Lightbox for film scanning

[Drew Wiley]

Sperdynamite : Yes, people "back in the day" would spend huge sums of money for one particular type of print versus another. And yes, the "best" print medium is the one you personally enjoy and understand how to do best. But "back in the day" there were also significant differences in the longevity of prints and the amount of effort and materials involved, which inherently factored into price parameters. Chromogenic prints (or RA4) were dirt cheap to make, dye transfers very laborious and expensive, with emerging Cibachrome somewhere in between if well made... Responding to mdarnton, Being precise might be "nitpicky", but that's the attitude necessary to do color printing well, even with RA4 materials. If you just want to have some fun, do it, whatever. The question is not about duplicating visual reality, which is impossible anyway; and the ability to recognize the specific limitations of any particular medium is in fact the first truth one should accept about color photography if one is to do anything eloquent with it. But let's face it, it's a lot easier to join the orchestra if you know how to play a Stradivarius rather than a gut bucket.

[Drew Wiley]

Back to the original query. It's encouraging to see Solux, a particularly respected source, now offering an overhead LED lighting strip with a published spectrogram nearly matching black body results, with several key color temps to choose from, and with a CRI of 97, which they claim is provides a unique level of quality. These start around $400. They have many related things which might be of service in this particular conversation. It's companies like these that can provide real answers without wading through the BS and deceptive marketing inherent to ordinary sources.

[sanking]

For what it is worth I have been quite pleased with the Kaiser 10X15" LED light panel. I am digitizing LF film with the panel placed about three inches from the film (on glass) and lighting is very uniform. I am mainly interested in B&W film but I have digitized quite a number of 4X5/5X7 color negative and transparencies, and with my digital camera set to AWB the colors look quite acceptable. Unfortunately nearly all of my color slides and negatives, made from about 1980 through 2005, have experienced significant shifts in color and fading and thus require post digitizing processing in PS. In my case don't believe there would be much to be gained by investing in a more expensive light source, and fortunately since I work for myself I get to make these decisions.

I settled on a work flow with a Sony a7r IV that involves three-pass stitching of 4X5 and 5X7, with pixel shifting. After merging in PS the final size of my 5X7 files are about 50X70 inches at 360 ppi, and image quality is similar to what I get with a Howtek drum scanner, though processing a color negative is much easier with the Howtek.



Sandy

[Tom Kershaw]

Sandy,

Is the Sony A7R IV the first camera you've tried camera based digitising with? I've made some attempts with a Fuji X-T2 and have found the process works better than I had expected, especially with large format film. Although the level of quality of reproduction I'm aiming for is for simple web type usage, not fine prints, with the limitations of a single 24mp exposure in mind.

Tom

[Alan Klein]

Do you use the Sony A7Riv for digital picture taking too?

[sanking]

Sandy,

Is the Sony A7R IV the first camera you've tried camera based digitising with? I've made some attempts with a Fuji X-T2 and have found the process works better than I had expected, especially with large format film. Although the level of quality of reproduction I'm aiming for is for simple web type usage, not fine prints, with the limitations of a single 24mp exposure in mind.

Tom

Hi Tom,

I previously digitized with a Sony a7r (36 mp) most of my archive of 35mm color slides. In that case I was able to capture with just one shot almost all of the detail, and tonal range, on the film with 36 mp and a sensor with pretty wide dynamic range.

With the 4X5 and 5X7 film I am trying to digitize at about the same quality as with my Howetek drum scanner. With the Sony a7r iv and high quality macro lens one shot is not capable of capturing all of the detail in 4X5 or 5X7 film so I use pixel shifting in combination with 3-pass stitching. The Sony a7r iv has a 16-shot pixel shift mode that shifts the sensor in half-pixel increments to capture 16 separate images that can be combined to create a 240.8 mp (19,008 px x 12,672 px) RAW files using Sony’s Imaging Edge Desktop software. Each of the three pixel shift shots have to be processed in Image Edge software, then combined in PS with Photomerge. Final image size is about 900 mp for 5X7 files after flattening and changing color space from RGB to Gray Scale.

With a 24 mp camera you should be able to get enough image quality to make very nice prints up to 11X14 or 16X20 in size. As you fine tune the process you will learn how to optimize this type of digitizing, which requires a good stable camera stand aligned with the media to be digitized, and some type of method to prevent flare from ambient light.

Sandy

[Kirk Gittings]

Hi Tom,

I previously digitized with a Sony a7r (36 mp) most of my archive of 35mm color slides. In that case I was able to capture with just one shot almost all of the detail, and tonal range, on the film with 36 mp and a sensor with pretty wide dynamic range.

With the 4X5 and 5X7 film I am trying to digitize at about the same quality as with my Howetek drum scanner. With the Sony a7r iv and high quality macro lens one shot is not capable of capturing all of the detail in 4X5 or 5X7 film so I use pixel shifting in combination with 3-pass stitching. The Sony a7r iv has a 16-shot pixel shift mode that shifts the sensor in half-pixel increments to capture 16 separate images that can be combined to create a 240.8 mp (19,008 px x 12,672 px) RAW files using Sony’s Imaging Edge Desktop software. Each of the three pixel shift shots have to be processed in Image Edge software, then combined in PS with Photomerge. Final image size is about 900 mp for 5X7 files after flattening and changing color space from RGB to Gray Scale.

With a 24 mp camera you should be able to get enough image quality to make very nice prints up to 11X14 or 16X20 in size. As you fine tune the process you will learn how to optimize this type of digitizing, which requires a good stable camera stand aligned with the media to be digitized, and some type of method to prevent flare from ambient light.

Sandy

Sandy,
My Imacon died and I am looking at this approach. What lens are you using?

[sanking]

Do you use the Sony A7Riv for digital picture taking too?

Hi Alan,

I plan to use the a7r iv eventually for normal picture but so far have not. But I bet it will give excellent results in the 5X7 large format film setting.

Sandy

[sanking]

Sandy,
My Imacon died and I am looking at this approach. What lens are you using?

Hi Kirk,

I have been using a Sigma 70 mm f/2.8 DG Macro Art for digitizing 4X5 and 5X7 film. No complaints about sharpness, which is superb, but manual focus is "by wire" and for this application I would really prefer mechanical focusing.
Have also used a 75mm Apo Rodagon D lenses, manual focus of course, with bellows. Bellows is an older Noveflex for Nikon F, with Nikon F to Sony E body adaptor, and Nikon F to 42mm adaptor for the lens.

With the great dynamic range and high resolution of the Sony a7r iv, especially with pixel shifting, it is hard to go wrong with this approach.

Sandy

[Kirk Gittings]

Hi Kirk,

I have been using a Sigma 70 mm f/2.8 DG Macro Art for digitizing 4X5 and 5X7 film. No complaints about sharpness, which is superb, but manual focus is "by wire" and for this application I would really prefer mechanical focusing.
Have also used a 75mm Apo Rodagon D lenses, manual focus of course, with bellows. Bellows is an older Noveflex for Nikon F, with Nikon F to Sony E body adaptor, and Nikon F to 42mm adaptor for the lens.

With the great dynamic range and high resolution of the Sony a7r iv, especially with pixel shifting, it is hard to go wrong with this approach.

Sandy

Thanks. I have an A7rII. I think I will rent a III and try it out.