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Scanning MF Film with MF Digital System

Godfrey

Well-known member
Read through the rest of the thread now. :)

I'm not going to the extent of building an "as good as it gets" scanning system. That's a bit beyond both my intent and my means. Perhaps my intent is better expressed as "as good as the equipment I have on hand can be for making a satisfying 8x10 to 13x19 inch print from my medium format negatives."

I did some experimentation yesterday using the CFVII 50c back on my Hasselblad 500CM body fitted with two extension tubes and the Makro-Planar 120mm lens. All together, this setup nets a 1:1.15 maximum magnification, more than necessary for capturing 6x6 negatives, with super quality resolution and contrast to the corners of the frame. However, it's something of a cumbersome setup and my existing copy stand/focusing rail/etc nets a fairly limited range of magnifications possible, mostly due to the long focal length of the lens. .

So today I'm going to experiment with a similar setup using the 907x body and mount adapters to test out and compare what I can get out of my Leica R lenses (50, macro 60, macro 100, bellows, etc) for this purpose. The advantages are much less cumbersome setup, much more range possible. I could also get a V to X system mount adapter and use the Makro-Planar 120mm in this same way, but the focal length is a bit long and that will be the lowest priority to try out since I have to spend for another mount adapter...

G
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
I didn't have much time to experiment yesterday, but I started by pulling out the Leica BEOON device, which is a dedicated small copy stand and designed for a 50mm lens to copy negatives and other flat subject matter in the 1:1 to 1:3 magnification range. It comes with a set of extension tubes and mounts for LTM and M-bayonet mounting for both camera and lens, masks for 2:3 format originals at 1:1, 1:1.5, 1:2 and 1:3 magnification, and a simple chart showing the necessary configuration of tubes for each of those magnifications. Very simple to set up and use...

Just for a test, I fitted a Summicron-M 50mm lens at 1:1 and 1:3 magnification configs on the lens side and the 907x with Fotodiox Pro M->X mount adapter on the camera side. The only fitting point that takes a little work is getting the camera perfectly aligned with the BEOON stage because it utilizes an M->LTM lens mount adapter to fit the camera body of choice. This means that to get the body properly aligned, you have to tighten the mount adapter "just enough" to align it. It's easy to be slightly off the mark... :)

I set the 907x/CFVII 50c back to Electronic Shutter mode and turned on Live View at the 1:1 setting. The 50mm lens hard vignettes at the corners of the frame due to the small diameter M lens mount, but images the 33x33 crop field without vignetting. At the 1:1 configuration setting, the BEOON's vertical pillar is just a hair off its bottom-most stop but images the 33x33 dimensions of the subject field quite precisely. In the full frame view, despite the vignetting, the magnification seems just slightly under 1:1 (perhaps 1:1.05) as it images 46mm across the horizontal rather than 44mm. The full-frame vignetting disappears at 1:3 magnification config settings. The BEOON's column is extended a little short of the 1:3 magnification scribed mark and the actual magnification achieved is 1:2.73.

Since for Hasselblad 6x6 negatives, the format dimensions are 56x56 mm and needed magnification to capture a full frame is 1:1.7, I'm sure I could come up with a configuration using the 1:2 tube configuration and some of the lens's native focusing helicoid range to achieve a clean full-frame capture.

It might also be possible using the R Adapter M and the Macro-Elmarit-R 60mm, but I didn't have time to test that configuration on the BEOON. Since that lens and adapter is quite a bit bulkier than the M-mount 50mm lens, if it fits in the BEOON's space, it would likely only be useful for transparency/negative capture since the lens would likely get in the way of lighting for reflected light illumination. I already know this combination works very nicely on the 907x body using the Fotodiox Pro R->X mount adapter and a copystand so I likely won't spend the time to test it further on the BEOON.

I was interested in testing with the BEOON because it is a very fast device to set up for a single frame capture, much faster than setting up my Novoflex Magic copy stand. And it proves workable.

