done away with the OLPF because software developers have been lazy indeed. Adobe spent the past decade on programming new versions of old software in new platforms (like mobile) rather than giving their prime stakeholders (paying the annual subscription) better raw processing (in Adobe Camera Raw). Nikon Eliminated the OLPF from the D800 (36MP) in the - ceteris paribus - D800E (36MP). The gain in image quality is shocking. But ACR only got its "Enhance AI Denoise" added as option last year, as a way to improve on Bayer noise (note that "detail" is a separate quality). What about scanning? Now we understand the Bayer paradigm, we have to know that scanners don't need to work in the Bayer paradigm. But if they do or don't is a matter of physical design and drivers and software with the scanner, plus parameter settings. In the case of "scanning" there is a notion of a travelling-over-the-original sensor that may "read" each coordinate with red, green, and blue and next stacks these separate values into RGB. "Multi pass" then will increase resolution and reduce uncertainties about colours. While your camera's Bayer raw file may be 14 bits, these are monochrome bits and the resulting RGB pixel on your monitor/display is probably 21 (3*7) or 24 (3*8) bits - where 24 of the 24 will result from guessing. ACR converts your 14 bits raw file into 3*16 bits per channel = 48 bits per pixel in ProPhoto colour space, but as ACR (or Lightroom Classic - LrC, or Photoshop - Ps) depicts it, that gradation resolution is compressed again. In Ps we can by the way convert the 3* 16 into 32 bits per channel (3*32=96 per pixel). From scanners, we may want to get, say, 16 bits per channel (native 48 per pixel) RGB TIFF files. This is orders of magnitude more precise than 14 bits monochrome from a camera. Reproduction of film-photographic images with a digital camera So with a digital camera we do not "scan". We shoot a raw file and this then has to be raw processed in order to get RGB pixels - an image we would like to see. The raw processing may be done in camera when we shoot JPEG, or in post, in ACR or C1 or ... . Part of the digitising, often, is colour reversal If we have colour or B&W negatives, then we not only need to reproduce the negative but also reverse the resulting negative image. The simplest approach is to import the image into ACR (the Develop tab in LrC is ACR) and swap the black and white points on the vertical axis. That makes a negative positive, but there's more work to do. You might want to buy NegativeLab Pro for that purpose (as the video illustrates). Colour negative film uses an amber coloured carrier film as a way to suppress noise and that colour needs to be subtracted. The negative may seem to have a narrow histogram - high contrast. If your maths are any good, note we work on a base-2-log scale in digital and exposure, but in film we worked on a 10-base-log scale when gradation, contrast, and contrast envelope were concerned. 4.5 on a 10-log scale is about 15 EV. The human eye works in 10-log too. Scanning Digital cameras? A handful of digital cameras can do something called "pixel shift". The idea is that we can get rid of Bayer noise by shooting 3 or more shots of a motionless subject and between shots shift the sensor precisely over a photosite pitch. One horizontal shift adds red to a previously green photosite coordinate and another shift would add blue for that coordinate. These separate shots then need to be stacked in post. Shooting more frames and making half photosite-pitch steps then removes more uncertainty and adds detail resolution. Gradation resolution will be great. And detail resolution too. My recently acquired Nikon Z camera can shoot up to 32 frames per original that I reproduce. We could argue that with pixel shift the digital camera actually scans the original frame. I don't know if the stacking in post is done in the raw domain, or relies on actual deBayerised RGB frames. Whatever the approach, the multi-pass pixel-shift approach takes uncertainty away, and with that, Bayer noise. Adjusting the camera - not really One way to get a negative parallel to the sensor is to use a negative/slide copier. I bought a Nikon one for my Nikon Z. A simple tube to be mounted on the lens using filter thread on one end and a simple negative/slide holder on the other. It's not too expensive, but finicky (sub-optimal design) and only holds 35mm film or slides. For my "6*9" (cm) negatives I need another solution. Also it was designed for use with a 50mm..60mm macro lens and I bought the far superior 105mm/2.8S. The latter's much longer focal length means that the tube connecting the film holder directly to the lens must be longer and Nikon has no extension for this. I bought a stack of $3/ea UV filters with aluminium ring, broke the glass out, and terminated either end with brass rings from slightly more expensive filters. Works like a breeze. And doesn't even look like Micky Mouse DIY. (Alu tends to lock itself and damage the counter thread, brass has self-lubricating properties.) Adjusting the camera - really If you shoot your reproductions from tripod, then you need to look into a geared tripod head. The NY, NY superstore sells a Sunwayfoto for about US$220 ex sales tax. It's not about tricks to get the camera right/level, but about making small controlled adjustments that are difficult to make with ball or video heads.
thank you for your insight on this topic :) at first i also had a struggle with scanning my negatives (essentially by using a scanner with an effective dpi of 900, which rendered the scans unusable since there was barely any sharpness at all), and had to decide whether to buy a new scanner or a dslr camera since i did not own one at the time. after a bit of research, i went with buying an opticfilm 8100 from plustek for about 250 euros and, i must say, am really content with its results, the only downside being that it only scans 35mm film. when i get to shooting 120 film i will definitely have to look out for a dslr camera and make myself comfortable with the process, thanks again for giving a rough overview over the topic!
Great video and explanation ! I do it the same way. I started as well with the lomography scanning masks, was not happy with the handling and ended up just putting the film flat on the Kaiser slimlite and surround the frame with 4 Canon Akkus. Works well so far. Now and then Newton rings can be a problem but in about 95% it's fine. I do tethering via Wifi to my computer. I found it easier to judge the focussing on a bigger screen. When I am ready to take the shot, I magnify the photo X10, lift the mouse off the table and wait until nothing moves. then I click the mouse without touching anything. sometimes, 5 secs is not enough until everything is completely still. With a macro lens that close, every tiniest move looks like an earthquake on screen ;-) ..... I love your videos and the way you explain things. Thankx + keep em coming ! ....
Haha. I used a coffee tin as a "rostrum" and a cheap light panel from amazon. The coffee tin had a plastic cover from which I cut out a circle that connected to the camera lens. I painted the interior with black paint. I used Kodachrome 64 for much of my photography, then Fujichrome Provia 100 for my trip to the Seychelles. (back in the 1980s). Of course I had to wait many years before I could view these images on a computer screen. The only decent option back then was a Cibachrome print. I still have the film, and the Cibachrome prints I took from it. Cibachrome is the best.
Always custom white balance your camera to the light box you're using. I've been doing all my negative/transparency digital conversion copy work like this for 20 years. DO wish someone (Luminar) would come up with a faster, easier color conversion however.
great video! your way of scan is totally same with mine... i'm still using lomography film holder and just ordered new essential film holder. i can't wait for it.
A very well put together video. Make sure to give yourself at least two pats on the back. I was very pleased to learn about the film holder and have just ordered one and now I am looking at the light tables from Kaiser. I was looking to see information regarding which size you found most useful. Is the smallest size adequate for both 35mm and 120 film? Thanks again.
