home made slide/negative/colour negative copier

[snaarman]

Some time ago I set about digitising my pile of slides (from 1970 to 2003) using a DSLR camera, a macro lens and a flash gun.

Here is a picture of the monster



I do posses a conventional Minolta slide scanner but compared to this method it is So Slow!

I also have used this thing to digitise some of the b+w negatives I have uploaded here, and the method is much the same except that you need to reverse the image in photoshop to turn black to white.. etc etc

Now I discover that I can tweak this to digitise those vile orange colour negatives as well. They do not shoot well as the orange/red mask on the negative causes all sorts of colour problems when you try to make them positive again...

The trick is to put a blue filter on the flash, so you illuminate the colour negative with blue light. This tries to neutralise the orange colour of the neg and you get much closer to the correct colours.

So -watch this space. I plan to upload some more old pictures that started life as colour prints..

Pete

[Ed Geraghty]

That's a pretty cool rig you got goin' on there!  I must admit, I look forward to seeing the resultant images from your coloured ones.

[Tracey]

Brilliant
I'm looking forward to seeing what you've got to post

[snaarman]

My most recent uploads from colour negs are a bit over sharpened, so I will make some adjustments to my workflow. Otherwise I am well pleased with the results: at least they haven't gone purple like their equivalent prints have..

Pete

[Ed Geraghty]

Believe it or not, I've just been admiring them!  I'm really impressed how well they've come out

(oh, and sadly, the library still looks just as rubbish )

[Tracey]

Pete, those latest uploads are great!
The quality of the picture us much better than the ones I uploaded from that era which went slightly fuzzy when I scanned them on our Epson scanner

[snaarman]

(photo geek mode on)
Well I do have a bit of a start here: The Olympus Zuiko macro lens is simply the sharpest lens I have ever owned, and I have had a few lenses over the years..
Even the dpreview web site, who are no big fans of olympus, said it was as close to a technically perfect lens as they have seen - so respec' as they say :-)

(p_g_m off)

Thus the camera and lens combination should be able to see the grain in the average film. The flash keeps the lighting absolutely constant.
I can "digitise" a strip of 5 negs in about a minute. However, "developing" each file from raw to jpeg with colour correction takes about a minute. All this is still loads faster than the Minolta scanner and the results are generally as good as, or sometimes a lot better.

Pete

[Tracey]

Thats a great workflow, and the images it is producing is amazing. I wish I could find my negs, but I fear they disappeared when we moved house a few years back so all I am left with is my photos (and even some of those I remember have gone ).
The scanner I used provided inconsistant results. Maybe I should try running some photos through some editing software...

[Grendel]

MY trick I learnt from my dad was to use a small light box, so you illuminate the slides / negatives from behind, then using a small digital camera you can get a 5mpixel photo of the slide or negative and work from there, I use the wifes canon powershot A710is along with a jessops postcard sized light box and a couple of L shaped black card masks to define the edges, I converted all of my mother in laws old black and white negatives this way, so we now have them for posterity. the light box has a slightly blue tint from memory, but this is dealt with along with all the other colour issues from slides and negatives.
Grendel