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A better light-box? Any recommendations?


wlaidlaw

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I have had my current Jessops light-box for over 25 years. It was not an expensive unit when I bought it. It uses 4 low voltage (12V) "caravan" fluorescent tubes behind a diffusor. It is just fine for looking at slides and film but when I have tried to use it for slide copying, the uneven lighting levels become much more evident, resulting in banding on the copies. I tried making a brightness correction mask but I don't think my Photoshop skills are at the required level, to get this to work properly. Given that after 25 years and much use, it really does not owe me anything, maybe the time has come to get a better light-box. 

 

Can anyone recommend one with very even illumination levels, preferably one they have used successfully for slide or film copying. Depending on what the Nikon scanner repair man says later today, I may end up getting a Leitz BEOON copying stand instead of a scanner for copying. Apart from anything else, the Jessops light-box is too small for the base of the BEOON to sit on. 

 

Wilson

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Most of the lightboxes now are LED, Wilson.

I use a porta-trace with ~A4-sized lit area. I generally just use it for viewing, but was doing some digitizing last year with a MP-E 65mm mounted on an A7R and StackShot focusing rail. Most of my work was B&W, but the occasional colour negative or slide seemed to come out OK (at least by my standards).

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For a barrel of laughs, I tried stitching 6 sets of 3 bracketed sets of 3 focus-stacked shots of 135 negative. I can report this to be an exercise in unproductive frustration, which aligns with most of my bright ideas. My own little Hillary's Everest.

 

I was finding 6-shot stitches of 135 and 15-shot stitches of 120 (without the exposure and focus bracketing / stacking) to be reasonably effective, but greatly prefer using my Plustek 120.

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 Depending on what the Nikon scanner repair man...

 

Wilson

Apologies for diverting the thread without any useful contribution about lightboxes - but as a Nikon scanner user, I wonder whether you could just include those details here for the record.

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Apologies for diverting the thread without any useful contribution about lightboxes - but as a Nikon scanner user, I wonder whether you could just include those details here for the record.

 

PM sent as we are not supposed to post email addresses on main forum. 

 

Wilson

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