Enjoy! G
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
I pulled out my dedicated 6x6 pinhole camera the other day, the "ReallySoSubtle 6x6", and discovered I had a few exposures left on the roll*of Ilford HP5 that I had put into it last year. Hmmm... I should use that up! and it gave me the opportunity to scan some new 6x6 film exposures. :)

I used the 907x fitted with the Fotodiox Pro R to X mount adapter and the Macro-Elmarit-R 60mm + Macro Adapter-R to capture the negatives. Aside from the mostly ridiculous nature of the endeavor (after all, pinhole images are never "high resolution" and a 50Mpixel capture is mostly a laugh), it did a good job.


Couch & Lamp - Santa Clara 2020


Bed & Bears - Santa Clara 2020


Tall Palms - San Jose 2020


Bicycle & Cafe - San Jose 2020


Appropriate Distance - San Jose 2020

One thing that I don't understand, though: When I have a mount adapter for either Leica M or Leica R lenses on the camera, and the camera is oriented straight down on the copy stand, the operation of the touch screen becomes flakey. Eventually the touch screen controls in the LCD freeze and I have to power off and restart to regain operation. This doesn't happen when I'm using the XCD21 lens, and it doesn't happen when I'm using the back on the 500CM in Live View/Electronic shutter mode. I'm a little perplexed by why this would be happening.

Has anyone else seen this kind of behavior?

G
 

buildbot

Well-known member
I pulled out my dedicated 6x6 pinhole camera the other day, the "ReallySoSubtle 6x6", and discovered I had a few exposures left on the roll*of Ilford HP5 that I had put into it last year. Hmmm... I should use that up! and it gave me the opportunity to scan some new 6x6 film exposures. :)

I used the 907x fitted with the Fotodiox Pro R to X mount adapter and the Macro-Elmarit-R 60mm + Macro Adapter-R to capture the negatives. Aside from the mostly ridiculous nature of the endeavor (after all, pinhole images are never "high resolution" and a 50Mpixel capture is mostly a laugh), it did a good job.


Couch & Lamp - Santa Clara 2020


Bed & Bears - Santa Clara 2020


Tall Palms - San Jose 2020


Bicycle & Cafe - San Jose 2020


Appropriate Distance - San Jose 2020

One thing that I don't understand, though: When I have a mount adapter for either Leica M or Leica R lenses on the camera, and the camera is oriented straight down on the copy stand, the operation of the touch screen becomes flakey. Eventually the touch screen controls in the LCD freeze and I have to power off and restart to regain operation. This doesn't happen when I'm using the XCD21 lens, and it doesn't happen when I'm using the back on the 500CM in Live View/Electronic shutter mode. I'm a little perplexed by why this would be happening.

Has anyone else seen this kind of behavior?

G
Hazarding a guess as to the cause, it could be that when pointed straight down, the adapter makes contact with the lens interface pins and either is causing electrical shorts that cause the voltage to drop slightly, causing the flaking touch screen and eventual lockup, or it could be some kind of lens detection mechanism getting triggered over and over, by the vibration of you touching the screen and causing the pins to shift slightly. Could use a lot of resources and cause a lockup eventually? Just speculating.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
Hazarding a guess as to the cause, it could be that when pointed straight down, the adapter makes contact with the lens interface pins and either is causing electrical shorts that cause the voltage to drop slightly, causing the flaking touch screen and eventual lockup, or it could be some kind of lens detection mechanism getting triggered over and over, by the vibration of you touching the screen and causing the pins to shift slightly. Could use a lot of resources and cause a lockup eventually? Just speculating.
I was thinking of that because the Fotodiox Pro R->X Adapter is a somewhat looser fit in the 907x bayonet mount (more rotational movement) than either their own M->X Adapter or the Hasselblad X-V Adapter. But it doesn't have any fore-aft movement, nor does it contact any of the electrical contacts (I even taped over that section of the bayonet that might to ensure it couldn't... no difference). There's no lens detection mechanism that I can detect ... I have to explicitly tell the body to use the electronic shutter when I fit anything other than an XCD lens, even with the X-V Adapter.

