29 ms·

Filmolino SlideScanner

49 points by _Microft 3y ago

danboarder 3y ago
This is cool. I was recently thinking about how to scan in a lot of family slides from the 60s, 70s, and 80s and now I think I want to build one of these to streamline the capture process... My previous plan was to just set up a projector in a dark room and photograph off the big screen manually with my DSLR (I thought this might also work for 8mm film reels as well).
- gsich 3y ago
  Better use a macro and a lightbox, photograph your slides/negatives.
nubinetwork 3y ago
Is this better than using a flatbed scanner?
- gsich 3y ago
  DSLR (or mirrorless) scanning is way superior to flatbed. Not just quality but also speed. You can "scan" a roll of 36 pictures in ~10 minutes compared to 5 minutes per frame with a flatbed.
  - ancientworldnow 3y ago
    It's definitely not superior in quality compared to a good flatbed but speed is much better.
    - jetrink 3y ago
      For 35mm, flatbeds just do not have comparable resolution to a digital camera with a good macro lens. The most you'll get out of the best flatbed is about 2300dpi (measured from resolved detail, not pixels). Generally, you end up with about 6-8MP of usable detail. If you own a digital camera already and are comfortable tinkering with your setup and workflow at first, camera scanning is the way to go. You'll get almost the full detail that 35mm film has to offer in less time overall for about the same cost.
    - flipthefrog 3y ago
      This simply isnt true. A DSLR with a sharp macro lens is a lot better than a flatbed. A dedicated filmscanner like those made by Nikon and Minolta 15-20 years ago, is very slow, but the quality is even higher
      - yzydserd 3y ago
        20 years ago so had a 4000 dpi film scanner. It was very slow, noisy, and memory hungry. But it made great scans. I have hundreds of rolls of B&W 35mm and 6x7’s on 120 film that I’d love to rescan. I don’t own a digital camera to take a photo of the film. Does anyone have experience on how to go about this? I’ve searched across HN and didn’t come up with much. Surely there are 35mm shooters today that have some contemporary high quality solution? Perhaps an epson v850? This thread gives me pause that it’d not be as good as using a digital camera rig.
    - lm28469 3y ago
      The best flatbed you can get as a consumer (Epson v850) is about as good as a mid range dedicated scanner (plustek), and it costs 2 or 3 times more. A proper camera based setup is both faster and better in term of output. I scan my own film with a 40 mpx debayered camera and get at least 4 times the effective resolution of my v850
      - qingcharles 3y ago
        Can you tell us more about your setup? I used to scan film with a Hasselblad X5, but I seemed to be hitting the level of grain with that beast.
        lm28469 3y ago
        I'm using a monochrome Leica, with a lens harvested from a Minolta dimage 5400 scanner, the rest is a very crude diy setup, a pvc tube to hold the camera, two panes of glass, a laptop screen as backlight https://www.closeuphotography.com/minolta-dimage-scan-elite-5400-lens https://www.closeuphotography.com/minolta-dimage-scan-elite-...
        qingcharles 3y ago
        That's some fantastic information, thank you so much! I'm always interested in what can be done to improve the scans of old film. I think we're coming really close to perfection now. I'm especially stoked with how AI, when used very judiciously, can perform dust and scratch removal miracles.
      - yzydserd 3y ago
        I have hundreds of old rolls of B&W film I want to scan. I was looking at the v850 which seems to have a 6400dpi resolution which is ~60MP for 35mm film. Or a plustek opticfilm. Can you clarify what sort of camera based rig at a similar price point would be superior? Where’s the 4x resolution come in?
        flipthefrog 3y ago
  - pimlottc 3y ago
    How does that work exactly? Do you have some sort of jig for positioning the slides, lighting, etc?
    - dekhn 3y ago
      The way I did it was: 3d print a jig that held a very bright LED, a diffuser plate (to spread the LED light over the entire slide), the slide, and lens, and then pointed my DSLR at that. It wasn't very fast but I can easily see several ways I could have sped it up.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  You might just want to pay someone to do it. I used to have one of these $20,000 Hasselblad X5s and they do a really nice job with slides -- you can get someone to scan your slides on theirs, e.g.: https://www.iconla.com/film-services/imacon-scanning/ https://www.iconla.com/film-services/imacon-scanning/
- vr46 3y ago
  Not really. Flatbeds give excellent consistency in their results and their workflow. Setups with digital cameras vary, require quite a bit of equipment for the serious, and are subject to a lot of variations in the process plus require more post-processing IMHO - from cropping to correction. They can also not deal with dust and scratches like an ICE scanner can. Not everything is about resolution. Digital camera scanning folks are enthusiastic and I’m all for it, but there’s a huge amount of value in a simpler process and automation. Look up camera scanning equipment and you’ll see an enormous amount of kit available to optimize these setups. There’s a reason it needs optimizing! :) I have two slide projectors but haven’t used them since the 1990s because of all the faff and the fact that projection degrades slides. Plus the space required.
  - gsich 3y ago
    There is not much automation with flatbed scanners. (neither with DSLR). Post processing is the same if you chose so. Negativelab Pro converts negatives to a usable image without issue. You can always tweak settings if you want. It works for both types.
c0nsumer 3y ago
Years ago I bought a Nikon Coolscan V to scan in all of my parents' old 110 slides. I would have loved a solution like this at the time, although that worked well (and way better than I thought) and the price ended up reasonable. I wish scanners like that were still made. Here's an old httrack image of the page I had documenting the process: https://nuxx.net/wiki_archive/A/110_Slide_/_35mm_Negative_Scanning https://nuxx.net/wiki_archive/A/110_Slide_/_35mm_Negative_Sc... Unfortunately it's not really repeatable as these scanners command quite a high price used and are fairly hard to come by.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Great article, thank you!

