[3by2]

I used to have, well, still have, a Minolta scanner which went out of support sometime after XP died. I could probably get it working again under Ubuntu or some jiggery pokery but I don't really want to as it was so interminably slow and produced quite average results which needed a lot of work.

Instead I'm looking for a quick way of loading a carrier with a neg strip or slides and using a macro lens setup to just whizz threw them and produce a goodish image. Most are just for memories and if any were good enough for more I'd consider getting them scanned properly.

I was thinking of either using a copy stand with a lightbox or setting up a rail with camera, flash and slide copier and was wondering what people thought of either and also wondering whether there was any software which was particularly useful, especially for colour and b&w negs, software or techniques. I've probably got a few thousand shots I'd want to digitise.

[Medex]

good 35 mm film dedicated Reflecta scanner with Silverfast software will cost you about 800 euro. Other alternative to scanning with scanner is digitizing with DSLR. I use Pentax K-1, FA 100/2,8 at f8 and custom made device. Quality is more than enough for my needs.
BTW, this topic was discussed in Pentaxforums earlier

[3by2]

good 35 mm film dedicated Reflecta scanner with Silverfast software will cost you about 800 euro. Other alternative to scanning with scanner is digitizing with DSLR. I use Pentax K-1, FA 100/2,8 at f8 and custom made device. Quality is more than enough for my needs.
BTW, this topic was discussed in Pentaxforums earlier

Have you got a link, I did have a quick look but didn't see anything but an old thread with not much detail?

[Russell W. Barnes]

I dug out my Elicar zoom slide copier recently. These were a thing back in the 80s and 90s (and possibly the 70s) and were made under different brands. It's a tube with a T-mount on one end allowing different adaptors to marry it to the SLR camera, and a slide-carrier and diffuser at the other. It's a fixed-focus tube with a lens arrangement half-way down: you put a rough setting (1, 1.5, 2X) on the slidey-out tube, lock it, then adjust a barrel accordingly. They're cheap enough on eBay. I use mine on my EOS 5D Mk: 1 with a Canon > M42 adaptor and n M42 T-mount.

For copying negs I remove the slide carrier and simply place the strip of negs on my lightbox beneath a mask cut from single-sided printed circuit board (thin plastic would do), sit the camera and copier tube vertically over the mask, and fire away, moving mask and camera along the neg strip as I go. I use mirror lock-up and a remote shutter release to minimise shake as a slow(ish) shutter speed is called for, and I set my Canon to RAW.

I find this gives better results than my ancient Acer Scanwit WinME-only SCSI-coupled scanner, for which I keep my old PC alive specifically.
--

Kind Regds,

R.

[3by2]

I dug out my Elicar zoom slide copier recently. These were a thing back in the 80s and 90s (and possibly the 70s) and were made under different brands. It's a tube with a T-mount on one end allowing different adaptors to marry it to the SLR camera, and a slide-carrier and diffuser at the other. It's a fixed-focus tube with a lens arrangement half-way down: you put a rough setting (1, 1.5, 2X) on the slidey-out tube, lock it, then adjust a barrel accordingly. They're cheap enough on eBay. I use mine on my EOS 5D Mk: 1 with a Canon > M42 adaptor and n M42 T-mount.

For copying negs I remove the slide carrier and simply place the strip of negs on my lightbox beneath a mask cut from single-sided printed circuit board (thin plastic would do), sit the camera and copier tube vertically over the mask, and fire away, moving mask and camera along the neg strip as I go. I use mirror lock-up and a remote shutter release to minimise shake as a slow(ish) shutter speed is called for, and I set my Canon to RAW.

I find this gives better results than my ancient Acer Scanwit WinME-only SCSI-coupled scanner, for which I keep my old PC alive specifically.
--

Kind Regds,

R.

How do you reverse the image on the negs?

[Medex]

Have you got a link, I did have a quick look but didn't see anything but an old thread with not much detail?

Film Scanner Recommendations - PentaxForums.com
Question about the current Pentax Film Duplicator & a mod - PentaxForums.com
B&W or Color Negative in Lightroom - PentaxForums.com
Dedicated film scanner, which is the best affordable? - PentaxForums.com
K-1 for converting slides ? - Page 4 - PentaxForums.com

---------- Post added 03-01-19 at 01:33 PM ----------

How do you reverse the image on the negs?

Lightroom is the quickest way, IMHO. Read more in the links I provided

[3by2]

Film Scanner Recommendations - PentaxForums.com
Question about the current Pentax Film Duplicator & a mod - PentaxForums.com
B&W or Color Negative in Lightroom - PentaxForums.com
Dedicated film scanner, which is the best affordable? - PentaxForums.com
K-1 for converting slides ? - Page 4 - PentaxForums.com

---------- Post added 03-01-19 at 01:33 PM ----------



Lightroom is the quickest way, IMHO. Read more in the links I provided

Excellent. One like is not enough for that. I did find a much more long winded way but that's much better.

[ProfessorBuzz]

You might check this out:
Minolta Scanner Drivers | VueScan

[3by2]

You might check this out:
Minolta Scanner Drivers | VueScan

Ah that's very interesting. I used to use Vuescan but I had no idea they'd expanded the driver side. My only issue now is I've moved to a small form factor PC and the scanner needs a scsi card. Always some drawback to decisions made.

[Russell W. Barnes]

Lightroom is the quickest way, IMHO. Read more in the links I provided

My version of Lightroom doesn't do this but it allows me to 'Edit in Photoshop', which does. Irfanview (freeware) does at a push.

[dsmithhfx]

Acer Scanwit WinME-only SCSI-coupled scanner

Wow that is REALLY old. I still have a SCSI-capable mac PPC, haven't booted it in almost 10-years, will probably be trashing it RSN.

[EssJayEff]

I recommend (once again) Peter Krogh’s book, Digitizing Your Photos with Your Camera and Lightroom.

[CarlJF]

Although the DSLR method works and can give great results, it is anything but quick... If you want something that's quick and will not cost you an arm, just get one of the Epson Photo scanners with a dual strip holder and ICE to remove scratch/dust. They work very well and I never was able to get significantly better results with "scanning with a DSLR"... By the time you optimize everything to get better results with the DSLR method (assuming you get to a point whwre you get really better results), you'll have the time the scan an whole shoebox of negatives with the scanner...

In the end, it's more a matter on how you value "quick" relative to "quality".

[Russell W. Barnes]

Although the DSLR method works and can give great results, it is anything but quick...

Yes... I suppose 'quick' is relative. I must say I am tempted by a modern scanner that will do both 120 and 35mm negs. The 'Scanwit' takes quite a while; six negs per go. Mañana...

[3by2]

I'm not in the market for a scanner, plus from what I've seen the flatbed scanners still aren't up to even the ancient old Minolta Scan Dual I have. I just want something I can setup relatively easily to whizz through stuff, things might be better now but the Scan Dual didn't whizz and I could manually copy 4 or 5 slides on a macro setup in the same time, then bulk edit them in lightroom. I just want to see what I've got, especially on the old B&W negs, some of which I've never even had contact printed. I'm not even bothered about quality. All the slides I thought were worth a damn, I did a long time ago on the Scan Dual and Photoshop, quality wise they're in a different dimension to today's digital, still very pleasing but some have also suffered so will never make great copies.