I noticed that the CVFII 50c back will very very occasionally freeze up when I'm using it on the 500CM body if I shoot downwards at a steep angle too. I wonder if the issue is cause by something in the orientation sensor.

Another occasional fault I've seen with the 907x/CFVII 50c is that if I'm shooting with the electronic shutter enabled for a while and then switch back to the XCD lens, disable the electronic shutter, again very very occasionally the camera will not power down until I eject the battery. Ejecting the battery always solves the power-down problem, of course, and the camera always wakes up normally afterwards.

A few "first version" firmware glitches, I'm sure. I hope we see a few improvements happen and a new firmware rev soon, but it may wait until the standard edition 907x is released.

G
 

Shashin

Well-known member
This is why I hate marketing. If their system is sooo easy to use, why do they offer so much training and technical support? And what in the world is a "cultural heritage solution"?

:banghead:

Lets see, I could "save" $25,000 buy buying this demo unit, or I could save $60,000 by not...
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
...
One thing that I don't understand, though: When I have a mount adapter for either Leica M or Leica R lenses on the camera, and the camera is oriented straight down on the copy stand, the operation of the touch screen becomes flakey. Eventually the touch screen controls in the LCD freeze and I have to power off and restart to regain operation. This doesn't happen when I'm using the XCD21 lens, and it doesn't happen when I'm using the back on the 500CM in Live View/Electronic shutter mode. I'm a little perplexed by why this would be happening. ...
It's been a while since I posted that, and I've reached a conclusion.

Follow up and closure:
I found that the same thing happened with the XCD 45P lens. As I wrote elsewhere, I discovered that once I'd used the bubble level's "Calibrate" function, the problems disappeared*. During the course of trying to fix the problem, I also ran into an issue with doing firmware updates where the camera would start a firmware load and then hang, just sitting there spinning the "busy" wheel. With the recent release of Firmware v1.2.0 for the CFVII 50c back, and its corollary updates for the 907x body and 45P lens, the firmware update mechanism seems to be completely settled now too: All updates installed flawlessly, correctly, and the 907x works to spec.

* I suspect the problem was an initialization issue with the orientation sensors and that doing a Calibration op forced proper initialization of the underlying hardware. Conjecture, yes, but it makes sense. Nothing to worry about any more, regardless.

I've reported this back to Hasselblad Customer Service and thus to Hasselblad Engineering in Sweden as well. They were all helpful and have done me excellent support, remarkably promptly too given that we're in the middle of a global pandemic! I want to be sure others know how supportive they've been. :)

G
 

RLB

Member
This is why I hate marketing. If their system is sooo easy to use, why do they offer so much training and technical support? And what in the world is a "cultural heritage solution"?

:banghead:

Lets see, I could "save" $25,000 buy buying this demo unit, or I could save $60,000 by not...

These systems are being marked to museums who have massive digitizations projects and big budgets. For them is makes perfect sense, for most photographers not so much. I will say their build quality is excellent, but that comes at a price.

Robert B
 

invisibleflash

New member
How has everyone progressed with their camera scanning over the time this thread was started?

I found this forum from a search on camera scanning. I still don't know what 'Get DPI' means, but it looked like a good photo forum in general, so I joined it.

I'm a photographer (street) and archivist. I work in many areas of archival preservation, including audio, cine' film, VHS and vintage advertising media. I had hurt my foot last year, so combined with the virus, that killed my work in NYC. So, I dug deeper into archival work, bought a Kaiser copy stand and could sit some with my bad foot while doing my work.

I'm like most of you. I got a lot of old negs and chromes of my own + the Archives chromes and negs. I hate the flatbed scanner for negs. I do tons of scanning, but it is generally paper on the flatbed and also the sheet fed scanner. I also do lots of copy stand work; usually doing about 20,000 to 30,000 scans a year with the sheetfed scanner. I wanted to try the digital camera for film scans and have been working on that. I'm more or less studying it and trying little experiments.