Ideally have the matte side face the camera, not the glossy side. That usually means that you‘ll be photographing the image mirrored which you can then just change in Lightroom by hitting right click - transform - flip horizontal.🙌🏼
So I was gonna try starting to shoot with 35mm soon. Would've never thought about using a digital camera or scanner and just invert the colour in a photo editor! Probably save me a lot of money I'm sure
I just adapted a couple different enlarger lenses because they are already macro and they are also flat field lenses specifically for enlarging so the edges are always square and flat. No distortion. To get in closer if you need you can use an extension tube which will not interfere with the flat field lens. Not all macro lenses are flat field lenses. I have two. One I like better than the other. I just use a true white light behind a frosted glass for the light table. It works. Yes, keep the ambient light away. I use fast shutter speeds to prevent blurring. Not sure why you chose long shutter speeds. F11 is a good spot. Good tip on which side to scan. Focusing on the emulsion side will result in sharper images. If you have to focus through the thickness of the film it can cause sharpness issues. Be sure you turn your image to the correct orientation after you take your image or the right will be the left and... you know. Backwards. You will know if there are any printed words.
Thanks for pointing me in the direction of Urth. I’ve been looking for an affordable and well-built adapter for using my Zuiko non-digital lenses with a 4:3 digital camera.
You may be getting some diffraction scanning at f/16, I assume you've done your research and tested I just never personally go beyond f/11 because I find the fall off to be pretty dramatic. Great video!
If one was using a decent ' macro ' lens, the chances are that the lens would be well corrected for filed curvature, chromatic aberrations and peripheral illumination, therefore two stops down from the widest aperture is where the optimal performance of the lens is, around F8~F9. Considerations of DOF do not really arise as a properly held flat negative or transparency does not require huge DOF to maintain sharp focus across the frame. Yes you are correct, F16 is well into the diffraction zone of most 35mm macro lenses.
Ahhh yes, I've just totally gotten used to scanning at f.16, which is actually just an old habit from when I was still figuring the process out. I was closing the aperture to gain DOF to ensure that everything is sharp, even if the setup slightly moves. I better check on that haha thanks for pointing this out!
That light leaks which you see on 3:28 are from the lens of your camera. My advice. Cover part of your light pad you are not using currently so its light will not be reflected on the lens of your camera. Second - use lens hood do filter side light. And there will be not light leaks)
This was so helpful! I just sent some film in and it costs $70 to develop, and had me thinking I should start doing this myself 😅 Will def be rewatching this a few times when I start
For developing and scannig of only one Roll? I started scanning with a plustek 8100, thats an affordable option too if you don't have a dslr or more importantly, the right lense. I paid about 175€ for mine used. The resolution in detail is not as high as labscans, but it's still really comparable.
Another great video. I do much the same. A few thoughts. Use a cable release. Use smartphone level to level everything, the app is just there on my phone. I have marks on the tripod so I can just set it up without trying to work it out each time. All these speed things up. I mask the light box so the light only shines on the film. Nate has just launched his V2.4, no extra cost to those with a licence, that is Service… I love this analogue to digital and back, work flow. Have scanned old 1970s film, edited in Lightroom and photoshop and printed digital negatives for printing on Cyanotype and as large format in the darkroom.
Using a digital camera to make a digital file of a 35mm negative or transparency is an efficient way of digitizing 35mm negs. The problem is, if and when the photographer moves beyond 35mm into MF or even LF format photography. Here the limitations of using a digital camera become more obvious and this where flatbed scanners ( there is really only one TBH, that can cope with MF and LF and that is the Epson V850 ) come into their own. With regret Nikon has long stopped producing their superb line of Coolscan ED scanners and what there is on the used market are priced beyond reasonable. I have experimented quite a bit with using digital cameras to digitize some of my negs, and a camera with a full frame of about 20MP can extract all the information from even the most high res films such as Ilford PanF or Rollei 80S. Your method is adequate and will produce decent results. Another alternative is what we old timers used in the film era to copy slides, and that is to use a decent enlarging lens in reverse. This can save a lot of money if you managed to find an EL Nikkor, Schnieder or Rodenstock lens of about 80mm.
As I think I mentioned in the video... that didn't work very well, because the tubes created a lot of chromatic aberration. But maybe my tubes were just too cheap, I don't know.
Hi, thanks for the reply. I think the issue is probably caused by the path the light goes through the lens when forced to focus at distances it was not designed. I read that if the lens can be 'reversed ' then the light path is more in keeping with how the lens was designed.
@@PhilJonesIII but majority of the lenses are not the sharpest at their widest aperture so ideally you need to be a couple stops down so around f5.6 to f8 depending on the maximum aperture of the lens.
A small travel zoom camera (eg nikon coolpix s9600) has a macro setting which works well..a much cheaper option..you can buy a used camera for under £50. A iPad set on white b,and screen works as a light source..BUT place your slide film at least 30 cm away from the iPad to avoid the discrete dots…by far the cheapest and fastest way of digitising slides…
I have a hard drive with 18000 photos in a drawer. Longing for the days of old I bought a film camera, only to discover that in 2023 i need to take digital pictures of my pictures and store them on a hard drive in my drawer. The teeth of technology have a deep hold these days. Great content though, not a slight on you rather the state of the world
Hello, I have a question about the method you are using for scanning your negatives. What is the size of the final file? What is the maximum print size you can achieve?
Hey Teo, if you have Lightroom, at least here in the US, I get Photoshop also. Photoshop has several options for converting negative to positive. One is a one click option and the other is a two click option. Both work fine and you still have the latitude to adjust colors, saturation, tone, contrast, etc. Does your subscription to LR not also include PS?
What is the make of tripod you have? I also have a Sony A7iii and have just ordered my first film camera the Pentax K1000. Love the idea of scanning film at home, so the inverted tripod would be a great idea! Thanks for the really informative video
Good thing to get a perfect flat image is to get some step up filters and soms lens hoods. And i managed to get my vivitar 55mm 2.8 perfectly aligned and it rest on the film holder. Perfectly flat images. And no accidentally bumpbs to the tripod what resets your alignment…
Great video! Love your voice, realy relaxing and soothing. One hint: Using a shutter remote or an app would help you speed up the process even more since you could get rid of the 5 second timer.
If you dont have bubble level use a mirror. Place a mirror on the the surface of the film holder, then you can aim your camera into the reflection. That way even if the table / holder is not level the camera still is dead on with it.
