Scanning films with DSLR

[fatihayoglu]

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Hi all,

So, for a while I am scanning my films with my Nikon D750 to digitise and have failrly consistent results. My setup is, Nikon is tethered to Capture One, a 60mm micro lens attached with ES2 film holder and the camera angled upwards to sky as backlighting.

The problem is, I live in UK and it is not always easy to find those sunny days. So I am thinking to get a light table/pad. Is there any item you can recommend me? Sure Amazon has plenty but it is better to hear your recommendation, in terms of brightness, uniformity of the light etc.

The second question is around white balancing. With negatives, I get a reading from an unexposed part of the film and use it as a base to get rid of orange mask. To my experience, slide films needs some sort of white balancing as well, to achieve correct colours. The question is, how would you get reading for a slide film? Would it be the same, from the un3xposed part of the film, ie in between frames?

many thanks,

Fatih

[Jossie]

To get correct colours for slides you need to expose an IT8-Target of the same type as the slide film is (albeit E6 emulsions behave rather similar, but still there is a difference between say Ektachrome and Fuji Provia. Kodachrome is a completely different story, targets for Kodachrome are rare and expensive.). You shoot the target the same way as the slides and use e.g. Argyll to create an ICC-profile from the target image, which you assign to the slide image. Colour managed software (like e.g. PhotoShop) uses the ICC-profile to calculate the correct colours for your slide image.

I think a light table is mandatory to get consistent results. Choose one which produces D50 light, which is the standard for ICC-profiles (and targets).

Hermann-Josef

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[Stuart Richardson]

I agree with Hermann-Josef. Try to find a D50 light if you can, but if you cannot, any consistent halogen source with diffusion would work well. Halogen and Incandescent will be much warmer in color temperature unless you are using something like a 5000K solux bulb, but they offer better color reproduction than most LED or fluorescent lamps, barring those which are specially made for use in color proofing. If you want to build a lightbox yourself, you can use neutral white acrylic, preferably double-diffused so that there are no hotspots. Another option would be to use a good flash and again, a highly diffused softbox. Since you already have a Nikon film holder, this may be the easiest route if you already have a flash. The softbox will act as the first level of diffusion, and the acrylic in the film holder the second. This should give you pretty even lighting. 

 

As for proper color, Hermann-Josef gave you the proper way, but if you want to get away with less work, I would advise just shooting a shot without film in the holder, and overexpose by one or two stops so that the acrylic in the holder is fairly bright. Then meter your white balance from that. If you have to adjust it afterwards, just do it by eye...E6 generally needs slight adjustment when scanning, as it loses some presence when scanned, as compared to how it looks on a light table. 

[pgk]

Nuangang (and other makers) make some small 'lightboxes' which work well - I paid about £40 for mine which is about 6" x 4" from memory, and it was ok right out of the box. I ended up adding a 2mm translucent white sheet to it to create a little more diffusion and its giving good results now. Although it has adjustable 'colour temperature' I always use it on the highest ('daylight') setting. Unless you are hyper-critical such lightboxes are more than adequate for slide copying and once you have sorted out settings in Photoshop to give a reasonable reproduction, you can apply them to all similar slides. Be aware that slide film fades (even Kodachrome) so colours are always a variable. Different film types, lighting, processing and so on, all affect colour so being over precise is only relevant for colour critical requirements (my dSLR scans print better than ever to be honest, despite me not being too critical). Lastly, the 'trick' to slide copying is rigidity.