This was shot with a 16mp Fuji. Nothing close to macro, I had to crop it a lot. I just wanted to see how things looked with the copy stand duplication before diving into it deeper. In the old days, when I had more $$, I didn't care. I would throw $$ at a thing to learn about it. But now, being on a tight budget, I have to be a more judicious.




It is an eBay slide I bought for a few $$. I call it 'Annie Leibovitz as a toddler.'​

The light source makes a big difference. Cheap LED light boxes can be way off color. But from a few experiments I did, I could see that camera scanning had some possibilities even if I was not rich.

This fellow has done some interesting work in camera scanning...

Digitizing Negatives with a Camera – Revisited – PhotoPXL

He did an earlier camera scanning article. I can't find the PDF link, but here is something on it. Maybe you can find the PDF. (I've got a copy of the older PDF, but no link to it.)

Scannerless Digital Capture and Processing of Negative Film Photographs - Luminous Landscape (luminous-landscape.com)

I found the first article at the Large Format Forum. They are run by a pretty anal character. I've been thrown out from that forum a few times, so I gave up on them, although I still read it. I hope this forum is not run the same.

Beside technique, it is interesting in seeing how the resolution target improved between the 2 articles. The Thor resolution target is much, much better than the Lasersoft.

Well, that is my story. Let us know where you are at with your camera scanning and thanks to all the members for your participation!
 
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invisibleflash

New member
A high resolution “scan” doesn’t really tell me anything about the overall quality of the process. If the goal is to exactly match the tones and colors of the original then how do you know it matches? If that’s your goal then it doesn’t matter if the digital version looks good, it only matters that it looks just like the original. It’s a technical process and requires some form of objective validation of the results.

If your goal is a good looking digital image based on the original then the exact match doesn’t matter since that’s not one of your criteria. In this case it’s an artistic endeavor and as long as the artist is happy then it’s successful.

Either way they are two entirely different goals.
In the old days, they would put a color and grayscale in the copy shot for just that reason. But not practical with film. I got no answer, except your eyeballs. Just like we post process everything else...give it your best shot!
 

anyone

Well-known member
Looking further into camera scanning, I'd like to ask a few practical questions:
Stitching: how do you stitch accurately? I ran into issues in my trial with homogeneous skies and couldn't really find an automatic way, so I had to hand-stitch which was annoying. I used the photoshop stitching tool.

Film holders / light source: I remember @darr wrote about the Sunray Copy Box. It looks like a nice system, albeit a bit pricy compared to a DIY solution. Can anyone comment on the film flatness which can be achieved? Is it worth the investment compared to having a Kaiser slimlite plano + enlarger film holder?

I'm looking into replacing my drum scanner in the future, but the results must be comparable.

Thank you!
 

anyone

Well-known member
Now the step has come, my drum scanner found a new home, I'm doing the last farewell scans.

Still looking for answers on the questions above. In addition: does anyone wet mount their film for camera scanning to achieve ultimate flatness, or is this step unnecessary when using the GFX as a "scanner"?

Thank you!
 
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MartinN

Well-known member
Now the step has come, my drum scanner found a new home, I'm doing the last farewell scans.

Still looking for answers on the questions above. In addition: does anyone wet mount their film for camera scanning to achieve ultimate flatness, or is this step unnecessary when using the GFX as a "scanner"?

Thank you!
Congrats, you will have more room for something else, but I think you will miss the extraordinary resolution. However, few films and lenses resolve that much. BTW, I will keep my Plustek OpticFilm 120 for MF, and no, I won’t set up a camera repro system.
 

davidrm

Member
Congrats, you will have more room for something else, but I think you will miss the extraordinary resolution. However, few films and lenses resolve that much. BTW, I will keep my Plustek OpticFilm 120 for MF, and no, I won’t set up a camera repro system.
Sorry to revive this old thread, but the topic is something I've been wrestling with over the last week.