Good video. I'm a busy body old photographer who should be doing something else... The film holder you bought and the slow work flow using a scanner really frames the issue. The only way these things have ever worked is on jobs with only a few pieces of film to scan, or if you have an employee and they just have to do it. I've had scanners, they never work our. Too time consuming. Photo gear is great but invariably stupid. (Manfrotto tripod, requires special shoes. I have a couple. But no place on the tripod to store spare shoes. Mind numbingly stupid. I drill holes in the knuckles and tap them with 1/4" -20 and screw on extra shoes. Right now my Nikon batteries are dead because my assistants put the chargers someplace. With my GoPro I can plug directly into the battery. ) For a camera support I'd suggest finding an old enlarger, one with a vertical post would be best. (I have a Besseler 4x5 enlarger, terrific but the 'post' is at an angle. It'd still work because you'll do one size format at a time. ) Tripods are too easy to bump -- though I've done thousands of frames of copy work using just a tripod. I always sand bagged the legs or taped them down. Do that first. For a lens, just about anything will do, especially because LightRoom can correct for zoom lens distortion. If you can use a flat macro lens like the one you inherited, or a Nikon 55 or 60 Micro or the 105 Micro. (I have both the old 55 and the newer 60. Except for the 60 being autofocus, they're every similar. On a budget? Buy an old one. Most other older film lenses are terrible. All old zooms are horrible. I shot for years with lenses that I thought I could still use when I got a D2X in 2001. Digital lenses are always much better. ) The holder looks great. I've exhibited and sold photos printed from negatives held in mat board DIY film holders. The critical factor is the image area of the film doesn't touch anything and the holder holds the film flat. Sometimes this is difficult. You don't need a level. Instead just lay a mirror, or the reflective surface of your light panel. When you see the front element of your lens centered in the frame in your camera- you're aligned. When I shot works of art behind glass I just held a small flashlight above the lens and then to the side and moved the camera until they were aligned. There were elaborate and costly widgets to do this but this is all you need. When you're aligned, tape everything down. After securing the tripod. (I guess you could use a level on the tripod tube.* shift the camera. The table top is constant. Tape everything down. At about 10 minutes Teo is putting in a new strip and his holder is sliding around. No. You add a lot extra labor and it will undermine your quality. This is not art, this is mechanical. You are making a machine think of it as a machine. Technical. Generally f 8 is the sharpest setting for most lenses. You get into refraction lower sharpness at higher f stops. To manually focus (I spent 40 years doing this with 4xt5 and 8x10 cameras, knew people who knew Adams, Weston and Cunningham.) You want to rack in and out getting closer and closer to the sharpest focus. With very little practice you'll get great at this. I don't know about the 2 second exposures. Ideally you want the camera to not move, meaning, mirror locked up, electrical release, not your finger. I'm also not sure about the light source. What's its CRI? And is it a continuous spectrum? This is really important with color transparencies and negatives. Do not shoot Jpegs, shoot RAW. My Nikon D850 has a phenomenal range. With transparency film (slides) anything 5 stops +/- is solid black or empty white. I think my Nikon has a range of 14 stops. (I can underexpose 5 stops and in Lightroom bring it right back to normal exposure -- with a little noise. Most film photography images had a range of 7 stops black to white). This greater range is really the reason why 'scanning' with a DSLR now 'works.' Also shoot with the emulsion up facing the camera. Now you're shooting the emulsion with the image, not looking through the clear base. Your image will be backwards (mirrored) so you'll have to flip it. Now the bad news. You'll have to get software to convert a color negative to a positive. (The second more costly one here looks great.) That reddish cast isn't the negative of the real world, it's a mask. Just fiddling I've never been able to correct it out. Second bit of bad news: all your grandparents' negatives from the 1960s and 70s? They're effectively screwed. Fugitive dyes in the film have faded, permanently shifting the color. There are probably some software options to fix some of this. The problem is you can't tweak a color that simply is no longer there. (BTW Kodachrome compared to Ektachrome and other slide films from back in the day? About 5-10CC Red. Plus more saturation, deep blacks. I once worked with a guy who had to shoot Ektachrome when he wanted Kodachrome and this is what we came up with.) The way you'd really do this DSLR scanning as a Work Flow. Start with a couple of images, drive yourself nuts. (Dust is also a huge problem. Cleaning solutions attract dust, but may be necessary to remove embedded dust. Distilled water is best. A little Photoflow (I still have a bottle! use it in my fountain pens) helps. If you keep at it you make progress, eventually you'll be as efficient as is possible. (Audiobooks is how I put in 60 hour weeks in a darkroom to make 20 prints.) Hope this helps.
Thanks for the amazing video Teo! What kind of tripod are you using? I did not see that or the lightbox listed with the equipment links below. Any assistance would be awesome. Thanks again. Peace, Love, and Happiness!!! 🙃
You can use a cell phone and set it to macro mode. There are old point and shoot cameras that have a macro setting. I'm sure you can find someone with one of those cameras.
Great video Teo! I have tried both scanning with my Epson V600 and my Sony A7III with a vintage macro lens. I would say the actual scanning is very slow on the Epson (especially at higher resolutions). But the workflow for DSLR/mirrorless scanning was too clunky for me. For now, I'll stick with my Epson V600 and just work on other things while the scans are processing. I would love to get my hands on a Noritsu scanner someday!
You and I sound like we have had EXACTLY the same experience! I used to scan with my Sony A7rII with an old macro lens and it was far too clunky and a hassle to set up/break down. Conversely, I have had an excellent experience I’ve switched to an Epson V600. You’re so right about it being slow and now and then I have had to clean the Epson’s sensors a couple times when it started producing that dreaded scan-line in the images. People whine about their lack of quality, but I recently had a print made of a photo I took with my Mamiya 645 that I scanned with my V600 and it turned out beautiful, was accepted in a juried art show and even sold on opening night. So I suppose everyone’s experience can be different
Thanks Reimann! :)) Ahh I get what you mean, that's the beauty I guess that we at least have the choice depending on our preferences :D And ohhh yes, I hope you get your hands on one some day!
@@pancakelens75 v600 makes beautiful 120 scans but 35mm is quite poor...I'm doing the opposite, trasitioning from v600 to something else (for 35mm only)
How do you feel about this method a year later? I currently have an Epson V550 scanner which I use in conjunction with Silverfast to scan, then use Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom to convert to positive. I'm moving overseas so I have to sell my V550. I'm considering switching to camera scanning since I have a Canon R7 and the scanner method was very slow, but I don't have suitable tripod and it seems the Negative Supply setup is over $2000, whereas I could get a used scanner for a few hundred dollars.
@@blackhellebore89 Ohh you can very easily do a simple colour inversion. But that sadly will not give you good results. For optimal colour balance in your scans you’re going to need to have a nuanced inversion hence it’s more complicated🤷♂️
@@teocrawford seriously this was like 10 years ago. So if it was tedious I've probably deleted it from the memory banks! I also used a M42 lens with adaptor to a Canon - I made a square tube and back lit with a lamp covered in baking paper to get my images
Hi, very interesting video especially for the end2end workflow. I am going to do a similar setup, the time I need with my epson v600 is too much. What about the quality of the scan using a good macro lens, such as the nikkor 55mm micro or something like that? Can you clear distinguish the film grain of a 400 film? Thanks again.
Much simpler. This is the designed setup. Take a Nikon camera, a 60 mm MICRO lens and the ES-1 adapter. It is about 5 sec per image. AF once, F9 or F11. Click. No alignment, no time wasted. Use a RAW converter that does the conversion automatically. Capture One does it.
No need to buy special macro lens. There are macro rings which you can attach to your camera and the lens and use your lens in macro. It is much more cheaper. And gives the same result. The only con of this solution - bigger shutter speed to capture the scene (your negative). But this is not a problem if tou use tripod and cable release (remote).
I'm not sure if you maybe missed that part, but in the video I actually mentioned that I tried one of those rings, however they we not working at all for me :(
What do you think of the KODAK Slide N SCAN, is it worth it? I wanted to buy a scan to develop my Kodak h35n films but I didn't want something very expensive. I prefer something more accessible and practical, what do you recommend?
Thanks. I thought they are developed first as hard copies and then scanned. Or may that's another way? Another question is, if this is the way to turn them to digital then the kind of film doesn't matter because the colors are adjusted anyway? Hope somebody can answer. Thanks
Prints are made off of the negative - and scans are made off of the negative. And yes, when you invert the colours the colours will come up as they are supposed to - or in black and white as it's supposed to.
