Agreed ... as I did this experiment last night, I found it pretty easy to get good "camera scans" from my 5 x 7 negs. When I moved on to the 120 and 35mm, I had to get much closer in macro mode, which increased barrel distortion greatly.
Rick
Agreed ... as I did this experiment last night, I found it pretty easy to get good "camera scans" from my 5 x 7 negs. When I moved on to the 120 and 35mm, I had to get much closer in macro mode, which increased barrel distortion greatly.
Rick
Depends on what your purpose for posting to the web is. If the idea is to send snapshots to friends and family I guess this is o.k. If you're planning to put it on a web site or anywhere else where technical quality is at all important . . . well, to be honest I don't think these are going to impress anyone.
Brian Ellis
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
a mile away and you'll have their shoes.
Ok, a couple more tests.
This time I used a better lightbox (but did a crappy job on dust control) and put a glass on top of the film to make it flat.
For web sharing, I found it decent enough.
Here's the setup I've used for digital duplication:
Dupes were taken using a 10MP dslr, with reasonable glass (tamron 28-75 2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical IF).
For grounds of comparison, I sent the chrome out for my lab (Chrome Digital in San Diego) to scan it with a scitex flatbed. The first thing I could notice was the lack of latitude on the dSLR... on my dupe, if I underexpose a bit more to capture the house number (visible on the scitex) I'd start to loose details on the shadows. Not very important in this picture, but it was a good illustration on why to have a good dedicated scanner for any serious stuff.
Here's also a 100% crop comparison of both digital files:
Thanks Padu. Definitely interesting, and might be good enough for web sharing of images. That lightbox almost looks like an old flatbed scanner with the lid removed. I am a little surprised at the noise (grain/texture) in the D-SLR shot; almost like that plastic around the 4x5 was left in place, or something on the glass . . . strange.
The colour and tonal quality of the Creo Scitex scan really jumps out beyond the D-SLR. I was expecting the resolution to be a bigger difference, and not the colour quality. Very interesting experiment. It would not surprise me if a D-SLR, AN glass, really good two bulb lightbox, and good lens would challenge some flatbed consumer scanners on image quality. Results like these almost belong in the Comparitive Scanner Review.
Ciao!
Gordon Moat
A G Studio
It should work fine for what you're doing. I use a copy stand (bencher) with backlight source for similar things. I suspect the problem might be with low-quality (low-CRI) tubes in your box. Do you know what they are?
If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck...
That's exactly it. I had an old scanner which I removed its internals and put one of these circular fluorescent lights. I got the diffusion piece from an old laptop monitor. It's composed of a few "lens sheets" and one or two diffusion sheets. I'm not sure I liked it. Maybe I'll spend 50 bucks and buy one of those slim lightpads.
I agree, and it only caught my attention when I compared it with the scan... maybe it's the notebook lens sheet that I used for the lightbox diffusion.I am a little surprised at the noise (grain/texture) in the D-SLR shot; almost like that plastic around the 4x5 was left in place, or something on the glass . . . strange.
The color difference I believe I could've adjusted in photoshop, but what really suck on the dslr is the lack of dynamic range. I found out that resolution is not as bad as I thought. DR in the other hand may be the biggest problem, but again, this is only for web display. A file like this will never see the color of paper.The colour and tonal quality of the Creo Scitex scan really jumps out beyond the D-SLR. I was expecting the resolution to be a bigger difference, and not the colour quality. Very interesting experiment. It would not surprise me if a D-SLR, AN glass, really good two bulb lightbox, and good lens would challenge some flatbed consumer scanners on image quality. Results like these almost belong in the Comparitive Scanner Review.
Ciao!
Padu
Hello Padu,
The slim lightboxes are okay when you need to transport something. A better choice would be a Porta-Trace Lightbox. I got a two bulb 10" by 12" recently, which seems to make a big difference viewing transparencies. You can also get replacement bulbs for these in the future when needed.
After reading your explanation, I think the texture might be the old laptop screen. Probably a proper white Lucite sheet might have worked better, though then you would have needed a stronger bulb. Easier just to buy a lightbox. I got the Porta-Trace stainless finish, though I think maybe the oak finish would look much nicer, not that it makes any difference in how they work.
Ciao!
Gordon Moat
A G Studio
Bookmarks