Godfrey
somewhat colored
Hmm. Copy equipment and technique notes...
Writing all this stuff makes the process seem very demanding. Once you have developed your skills, however, it's actually all pretty quick and easy: all the heavy work is in the setup. After that, it's just shuttle the negs through the carrier being careful while doing so not to move the setup.
G
- The Novoflex Magic system copy stand I use is very, very stable. The table I use for setting up the copying is also extremely square and stable.
- I use a laser level and a drop line to absolutely align camera and negative stage. It's measurably more accurate than the mirror trick for alignment, and is also much, much faster in doing the job.
- My current copy cameras are the Leica CL (24 Mpixel, which I use mostly for 35mm and smaller formats) and the Hasselblad 907x (50 Mpixel, which I use mostly for 645 to 6x9 cm and Polaroid prints). Both have excellent sensors (excellent dynamic range at ISO 200) with extremely effective focusing aids.
- For both cameras, I use either the Leitz Macro-Elmarit-R 60mm f/2.8 or Leitz Macro-Elmar-R 100mm f/4 + Leitz Focusing Bellows-R. (I also capture Minox 8x11mm format negatives, and there I've found that the Leitz Summicron-R 50mm f/2 does a better job at magnifications greater than 1:1 than either of the two macro lenses.) None of the seven or eight other lenses (macro, enlarging, whatever) I tested proved to produce better results than these three lenses.
- I use a Novoflex geared focusing rail with the 60mm macro lens. The Leitz Focusing Bellows-R has its own geared focusing rail built in.
- In my experience doing this (now thirty years long...), I've found autofocus to do nothing but get in the way when I've had it available. The setup I have is stable enough and holds the negatives flat enough, and stably enough, that I manually focus once at set up time and don't change it again for an entire session. With careful setup, I get excellent rendering of grain from center to corner on all formats, which says that the lenses and the film are a good match in terms of how the negs are being held and how the lens' focusing field curvature are matched.
- Generally speaking, it seems better to use a capture format that is smaller than the negative format. This permits you to work in the 1:2.5 to 1:1.5 range, not constantly locked into exactly 1:1 for 35mm format, and allows much more flexibility in focusing, framing, and DoF. Most lenses do slightly better at these magnifications than at 1:1 or higher magnification; the Summicron-R 50mm performance was a surprising find.
- At base ISO, the differences in capture dynamic range between APS-C and FF are not observable although they might be measurable; the difference in capture dynamic range between either of those and the Hasselblad 907x sensor is much greater, with the Hasselblad winning by a very noticeable, observable margin. Great for those contrasty negatives and slides! The best part of using APS-C to capture 35mm to Minox format is that you need less magnification to nearly fill the frame than you do with FF or MFD formats.. This means less extension needed, less height on the copy stand, and tends to produce less camera vibration for sharper results.
- Always lock down the white balance to a fixed setting ... It makes it much much easier to adjust batches of negatives to 'get in the ballpark' on rendering.
Writing all this stuff makes the process seem very demanding. Once you have developed your skills, however, it's actually all pretty quick and easy: all the heavy work is in the setup. After that, it's just shuttle the negs through the carrier being careful while doing so not to move the setup.
G
Shac
Well-known
Agree - I was surprised how good it was - especially in terms of sharpness corner to corner. I'd never had this with any of the other lenses I'd used before
ColSebastianMoran
( IRL Richard Karash )
The 80 Olympus Bellows Macro is one of the few camera lenses specifically designed for and optimized for 1:1, so excellent for camera-scan of 35mm to FF body.
Another is the 75 f/4 APO Rodagon-D 1x copy lens.
jzagaja
Well-known
Best is Printing Nikkor and Minolta 5400 Elite lens?
ColSebastianMoran
( IRL Richard Karash )
Good question Jack.
I don't have access to the Printing Nikkor, but I'll trust Robert O'Toole's reports that this lens is excellent. I'm skipping most of the exotic lenses.
The lens from the Image 5400 is known to be excellent. it is set up at 1.78x in the scanner, and I've tested mine at that magnification with excellent results. But, it is hard to use for camera scan at this magnification. Stitching, of course, is an option.
But, I was surprised to find that turned around and with slightly different conjugates, it works well at 0.67x to cam-scan 35mm to an APS sensor. Has excellent sharpness to the corners in this configuration. This 40mm lens has fixed aperture at about f/4.