Hello there,
finally I made this video! Many have asked for it and I'm happy to show you how I do it :) However... of course I forgot to mention one little detail, so just another tip: before you slide your negative into the holder you will need to decide which side to scan. If you look carefully you will see that one side is shiny and the other is matt (it's still shiny, but less). On B&W film it is obvious, on colour film you will ususaly need to look a bit closer. Anyway, as far as I know it is best to scan the matt side to capture maximum detail and also avoid reflections.
And btw. just want to thank Urth again for partnering with me in the video - their adapter has really been a wonderful tool for me, but something I didn't mention is that you can not only use these for scanning, but of course they are a great way to adapt unique stylistic lenses to your digital cameras to get make use of the pleasing characteristics many old lenses have :)
You can check out their adapters here: actv.at/VYd/84770
Have a good week,
Teo
I’m interested you say scan the Matt side, never thought of that. Two things though, first - the picture will need flipping. Not had reflection issues if overhead lights turned off. When I scan next time, I will try both ways - thanks for the suggestion.
Yes. I m using this technique for last 50 years.
Bruvvv! i always thought you had a darkroom for yourself.
hey im new to film. but do i need to develop my film before scanning it?
There's a trick to level your camera, you can use a small mirror and place it on top of where the film will be and once the reflection of your lens is in in the middle of the frame of your camera, it is perfectly leveled.
Ahhh that's such a smart trick haha, thanks!
Or just buy a small level
Or use your smartphone
Or just eyeball it
I did this myself two years ago to capture slides and negatives. I'm not a regular Gimp user, but I found that Gimp's Color->Invert function worked very well to get regular images back from the negatives.
I love how concise you are in your videos! As someone who is new to the world of film photography, it is super overwhelming! But you really take the time to organize and explain everything in a way that’s super approachable! Thank you so much!
Couldn’t agree more ! Just started getting into film myself
For anyone that doesn’t have a macro lens, check out the vintage Nikon 55mm 2.8ais or 3.5ai lenses. You can find them below a $100 or even dirt cheap and they are magnificent for this purpose. Very weird for me to get that level of sharpness from a late 70’s lens. Mind that they’re 1:2 magnification but with Nikon’s own tube they become 1:1. I scan 35mm negatives with a crop camera and at the minimum focus distance the film frame almost covers the whole picture. Either use a Nikon body or any mirrorless one with an adapter for the Nikon F. Cheers!
This is my exact setup with a crop sensor camera and Nikons “m2” extension tube. Works bloody wonders
Oh man, so cool to see you shouting out Urth. You're spot on about the build quality. I have a bunch of their adapters including their Canon EF to Sony E mount adapter. I use it with a 40mm 2.8 canon pancake and the autofocus is so fast and so precise despite the adapter. Love their stuff.
Love the quiet vibe from your videos and your voice! So enjoyable to learn about photography in your channel!
Just getting into photography and I found your channel I love your videos! Your videos have helped me learn a lot!
Ohh great, happy to hear that!🤗🙏🏼
If you want a cheap stand get a used photographic enlarger. They can be had for a song. Most enlargers let you take the head off and you have a baseboard, a column and the mechanism that was originally used to move the head up or down. Fix your camera instead of the head and there you are. Far easier to handle than a tripod and, above all, far easier to adjust.
you don´t understand how this video helped me, I´m working in a Photostudio and we don´t have any scanner, but we have macro lenses, a lot of tripods and lights. THANK YOU
The problem with the macro rings (extension tubes they're also called) is not the tubes themselves (unless you're getting uneven sharpness from side to side) but with the lens. Modern lenses are wonderful, but they are not normally corrected for flatness of field at very close range. As other people have mentioned, if you don't have access to a macro lens, a simple (but good quality) enlarger lens will be very good. As you're working at a fixed distance, it should be not too difficult to get some tubing that gives you sharp focus and satisfactory framing.
Thank you, so well explained, precisely done with your gentle manner.
been waiting for that for ages man!
Hahah I knooow, it took a while hehe😅🤗
@@teocrawford no worries :)
Tank you soooooo much for the tips to invert the colors in Lightroom, that looks now quite easy for me to obtain nice results !
After all the videos with computer-generated voices, I have to compliment you on your rich, deep, voice, enhanced (for those of us on the left side of the pond) with a cultured British accent.
The problem with Extension tubes with a regular lens of some sort is that the field of sharp focus is not flat at close focus distances while a macro lens is designed to have a flat field of focus up close. Ie when the centre is sharp the edges are not and vice versa. Stopping down would reduce the problem but I chose to buy the Olympus 30mm macro which was quite low priced lens even for a M4/3. My solution for a negative holder was to use an old enlarger negative carrier. I built my copy stand from a old enlarger base. I got my led backlight from the hardware store. For software I use Affinity photo and Pixelmator Pro on my Mac and can invert them quickly. Mine are mostly old B&W negs from the 60s. Interesting to see how you went about it.
Thx for these explanations! I just got a Hasselblad 500c and de ided to try film photography, I may try home scanning with your method!
Idk why but the shot at 10:21 was one of the most beautiful shots I’ve ever scene. The tripod being in focus and you being out of focus looks really interesting. Also the painting adds a pop of color with a creative feel. The coolest aspect was the soft lighting coming from the window(I think) giving the wall a nice gradient and you a flattering look, whilst giving the tripod legs a nice reflective slim line of light.
I see that your at 99 comments on this video… I thought I’d make it an easy 100, this video was super helpful, im just getting into film, I love it and your channel had helped a lot!
Best video anyone has done on this
wow cool ,i didn't know films could be converted like this. thnx for the video
Nice work. To add to that ...
In "digital photography" the elephant in the room is the "Bayer paradigm" (conspiracy?). Colour film has 3 layers on top of each other with subtractive filtering between them and consequently we have RGB at ~every coordinate. That idea is extremely hard to copy in sensors, at serious resolution, with excellent low light sensitivity and dynamic range. It has been attempted by Foveon, but they tanked, got taken over by Sigma, who released a couple cameras with a Foveon sensor but this also was a dead end street. None of Sigma's promises have been delivered on. And it remained "crop".
In the Bayer paradigm, we use a colour-blind sensor (it's analogue, by the way) that sees the entire humanly visible spectrum (more). Each photocell (light sensitive diode) has a circuit to store a charge that builds under exposure, as an analogue value, and taking a photo means that all these values are measured and Digital-to-Analogue (DA) converted. Each of these cells with a circuit is a "photosite".
In old black & white film terms, the Bayer sensor is panchromatic (pan=call, chromatic=colour), but we have no "colour" yet.
Mr. Bayer solved this by proposing a colour filter grid over the sensor that precisely aligns with the sensor grid of squares. Each 2*2 "photosites" would be filtered (counter) clock-wise red, green, blue, green (RGBG). This makes each photosite monochrome in that it only sees one colour (mono=one, single) and this also applies to the raw file. Each photosite measures a light level and the data elements in the raw file are labelled with one of R, G, B.
Neither the sensor nor the raw file, in this sense, have pixels (PICture ELementS), because to display a picture we want RGB pixels. Note that shooting B&W with a camera like this, we still start with a raw colour file of monochrome data elements and the B&W conversion makes the RGB conversion first.
