Scanning Film

I read about using a macro lens to "scan" film, rather than using a dedicated film scanner. As I recall, the results were actually better than mid-grade scanners.

Is that accurate? If I get a 1:1 macro lens, should I get excellent results by "scanning" my film that way?

I used to scan with a macro lens. I got really good results, but in the end, my scanner was just more convenient. That being said, if I didn't own a scanner and already had a macro lens, I'd use the lens. I scan with an Epson V550 which can be had used for less than the cost of most macro lenses and I've since sold the lens.

Macro can definitely give good results with a 20+Mp sensor. you can get weird aliasing of pixels with some lower resolutions but I'm guessing that is a mute point these days.

Decent scanners have gotten cheaper. Yea, for $200 if that V550 is decent, I think I would have to recommend that route unless you really like 'tinkering' with stuff (I do). And if you don't have a macro or tubes, then it would seem silly to get one just to scan slides.

Now for anyone determined to use a macro lens:

Yes it can be a PITA. It's not too bad if you are only doing the occasional roll. Results seem very high quality to me, plus having a raw file (or files since I often bracket) can allow you to do a lot in PP if you want to.

I have a small inexpensive lighttable and then try to get the negatives or slides uncut and unmounted (people just love to mount slides). The I actually build a little holder which is just some card with a hole that I slot into a wood block. This way I can get everything set up and just move the film though the holder for each shot.

Getting set up and getting the camera/lens perpendicular to the film is not trivial and takes some practice. In fact sometimes that can take me longer than scanning the film. Even at f11 your DOF is pretty shallow and the film is never perfectly flat. Plus you want to get as much of the film filling the frame as possible.

Hope that helps.

Oh, and if doing negatives, you will have to learn how to color-correct them unless you have better luck finding cheap/free software than I did. That's also not trivial but if you are decent at PP you'll figure it out. If you just push/pull sliders in LR, forget it (at least that was/is my experience).

One of the trickier aspects of using a camera with macro lens is when the copying camera is not the same size as the film original...36mm x 24mm slide being copied by (for example)

1. a T6 with 22.3mm x 14.9mm sensor...you need to find a lens with FL and and extension tube which is 0.62X FL in length in order to copy the image at 0.62X
   
2. A 7DII with 22.4 x 15.0 mm sensor...you need to find a lens with FL and and extension tube which is 0.62X FL in length in order to copy the image at 0.625X
   

Scanner and Silverfast.

If I'm gonna be taking a photo of a photo, I'd use digital to begin with and save myself the trouble.

Alveric wrote in post #18814831
If I'm gonna be taking a photo of a photo, I'd use digital to begin with and save myself the trouble.

Rofl

Alveric wrote in post #18814831
Scanner and Silverfast.

If I'm gonna be taking a photo of a photo, I'd use digital to begin with and save myself the trouble.

And if the photo was shot in 1970 on film, how would you propose making the photo available if you wanted to use that photo in a lecture to a bunch of students about some photographic principle, without recreating and reshooting the same situation today?!

It's copying or photocopying - I wish folks wouldn't call it scanning. I have also heard it works pretty well. But you need to rig things up so you are exactly parallel and have a nice even light source with the right color quality.

I use a real scanner, but have thought about doing the copying because I think it might be faster. It should work great for screening, and then I could scan the ones that justify the extra time. But I have not gone very far along the copying route because of the rig I need to set up.

If you are copying old negatives or slides you could run into color problems that can't be fixed by normal color adjustment. The problem is that the color dyes fade at different rates. So the highlights and shadows can have inconsistent color balance. This can be fixed by using curves, but it has to be done by eye and is hard IMO. More recent film does not give these problems to the same extent.

If you can find an old Illumitran, you might be able to adapt it to copy negs or slides.

This youtube video should help give a practical guide.

There are some threads on the large format forum on scanning with digital cameras. The method involves stitching multiple overlapping frames in order to achieve resolution comparable with or surpassing drum scans.

Here are a couple of references:

https://www.largeforma​tphotography.info …k&highlight=Dsl​r+scanning
https://www.largeforma​tphotography.info …R&highlight=Dsl​r+scanning

I started using a scanner but soon migrated to using my 5DII. The scanner did fine but was slow and correcting the image was a bit troublesome. THe camera allows me to capture a raw file and use my normal workflow in processing the image.