John Thanks you gave a great presentation! I will be getting started on my project of slides and negatives some go back a long ways and other more recent like 20 years ago. Iwant to tke a moment to thank you for this video. I'll be using my old copy stand and my old film holders. so once again thank you.
Thank you for your comments Hank! It was quite a project to make this video, so it's nice to hear you enjoyed it. And wishing you the best of luck on your project. It is a lot of work but it comes with a ton of enjoyment too!
Thanks so much Paul. I had to watch my slideshow again and "re-enjoy" it after I read your comment! My favorite one is the last picture of my oldest brother Jerry in front of my Dad's 1958 Buick Special wagon. That car is legendary in my mind!
Thank you so much for this, John! The benefits of having Raw images to work from has convinced me to ditch my cheap digitizing scanner and use your methods instead.
Yes, my line is 11 1/2 inches up from the platform of the stand with the light panel removed. Of course this will only be for a GH5 camera and Olympus 60mm macro lens. This gets you in the right ballpark and you can always tweak it some if necessary to fill the frame just right. I'm now using my GH6 which has a 25mp sensor instead of 20mp on the GH5, so it takes larger files. Then I don't need to be so careful framing too tightly. In fact it has a 100mp mode too, but that's really overkill for this application. Thanks for watching my video and let me know how it works for you:)
Very helpful video, thanks. Do you continue to recommend the Cosmo copy stand for this ? Any issues with it ? I am looking at using my iPhone 14 tethered to my Mac book pro as a setup. Thanks again.
Yes, I do still see the Cosmo stand as the best option. I haven't noticed any downsides to it for what it is. There are others I would recommend over it, but are way too expensive unless you are making a living doing this or other macro work. But I haven't done a current search. If you haven't done so already, I would really recommend you test this approach before going forward with getting any of the equipment on my list. Just suspend the phone between two piles of books and simply shoot a macro shot of a well lit photo the exact size of a slide and then scrutinize for focus and clarity and speed. If it passes, then I'd say it is a good option! Thanks for this comment/question!
On my cameras (Panasonic Lumix GH5 and GH6), they connect to the computer with a USB-C cable. This is how they designed the system to communicate with the program on the computer so you can control the camera from the computer. It's called "Lumix Tether). This just allows me to take the picture with the software. Once captured to the computer, it is then imported into Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom for processing. Does this answer your question? Not all cameras have tether software, but you can still capture the images to the card in the camera and download to the computer for processing. I would use a cable release or the camera's timer for the exposure in that case.
You're right, but in another sense it is kind of exciting. I love seeing an old image showing up on my screen for the first time. For me, 35mm negatives are the most arduous. Kind of fiddly. I like doing slides more.
Yes. I just googled it and there is aplace called digitalmemoriesonline.net that does them for 50 cents each. If you have just a few, or don't mind spending the money for a large number of them this could be good. I doubt you would get a raw file from them, but most people wouldn't care about that. This technique is not for everyone!
Hi John, good stuff. I am not very savvy to all of this but wondered why you take the digital images with the emulsion side up? I have done something similar but the opposite side. Am I compromising quality by doing so?
Truthfully, I doubt you could tell the difference. My thinking is that the more tiny details you pay attention to, cumulatively they may make a significant contribution to the image quality. The reason I shoot with emulsion side up is because the film is made up of layers. The emulsion is where the image is. Below that is a layer of plastic. If you shoot on the shiny side, you will be looking through the layer of plastic to "see" the image. This will degrade the image quality slightly. By shooting the dull or emulsion side, you're seeing the image more clearly. See this link: hhsrop.wordpress.com/2020/01/20/film-study/
"Use electronic shutter to avoid vibrations". I hear it's not possible because it introduced banding. Without the light source and the camera having electronic shutter to test together - how are you managing this situation?
You only get banding with electronic shutter with certain kinds of light that flicker at just the wrong frequency. With this particular light source the flicker of the LED source is not an issue. Where I have found banding when shooting with electronic shutter in the past, it was with some fluorescent lights and also some vapor lights of some kind.
