Use a macro lens for slides

Hi,

I want to copy thousand of slides and have seen that the fastest solution is the use of a macro lens together with a slide holder (Opteka slide copier).

Do you know if it would still work if I remove the optic contained in the Opteka to just use it as an extension tube ? I will mount it on a 100mm macro lens (or shorter macro lens).

I've tried various methods of copying and found the best results are obtained using an Ohnar slide copier. It has its own optics and zoom (if required) and mounts directly to the camera body (via an adapter).

Bob (also in France)

Merci for you for your advice, I'm taking a look at this slide mount (eventually modifying this mount)

I really would like to avoid an slide mount with incorporated optic since it will reduce the quallity. Have you also tried slide mount without incorporated optic ?

I've got various options and tried them all at some time of other.

Prior to getting the dedicated copier, I had an old FD Autobellows with a T2 copying adapter (glassless) that was quite good (FD50 macro lens on the end). I've also tried doing a straight macro shot with the EF50cm and EF100L and the slide mounted on a light box...not brilliant.

I used the Ohnar copier with a diffused flash firing from behind the slide and this seems to be a usable light source.

Bob

I tried using macro setups to copy slides, but had various issues. One of the main ones was getting even and correct light, but focus can also be an issue.

I finally ended up getting the Plustek 7600 dedicated slide copier, which seems to do a pretty good job. It also does 35mm color and B&W film.

I also wanted to copy thousands of slides. I wasn't terribly concerned about image quality for most of the slides; I just wanted electronic copies. If I needed great quality for some images, my local camera shop can do that.

I have a Plustek scanner, but it was way too slow (about a minute per slide). I decided to try photographing the slides using my 100 macro lens on my 60D. I tested by simply hand-holding a slide to see if I could photograph it. I could, so I made the following fixture:

i bought this:
http://www.amazon.com …polaroid+slide+​duplicator

it didn't work well with my 100mm macro, so i popped out the optic inside, and then got a couple pvc pipes to frankenstein it to make the slide farther out so i can get the whole image, and then crop in photoshop...it's pretty quick, i just mount the camera to my tripod, and backlight it. the 2 slide holders make it go a bit faster i think

If you have thousands to do, I would honestly say send them out to be scanned. It will save you much more time then you save in money.

Nick

Thank you for your advices, i'll go for the 100mm macro with adjusted slide mount.

Good. I finally had the time to scan some slides with a 100mm macro and an adapted slide mount with no additional optics. When I will have time, I'll take a picture of the modified slide mount.

Here are a picture and a (here 100%) crop.

If you want to find better settings for the picture, here is the raw file :
https://documents.epfl​.ch …d/ldudok/www/VC​4W9502.CR2

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png'

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png'

bringing this from the dead. do you have any measurements for the wood and distance from slide to camera?

2005GLI wrote in post #16097435
bringing this from the dead. do you have any measurements for the wood and distance from slide to camera?

I didn't actually measure anything. I bolted the head from my monopod to a board to attach the camera. Then I handheld a slide and moved it back and forth (taking a few test pictures) to determine where the slide needed to be with regards to the camera. I would guess that the slide ended up being 4 - 5 inches from the end of my 100mm macro lens. Then I cut up some more wood so that I could position it about where it should be. As you can see from the picture, I did mount the camera on one board, and then I put second board on top of that to allow some left/right sliding as needed. The height of the vertical board that holds the slide and the location of the slide itself were also determined by trial and error. My fixture wouldn't work with any other combination of head/body/lens. Sorry for the lack of detail, but I hope this gives some insight as to the trial-and-error process I used. Even with that, it still only took a couple of hours to hack the rig together. I made everything from a scrap 1x6 and a few hardware brackets that were leftover from previous projects. Total cost was $0.

Regards, Jim

Canon 100mm f/2.8 USM macro focuses to 0.31m. If it were focused to 0.425 meters (16.73"), it would have 0.62x magnification which would permit full 24x36mm frame area to fill the APS-C size frame.

My experience says you will get better results doing slides with a good scanner than with any macro lens.

gasrocks wrote in post #16099055
My experience says you will get better results doing slides with a good scanner than with any macro lens.

I think it's more about the time involved