ideas for copying slides with the G3 ??

Hi,
Great forum. All you folks are to be commended for sharing so unselfishly!
I still have my 35 but am going to take the plunge on a G3 or G4 if that's out by the time I do it.
Meanwhile I'm trying to digitize some of the thousands of slides I have. I first tried using my camcorder which focuses down to approx 1/4 of an inch and allows me to just put the lens next to a slide on a sorter or light box.
Not bad, but only getting 640 x 480 and thouching up in Paint Shop Pro isn't great.
Next I tried my friends Oly 3030. It doesn't focus close enough to do the light box thing so had to project onto a whiteboard and just photo the image.
That works better but there is a fair amoung of light falloff toward the outer edges of the image and they certainly don't look as good as the magnified slide does.

Have any of you come up with a way of doing it with the G3?

JJ

Hi JJ,

I have tried several ways... having the same challenge to get several thousand slides digitized.

1) I projected the slide onto a screen, using a slide projector (of course!), and took the pictures using a tripod. That worked fairly well regarding speed, but the sharpness isn't great.

2) I projected the slide against a milky semi-transparent glass from one side, and took the picture from the other side. That did not work because you could see the glowing wires of the lightbulb, and contrast was bad as well.

3) I used makro lenses, and an external flash connected to the camera, which bounces off a white sheet of paper behind the slide, so the slide is backlit correctly. This seems to be a good solution, however I am still looking for some kind of equipment where the slide can be arranged and changed easily. Just holding with your hands leads to out-of-focus slides.

4) Don't laugh, I have a slide scanner. It is a little outdated, but working alright quality-wise. Only the dark slides don't come out too well. The big problem is that each slide takes about 5 minutes to pre-scan, brightness-correct, focus and scan.

I hope I will be done in a few months, and then throw the scanner out of the window and never use it again.

There are add-on tubes dedicated to slide copying available for Nikons, but I found absolutely nothing for Canons, so it's up to us to get something built.

Good luck...

Check this out...

http://www.photosolve.​com …ct/xtendaslide/​index.html

I see the product but don't see anywhere where they are for the Canon G3, they say Olympus and Kodak. Did you confirm whether they have them for the G3?

Frederique

drisley wrote:
Check this out...

http://www.photosolve.​com …ct/xtendaslide/​index.html

Actually, if you go here, they do mention the G1 and G2.

http://www.photosolve.​com …t/xtendaslide/c​ompat.html

I assumed they would soon have something for the G3. Maybe drop them a line

With a step down ring 52/58 to 49 mm this could work. Kind of stiff pricing, $65+$12 + Shipping + Tax, basically for a plastic tube. I guess I will be scanning a little more...

I'm still experimenting. Last night I tried copying a few by viewing them on my Pana-vue slide viewer and just focusing my buddy's Oly 3030 on them. That actually worked well insofar as getting an even level of illumination on them but I didn't get real sharp results. I think that was because the shutter speed on auto was 1/30 - 1/60 and even though I had the camera pressed against the viewer's window I think it still shook a bit when I depressed the shutter.

Since first inquiring about this I have also tried the 'photo the projected slide' system again, this time using a more solid rest for the camera to eliminate shake. That seems to be working best. I don't have a place to post some shots or I would just so you could see how they turn out. They actually aren't bad. (imho of course).

So for those of you who don't have a good slide copier or have one like I tried once ...which had a little slot to insert the slide so you end up with a little image which completely washes out when you enlarge it ...projecting the slide onto a hard white surface does seem to work. It didn't work using a projection screen due to the matt of the screen being picked up by the camera so be sure to use a hard smooth white surface and position the camera so the image fills the viewfinder or LCD screen.

Happy copying!
jj

When I saw this post, it reminded me of a device I bought with my first Video Camera. It was a Slide and Film adapter, which screwed onto the front of the camera lens. The adapter is a Canon DP-10.

My Video Camera got stolen, but the adapter did not and has sat in my darkroom, unused ever since. I used the insurance money to upgrade to a much lighter camera, which had a different lens. I had never used the adapter more than a few times, so decided a lighter camera was more important.

The adapter has similarities to the Xtendaslide and came with 2 different ends that could be swapped. One was for slides and the other for negatives. The camera had an invert video switch for use with negatives. The DP-10 has a very thick/heavy lens at the camera end of the tube.

The method of use was to screw it onto the camera, insert a slide and point the end at a light source.

I dug out the DP-10, which seems to have about a 60mm thread, pointed the G3 into the lens end and placed a slide in the slide adapter. I then pointed the unit at a piece of white styrofoam. The G3 was connected to the PC in Capture mode. Sunlight through the window was regularly fading behind clouds and the image on screen faded at the same time. Eventually I grabbed a simple torch and pointed it at the styrofoam. The resulting image can be seen at:

http://community.websh​ots.com/user/imbrucew

in the Hobbies album.

As a comparison, I have also posted the same slide, scanned by my Nikon Coolscan III, film and slide scanner. In both cases I used the maximum resolution the equipment had to offer, which means the CSIII has 3690x2436 pixels, compared to the G3s 2272x1704.

The CSIII scan is unaltered. The G3 image was a bit blue, so I have adjusted the colors a bit.
The Exif data should be embedded in the posted image, but in summary; I used tungsten White Balance with Exposure mode = Av, set at f8.0, to help with focus problems. Shutter speed is 1s.

The PC Capture software is a real dog to use and I spend most of my time trying to work out how to manual focus using this software. I came to the conclusion that it will not let you manual focus. When I changed the White balance it seemed to trigger some auto action that gave me close to correct focus. I note the EXIF data indicates that the distance is 2.13m, which is certainly not the length of the CP-10. The lens in the CP-10 must be the explanation. The CP-10 length is about 165mm.

I believe the results of the G3 are quite good, although they are more contrasty than the CSIII. If I spent more time on the lighting I could probably have improved the contrast, by using a more diffused light. Also, if I had chosen a custom white balance I could probably have solved the blue color cast. I do not have a lens adapter, so I just used a piece of plumbing PVC to improve the interface between the G3 and the DP-10. Very crude.


Bruce

This just keeps getting more interesting.

Your slides really turned out nice Bruce. I remembered I had joined Webshots too but hadn't posted anything so I just went and posted a few too.

http://community.websh​ots.com/user/jjlad

They are all slides that I projected as described earlier and photo'd with the digital camera.

I did a little bit of correction on them. The one on the 'grid' was pretty red so I decreased the red a bit and added some blue which turned the grid blue too. The other colors got more realistic though. While I was rotating it in my editor I captured the editing screen using Capture Express and saved it in pretty low res.

I'm not too disappointed with the results as they end up looking pretty much like the projected slides.

Sure are a lot of ways to skin a cat aren't there?

You can't complain much about these results.

For the second photo (ie Northern Harbour 02), the sky has a slight grainyness or noise look to it. Is that because of the scanning process, or have you increased the brightness in Photoshop?

Bruce

Yes ...on that one I believe I used the Gamma Slider to brighten it up a bit and then a little sharpening to get it crisp again. That's the big problem with projecting the slides and then photographing them ... I get a lot of light fall off at the edges. Using Gamma corrections tends to help but the adjustments necessary afterward can add grain.

I'm sure a real slide copier (the extension tube type with a mount on the end for the slide) would do much better as there would be no additional lenses involved in the process either.

Once I get my own G3 (or G4) if one is out by then, I'll get whatever I need to do the slide thing right. Even if I have to go through them all again I won't mind because going through them is relaxing and enjoyable for me anyway, although I tend to not notice how late it's getting once I'm into it.