49 points by _Microft 3y ago

This is cool. I was recently thinking about how to scan in a lot of family slides from the 60s, 70s, and 80s and now I think I want to build one of these to streamline the capture process... My previous plan was to just set up a projector in a dark room and photograph off the big screen manually with my DSLR (I thought this might also work for 8mm film reels as well).

gsich 3y ago
Better use a macro and a lightbox, photograph your slides/negatives.

nubinetwork 3y ago

Is this better than using a flatbed scanner?

gsich 3y ago
DSLR (or mirrorless) scanning is way superior to flatbed. Not just quality but also speed. You can "scan" a roll of 36 pictures in ~10 minutes compared to 5 minutes per frame with a flatbed.
- ancientworldnow 3y ago
  It's definitely not superior in quality compared to a good flatbed but speed is much better.
  - jetrink 3y ago
    For 35mm, flatbeds just do not have comparable resolution to a digital camera with a good macro lens. The most you'll get out of the best flatbed is about 2300dpi (measured from resolved detail, not pixels). Generally, you end up with about 6-8MP of usable detail. If you own a digital camera already and are comfortable tinkering with your setup and workflow at first, camera scanning is the way to go. You'll get almost the full detail that 35mm film has to offer in less time overall for about the same cost.
  - flipthefrog 3y ago
    This simply isnt true. A DSLR with a sharp macro lens is a lot better than a flatbed. A dedicated filmscanner like those made by Nikon and Minolta 15-20 years ago, is very slow, but the quality is even higher
    - yzydserd 3y ago
      20 years ago so had a 4000 dpi film scanner. It was very slow, noisy, and memory hungry. But it made great scans. I have hundreds of rolls of B&W 35mm and 6x7’s on 120 film that I’d love to rescan. I don’t own a digital camera to take a photo of the film. Does anyone have experience on how to go about this? I’ve searched across HN and didn’t come up with much. Surely there are 35mm shooters today that have some contemporary high quality solution? Perhaps an epson v850? This thread gives me pause that it’d not be as good as using a digital camera rig.
  - lm28469 3y ago
    The best flatbed you can get as a consumer (Epson v850) is about as good as a mid range dedicated scanner (plustek), and it costs 2 or 3 times more. A proper camera based setup is both faster and better in term of output. I scan my own film with a 40 mpx debayered camera and get at least 4 times the effective resolution of my v850
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      Can you tell us more about your setup? I used to scan film with a Hasselblad X5, but I seemed to be hitting the level of grain with that beast.
      - lm28469 3y ago
        I'm using a monochrome Leica, with a lens harvested from a Minolta dimage 5400 scanner, the rest is a very crude diy setup, a pvc tube to hold the camera, two panes of glass, a laptop screen as backlight https://www.closeuphotography.com/minolta-dimage-scan-elite-5400-lens https://www.closeuphotography.com/minolta-dimage-scan-elite-...
        qingcharles 3y ago
        That's some fantastic information, thank you so much! I'm always interested in what can be done to improve the scans of old film. I think we're coming really close to perfection now. I'm especially stoked with how AI, when used very judiciously, can perform dust and scratch removal miracles.
    - yzydserd 3y ago
      I have hundreds of old rolls of B&W film I want to scan. I was looking at the v850 which seems to have a 6400dpi resolution which is ~60MP for 35mm film. Or a plustek opticfilm. Can you clarify what sort of camera based rig at a similar price point would be superior? Where’s the 4x resolution come in?
      - flipthefrog 3y ago
- pimlottc 3y ago
  How does that work exactly? Do you have some sort of jig for positioning the slides, lighting, etc?
  - dekhn 3y ago
    The way I did it was: 3d print a jig that held a very bright LED, a diffuser plate (to spread the LED light over the entire slide), the slide, and lens, and then pointed my DSLR at that. It wasn't very fast but I can easily see several ways I could have sped it up.
qingcharles 3y ago
You might just want to pay someone to do it. I used to have one of these $20,000 Hasselblad X5s and they do a really nice job with slides -- you can get someone to scan your slides on theirs, e.g.: https://www.iconla.com/film-services/imacon-scanning/ https://www.iconla.com/film-services/imacon-scanning/
vr46 3y ago
Not really. Flatbeds give excellent consistency in their results and their workflow. Setups with digital cameras vary, require quite a bit of equipment for the serious, and are subject to a lot of variations in the process plus require more post-processing IMHO - from cropping to correction. They can also not deal with dust and scratches like an ICE scanner can. Not everything is about resolution. Digital camera scanning folks are enthusiastic and I’m all for it, but there’s a huge amount of value in a simpler process and automation. Look up camera scanning equipment and you’ll see an enormous amount of kit available to optimize these setups. There’s a reason it needs optimizing! :) I have two slide projectors but haven’t used them since the 1990s because of all the faff and the fact that projection degrades slides. Plus the space required.
- gsich 3y ago
  There is not much automation with flatbed scanners. (neither with DSLR). Post processing is the same if you chose so. Negativelab Pro converts negatives to a usable image without issue. You can always tweak settings if you want. It works for both types.

c0nsumer 3y ago

Years ago I bought a Nikon Coolscan V to scan in all of my parents' old 110 slides. I would have loved a solution like this at the time, although that worked well (and way better than I thought) and the price ended up reasonable. I wish scanners like that were still made. Here's an old httrack image of the page I had documenting the process: https://nuxx.net/wiki_archive/A/110_Slide_/_35mm_Negative_Scanning https://nuxx.net/wiki_archive/A/110_Slide_/_35mm_Negative_Sc... Unfortunately it's not really repeatable as these scanners command quite a high price used and are fairly hard to come by.

qingcharles 3y ago
Great article, thank you!