We can call the raw file "Bayerised" and Mr. Bayer proposed a simple form of guessing the missing colours as "deBayerisation".
The Bayerised raw file is extremely noisy - 100% noise in fact and we can call this "Bayer noise".
Mr. Bayer's deBayerisation works well at rather low resolutions, but deBayerisation based on old-school AI generates "digital artefacts" that become visible at higher resolutions. The best known is "Moiré", but crinkly lines at the pixel peep level, and colour cross-bleeding at edges between colour blobs are in there as well. These effects are called "mosaic" and with increasing resolution, it became opportune to remove them in "demosaicking" - or I would argue it is better to prevent them in the deBayerisation.
The challenge with this entire process is that all RGB pixels we create are 100% the result of "guessing", even when we can do that without generating digital artefacts.
There are two deeper phenomena here and that is that cameras may use a second filter layer over the sensor to help this colour guessing: OLPF (AKA Anti-Aliasing or AA-filter). The OLPF disperses a bit of light travelling to photosite [x,y] so as to hit the direct neighbours. This OLPF aspect makes colour guessing with less noise easier. It, AA-filter aspect, also helps reduce jagged lines/edges following from the grid of rectangles in the sensor. Second there's the question of Bayer noise. As the assumption is that we get "perfect" RGB pixels after deBayerisation and demosaicking, we still may see grain or noise in our images. I would call this, generally, "failed or inadequate deBayerisation". When you shoot the Milky Way, it is valid to talk about not enough photons, maybe, but in most other photography a discussion about photons distracts from the Bayer paradigm.
We see the failed deBayerisation more in the blurry zones, low contrast zones, darker zones of our images. And call it colour noise and/or luminance noise, thus by blaming the camera helping lazy software developers that need to give us better raw processing (conversion).
Applying inadequate deBayerisation, you will see the Bayer noise more in images from cameras that have done away with the OLPF because software developers have been lazy indeed. Adobe spent the past decade on programming new versions of old software in new platforms (like mobile) rather than giving their prime stakeholders (paying the annual subscription) better raw processing (in Adobe Camera Raw). Nikon Eliminated the OLPF from the D800 (36MP) in the - ceteris paribus - D800E (36MP). The gain in image quality is shocking. But ACR only got its "Enhance AI Denoise" added as option last year, as a way to improve on Bayer noise (note that "detail" is a separate quality).
What about scanning?
Now we understand the Bayer paradigm, we have to know that scanners don't need to work in the Bayer paradigm. But if they do or don't is a matter of physical design and drivers and software with the scanner, plus parameter settings.
In the case of "scanning" there is a notion of a travelling-over-the-original sensor that may "read" each coordinate with red, green, and blue and next stacks these separate values into RGB.
"Multi pass" then will increase resolution and reduce uncertainties about colours.
While your camera's Bayer raw file may be 14 bits, these are monochrome bits and the resulting RGB pixel on your monitor/display is probably 21 (3*7) or 24 (3*8) bits - where 24 of the 24 will result from guessing. ACR converts your 14 bits raw file into 3*16 bits per channel = 48 bits per pixel in ProPhoto colour space, but as ACR (or Lightroom Classic - LrC, or Photoshop - Ps) depicts it, that gradation resolution is compressed again. In Ps we can by the way convert the 3* 16 into 32 bits per channel (3*32=96 per pixel).
From scanners, we may want to get, say, 16 bits per channel (native 48 per pixel) RGB TIFF files. This is orders of magnitude more precise than 14 bits monochrome from a camera.
Reproduction of film-photographic images with a digital camera
So with a digital camera we do not "scan". We shoot a raw file and this then has to be raw processed in order to get RGB pixels - an image we would like to see. The raw processing may be done in camera when we shoot JPEG, or in post, in ACR or C1 or ... .
Part of the digitising, often, is colour reversal
If we have colour or B&W negatives, then we not only need to reproduce the negative but also reverse the resulting negative image. The simplest approach is to import the image into ACR (the Develop tab in LrC is ACR) and swap the black and white points on the vertical axis. That makes a negative positive, but there's more work to do. You might want to buy NegativeLab Pro for that purpose (as the video illustrates). Colour negative film uses an amber coloured carrier film as a way to suppress noise and that colour needs to be subtracted. The negative may seem to have a narrow histogram - high contrast. If your maths are any good, note we work on a base-2-log scale in digital and exposure, but in film we worked on a 10-base-log scale when gradation, contrast, and contrast envelope were concerned. 4.5 on a 10-log scale is about 15 EV. The human eye works in 10-log too.
Scanning Digital cameras?
A handful of digital cameras can do something called "pixel shift". The idea is that we can get rid of Bayer noise by shooting 3 or more shots of a motionless subject and between shots shift the sensor precisely over a photosite pitch. One horizontal shift adds red to a previously green photosite coordinate and another shift would add blue for that coordinate. These separate shots then need to be stacked in post. Shooting more frames and making half photosite-pitch steps then removes more uncertainty and adds detail resolution. Gradation resolution will be great. And detail resolution too. My recently acquired Nikon Z camera can shoot up to 32 frames per original that I reproduce. We could argue that with pixel shift the digital camera actually scans the original frame. I don't know if the stacking in post is done in the raw domain, or relies on actual deBayerised RGB frames. Whatever the approach, the multi-pass pixel-shift approach takes uncertainty away, and with that, Bayer noise.
Adjusting the camera - not really
One way to get a negative parallel to the sensor is to use a negative/slide copier. I bought a Nikon one for my Nikon Z. A simple tube to be mounted on the lens using filter thread on one end and a simple negative/slide holder on the other.
It's not too expensive, but finicky (sub-optimal design) and only holds 35mm film or slides. For my "6*9" (cm) negatives I need another solution. Also it was designed for use with a 50mm..60mm macro lens and I bought the far superior 105mm/2.8S. The latter's much longer focal length means that the tube connecting the film holder directly to the lens must be longer and Nikon has no extension for this. I bought a stack of $3/ea UV filters with aluminium ring, broke the glass out, and terminated either end with brass rings from slightly more expensive filters. Works like a breeze. And doesn't even look like Micky Mouse DIY. (Alu tends to lock itself and damage the counter thread, brass has self-lubricating properties.)
Adjusting the camera - really
If you shoot your reproductions from tripod, then you need to look into a geared tripod head. The NY, NY superstore sells a Sunwayfoto for about US$220 ex sales tax.
It's not about tricks to get the camera right/level, but about making small controlled adjustments that are difficult to make with ball or video heads.
thank you for your insight on this topic :)
at first i also had a struggle with scanning my negatives (essentially by using a scanner with an effective dpi of 900, which rendered the scans unusable since there was barely any sharpness at all), and had to decide whether to buy a new scanner or a dslr camera since i did not own one at the time. after a bit of research, i went with buying an opticfilm 8100 from plustek for about 250 euros and, i must say, am really content with its results, the only downside being that it only scans 35mm film. when i get to shooting 120 film i will definitely have to look out for a dslr camera and make myself comfortable with the process, thanks again for giving a rough overview over the topic!
Ohh cool, good to know that the Opticfilm can deliver :))
I see, well I'm happy I could give you this little overview🤗🙌🏼
Perfect. Thanks. I have tons of old 35mm... I would never have thought of this, or known how to do it!
