How to Scan Slides & Negatives (Nikon ES-2 Film Digitizer)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 พ.ค. 2020
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A few years ago I purchased random carousels of slides and just finally got around to scanning them. This video is all about how to scan your film or slides aka digitize them. I used the Nikon Z7 and Nikon ES-2 Slide Digitizer. It is possible that this slide digitizer will also work with macro lenses from Sony and Canon.
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I cant wait to scan the rest of these bad boys!!!!!
Bro this is so cool
AMAZING!!!!!! WOW!
How well does this compare to using a dedicated desktop film scanner?
Any reason you didn't get a dedicated film scanner?
I have a scanner high res, but I don't know if the software will convert the files to raw.
Best practices for copying negatives with a macro is to face the emulsion toward camera not toward light as you have done. Your way sets the image so that it's not backwards, but by facing the emulsion toward the lens results in a slightly sharper image. You would then be focusing on the grain, not the image. Then you just reverse it in post. No need to be shooting through the cellulose which adds a slight haze.
I use an ES-2 and I didn't know which side to face which direction. Turned out most slides were marked "This side to projector" or "This side to screen" so I used that as "this side to camera" or "this side to ES-2 light" respectively. I think that matches what you were recommending.
@@xxtwnz2919 Actually, it's not what I was recommending at all. It's the opposite. What you're referring to is for making sure you're viewing the image correctly on a screen, that words are not backwards, etc. But in terms of getting absolute sharpness, you need to shoot the side of the film where the image is, which is the emulsion side, the dull side. Otherwise, with the shiny side toward the lens, you're shooting through the film material to the image on the other side. But it WILL be backwards and need to be flipped in post. Which is just a click or can be done to all the images at once during import into any editor.
Thank you for this information I just started using the ES2!
Best way is to test it, I tried shooting with the emulsion side to the camera and the base and found no noticable difference, so I just shot with the "correct" side to the camera to save some time.
I'm assuming unrealzocker is right. which side doesn't make any difference. If it did you would post pics of both showing that's wrong. So hot air?
This is my favorite video you’ve ever done. The trick you shared about taking multiple exposures and HDR merging them helped me recover a ton of detail in some 1960s photos of my dad (who recently passed).
Fantastic video, thank you, Jared! Reminds me of the time when I was the archivist for the longest continuously running explosives and heavy chemical manufacturing sites in Melbourne nearly 25 years ago. I had a collection of 10,000 photographs that documented just about everything that went on. It was an incredible experience.
Thanks for delivering on your promise. Have loads of negatives and slides to digitize. Thanks Jared, keep up the great work!
This is just flat out awesome! Imagine doing this for an older relative and giving them digital versions that they can keep on their phone or tablet. Literally the gift of photography! Good job Jared!
I want to do this for my 92 year old mother in law and then give her PRINTS. But I don't have a dslr. Any ideas?
I've been thinking of doing this with all of my grandfathers old WWII slides, now i'm even more motivated since it is so easy!
I like to thank you so much Jared for making this video. It has been super helpful, as I too have many colour slides and negatives that need digitizing. I travelled a lot in remote parts of the South Pacific and Caribbean in the 1970's through to late 1990's, so I am very keen to have them digitised using this device from Nikon, and making some travelogues from them.
Just started this project today. Had the ES-2 and 60 macro for over a year now. I have slides from the 70s and producing some great images thus far. The Kodachrome is great. Thanks for the added tips...
Jared, thanks for the video. I think sometimes we focus on the gear and forget what photography is about. This is awesome and like others, would really like to see more of these slides.
You just blew my mind!!!!! I tried scanning my old stuff when I retired, but after several hundred hours, and only a dent in the project, I gave up as shooting them one at a time was just too time consuming. But if I can get this to work, it would speed the process up dramatically! I’m definitely going to work on this right away. Thank you so much for sharing this tip.
If you have more details, I would love to hear them.
Thanks. You have motivated me to get to work on my father's slides and negatives dating back to the Vietnam era.
