Another Visoflex Question

[DavidStone]

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Was there ever a negative/slide mount holder made for the Visoflex to produce 1:1 copies from transparencies or negatives? I have in the past used a light box and a mask cut from black card, which works for one or two copies but for a larger quantity it's not ideal.

 

The reason I ask is that it occurs to me that instead of buying an expensive scanner to make digital copies of all my old negatives and slides, I could use my Visoflex and M8 to make direct digital copies. Has anyone tried this? I can't think of any disadvantages.

 

David

[Rona!d]

One disadvantage (and a big one!) is the missing ICE-function when operating with the M8 instead of a good slide-scanner. There are many others too - for best results take a good scanner.

 

The compendium for the bellow II has a kind of negative-feeder, but it looks like for 6x6 cm.

 

Was there ever a negative/slide mount holder made for the Visoflex to produce 1:1 copies from transparencies or negatives? I have in the past used a light box and a mask cut from black card, which works for one or two copies but for a larger quantity it's not ideal.

 

The reason I ask is that it occurs to me that instead of buying an expensive scanner to make digital copies of all my old negatives and slides, I could use my Visoflex and M8 to make direct digital copies. Has anyone tried this? I can't think of any disadvantages.

 

David

[DavidStone]

One disadvantage (and a big one!) is the missing ICE-function when operating with the M8 instead of a good slide-scanner. There are many others too - for best results take a good scanner.

 

The compendium for the bellow II has a kind of negative-feeder, but it looks like for 6x6 cm.

 

I've never had any major dust problems when printing my negatives and my thousands of slides are kept clean and dust-free, so I'm not too worried about this. In any case, most of my negs are on HP5 and most of my slides are Kodachrome, so the ICE-function (as I understand it) is not an option. What are the "many other" disadvantages that you mention?

 

David

[Rona!d]

... and my thousands of slides are kept clean and dust-free, so I'm not too worried about this.... What are the "many other" disadvantages that you mention?

 

David

 

Dear David,

who will feed your Visoflex/M8 with your thousands of slides? (just to name another big disadvantage:rolleyes: )

 

Don´t get me wrong, maybe you have no experience with a real good scanner or you want to play around with your new M8 and are a retired man with a lot of time.

In any case good luck and have fun

 

Ronald

[pierovitch]

There seems to be an incorrect assumption that the optics of a scanner are superior to a good macrolens on a visoflex. scanners have a moving sensor or mirror and lens which can have alignment problems when worn and streaking noise patterns in shadows. the highly collimated light of LED's in particular accentuate grain relative to image resolution which is why you need dust and grain removal. This softens the image with the grain so you then need an overdose of unsharp masking to compensate. B+W and kodachrome are not compatible with ICE processing. If you have the time to do the job properly do it with the visoflex, macro lens and a diffuse illuminator enjoy the imqage quality if you really want sharp grain and overdone sharpening add it in photoshop. Scanners are the functional equivalent of a point source enlarger with a diffusion filter on the lens to reduce the grain.

 

[Alberti]

There seems to be an incorrect assumption that the optics of a scanner are superior to a good macrolens on a visoflex. scanners have a moving sensor or mirror and lens which can have alignment problems when worn and streaking noise patterns in shadows. the highly collimated light of LED's in particular accentuate grain relative to image resolution -. -. -. If you have the time to do the job properly do it with the visoflex, macro lens and a diffuse illuminator -. Scanners are the functional equivalent of a point source enlarger with a diffusion filter on the lens to reduce the grain.

 

 

Scans show all the dust particles, calcium residues that I never see when printing.

I like your note on the effect of LEDS on scanning - see Erwin Puts comparisons and the finest negative film looks like sandpaper compared to a polished M8 image. I do expect a copy stand to be a lot better.

Secondly, B&W negatives have this 'tunneling effect', you enlarge the space betwwen grains. Specifically Tri-X users exploited thus (I did once have a single point source, the effect was strange, the impression of sharpness while you do not have it). Best is to have a long enlarger lens.

But then, how to invert the negative? Capture One does not seen to have such a button. What is your suggestion?

regards

albert

[DavidStone]

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Thanks to Pierre and Albert for these useful comments. I have some very good enlarger lenses, which have in the past produced excellent copies with the Visoflex and M6. As soon as I have time, I'll set up a copy stand and a light-box and see what kind of digital copy the M8 will give me. It seems, from what you write, that scanners - of which I have limited knowledge - also have their disadvantages.

 

David

[DavidStone]

As a follow-up to yesterday's correspondence, I set up today my old copy-stand with a light-box on the baseboard, Visoflex 2 with bellows, and a 75mm enlarger lens, plus the M8 body. I copied a few negatives, including one which used to demand all my hard-earned printing skills to produce a good darkroom print.

 

First results look very promising. The final test will be to discover if I can produce a good digital print from the resulting files, since I no longer have access to a darkroom.

 

Since I only anticipate making a few copies at a time, the relatively slow process of using a copy-stand will not be much of a handicap. And it's still quicker and more convenient than the conventional process of making copy-negatives!

 

Capture One LE is a convenient way of processing the negatives - as long as one is familiar with negative images.

 

As for reversing the negs, Photoshop will do this - even the cheap Elements version.

 

So it seems that I've saved myself the price of a scanner.

 

David