Thread: Slides to digital

The "slide copier" I have has also does 35mm or Instamatic film. Whether they are colour, negatives or slides is a matter for your image processing software rather than the digitising device.

I have done quite a few of my half frame slides.

I have some other formats that present issues I am still working on - I have a large number of 120 and 620 negatives dating back to the 1920s, a significant number of 75x75 slides, and a few strips of 16mm negatives.

Originally Posted by 123rover50

Whats a negative Slide Converter?
....

At the risk of stating the obvious, you get film in both negative and postive(slide) types.

Negative film(the most common type for just getting regular photo prints) needs a layer of processing to revert it back to human understandable colours.

So if you "take a photo" of a negative film frame with a digital camera, it's still a negative.

If you shoot this negative in jpg mode on the camera, the reversal process in software looks 'ugly'(relative term), but if using camera raw format, can come up really nice, and with some basic manipulation came end up looking even nicer than a standard lab print of the negative too(ie. my reference to dodge and burn whilst photographing the negative). And once the negative has been captured and in your preferred editing software, further processing if needed can reveal even more detail again.

Overall, using a half decent modern digital camera in raw format allows a ton of editing leeway if you're after getting the most out of a particular film.

The process of film reversal is very easy to do. I think I remember that some software even have a one click step to do this, but doing it manually is also trivially easy, once you do it once or twice.
If you know about software editing, then you know of the histogram(levels and curves) tool. Usually the levels curves tool shows a linear/direct gradient line, from low darks/blacks to high highlights/whites.
You grab the lower end of the gradient and lift it to high, and then grab the high end of the gradient and bring it back to low levels. The end result is that the previously linear gradient will then look like a sinewave curve.
This will then invert the once negative digital image into a colour corrected version. Once you have the corrected colour, it will almost certainly have a way off white balance(mine were all blue, which is to be expected), and I then used a click to whitebalance, click on a white/grey/black point in the image and it transformed from this blue colour image into a nicely balanced colour image.

From what I can understand with this QPIX devices, they seem to capture in jpg only. There is no mention in the manuals of any option for file format.

So this negative slide scanner machine has the option to do the colour reversal itself, which saves some time in doing those processing steps in software.
But in saying that, the only time you need to selectively do this colour reversal step is if you change the light source used to shoot the film with your camera.
Once I got my reversal process to my liking, I saved it as a batch edit process, and then applied it to all images I wanted reversed.

Originally Posted by AK83

If you want quality reproductions, nothing beats a modern digital camera copy, in it's native raw format.
<snip>
I have a Nikon system, and got myself an old slide copy bellows for the Nikon F mount(which also has the side benefit of being a lens extension system for high magnification photography too).
I found an old Nikon PB-4 bellows, with slide copy attachment, which holds the negatives at a preset distance from whatever lens works best for you, and allow you full coverage of the slide. Hold both mounted and strips film.

I run Pentax DSLRs (currently K-mount - bayonet) but I have a bellows from my days of running Pentax screw mount. I have an adaptor I bought at the time I bought my first Pentax K-mount film camera in 1989. I'll give it a go.

Originally Posted by AK83

Mum had a suitcase full of Kodakchrome slides from their early years in Aus, which I wanted to convert, and tested it out on my small collection of films and negs.
When I went to collect the suitcase of films from mum, turned out the stupid sister threw them all out about a month prior!

I was annoyed when I found my sisters had turfed my parent's photo albums. I particularly wanted the photos Dad took in Darwin after the Japanese bombings. I wanted to pass them on to the Australian War Memorial. (Dad was there as part of the Civil Constructional Corps Civil Constructional Corps in Australia during WW2. He'd lost an eye as a child so couldn't enlist with his brothers.)

I wasn’t looking but obviously Google was - this popped up in my YouTube feed tonight



I have a copy stand I made (at work) back in 1968. I have a K-mount macro lens.

I have a light box,

As an alternative, I have an M42 screw mount bellows - I might have the slide holder, too. I have a genuine Pentax M42 to K-mount adaptor which is much neater than the adaptor shown in the video. It looks like this:

KF06.278-1-518x518.jpg

I need a way to hold film strips flat. I may have a solution to that in one of my non-working slide copiers.