Such a cool video Jared. Love your enthusiasm. About both the technique and the photographer/subject matter. Awesome job!
This is so inspiring 🙌🏻 I can’t wait to see more of this. And honestly do more story-time kinda stuff. I feel like you are born to tell stories and are really talented in doing so. So please please tell us more about anything honestly... :)))
Jared - Love the video! I have actually just started a massive project to digitize family photos myself with a somewhat different approach. For the slides, I planned to shoot on an old portable light table, but unfortunately even with a new bulb it did not produce even light. So, I took the light table apart and mounted the top of the table on a light stand. I then shot straight down using a tripod with my prime macro lens. Underneath the light table I pointed a flash in RC mode up through the slide. The flash is providing a ton of even and consistent light! I am shooting tethered and I manually focus and adjust the flash intensity using the Olympus Capture tethering software (which is surprisingly good software for a camera manufacturers program). I can then check the RAW file in my editor and make sure I have a good starting point for editing. Then I can press on to the next image. It is working great so far!
I am also digitizing a bunch of family photos (prints) - many of which have been passed down from generation to generation and some are well over 100 years old! For this I am using a laptop tray mounted on a sturdy tripod. I have the tray surface perpendicular to the ground so I am shooting from my camera head on from a tripod. I purchased a set of very strong and thin magnets to hold the prints flat on the tray. I am again lighting with RC flash and for some prints I am having adjust the flash orientation (I bouncing off the ceiling and walls) and/or positioning a large reflector with the black side out to kill the reflections.
I am loving the look of these images, which I can now share with the entire family on Flikr. The conversions from the slides are absolutely gorgeous, especially since I can make a few tweaks and I have always loved the look of slide film. I am able to do a lot of restoration to some of the worn and damaged old prints, although just enough - I like the aged look so I intentionally leave a lot of imperfection as well.
Fantastic video - went out and bought a ES-2 for my Nikon D3500. I want to convert many of my Dad's old negatives and slides to digital. Thanks Jared!!
I’ve been going through three years of negatives with this little kit. I’ve been super impressed at what it’s able to pull out, some of these look better than what I shot and printed them originally even with the dyes having faded.
It really is a great kit. Higher quality "scans" than any other technique and much faster to boot.
I think what I find most fascinating about this when you really think about it is how you’re capturing an image that somebody else captured so many years ago-in this case 1956-and the sensor on your camera is taken back in time and is being exposed to the same image as the as the camera in the past. Your cameras taking a journey that you’re not actually taking to a time that you weren’t actually even in existence and yet you see exactly what the original photographer captured. I just find this absolutely incredible. Thank you for sharing.
ive honestly been waiting for this video, ever since you uploaded those stories
I started doing this with my grandpa's slides. One was labeled "Bermuda 1951", which was when he was stationed out there during is time in the Army. You are absolutely correct on Kodachrome, that film is gorgeous! I had enjoyed scanning those slides so much, I decided to start a local digitizing business.
A lot of your reactions are the same ones I had when I had. Glad to know I'm not the only one geeking out on both history and photography!
In 2001 I went to Oahu and took my 645 Fuji rangefinder and used slide film. This video has inspired me to find and digitize them. Cheers Jared.
This is really interesting and so useful! The way you found you could make a sort of HDR image with those 60+ year old Kodachrome slides is amazing! So is how you color correct the old Ektachrome slides. Thank you. Even more amazing are these images from those places and days. Really looking forward to the coming videos and images from this collection.
Really enjoyed that, thank you. Loading that Kodachrome slide photo into Lightroom, I know you played with a few settings but it just couldn't be improved from the original - all those decades ago. Incredible.
Jared, this is absolutely amazing. I think it's awesome that you had those pics from 1956. Awesome work, bro.
I just did this with Dad's old negatives! That Nikon Slide adaptor is amazing. Want that for Canon/Fuji/Sony!!
