Digitizing slides

[Joe from So Cal]

I've been considering getting a D850 and a ES-2 adapter to digitize some of the thousands of negatives I've shot over the years. I've been impressed with the detail I can pull out of an image with my D600 and I imagine the D850 can demolish that. I have a 105 F2.8D Micro Nikkor.

When I considered a film scanner I wanted the best quality I could afford. I noticed the drum scanners could take 30 seconds or so per image. That seemed a bit arduous. The cost is up there as well, I think.

I welcome input from anyone here who uses or has experience with these things, pros and cons. Thank you.

 

[cgw]

All I can say is that I'm unaware of any breakthroughs in civilian scanner technology. Put another way, scanner technology is long stagnant. DSLR scanning works. Here's a Kodak TMY-2 120 neg scanned with a 24 mp Nikon D7200:

 

[Ozzie_Traveller]

G'day Joe

Several yrs ago I had the task of going thru a slide collection of around 6000 images and copying them

I found a $50 slide display device ... ie:- slide stacker plus one-by-one left-to-right slider, normally illuminated by a small bulb via a square moulded plastic lens. I removed the bulb and replaced it with a halogen bed lamp with a 3400K bulb and removed the moulded viewing lens so that my camera shot directly into the slide

With camera on tripod plus one extension tube I found that the normal lens would close-focus and zoom to pick up the slide just nicely ... the whole rig was locked down via duct tape !! and away I went shooting slide after slide

With WB @ 3400K the camera was set to match, exposure was "A" mode @ F8 and shutter was left to itself. I trialled about 50 slides to examine focus + illumination corner-to-corner + contrast etc and made some minor tweaks before spending many hours over the next week or so just shooting and more shooting and more shooting!

In the end it was well worth it and the digital results are quite satisfactory

Hope this helps
Phil

 

[smoke665]

If you're mechanically inclined I've seen several DIY projects over the years that converted slide projectors. Here's just one of many DIY Slide Scanner | Steve's stuff

 

[AlanKlein]

What kind of negative? Color or BW?

You can see scans of 35mm film on my Flickr site linked below using both Epson V600 and the more costly V850. I've never scanned with a camera so I can't comment on their use. If you film is dusty, scanner programs have ICE which help get rid of them while scanning although it doubles the scan time. (ICE works on E6 color slides and color negatives but not BW negatives or Kodachrome slides.) Not sure how ICE is handled with cameras.

Good luck on whatever you decide.

 

[Joe from So Cal]

What kind of negative? Color or BW?

You can see scans of 35mm film on my Flickr site linked below using both Epson V600 and the more costly V850. I've never scanned with a camera so I can't comment on their use. If you film is dusty, scanner programs have ICE which help get rid of them while scanning although it doubles the scan time. (ICE works on E6 color slides and color negatives but not BW negatives or Kodachrome slides.) Not sure how ICE is handled with cameras.

Good luck on whatever you decide.

I've got lots of negatives, 35 mm, both color and b&w. I was watching a video of a guy copying negatives with a D850. It actually has a program in it to do this sort of thing. If you shoot them as negatives you can capture RAW files. If you convert them in the camera to positives you can only save them as high quality jpegs.

There are limitations, that's why I was asking if anyone here has gone that route. I suppose the worst that can happen is if I don't like it, I can add a D850 alongside my D600.