My camera doesn’t have a fold-out screen so I’ll need to look into the viewfinder for accurate focussing. Fortunately, I have a right-angle viewfinder attachment.

IMG_0003.jpeg


If I sort something out, I’ll post pics.

Oh, I do have Lightroom.

Originally Posted by AK83

At the risk of stating the obvious, you get film in both negative and postive(slide) types.

Negative film(the most common type for just getting regular photo prints) needs a layer of processing to revert it back to human understandable colours.

So if you "take a photo" of a negative film frame with a digital camera, it's still a negative.

If you shoot this negative in jpg mode on the camera, the reversal process in software looks 'ugly'(relative term), but if using camera raw format, can come up really nice, and with some basic manipulation came end up looking even nicer than a standard lab print of the negative too(ie. my reference to dodge and burn whilst photographing the negative). And once the negative has been captured and in your preferred editing software, further processing if needed can reveal even more detail again.

Overall, using a half decent modern digital camera in raw format allows a ton of editing leeway if you're after getting the most out of a particular film.

The process of film reversal is very easy to do. I think I remember that some software even have a one click step to do this, but doing it manually is also trivially easy, once you do it once or twice.
If you know about software editing, then you know of the histogram(levels and curves) tool. Usually the levels curves tool shows a linear/direct gradient line, from low darks/blacks to high highlights/whites.
You grab the lower end of the gradient and lift it to high, and then grab the high end of the gradient and bring it back to low levels. The end result is that the previously linear gradient will then look like a sinewave curve.
This will then invert the once negative digital image into a colour corrected version. Once you have the corrected colour, it will almost certainly have a way off white balance(mine were all blue, which is to be expected), and I then used a click to whitebalance, click on a white/grey/black point in the image and it transformed from this blue colour image into a nicely balanced colour image.

From what I can understand with this QPIX devices, they seem to capture in jpg only. There is no mention in the manuals of any option for file format.

So this negative slide scanner machine has the option to do the colour reversal itself, which saves some time in doing those processing steps in software.
But in saying that, the only time you need to selectively do this colour reversal step is if you change the light source used to shoot the film with your camera.
Once I got my reversal process to my liking, I saved it as a batch edit process, and then applied it to all images I wanted reversed.

Thanks for that, even though most of it was way over my head, the last paragraph answered my question. I am not into this high tech stuff. My digital camera is a small pocket one much like my Canon Demi and I find its all I need. I will look into this QPIX thing some more.
Keith

I was at a friend's place today and mentioned this thread.

She gave me a slide/negative/photo copier to try out. The internet reviews are varied on this unit, an Otek PS979

Here are a couple I just did. I haven't done any editing or corrections, these are straight from the scanner. I suspect it's not a scanner but takes a photo of the image as it's too quick.

One taken in 1979 - I was baby-sitting our son. Colours aren't too bad.

PICT0004.jpg

This one taken in 1970 at work in Ceduna early one morning. The colours are wrong, that should be an orange sunrise.

PICT0001.jpg

The quality may be good enough for most of my slides. I need to try it on some colour photos and colour negatives.

Originally Posted by p38arover

I was at a friend's place today and mentioned this thread.

She gave me a slide/negative/photo copier to try out. The internet reviews are varied on this unit, an Otek PS979

Here are a couple I just did. I haven't done any editing or corrections, these are straight from the scanner. I suspect it's not a scanner but takes a photo of the image as it's too quick.

One taken in 1979 - I was baby-sitting our son. Colours aren't too bad.

PICT0004.jpg

This one taken in 1970 at work in Ceduna early one morning. The colours are wrong, that should be an orange sunrise.

PICT0001.jpg

The quality may be good enough for most of my slides. I need to try it on some colour photos and colour negatives.

Love the first photo, did Elisabeth take it as evidence of responsible father-son supervision?

Originally Posted by V8Ian

Love the first photo, did Elisabeth take it as evidence of responsible father-son supervision?

Yes.

Here's a black and white photo taken in the 50s or 60s. Not yet cropped to remove the carrier as it was a small photo.


PICT0007.jpg