I use it on a Canon camera and it works perfectly, you just got to buy an step up ring depending on the lens.
Gotta say, the last few videos on the channel were not really my type but as someone who also shoots a lot of film I really loved that one. Would love to see more “vintage” oriented videos!
This is awesome sauce! I have boxes full of negatives from the 80's to early 2000's (courtesy of my Pentax ME Super), plus my grandfather's slides from his world travels (He was a newspaper editor) that I inherited.
I've been looking at ways to best preserve them, been sorely disappointed on what I tried before. But this set up is the best I've seen, and well have an a7r-iv that's not getting much love at the moment.
Thanks for inspiration!
That is amazing, Jared. I have a bunch of old photos of my family going all the way back to the 1950's in Taiwan. I should get this thing to digitize everything.
I’ve been waiting for this video! Super cool to see process and also the photos.
Thanks for sharing this. Just picked up the 60mm Macro and am considering an ES-2 now. My mother has a bunch of old negatives from the 70s and 80s so it'll be a fun way to kill some quatantine time...
Its crazyyyy how well that film holds up, amazing
We'll be sitting around in our 80s or 90s wondering what happened to all our digital pictures. ie think digital will last as long as film?
Perfect timing :) Now I need more gear... Would have loved to hear more about the photographer - the idea you bought someone else's travel photos is so cool IMO, I bet whom ever took them would have been so pleased to share a story or know their story is still alive.
I'm about half way done with scanning a couple thousand slides while in lockdown. I considered the ES-2 but went with my Nikkor 55mm 3.5 Macro and picked up a used vintage Nikon PB-4 bellows with the PS-4 slide adapter on my Sony A7III. Its working great! My kids are happy. They've been asking me to do this for years. Its incredibly fast. Pickup a slide, blast it with my Rocket Blower, put it in, hit the shutter release, take it out, next. No need to refocus with the PB-4 locked down. Shooting at 5.6 supposedly the best aperture for sharpness with the 55mm. And yes! The Kodachrome slides from the 60s and 70s look fantastic! Im having good luck with a single exposure and using the shadows adjustment in Lightroom to bring out more shadow detail. Most of my slides are shot with either a Canon F1 with 50 1.4 or Nikon F2 with 50 1.4 and 24 2.8.
It was nice to see in action a quick aging difference between Ektachrome and Kodachrome.
That quick part alone is perfect to show people who ask what was the difference and debate the pros/cons of E-6.
Amazing seeing those old slides!
Greetings from India. So amazing to see part of world history through your video. You're a rockstar !!
Great video. I liked seeing the 1950 images as I was a young child in those years.
Great Video. For my Nikon 105mm Macro, I had to use a different adapter. I found a Video Slide Duplicator on ebay for $10, from Prinz. It has a 6" length to allow the Macro to focus. I had to remove the internal lens in the adapter (It unscrews), and add a 52mm to 62mm step up ring. Now I have a perfect device for the 105mm macro. May work with other lenses with adapter rings. I have not tried any close focus extension tubes to see if other lenses can work. This is a fun thing to do, and very inexpensive if you get used slide adapters. I also purchased a SLIDE2PCFH negative holder and was able to trim it to fit the Slide duplicator. My Z7 is now digitizing all of my old negatives and I can extend my library to include all the old photos instead of scanning the crappy cropped 4x6 photos.
Amazing look back in time. Thanks for sharing the video.
Loved this video... amazing balance of history, culture, and photography :D
I cant express how much I love this....I love history and people...best of my passions...❤❤ 1956! 🤯
Such a cool video. This would’ve been a great project to do while on lockdown. My dad has tons of shots from when he was in the navy that I’m sure he would love to have on his computer.
Excellent Jared. I've got lots of old slides and negs from 30 plus years ago. Will be looking in to this next month. Gotta launch my course first but great stuff dude.
This is going to be an amazing doc Jared!!
I bought a film and negative scanner, and digitized many years of negative and slides-thousands. Faster and much better. Was able to correct prior to digitizing through their program. Cost was minimal, and as we all know, time = money, so I saved a of of time and money.