I also use an OpticFilm 120 (which I'm quite happy with) and (whisper it) Silverfast (ditto, with some reservations). Calibrating the OF120 with the high resolution SF IT8 target they released a few years back gives me an almost perfect colour reproduction for transparencies (mainly Provia 100F and Kodak E100). However, some rough tests have convinced me that I can pull more details from the shadows with a camera scan, and of course it's a lot faster. So I'm on the edge of buying a Negative Supply kit. However ...

... so far I just cannot get as good colour out of the camera than I can out of the OF120. I'm using CaptureOne with a Cobalt Repro profile and Linear curve, and I've measured the white balance of my nominally D50 Cabin light panel (which is over 20 years old) and I get get close, but close is not enough since I already own a solution which does an excellent job. I hesitate to mention the camera I'm using in such august company: it's an Olympus OM-1 in multishot mode with 60mm Macro f/2.8. Good enough for me. The OF120 makes bigger files but I don't think there's much detail in the film beyond around 4000dpi. Note, some time ago I compared the OF120 with a well-maintained Hasselblad X5 - at 3200dpi there really wasn't much in it, if anything. Certainly not $15'000 difference.

I suspect the weak point is the light panel, but I wonder if anybody has any advice? I don't really see the point of gaining a lot of time at the acquisition point but spending hours in CaptureOne trying to get a good reproduction - not to mention losing the benefit of IR dust & scratch removal. I've looked into calibrating the setup, but as far as I can see Lumariver doesn't support transparency targets.

So am I on a fool's errand here? Apart from speed, at the "low" end (i.e not CaptureOne CH territory) does "scanning" with a camera REALLY offer cut and dried advantages over a competent film scanner?
 

cunim

Well-known member
The more area you scan at one time, the more you lose in precision. If your electronics are capable of resolving 16 bit data (unlikely without cooling or frame averaging), a high quality spot scanner could give you that. A linear array scanner might take that down to 14 bits. An area array scanner (camera) will be hard pressed to do much better than 12 bits. Once you get beyond about 12 bits of precision, the problem is flare within the optics. I know nothing about the OF120 but it looks you moved from a sealed box system that tries to minimise flare to an open system that does not.

What does all this mean? It means that the old drum scanners produced better images - for a reason. Less flare To optimise camera-based scans, we can implement flare reduction protocols (as P1 does, for example, in their CH systems or as it seems that the OF120 does). That way, we can make our camera-based scans look good and yield a decent compromise between precision and convenience. However, we shouldn't expect a simple light-stand/plate illuminater type system to be particularly good for scanning transparencies. Most people don't know that because they only have experience with the stand system. You won't miss what you don't know and the stand system is cheap and convenient. Sadly, you have experience with something better and will have to decide what that means to you.
 

guphotography

Well-known member
You should look into valoi as an alternative, way more reasonably priced than negative supply, very even light source, holds a negative flat.

My old setup was with a kaiser copystand, h2 with macro lens and a multi shot back, very fast capture, excellent results.

There is a free conversion plug in for capture one that allows you to convert negatives, also with lcc, you can address light falloff.

Enjoy it!
 

tenmangu81

Well-known member
Hi David,
I am just on the way to scan my 135 films using an MF camera and a Negative Supply (™) kit. I've bought the Light Souce Mini (with CRI 97) and a Basic Film Carrier 35mm. According to my first trials, it seems to give rather good results and I expect even better very soon.
BUT I don't use Capture One anymore. I did it some time ago, and never succeeded in obtaining good results when inverting my negatives, and even Capture One CH inverting profiles were not as performing as expected.
Because I switched from Leica to Hasselblad, I came from Capture One to Lightroom, and I have bought the Negative Lab Pro (™) plug-in software, which does a rather good job. Below is my first trial.
Cheers

Edit : If there is an inverting plug-in for Capture One (what I didn't know) as informed by guphotography, just try it, indeed !!
 

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