@@killpop8255 Just use the one I have linked under my video at Amazon called: "Rybozen Ultra-Thin Portable Slide Scanner 5 x 4 Inches LED Light Panel". If not this one, just buy a different one made for this purpose or just use mechanical shutter. You'll probably be OK with mech shutter. But if you notice any blur, just turn your ISO up gradually using a faster shutter speed until it's sharp. It will be hard to tell though because the blur would be so small. Just don't go high enough to add noise. That threshold will depend on your camera's age and sensor size. For example on a full frame newer camera, you might be able to go up to ISO 6400 before introducing too much noise. Don't concern yourself too much with this.
@@FourKnown Thanks but I want to understand because I'm thinking beyond this. Like with the Laowa Aurogon set it appears dof is so small stacks of several hundreds per shot. As I've just got the most expensive camera I could ever buy (not yet opened it) , I'm imagining the shutter wear on mechanical could be astronomical. And the lights will be expensive hence wanting to know the details.
@@killpop8255 Hmm. What camera are you getting? I just looked up the shutter life on a Lumix GH5 I sold and it's 200,000. I can't imagine yours would be less than 400,00?? As for the Laowa Aurogon lenses, looking them up, it seems they are for very very high mag work. What kind of work will you be doing?
Thanks for excellent video. Just wondering why you used a level rather than the level indicators in the camera. I have Olympus micro four-thirds which have these, and just assuming the Lumix cameras do too.
You could use the camera leveling but if the table is not flat this wouldn't give the best result. This way it doesn't matter if the table is level completely or not.
I love your tutorial!!! And I am a fan! In your Video it says at the the end of video all the instruments like camera stand etc. but it didn’t say. Can you please give names and should I go to B&H
Thank you for your kind words Ravi! The links to all the items needed are in the description under the video. Please click "Show more" at the end of the description :)
Have you seen any evidence that copying emulsion side up makes any difference? When we photograph a negative or slide, we are photographing the light passing through the film (emulsion plus celluloid). Won't the photographed image be virtually identical regardless of which side of the film is up?
The answer is "no". But if we pay attention to all the little details, we can get some assurance of that we will get the best results we can. There are many short cuts a person can take and still get nice results! This idea came from a co-worker when I worked at Boeing. He did micro-electronics failure analysis. Very sharp guy.
Did not see your second question earlier. The idea is that as the light passes through the celluloid after passing through the emulsion there is a tiny amount of distortion. But with the emulsion side up, the celluloid only serves as a slight diffuser without distorting the image and the camera is photographing the sharpness in the emulsion directly.. This is how my engineer friend reasoned it :)
No, I hadn't heard of that. Thanks! The problem is that I've not taken the leap to Lightroom yet. I'm worried about losing my file organization I've established with thousands of files over the last 15 years or so.
Bought all hardware with Amazon. Long behold, there is no tethering software for Nikon D800 or D850(have these both cameras); there is tethering software for D760 and D6. Also, macOS Ventura with my new MacBook doesn’t work! Old OS like Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave would work. What a bummer 😢
Just don't destroy your negatives or slides after digitizing. There is no guarantee the digital formats of today could be easily accessed after many decades as old computer technology will become obsolete.
Good point-I agree! Thanks for mentioning this. I keep mine in acid-free archival sleeves in a 3-ring binder. Some of the early stiffer slide-holder pages were not archival. I think they were made by 20th Century Plastics.
Thank you for the modeling clay idea! Brilliant. I was driving myself crazy figuring out how to stabilize my rig. You were a big help.
Glad it helped. Thanks for the feedback!
Great video. Very detailed and informative.
Thanks very much:)
Thanks for Posting this information is very Useful.
Thank you John. What an informative video. Superb content.
Thanks for your kind comments.
John Thanks you gave a great presentation! I will be getting started on my project of slides and negatives some go back a long ways and other more recent like 20 years ago. Iwant to tke a moment to thank you for this video. I'll be using my old copy stand and my old film holders. so once again thank you.
Thank you for your comments Hank! It was quite a project to make this video, so it's nice to hear you enjoyed it. And wishing you the best of luck on your project. It is a lot of work but it comes with a ton of enjoyment too!
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 - thanks for posting this John. Very useful 👍🏻
It's like discovering HDTV all over again. Well done!
Thanks. That's a good comparison!
Fantastic video John! I especially enjoyed looking at your images at the end….so many great memories!