I shot a whole batch of E6 frustrated that it wasn't capturing the full frame. 1 hour later I realised that I could extend the tube lol. I feel your pain on that, but I was relieved to find it. You live and learn. I agree with you on the neg scanning it does not have the edge that scanning the E6 has.
I just go mine all set up and it is true Ly amazing, thank you for your video
This is awesome. Both the old slides you found and the copying setup. I have a flatbed scanner that does a good job but I have to think that this method would be much better. Now I just have to figure out if I can use it with my Canon 100mm macro
That was fascinating to see, I now have the hots for a ES2 .
Hi Jared, I digitized all my slides using my Nikon ES 5000 scanner that I bought years ago. I used a software package called Vuescan and it is a really great process, it produces a JPEG and a DNG of your slide or negative. It even has a function called x-ray that will get rid of all the dust and particles that may have settled on your slides over the many years in storage. I was sorry to see that Nikon got out of the scanner business.
Very interesting I can't wait to see the end result. great Video thanks Jared.
Did you realize that what you are doing, not even touching the camera, was not even in science fiction for the guy who actually took those pictures?
Back 40+ years ago I bought one of these to convert color slides to negative so I could print them in my darkroom & it was second hand when I bought it. Not new, just the camera technology is. You could but one of the old ones & put it on your DSLR or Mirrorless as they had a zoom feature for filling the frame.
Jared, thanks for the great film, I couldn't believe it when this popped up on my suggested viewing. I ordered one of these about 6 weeks ago and the company now can't give me a date when they will have it to ship, d'oh! I will be referring back to this. The appeal to me was that I could digitise transparencies as NEF RAW files.
Back to the future style of the shirt is such a nice touch man. I bet it was on purpose! Very cool video!
Very nice information. So much better when it’s not a clown show. Thanks!
Stunning Jared, great work!
This is really interesting. Can't wait to see the full story
Thanks for this video. I need to sort out a similar system for use on a Canon R5. Very cool.
Pretty sweet. I can't wait to do this to all my grandparent's old photos negatives.
I loved this video Jared. Your love of photography really came through in your passionate explanation of these slides.
Sep 1956... my father wasn't born yet (still a couple months out) while my mom was still an infant. It's great those negatives and slides survived.
I've seen other units like this. And full-frame cameras definitely have it MUCH easier in this since you don't have to account for the crop. I've found a few other resources on how to use something like this with a crop sensor, and basically it's about reducing the magnification. You don't necessarily need a macro lens. It's just easier using one. Another video I saw recommended taking the exposures at different _apertures_ instead of shutter speeds. And apparently there are kits that attach to the camera body instead of the lens, with all the needed optics inside.
More research ahead!
Great content. Im looking to get this also for my film camera.
This is cool, looking forward to the documentary
I have kept my old negatives scanner Nikon CoolScan V, it does the job easily.
Jared, you can use the accessibility settings on your iPad to make it so that you can push the home button a few times and opt to invert the colours for when you deal with negatives. :)
Great, I have some slides I scanned from from 1985 of Egypt and have been meaning to edit and correct. Should do that now.
It works well on a DX camera with the 40mm Micro Nikkor DX, I've even used it with my old D70 and D1X. It's cumbersome because no live view but it does work.
Been waiting for this one for sooo long!!😁😁😁
I used to work in a slide scanning studio and we had a custom scanning set up:
Slides were loaded onto a carousel and put into a slide projector that had no lens. Then we would remote shoot a DSLR with a bracketed exposure, producing an HDR of each slide. Once the slide projector advanced the previous images would be stacked and the cycle would continue. The output was full HDR images and basically set it and forget it, once the projector was running everything was automatic. One of the best looking and crazy efficient systems I've seen.
Do you have links and/or posted photographs of your scanning setup?
