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Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom
11-23-2012, 06:33 PM
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Hi,
I love film, I even develop color negatives and slides by myself (what a pain…) because nobody does a decent job in my area, not anymore.
But the biggest problem for me has ever been scanning. I use from 35mm to 13x18cm, and my options were all pretty much not cheap enough or very bad quality wise.
I read various times about the possibility to use a digital camera instead of a scanner, but the results I got were always poor because of lack of alignment and low general resolution.
Now I think I found the proverbial (well, at least here in Italy!) "Columbus egg".
What you need:
- a digital camera with live view (slr, mirrorless, whatever)
- a lens hood of the right diameter for your lens and (crucial) of the right height (I will explain shortly why); alternatively, if you decide to use an inverted lens, a set of macro tubes
- a lens that you can use in macro; I didn't say a macro lens because till now I've had the best results with an old 35mm f/2 Nikkor O (yes, the pre-Ai kind) inverted (but I'm waiting for a Pentax 50/4 Macro M)
- a slide viewer or, if you don't have one yet and you are a bit capable around electricity, a transparent adapter for an old scanner. In this case just join the cable of the adapter directly to an appropriate transformer - please do not electrocute yourself!
- a software for panoramic photography that let you use the "matrix" or "multirow" template (if you shot Canon Photostitch came for free; a really good and cheap alternative, at least on Mac, is Panorama Maker; a bit complex, but free and of extreme quality, Hugin came for all operating systems)
Then you:
- put the slide viewer flat on a table;
- tape down the film flat on the viewer surface;
- put the camera with the macro lens + hood (or with the reversed lens + tubes) directly on top of the film, so you'll get rid of alignment problems (and no, the film doesn't get scratched)
- focus with the live view; if you reproduction ratio is good enough you can focus directly on the film grain!
- set the exposure in manual mode, to ensure that all the shots are the same
- start taking multiple shots
- assemble them in the panoramic software
How many shots will depend of the reproduction ratio you (and your lens) will use. Generally I use a 1:2 enlargement ratio on medium and large format film and a 3:1 ratio on 35mm and I get more or less this results:
- 35mm = 4 / 6 shots
- 4,5x6 = 4/ 6 shots
- 6x6 / 6x7 = 6 / 8 shots
- 4x5" / 13x18cm = 20 / 30 shots
Taking enough shots for, say, a 6x6 frame takes less than 15 seconds, and this because I use a 2 seconds self timer to avoid vibrations!
On the bottom you can see a quick example of the quality you can get; it's a comparison using the same 4,5x6cm negative between the Epson 700v (film holder height calibrated) and this method (using a 1:3 ratio). And please, remember that with this digital camera method you can still go to 1:1 or more and extract more detail.
Just to be clear: this are 100% corner crops, and while the Epson has been sharpened the Canon not!
If you want to see more examples, including a comparison against a Dainippon Screen drum scanner, please take a look at this post on my blog:
http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/11/23/best-film-scanner-canon-5d-mark-ii-...-vs-epson-v700 |
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-11-2012, 10:00 AM
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I was talking with a guy on a forum about what raw converter one should use and why, so I thought that this my old (a few months) test was worth sharing.
It's a 5 parts post with 100% crops :cool: - may be useful to someone else in his situation. I compared against each other almost all the raw converters available then. They were: Apple Preview, Canon Digital Photo Professional, CaptureOne 6, Corel AfterShot, DCRaw, DXO Optics, Gimp, Lightroom 3, PerfectRaw, Photoshop 5, RawTherapee, Rawker, RawDeveloper, RawPhotoProcessor, UFRaw.
Review: Raw Converters Mega Test part I
Review: Raw Converters Mega Test part II
Review: Raw Converters Mega Test part III
Review: Raw Converters Mega Test part IV
Review: Raw Converters Mega Test part V
And then I found another interesting one, free for Apple users with the Developers pack:
Review: Core Image Fun House
Hope this helps. Happy pictures everyone
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Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom
12-07-2012, 05:16 AM
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I absolutely agree, the Pentax macro is a terrific lens.
I too test all the used lenses I buy, to be sure to not have stumbled on a "lemon". Now I have a few 50mm-ish lenses and I decided to compare one against each others; not to hijack my own thread ;) but I'll put the test online tomorrow (I'm finishing formatting the page) on my blog, if you're interested:
http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/12/08/battle-of-the-50s-contax-60-vs-mino...ntax-takumars/
Bottom line: the 50s I tried (Pentax macro, Takumar 8 elements and 7 elements, Minolta Md, Contax Makro Planar, Olympus Zuiko) are all excellent lenses, but each with quite a bit of personality and "best" kind of use.
Regards,
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
12-08-2012, 03:26 AM
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Hi,
one of my favorite focal length is the 50mm. In the last years I've collected a few of them, so I decided it was time to put them one against each other to learn pros and cons of each lens.
I thought that may be of interest for other people too, so I just posted a comprehensive comparison - with 100% center and border crops at almost each stop - of the following 50-ish lenses:
- Pentax 50mm f/1,4 Super-Takumar 8-elements design
- Pentax 50mm f/1,4 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 7-elements design
- Pentax 50mm f/4 M Macro
- Contax 60mm f/2,8 Zeiss Makro S-Planar
- Minolta 50mm f/1,7 Rokkor MD
- Olympus 50mm f/1,8 OM Zuiko
Happy pixel peeping everyone :lol:
Battle of the 50s: Contax 60 vs Minolta vs Olympus vs Pentax Takumars | | Addicted2light Addicted2light |
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Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom
11-24-2012, 08:10 AM
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And here an overview of the shooting setup: on the left how you need to take the shots, on the right the results.
Please keep in mind that this was one of my fist attempts, so I overshoot quite a bit. If there aren't big skies or large areas of detail-less water you'll need only 4 shots.
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