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Thread: I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

  1. #1

    Lightbulb I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

    Hi, I'm Dario, from Italy, and I went to this forum in search for experts in medium and large format photography, because I have some dilemmas about my project, and I hope you can help me.
    Like the title says, I'm building a large format camera, using a flatbed CCD scanner instead of film.

    Here it is the gallery with all the photos of the work in progress http://www.flickr.com/photos/project...7623187612134/
    and this is a video I've made some time ago, about the camera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXxjsz6J5Bg

    Am I doing it wrong? Do you have some suggestions about the shape and the features of the chassis? Any idea about how to make a "working" ground glass? any suggestion about how improve the overall design? any feedback of some sort?

    Also I''m searching for a wide angle lens, or at least something wider than the Industar 300mm.. but I don't have thousands of euros to spend in this project.. there are dozen of large format lenses on ebay under 300$ but I'm not an expert, I don't know what is good or bad.. so again: ...any suggestion?

    Thank you in advance.

  2. #2

    Join Date
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    Re: I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

    Quote Originally Posted by Project ESE View Post
    Am I doing it wrong? Do you have some suggestions about the shape and the features of the chassis? Any idea about how to make a "working" ground glass? any suggestion about how improve the overall design? any feedback of some sort?
    Do you know this site?

    Have fun

    Peter

  3. #3

    Re: I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

    Yes I know the site, it's probably one of the earliest about this kind of thing.
    From there the scanner technology has done some big steps in terms of resolution and performance.
    He was using the lens fixed to the ccd and moving the whole thing: If the motor has enough power and the lens assembly is not heavy is the best choice. I can't do it with the large format solution, but in future if I will use a small or medium format lenses is the system that I will choose.

  4. #4

    Join Date
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    Westminster, MD
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    Re: I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

    Very very cool.

    Are you machining the metal yourself?

    They way it is structure it appears you are sticking to a horizontal orientation. Wish I was as mechanically minded because, if I were, I'd love to do this too.

    Good luck. Can't wait till you post images made with this camera!
    When I grow up, I want to be a photographer.

    http://www.walterpcalahan.com/Photography/index.html

  5. #5

    Re: I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

    Hi Dario, have you already hacked the scanner's software? I was googling around the subject a while back & found a site with lots of scanners listed for which hacks were offered - for free I think.
    I don't think I bookmarked it but may be able to find it again if it would help.

  6. #6

    Re: I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

    well, as far as I know the only alternative for me is use VueScan, but is basically identical to the epson, or even worse. I've seen a site where a guy has made a custom driver for his scanner in linux, and he can control everything, and the thir party Linux standard drivers for my scanner are better, because it's possible to have access to some important features, like separate horizontal and vertical resolution.
    At the moment the only problem with the drivers is the shift of the color channels and the anamorphic resolution: now i'm shfting the channels in place with Photoshop, but in high contrast zones there are some aberrations.

    @Walter: this design does not require machining metal: the chassis is made from standard aluminium profiles and L joints with bolts and nuts. You can build it with a saw and a drill. and if you want to see some images there are on the link in the first post: there are not very beautiful but the camera was different from now.

  7. #7
    Consulting the pineal gland
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    Re: I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

    Every one of these I've seen has some troubles with banding. Has anyone managed to solve these yet?

    I'd love to see how it works out. Like a BetterLight for us non-rich non-pro's.

    Linux is nice. If there is a driver offering full controls that is probably the way to go. There are some embeddable i386 platforms that might be built into it... saving the weight of the capture computer system and cables. Lots of people code under Linux for free, if you need something done often a cheap bounty can make it happen because the writer won't be used to getting paid at all.

  8. #8

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    Re: I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

    Dario,

    this is super cool! A digital camera with - how many gigapixels? - for a few hundred Euros! I do wish you a lot of success!
    One thing IŽd like to know though, will it be possible to use short lenses or will the different angles at which the light rays hit the sensors be a problem? And how do you deal with the electricity problem when you want to leave the studio?
    Besides, IŽve experienced various troubles with my Epson, so IŽd be thankful to learn about those hacking possibilities, maybe that would make it easier to find a solution.
    regards
    Michael

  9. #9

    Join Date
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    Re: I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

    A Canon CanoScan LiDE 100 scanner is powered off of the USB connection to a laptop. So, it is simply one cable connection. With a newer 'netbook' computer, you should be able to capture a few images in the field, where the weight of the netbook is far smaller than the camera the scanner is attached to.

    I have seen a couple of scanner cameras that have solved the banding problem in post processing. So, there is software available to do this.

    I recently bought the above scanner to try to use it on a scanner camera. It cost me about $60.00 from B&H Photo. Since the hardware has to be modified to make it work, I did not think the cost was that great. At some point, I will tackle this project myself, so that I can use it on my Cambo Legend 8x10.

    Jon

  10. #10

    Re: I'm building a LF SCANNER camera

    With your current set up I wonder about focusing. It will take a really long time to focus using the scanner instead of ground glass.

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