Thanks so much Paul. I had to watch my slideshow again and "re-enjoy" it after I read your comment! My favorite one is the last picture of my oldest brother Jerry in front of my Dad's 1958 Buick Special wagon. That car is legendary in my mind!
👏show de bola! greetings from Brazil❗
Thank you so much for this, John! The benefits of having Raw images to work from has convinced me to ditch my cheap digitizing scanner and use your methods instead.
That's good to hear. Thanks for letting me know!
Thank you for this. Great video - very informative!
You have some really great results! Any macro lens works?
Thank you Tom! Yes any modern macro lens rated at a 1:1 magnification capability should work very well on your interchangeable lens camera.
awesome video :]
Thanks!
Excellent! what lens did you use please?
Never mind! I went back and you did say
Did you do any testing of the light panel to determine the evenness of the light?
No, but subjectively, it seemed very uniform. It IS made for this purpose...
You mentioned you marked how high your camera needs to be. How high should the camera be so I can also mark the stand as well. Thanks.
Yes, my line is 11 1/2 inches up from the platform of the stand with the light panel removed. Of course this will only be for a GH5 camera and Olympus 60mm macro lens. This gets you in the right ballpark and you can always tweak it some if necessary to fill the frame just right. I'm now using my GH6 which has a 25mp sensor instead of 20mp on the GH5, so it takes larger files. Then I don't need to be so careful framing too tightly. In fact it has a 100mp mode too, but that's really overkill for this application. Thanks for watching my video and let me know how it works for you:)
@@FourKnown thank you.
Very helpful video, thanks. Do you continue to recommend the Cosmo copy stand for this ? Any issues with it ? I am looking at using my iPhone 14 tethered to my Mac book pro as a setup. Thanks again.
Yes, I do still see the Cosmo stand as the best option. I haven't noticed any downsides to it for what it is. There are others I would recommend over it, but are way too expensive unless you are making a living doing this or other macro work. But I haven't done a current search. If you haven't done so already, I would really recommend you test this approach before going forward with getting any of the equipment on my list. Just suspend the phone between two piles of books and simply shoot a macro shot of a well lit photo the exact size of a slide and then scrutinize for focus and clarity and speed. If it passes, then I'd say it is a good option! Thanks for this comment/question!
@@FourKnown Thank you for the response and wonderful information.
Hello, John,
I wonder how you link the camera to the monitor? With an HDMI cable? And how do you control the remake on the monitor screen?
On my cameras (Panasonic Lumix GH5 and GH6), they connect to the computer with a USB-C cable. This is how they designed the system to communicate with the program on the computer so you can control the camera from the computer. It's called "Lumix Tether). This just allows me to take the picture with the software. Once captured to the computer, it is then imported into Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom for processing. Does this answer your question? Not all cameras have tether software, but you can still capture the images to the card in the camera and download to the computer for processing. I would use a cable release or the camera's timer for the exposure in that case.
Nice presentation. Unfortunately, no matter how you cut it, scanning negatives and slides is truly an arduous task!
You're right, but in another sense it is kind of exciting. I love seeing an old image showing up on my screen for the first time. For me, 35mm negatives are the most arduous. Kind of fiddly. I like doing slides more.
Very interesting! I’m just wondering. Is it possible to pay a professional to do that?
Yes. I just googled it and there is aplace called digitalmemoriesonline.net that does them for 50 cents each. If you have just a few, or don't mind spending the money for a large number of them this could be good. I doubt you would get a raw file from them, but most people wouldn't care about that. This technique is not for everyone!
Hi John, good stuff. I am not very savvy to all of this but wondered why you take the digital images with the emulsion side up? I have done something similar but the opposite side. Am I compromising quality by doing so?
Truthfully, I doubt you could tell the difference. My thinking is that the more tiny details you pay attention to, cumulatively they may make a significant contribution to the image quality. The reason I shoot with emulsion side up is because the film is made up of layers. The emulsion is where the image is. Below that is a layer of plastic. If you shoot on the shiny side, you will be looking through the layer of plastic to "see" the image. This will degrade the image quality slightly. By shooting the dull or emulsion side, you're seeing the image more clearly. See this link: hhsrop.wordpress.com/2020/01/20/film-study/
"Use electronic shutter to avoid vibrations". I hear it's not possible because it introduced banding. Without the light source and the camera having electronic shutter to test together - how are you managing this situation?
