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A little test...

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Paolo7780

Guest
I've recently purchased this Panagor Slide Duplicator. This object is quite cheap, the lens quality is not outstanding but it is tank build.



My aim was to verify if the quality reachable with slides is higher than a film scanner (I use a Plustek7200). I want to show you some fast shots (200ISO and sky as light source) with some rugged sildes.
Results have been really good.

These are from a Fuji Velvia 100F and Contax T2: true scanner killers






This is a crop from the last.

These again from Velvia 100F and Minolta 35mm f2.












With a macro lens using a flash probably I would reach better sharpness.
The real gain of A900 over a film scanner is the lack of Dmax: the quantity of light is not fixed, we can change it as we want, and the CMOS hilight outfit helps. Shooting RAW we can remove color dominant easily, and the whole workflow is faster.
 

dhsimmonds

New member
Hi Paolo

This is very interesting indeed. I have tons of slides (and negatives) that I keep promising myself to "digitise" but baulk every time at scanning, de-specking and everything else that goes with scanning.:sleep006:

It looks to be a very well made device, does it only copy from 35mm or is there a variant that will copy from 6x6mm trannies as well?....I have both to digitise!
 

dhsimmonds

New member
I have also just done a Google search and found that the Panagor is over 25 years old....so no wonder it's so well made then. Nothing wrong with that or those images in my view.
 
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Shelby Lewis

Guest
cool!

This is also a great find in that, if you have enough megapixels, you can shoot 35mm chromes again without buying a scanner if you're enlargements aren't going to be huge. (or maybe if they are?)

Thanks for sharing.
 

edwardkaraa

New member
The problem that I see in such duplicators is that the limiting factor are the optics, which are never going to compete with a good scanner, no matter what.
 
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Paolo7780

Guest
Yep... The lens is not so good for detail extraction, but the tonal response is very very good. I've shot @ 24Mpixel and downsampled to 3000x2000px.

The result is good indeed, and usable up to 15x22cm or 20x30cm.

This bellow with a sharp 50mm lens and a flash would be better
 
Just out of curiosity, is the vignetting/falloff in corners in the originals? I was looking at one of those tubes with an eye toward knocking out the glass and screwing it onto the end of my 100/2.8 macro(it helps that my brother is a machinist). I bought the bellows setup with a macro MD lens for $90, with a MD-AF converter it will probably end up at ~$130. One big advantage is it will handle negatives as well, without modification.
 

Georg Baumann

Subscriber Member
aye... fascinating!

I think, all this setup is not needed anymore, except for existing slides of course.... then again, I might be wrong....
 
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