Copy or scan?

[torment]

Why do most people use scanners to copy old negs and slides?  Some time ago I tried to find a neg scanner in the local retail outlets with no success. I took a small cardboard tube about 2" long and taped a 35mm neg across one end and fitted it to my old Canon Powershot Pro 1. The resulting digital neg was then processed and looked OK.  I found an old Ohnar slide copier on ebay, cut it down and reassembled it to enable me to screw it onto the filter thread of the Canon PP1.  After a bit of trial and error I found that Super Macro at f8 gave acceptable images for 35mm B&W and color negs as well as old color slides.  

Then I tried 21/4" square negs from my old Yashicamat using an old cylindrical cigar box lined with matt black card with a 42mm filter adapter screwed on the end as a negative holder and found that this gave the same good images. I ran a film through the Yashicamat and had the film professionally processed and scanned to compare results and didn't find much difference between the scan and my copying.

The set up is shown with camera mounted on a tripod but in practice I use the camera hand held and wave it vaguely at the window.  As the subject moves with the camera there is no camera shake.  Bright days without direct sunlight on the camera is preferred. It is very quick to load and photograph strips of film.


A couple of 55 year old images are shown.




So, what am I missing by photographing rather than scanning?

[Olypen]

There is a two-part article about this very question on "The Online Photographer" which has been posted this week and last week.  I haven't read it.  It is by Ctein who is quite exacting in his requirements.  I can't give a personal opinion because I don't have any experience copying with a digital camera; but, I would observe that film cameras were used to copy both positives and negatives quite successfully.  The copies you posted seem to me to do justice to your original striking photos.  The ingenuity and adaptability of your setup is also quite striking.

[br1078lum]

You're just using the camera in place of a scanner.  Only thing different is the form factor.  Nothing wrong at all with it.  I've got a couple of Dupliscopes that I hope to put into use if I ever get a decent digital camera.

PF

[LarryD]

Image area...

[torment]

There is a two-part article about this very question on "The Online Photographer" which has been posted this week and last week.  I haven't read it.  It is by Ctein who is quite exacting in his requirements.  I can't give a personal opinion because I don't have any experience copying with a digital camera; but, I would observe that film cameras were used to copy both positives and negatives quite successfully. 

Thanks Olypen for the lead to "The Online Photographer".  I think that if I had read that first I wouldn't have bothered!
It seems that opinions vary as usual.  My system is very fast when processing negatives and the results are satisfactory.  I have at last found a good use for the Powershot Pro 1.

[radiophoto]

I think it's a very clever idea.  Nice and thanks for sharing!

[Mike Kovacs]

There's a well known (former? lurking?) member here that would "scan" his films this way.

My question would be 35mm slides of which I shoot basically none these days anyway, but have loads of. They can be very dense, and I wonder how much shadow detail and noise you could get with a top quality dSLR vs my Nikon scanner. Maybe I'll have to try some shots comparing my Coolscan III to my D300s? My old 55/3.5 Micro-Nikkor should kick butt for this type of work.

[torment]

There's a well known (former? lurking?) member here that would "scan" his films this way.

My question would be 35mm slides of which I shoot basically none these days anyway, but have loads of. They can be very dense, and I wonder how much shadow detail and noise you could get with a top quality dSLR vs my Nikon scanner. Maybe I'll have to try some shots comparing my Coolscan III to my D300s? My old 55/3.5 Micro-Nikkor should kick butt for this type of work.

There is only one way to find out.  Try a simple set up.  1 See how close you can get to show a full frame image.
2 Roll a card tube of that dimension to fit over the lens. 3 Fit a 35mm neg to front of tube using card mask, sticky tape, etc. 4 If you have a white diffuser over the neg.  If stuck for a diffuser use a piece of thin white plastic from some product in the house.  5 Check focus, set to best f number, auto focus and click. 

I like the live view camera approach to make it easy to see focus is ok, neg is centred, etc.

Please try and report your findings here with comparative pictures.