I decided to try some negative scanning with the Pentax KP, Tamron 90 macro, Sirui T-1004SK T-S Tripod with C-10S Ball Head, a light pad and negative trays. I had the film developed by Process One just getting the negatives.
The light pad I used was the
tiktecklab A4 Size Ultra-Thin Portable Tracer White LED Artcraft Tracing Pad Light Box from Amazon (I paid $16.20 last week it is now $21.10). I had bought a cheaper light pad the week before but it had a built in grid, not mentioned in the description, so I sent it back and got this one, no grid and even brighter.
Negative Trays Set of 3 - Fits most zonoz, Wolverine Data, Jumbl, Magnasonic, Digitnow, SainSonic & ClearClick 35mm Slide & Negative Scanners also from Amazon ($19.99)
I set up the tripod on the kitchen counter at the lowest setting (with all legs collapsed) which was too low, put the legs up to the next angle which was too high. So the light pad was set on top of a couple of books and 2 pieces of 1/4 lattice to get to the right level.
The negative trays were perfect for the job.
I set the camera to Raw+, aperture to 2.8, set digital filter to invert color. Of course I used live view with focus peaking and also magnification, and I focused on the film grain. I had read in one of the threads here to focus on the film grain so that's what I tried, on a side note I first focused without the magnification and the focus peaking was pretty spot on. The negative trays held the film well enough I really did not need to focus but once per tray, but I checked each image anyway. I just slid the negative trays across the light pad, which is a glass surface with no frame. I lined the negatives up with two sides to the edge of the KP's screen, so I only needed to crop on two sides, it was a very small amount needing cropped. The Invert Color worked well for that also, because I saw white borders on the KP screen. I don't now how accurate a digital filter is for color reversal, but it may be pretty close, and is definitely fine for black and white. Maybe that is the purpose of the digital filter?
After loading the images to the computer I opened the jpgs in Adobe Bridge and did some processing, mostly the white balance needed warming, and they all needed some dehazing. Of course I don't really know if that is due to the taking of the photos or the scan job. I should probably get prints of a couple of the negatives to check it. This was a pretty quick process and I was not too meticulous, I did not blow dust off of the negatives or anything like that. I also did this during daylight with full ambient lighting around. Of course this is far from a professional scanning job, but the last group I had scanned were really not any better. This of course is a trial, which I'm pleased with.
A couple of phone pics of the setup, and a couple of the "scanned" photos.