Using digital camera to digitize slides and negatives

[ktoey]

Has anayone tried to digitize slides or negatives using a digital camera ?. What is the procedure for inverting the negatives ?.

[Klaus DK]

Yes I have!

I've digitized some hundret dias - with a result I can live with...

I would'nt spend the money on the diasadapter from Nikon, because I read serveral places on the net, that you can make a copystand yourself - which could be better. So I decided to save the money.

Try searching the net for homemade copystands. You'll get many ideas and will prob. save some money.

Heres what I did:

I bougt some foggy hard plastic (no sratches!) and made a holder in wood (really easily done - you can use other materiel). Then I got hold of my dia illuminator which I used to backlight the dias from behind. Put my digicam on a small tripod - experimented with the setting and bingo - I got a fine result!
I think I used the macrosetting on my CP5700 - but you have to experiment on that.

Just one way to do it!

Good luck!

[david]

You could try using a slide projector and photograph the screen. A friend of mine gets pretty good results this way.

David.

[Klaus DK]

David - I must say - I have tried that with acceptable results, but not far as good as my solution above. But of course it's worth a try. And it pretty easy.

[david]

I always say try the simple solutions first before you throw loads of money at the problem.

David.

[Klaus DK]

I totally agree, but my experience tells me the best results is the one I mentioned. And cheap too.

[NHL]

Plenty of good advice here...

I bought the ES-E28 for my 990 sometime back, and definetly not recommending it!!! In my opinion the ICE softwares than come with most real-slides scanners are really worth it for the package price (ie too much work otherwise for digitizing slides).

I think everyone is spoiled by digicam pictures until they took a picture of their slides and suddenly notice the imperfections that entails... It kind of reminds how the dark days of the darkroom were like!

[PERUFFO]

It can be easily done using a foto video camera FOTOVIX made by TAMRON. This equipment can be found on EBAY.

[sjms]

if you are scanning kodachrome do not use digital ice. the don't play well together. in fact its not needed since kodachromes last dramatically longer than any other direct positive film. thank you eastman kodak.

to convert a slide to a digital image using a digital camera is very work intensive and the results will be extremely disappointing.

there is no compromise if you value that image. a good quality slide scanner with a 25MB tiff minimum image output cannot be replaced by a 5MP digicam putting out at best 14MB tiff. two different processes are used to scan.

as NHL mentioned about Digital ICE. on older ekta agfa anf fuji chromes it can rescue most of the fade and scratch issues. but there is a price to be paid for it. again do not use it with kodachrome. the differences in kodachrome from the others is the difference between black from white.

[njb]

I am also researching how to get my slides copied and as per Klaus DK's suggestion, I am considering buying this stand:

http://www.shotcopy.com/

Does this look like it would do the trick, Klaus? Would you suggest any modifications?

njb