Net for me: Quite usable and excellent results at 0.67x to APS, but be careful about film flatness and alignment. 40mm is a little short for my preference.
Rather than this lens, I'm using the 70 Sigma Macro ART, the 55 f/2.8 Micro Nikkor. For special images, I may do focus-stacking with the lens from CoolScan 8000 (a close relative of the printing Nikkor).
john_s
Well-known
A single wavelength would certainly minimize chromatic aberrations. 436nm is at the violet end of the spectrum. Using a more ordinary macro lens, would that be the best wavelength, or would something in the middle of the visible spectrum (e.g. green) be better?
Freakscene
Obscure member
That Zeiss S-Planar is optimised for that wavelength. For lenses that are designed for the broader visible spectrum you may need to experiment. For non-apo lenses, focus becomes very important because of focus shifts due to wavelength. When I first got a Leica MM I was astounded how obvious focus shift was with orange or red filters and even some pretty accomplished lenses like the pre-ASPH Leica 50/2 Summicron. Live view helps, but I found that it is hard to focus optimally and to maintain the optimal focus.
Marty
john_s
Well-known
On the subject of the best colour illumination to scan B+W negatives, I remember that I read this years ago on Paul Butzi's web page. It's no longer up, but wayback has an image of it. Basically, scan with white light, then separate the white image into primary colours and find that one is superior. In his example below, blue gives the best image converted back to monochrome. He uses a flatbed scanner to scan sheet film negatives.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130415144809/http://www.butzi.net/articles/colorscan.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20130415144809/http://www.butzi.net/articles/colorscan.htm
Particular
a.k.a. CNNY, disassembler
This is advice that is relevant to scanners because they use linear sensors that scan every pixel in each color. I have tried this option in VueScan with my Coolscan scanners, and found very minor differences. In my case green seemed marginally sharper. I always wondered though if just using all three colors didn't give a cleaner result because of multisampling. Either way the differences were minimal.
For camera 'scanning', using a single color does not make any sense to me. The advantage would be that you eliminate the effect of chromatic aberration. Since you are recording with a bayer pattern, and then processing the raw (interpolating), using one color basically eliminates all the pixels from two of the colors in your image. Effectively for blue or red that typically means 1/3 resolution, while for green 1/2 resolution.
If chromatic aberration is cutting your resolution in half, then it might improve things, but in that case perhaps using a better lens would improve things more.
Best would probably be to use a monochrome camera with a single color light source.
Tim Gray
Well-known
I thought I have read that the Coolscan 8000/9000 lens is close to the Printing Nikkor, and possibly related in design.
Nice tests! I have the Sony 90 Macro, the 75 Apo-Rodagon D 1x, and a Coolscan 9000 lens. I've not had a chance yet to use the Coolscan lens, since it's obviously a much more fiddly setup. From my brief tests between the Sony Macro and the 75 Apo-Rodagon, the 75 looked a *hair* better, but not enough to warrant the adapters, bellows, manual focus, etc. The Sony Macro really simplifies things in my opinion: mount the lens on the camera, auto focus, and done.
What copy stand are you using? Mine is small and bit wobbly...
john_s
Well-known
Thanks for that. It makes complete sense. I will stick to white light for camera "scanning" and try the other with flat bed scanning of 4x5 sheet films.
ColSebastianMoran
( IRL Richard Karash )
Agree, they are very close. Big difference in usage, not in the image quality results at 50 MPx. The 75 APO Rodagon-D 1x covers 6x6 so might be very relevant as a 1x lens for medium-format camera scanning.
I have a rock-solid copy stand, adapted from the Polaroid MP-4 copy camera. With this, I do manual-focus, but if things were at all wobbly I would use AF.
ColSebastianMoran
( IRL Richard Karash )
Physicist here... Diffraction varies with wavelength; violet/blue light will diffract less that red.
But, I think that's a red herring for all of us using Bayer-array sensors.
Freakscene
Obscure member
I use an M10M for my film copying, but using a single wavelength is more about lenses and minimising or eliminating chromatic aberration than capture medium.
Marty
ColSebastianMoran
( IRL Richard Karash )
I'm going to update this discussion with a more detailed comparison of a "top" lens vs one way down the list. I'm somewhat surprised by the results.
This is posted in a new thread, including updates to my list of tested lenses.
This is posted in a new thread, including updates to my list of tested lenses.