You only get banding with electronic shutter with certain kinds of light that flicker at just the wrong frequency. With this particular light source the flicker of the LED source is not an issue. Where I have found banding when shooting with electronic shutter in the past, it was with some fluorescent lights and also some vapor lights of some kind.
@@FourKnown OK thanks but how do I know if a liight is 'safe'? I've never seen any as 'safe for electronic shutter'.
@@killpop8255 Just use the one I have linked under my video at Amazon called: "Rybozen Ultra-Thin Portable Slide Scanner 5 x 4 Inches LED Light Panel". If not this one, just buy a different one made for this purpose or just use mechanical shutter. You'll probably be OK with mech shutter. But if you notice any blur, just turn your ISO up gradually using a faster shutter speed until it's sharp. It will be hard to tell though because the blur would be so small. Just don't go high enough to add noise. That threshold will depend on your camera's age and sensor size. For example on a full frame newer camera, you might be able to go up to ISO 6400 before introducing too much noise. Don't concern yourself too much with this.
@@FourKnown Thanks but I want to understand because I'm thinking beyond this. Like with the Laowa Aurogon set it appears dof is so small stacks of several hundreds per shot. As I've just got the most expensive camera I could ever buy (not yet opened it) , I'm imagining the shutter wear on mechanical could be astronomical. And the lights will be expensive hence wanting to know the details.
@@killpop8255 Hmm. What camera are you getting? I just looked up the shutter life on a Lumix GH5 I sold and it's 200,000. I can't imagine yours would be less than 400,00?? As for the Laowa Aurogon lenses, looking them up, it seems they are for very very high mag work. What kind of work will you be doing?
Thanks for excellent video. Just wondering why you used a level rather than the level indicators in the camera. I have Olympus micro four-thirds which have these, and just assuming the Lumix cameras do too.
You could use the camera leveling but if the table is not flat this wouldn't give the best result. This way it doesn't matter if the table is level completely or not.
I love your tutorial!!! And I am a fan! In your Video it says at the the end of video all the instruments like camera stand etc. but it didn’t say. Can you please give names and should I go to B&H
Thank you for your kind words Ravi! The links to all the items needed are in the description under the video. Please click "Show more" at the end of the description :)
Have you seen any evidence that copying emulsion side up makes any difference? When we photograph a negative or slide, we are photographing the light passing through the film (emulsion plus celluloid). Won't the photographed image be virtually identical regardless of which side of the film is up?
The answer is "no". But if we pay attention to all the little details, we can get some assurance of that we will get the best results we can. There are many short cuts a person can take and still get nice results! This idea came from a co-worker when I worked at Boeing. He did micro-electronics failure analysis. Very sharp guy.
Did not see your second question earlier. The idea is that as the light passes through the celluloid after passing through the emulsion there is a tiny amount of distortion. But with the emulsion side up, the celluloid only serves as a slight diffuser without distorting the image and the camera is photographing the sharpness in the emulsion directly.. This is how my engineer friend reasoned it :)
Negative Lab Pro plug-in for Lightroom. Much faster and great results. But you must know this.
No, I hadn't heard of that. Thanks! The problem is that I've not taken the leap to Lightroom yet. I'm worried about losing my file organization I've established with thousands of files over the last 15 years or so.
What brand is your stand?
It's the Cosmo Mini 500. Links to everything is in the notes under the video.
Thank youuuuuuuu
Bought all hardware with Amazon. Long behold, there is no tethering software for Nikon D800 or D850(have these both cameras); there is tethering software for D760 and D6. Also, macOS Ventura with my new MacBook doesn’t work! Old OS like Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave would work. What a bummer 😢
Would this work: th-cam.com/video/_kRiGxBs0jY/w-d-xo.html
Just don't destroy your negatives or slides after digitizing. There is no guarantee the digital formats of today could be easily accessed after many decades as old computer technology will become obsolete.
Good point-I agree! Thanks for mentioning this. I keep mine in acid-free archival sleeves in a 3-ring binder. Some of the early stiffer slide-holder pages were not archival. I think they were made by 20th Century Plastics.
......just start off by spending several hundred dollars of equipment - and it’s easy ! 🥴