Great video and explanation ! I do it the same way. I started as well with the lomography scanning masks, was not happy with the handling and ended up just putting the film flat on the Kaiser slimlite and surround the frame with 4 Canon Akkus. Works well so far. Now and then Newton rings can be a problem but in about 95% it's fine. I do tethering via Wifi to my computer. I found it easier to judge the focussing on a bigger screen. When I am ready to take the shot, I magnify the photo X10, lift the mouse off the table and wait until nothing moves. then I click the mouse without touching anything. sometimes, 5 secs is not enough until everything is completely still. With a macro lens that close, every tiniest move looks like an earthquake on screen ;-) .....
I love your videos and the way you explain things. Thankx + keep em coming ! ....
Haha. I used a coffee tin as a "rostrum" and a cheap light panel from amazon. The coffee tin had a plastic cover from which I cut out a circle that connected to the camera lens. I painted the interior with black paint.
I used Kodachrome 64 for much of my photography, then Fujichrome Provia 100 for my trip to the Seychelles. (back in the 1980s). Of course I had to wait many years before I could view these images on a computer screen. The only decent option back then was a Cibachrome print. I still have the film, and the Cibachrome prints I took from it. Cibachrome is the best.
Nice to see that Teo does it the same way I do and isn't using some fancy photo magic I didn't know about. He's just better at it that I am.
Ahh great, yeah my setup is pretty non-fancy, but it gets the job done :) Thanks for the kind comment!
Always custom white balance your camera to the light box you're using.
I've been doing all my negative/transparency digital conversion copy work like this for 20 years.
DO wish someone (Luminar) would come up with a faster, easier color conversion however.
so lange auf dieses video gewartet, vielen dank für deinen aufwand und die offenbarung deines scan-prozesses✨
Hahaha sorry, dass es eine Weile gebraucht hat :,D Bitteschön! :)
great video!
your way of scan is totally same with mine... i'm still using lomography film holder and just ordered new essential film holder. i can't wait for it.
A very well put together video. Make sure to give yourself at least two pats on the back. I was very pleased to learn about the film holder and have just ordered one and now I am looking at the light tables from Kaiser. I was looking to see information regarding which size you found most useful. Is the smallest size adequate for both 35mm and 120 film? Thanks again.
Excellent video! Which side does the negative face the lens? Being new to this I noticed the negatives have a dull side. Thanks
Ideally have the matte side face the camera, not the glossy side. That usually means that you‘ll be photographing the image mirrored which you can then just change in Lightroom by hitting right click - transform - flip horizontal.🙌🏼
Thank you for such a well-made and informative video! Looking forward to more of your videos. :)
Sure! Thank you for the kind comment :)
Holy moly your video is a vibe I love it
So I was gonna try starting to shoot with 35mm soon. Would've never thought about using a digital camera or scanner and just invert the colour in a photo editor! Probably save me a lot of money I'm sure
Thanks! 💛👑
I just adapted a couple different enlarger lenses because they are already macro and they are also flat field lenses specifically for enlarging so the edges are always square and flat. No distortion. To get in closer if you need you can use an extension tube which will not interfere with the flat field lens. Not all macro lenses are flat field lenses. I have two. One I like better than the other. I just use a true white light behind a frosted glass for the light table. It works. Yes, keep the ambient light away. I use fast shutter speeds to prevent blurring. Not sure why you chose long shutter speeds. F11 is a good spot. Good tip on which side to scan. Focusing on the emulsion side will result in sharper images. If you have to focus through the thickness of the film it can cause sharpness issues. Be sure you turn your image to the correct orientation after you take your image or the right will be the left and... you know. Backwards. You will know if there are any printed words.
I use Affinity Photo.
Thanks for pointing me in the direction of Urth. I’ve been looking for an affordable and well-built adapter for using my Zuiko non-digital lenses with a 4:3 digital camera.
You may be getting some diffraction scanning at f/16, I assume you've done your research and tested I just never personally go beyond f/11 because I find the fall off to be pretty dramatic. Great video!
If one was using a decent ' macro ' lens, the chances are that the lens would be well corrected for filed curvature, chromatic aberrations and peripheral illumination, therefore two stops down from the widest aperture is where the optimal performance of the lens is, around F8~F9. Considerations of DOF do not really arise as a properly held flat negative or transparency does not require huge DOF to maintain sharp focus across the frame. Yes you are correct, F16 is well into the diffraction zone of most 35mm macro lenses.
Ahhh yes, I've just totally gotten used to scanning at f.16, which is actually just an old habit from when I was still figuring the process out. I was closing the aperture to gain DOF to ensure that everything is sharp, even if the setup slightly moves. I better check on that haha thanks for pointing this out!
Great video! Looks like I’ll be using that old lens I inherited… thanks to you.
Nicely done. Well explained.
That light leaks which you see on 3:28 are from the lens of your camera. My advice. Cover part of your light pad you are not using currently so its light will not be reflected on the lens of your camera. Second - use lens hood do filter side light. And there will be not light leaks)
I did that, that is why my lighttable is so dirty haha, however that didn't solve the problem for me :(
This was so helpful! I just sent some film in and it costs $70 to develop, and had me thinking I should start doing this myself 😅 Will def be rewatching this a few times when I start
For developing and scannig of only one Roll? I started scanning with a plustek 8100, thats an affordable option too if you don't have a dslr or more importantly, the right lense. I paid about 175€ for mine used. The resolution in detail is not as high as labscans, but it's still really comparable.
Another great video. I do much the same. A few thoughts. Use a cable release. Use smartphone level to level everything, the app is just there on my phone. I have marks on the tripod so I can just set it up without trying to work it out each time. All these speed things up. I mask the light box so the light only shines on the film. Nate has just launched his V2.4, no extra cost to those with a licence, that is Service… I love this analogue to digital and back, work flow. Have scanned old 1970s film, edited in Lightroom and photoshop and printed digital negatives for printing on Cyanotype and as large format in the darkroom.
Using a digital camera to make a digital file of a 35mm negative or transparency is an efficient way of digitizing 35mm negs. The problem is, if and when the photographer moves beyond 35mm into MF or even LF format photography. Here the limitations of using a digital camera become more obvious and this where flatbed scanners ( there is really only one TBH, that can cope with MF and LF and that is the Epson V850 ) come into their own. With regret Nikon has long stopped producing their superb line of Coolscan ED scanners and what there is on the used market are priced beyond reasonable. I have experimented quite a bit with using digital cameras to digitize some of my negs, and a camera with a full frame of about 20MP can extract all the information from even the most high res films such as Ilford PanF or Rollei 80S. Your method is adequate and will produce decent results. Another alternative is what we old timers used in the film era to copy slides, and that is to use a decent enlarging lens in reverse. This can save a lot of money if you managed to find an EL Nikkor, Schnieder or Rodenstock lens of about 80mm.
2:30 omg. you just explained to me a function of my tripod i didnt understand before 😅
Same!!!😮
Just what I need right now!
Thanks for this video :)
Ahh great, thanks for the kind comment!🙏🏼🤗
Oh hey, I have the same negative holder. its ok.
its a bit rough switching formats but as long as I dont change anything its great for 35mm
Ahh ok, I haven't experienced switching formats yet :)
i made it the same way but then i found a epson v750 pro for only 10€ at a flewmarket and i love the results! :)
WHAT!? 10€!? What a snack haha!
Few min. in - had to stop, going into a trance because of your amazing voice, lol!
You Could use extension tubes with a non macro prime lens.
As I think I mentioned in the video... that didn't work very well, because the tubes created a lot of chromatic aberration. But maybe my tubes were just too cheap, I don't know.
Hi, thanks for the reply. I think the issue is probably caused by the path the light goes through the lens when forced to focus at distances it was not designed. I read that if the lens can be 'reversed ' then the light path is more in keeping with how the lens was designed.
Now I understand how much trouble I'm in choosing Film Photography😭
His voice puts me to sleep, not a bad thing..I haven’t finished the video yet but brb gonna nap rq. Quite informative so far..
F16 or even f11 will introduce the effect of defraction into an image, I personally use f5.6 to f8 on my lenses for the best image quality
Yes, trueee! I totally forgot that using f16 is just an old habit of mine from when I was figuring the process out. I need to check on that :D
The subject is perfectly flat so, I use the widest aperture possible.
@@PhilJonesIII but majority of the lenses are not the sharpest at their widest aperture so ideally you need to be a couple stops down so around f5.6 to f8 depending on the maximum aperture of the lens.
A small travel zoom camera (eg nikon coolpix s9600) has a macro setting which works well..a much cheaper option..you can buy a used camera for under £50. A iPad set on white b,and screen works as a light source..BUT place your slide film at least 30 cm away from the iPad to avoid the discrete dots…by far the cheapest and fastest way of digitising slides…
I have a hard drive with 18000 photos in a drawer. Longing for the days of old I bought a film camera, only to discover that in 2023 i need to take digital pictures of my pictures and store them on a hard drive in my drawer. The teeth of technology have a deep hold these days. Great content though, not a slight on you rather the state of the world
Hello, I have a question about the method you are using for scanning your negatives. What is the size of the final file? What is the maximum print size you can achieve?
Awesome guide, you thought of everything to explain!
How do you deal with hair and dust on the film? Do you have any special tips about that? :)
Hey Teo, if you have Lightroom, at least here in the US, I get Photoshop also. Photoshop has several options for converting negative to positive. One is a one click option and the other is a two click option. Both work fine and you still have the latitude to adjust colors, saturation, tone, contrast, etc. Does your subscription to LR not also include PS?
That’s awesome. Thanks for the video. Can I ask what brand and model is your tripod? I couldn’t find it listed in the thumbnail. Thanks so much.
What is the make of tripod you have? I also have a Sony A7iii and have just ordered my first film camera the Pentax K1000. Love the idea of scanning film at home, so the inverted tripod would be a great idea! Thanks for the really informative video
also, what kind of tripod is that.. im looking to buy one myself. thanks in advance
Thanks for this video
Sure!🤗
I"ve been using a digital camera , tripod and a light box to copy negs & trans of all sizes for 20 years !
Good thing to get a perfect flat image is to get some step up filters and soms lens hoods. And i managed to get my vivitar 55mm 2.8 perfectly aligned and it rest on the film holder. Perfectly flat images. And no accidentally bumpbs to the tripod what resets your alignment…
Great video! Love your voice, realy relaxing and soothing. One hint: Using a shutter remote or an app would help you speed up the process even more since you could get rid of the 5 second timer.
If you dont have bubble level use a mirror. Place a mirror on the the surface of the film holder, then you can aim your camera into the reflection. That way even if the table / holder is not level the camera still is dead on with it.
Ahhh true, what a smart trick, thanks!
Brilliant, Genius 😮😊
This tutorial is impressive
Just love the way you make thing so easy to do
With the A7, are you shooting in jpeg or raw ?
Aww thanks!☺️
Ohh definitely raw, it‘s vital for this process to maximise the information you capture with the camera!🙌🏼
Good video. I'm a busy body old photographer who should be doing something else... The film holder you bought and the slow work flow using a scanner really frames the issue. The only way these things have ever worked is on jobs with only a few pieces of film to scan, or if you have an employee and they just have to do it. I've had scanners, they never work our. Too time consuming. Photo gear is great but invariably stupid. (Manfrotto tripod, requires special shoes. I have a couple. But no place on the tripod to store spare shoes. Mind numbingly stupid. I drill holes in the knuckles and tap them with 1/4" -20 and screw on extra shoes. Right now my Nikon batteries are dead because my assistants put the chargers someplace. With my GoPro I can plug directly into the battery. )
For a camera support I'd suggest finding an old enlarger, one with a vertical post would be best. (I have a Besseler 4x5 enlarger, terrific but the 'post' is at an angle. It'd still work because you'll do one size format at a time. ) Tripods are too easy to bump -- though I've done thousands of frames of copy work using just a tripod. I always sand bagged the legs or taped them down. Do that first.
For a lens, just about anything will do, especially because LightRoom can correct for zoom lens distortion. If you can use a flat macro lens like the one you inherited, or a Nikon 55 or 60 Micro or the 105 Micro. (I have both the old 55 and the newer 60. Except for the 60 being autofocus, they're every similar. On a budget? Buy an old one. Most other older film lenses are terrible. All old zooms are horrible. I shot for years with lenses that I thought I could still use when I got a D2X in 2001. Digital lenses are always much better. )
The holder looks great. I've exhibited and sold photos printed from negatives held in mat board DIY film holders. The critical factor is the image area of the film doesn't touch anything and the holder holds the film flat. Sometimes this is difficult.
You don't need a level. Instead just lay a mirror, or the reflective surface of your light panel. When you see the front element of your lens centered in the frame in your camera- you're aligned. When I shot works of art behind glass I just held a small flashlight above the lens and then to the side and moved the camera until they were aligned. There were elaborate and costly widgets to do this but this is all you need. When you're aligned, tape everything down. After securing the tripod. (I guess you could use a level on the tripod tube.* shift the camera. The table top is constant. Tape everything down. At about 10 minutes Teo is putting in a new strip and his holder is sliding around. No. You add a lot extra labor and it will undermine your quality. This is not art, this is mechanical. You are making a machine think of it as a machine. Technical.
Generally f 8 is the sharpest setting for most lenses. You get into refraction lower sharpness at higher f stops. To manually focus (I spent 40 years doing this with 4xt5 and 8x10 cameras, knew people who knew Adams, Weston and Cunningham.) You want to rack in and out getting closer and closer to the sharpest focus. With very little practice you'll get great at this. I don't know about the 2 second exposures. Ideally you want the camera to not move, meaning, mirror locked up, electrical release, not your finger. I'm also not sure about the light source. What's its CRI? And is it a continuous spectrum? This is really important with color transparencies and negatives.
Do not shoot Jpegs, shoot RAW. My Nikon D850 has a phenomenal range. With transparency film (slides) anything 5 stops +/- is solid black or empty white. I think my Nikon has a range of 14 stops. (I can underexpose 5 stops and in Lightroom bring it right back to normal exposure -- with a little noise. Most film photography images had a range of 7 stops black to white). This greater range is really the reason why 'scanning' with a DSLR now 'works.' Also shoot with the emulsion up facing the camera. Now you're shooting the emulsion with the image, not looking through the clear base. Your image will be backwards (mirrored) so you'll have to flip it.
Now the bad news. You'll have to get software to convert a color negative to a positive. (The second more costly one here looks great.) That reddish cast isn't the negative of the real world, it's a mask. Just fiddling I've never been able to correct it out. Second bit of bad news: all your grandparents' negatives from the 1960s and 70s? They're effectively screwed. Fugitive dyes in the film have faded, permanently shifting the color. There are probably some software options to fix some of this. The problem is you can't tweak a color that simply is no longer there. (BTW Kodachrome compared to Ektachrome and other slide films from back in the day? About 5-10CC Red. Plus more saturation, deep blacks. I once worked with a guy who had to shoot Ektachrome when he wanted Kodachrome and this is what we came up with.)
The way you'd really do this DSLR scanning as a Work Flow. Start with a couple of images, drive yourself nuts. (Dust is also a huge problem. Cleaning solutions attract dust, but may be necessary to remove embedded dust. Distilled water is best. A little Photoflow (I still have a bottle! use it in my fountain pens) helps. If you keep at it you make progress, eventually you'll be as efficient as is possible. (Audiobooks is how I put in 60 hour weeks in a darkroom to make 20 prints.) Hope this helps.
Would it be more cheaper if I use a cropped censor like A6100?
I wouldnt set my f stop as high as 16; thats where the defraction of the lens makes the image softer; the sweet spot is around f 5.6~8
Hello, friend. Where can I find your tripod?
Thanks for the amazing video Teo! What kind of tripod are you using? I did not see that or the lightbox listed with the equipment links below. Any assistance would be awesome. Thanks again. Peace, Love, and Happiness!!! 🙃
Manfrotto BeFree
@@JoachimPersonalAccount Thank you!
In Photoshop - Image (menu), adjustments (menu item), Invert or simply command-I makes a negative positive or a positive negative. Easy! FYI
You can use a cell phone and set it to macro mode. There are old point and shoot cameras that have a macro setting. I'm sure you can find someone with one of those cameras.
Great video Teo! I have tried both scanning with my Epson V600 and my Sony A7III with a vintage macro lens. I would say the actual scanning is very slow on the Epson (especially at higher resolutions). But the workflow for DSLR/mirrorless scanning was too clunky for me. For now, I'll stick with my Epson V600 and just work on other things while the scans are processing. I would love to get my hands on a Noritsu scanner someday!
You and I sound like we have had EXACTLY the same experience! I used to scan with my Sony A7rII with an old macro lens and it was far too clunky and a hassle to set up/break down. Conversely, I have had an excellent experience I’ve switched to an Epson V600. You’re so right about it being slow and now and then I have had to clean the Epson’s sensors a couple times when it started producing that dreaded scan-line in the images. People whine about their lack of quality, but I recently had a print made of a photo I took with my Mamiya 645 that I scanned with my V600 and it turned out beautiful, was accepted in a juried art show and even sold on opening night. So I suppose everyone’s experience can be different
@@pancakelens75 I agree with all that! I think the V600 does particularly well at scanning 120 film!!
Thanks Reimann! :))
Ahh I get what you mean, that's the beauty I guess that we at least have the choice depending on our preferences :D
And ohhh yes, I hope you get your hands on one some day!
A Noritsu? I’d settle for a Nikon Coolscan 9000. 🤣
@@pancakelens75 v600 makes beautiful 120 scans but 35mm is quite poor...I'm doing the opposite, trasitioning from v600 to something else (for 35mm only)
nice one ... cheers ... quick question (maybe already asked but I could not find a hint or link) what specific tripod do you use here? thanks
Lovely! 😊 thank you
How do you feel about this method a year later? I currently have an Epson V550 scanner which I use in conjunction with Silverfast to scan, then use Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom to convert to positive. I'm moving overseas so I have to sell my V550. I'm considering switching to camera scanning since I have a Canon R7 and the scanner method was very slow, but I don't have suitable tripod and it seems the Negative Supply setup is over $2000, whereas I could get a used scanner for a few hundred dollars.
Can you use a phone or tablet as a backlight?
when scanning film like this at home, does the room need to be dark to avoid light hitting the negative when its removed from the canister
Have you dealt with removing remjet from film that has it?
Wow back in the day you could just go into a menu in Lr and invert the colour with a click. I don't remember having to do all of this stuff
@@blackhellebore89 Ohh you can very easily do a simple colour inversion. But that sadly will not give you good results. For optimal colour balance in your scans you’re going to need to have a nuanced inversion hence it’s more complicated🤷♂️
@@teocrawford seriously this was like 10 years ago. So if it was tedious I've probably deleted it from the memory banks! I also used a M42 lens with adaptor to a Canon - I made a square tube and back lit with a lamp covered in baking paper to get my images
Hi, very interesting video especially for the end2end workflow. I am going to do a similar setup, the time I need with my epson v600 is too much. What about the quality of the scan using a good macro lens, such as the nikkor 55mm micro or something like that? Can you clear distinguish the film grain of a 400 film? Thanks again.
Have you tried a reversal ring for maco photography ?
what brand is your tripod? i love that it has the ability to flip.
Much simpler. This is the designed setup. Take a Nikon camera, a 60 mm MICRO lens and the ES-1 adapter. It is about 5 sec per image. AF once, F9 or F11. Click. No alignment, no time wasted. Use a RAW converter that does the conversion automatically. Capture One does it.
Nice video man. Very helpful. How about using a tablet as light source?
Thank you!🤗
That should work too! Maybe just be careful that you don't end up with visible pixels in your scans🙌🏼
@@teocrawford You are right. Worth a try
What tripod are you using? I will be buying my first tripod and I want to make sure that it can hang the camera in up-side-down mode.
No need to buy special macro lens. There are macro rings which you can attach to your camera and the lens and use your lens in macro. It is much more cheaper. And gives the same result. The only con of this solution - bigger shutter speed to capture the scene (your negative). But this is not a problem if tou use tripod and cable release (remote).
I'm not sure if you maybe missed that part, but in the video I actually mentioned that I tried one of those rings, however they we not working at all for me :(
@@teocrawford yeah, I just pused video to comment and after that I heard about macro rings in the video)
how do you get the film from camera to the strips you have there
@@ballkeeper6662 I get them developed at a lab. Usually a lab will also offer scanning, but I just order development only and then scan myself🙌
What do you think of the KODAK Slide N SCAN, is it worth it? I wanted to buy a scan to develop my Kodak h35n films but I didn't want something very expensive. I prefer something more accessible and practical, what do you recommend?
Could you please link your tripod?
Do you have to do the scans with a DSLR or can it be with APS-C? What is the effect of doing scanning with the latter?
Doesn’t matter!☺️🙌🏼
Thanks. I thought they are developed first as hard copies and then scanned. Or may that's another way? Another question is, if this is the way to turn them to digital then the kind of film doesn't matter because the colors are adjusted anyway? Hope somebody can answer. Thanks
Prints are made off of the negative - and scans are made off of the negative.
And yes, when you invert the colours the colours will come up as they are supposed to - or in black and white as it's supposed to.
Thank you!
Did you try a reversal lens mount for scanning?
Would this work with Super 8 film, with a suitable macro lens? Looks extremely time-consuming, though.
i love your videos