Excellent video!! 👍👍👍
Something magical about bringing old slides and negatives back to life with new technology. Although it's a brave man that scans/digitizes without blowing air on them first. ;)
Great subject/video Jared, thanks!
Jared, with this material plus some research, you could make an awesome documentary.
This was extremely helpful. AND fascinating. Thanks.
Awesome video! Now I want to ask my grandparents if they have any old negatives or slides laying around.
So it took four years, but you finally did it. Give me more.
Wow it's so awesome it's like going back in time
Nice video Jared. This is a great way to bring back our past to the present time. That is fascinating and important. That brings on the table another issue. Will be able to watch our current files in 60 years from now? Can the current technology resist the test of time? I guess, probably no
Very cool. I move off my Epson flatbed last year to rescan a bunch of Kodachrome 25 I shot back on my Olympus OM-1, when I was sixteen, on a five week family trip though the West, a total of about 30 rolls, though I had curated the picks down to four slide magazines.
I got the ES-2, an adapter ring, an LED light panel, and put this on my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II and M.Zuiko 30mm f/3.5 macro lens (a $250 lens that occasionally goes on sale for $99). Not a high-end lens, but ideal for this purpose. I shoot in 8-shot "hires" mode, primarily to get full color samples per pixel. As demonstrated in this video, sampling at 40-50 megapixels is serious overkill for the lens and film combinations going back to those days. But the cool thing about they way Kodachrome works is that you really don't see grain -- the dye clouds are suprisingly large, limiting effective resolution, but they're smooth.
I also found that multiple samples worked well on some images. I didn't really want to think about the fact that, if I took five bracketed shot in hires, I was capturing forty 20 megapixel shots to deliver one final image. But the end result is better than from the scanner and, particularly for transparencies, it's great to have the captures in the same raw workflow I use for every other camera.
It would be worth another video to see how you're dealing with negatives. I'm using Negative Lab Pro, which does the job pretty well. But Lightroom doesn't understand negatives, so you wind up having to make most adjustments through the Negative Lab Pro plug-in, rather than directly in Lightroom, once you flip the colors. You can set the changes by printing to TIFF or something, but at that point you've left behind a true raw image.
Another tip there... capture a bit more of the image than you need, get a little bare film in there, and use that to set a white point before flipping the image.
Awesome! This has motivated me to pick up the equipment to do this. I lived in Turkey, France and the Azores in the early 60's. My dad was Navy and also a photographer so I have lots of slides! Question, for the Ectachrome is that preset in one of your Fro Packs? Thanks.
I missed how you reverse the negatives. Can you add something on that? Great work! Great idea for Covid isolation!
Hi Fro. Lookup the Vincent Versace Video on the ES-2. At the end of the video he shows how to convert this stuff including negatives into NEF files by using Nikon's Capture NX-D.
Thank you! Been thinking about getting the d850 just to do this with beth results.... but I already have a Z7! Sold..... Added to cart
Thanks for this Jared. I have tried some slide and film negative scanners to scan my slides and negatives but the quality was always poor. I had just decided to use Nikon DSLR to do this and was about to buy the Nikkor 60 mm micro lens to do this. I will not get the ES-2 as well.
Really enjoyed that look back in time. Looking forward to the documentary.
Really enjoyable Jared - thanks!
These were around in the 1970s, perhaps even earlier here in the UK. I used a Canon flatbed scanner to do loads but was a bit disappointed with the quality of some. One of these might be better. Of course, even when the quality isn't too good it's better than nothing with family photos. Regards from the UK. Take care and stay safe.
Thanks - really useful and practical - now just got to get on with several hundred slides left by my parents
Gret video hope to see more of this project
Made so easy. Love you ❤️
Thank you for this very helpful tutorial.
I have a Nikon LS8000 slide scanner which I havent used for years. The last time I tried the pictures looked terrible: they were underexposed and brown.
I wonder if one of the capacitors in the electronics had aged badly from not getting any use. I also wonder if there is any way I could have it repaired.
At least I used it intensively around 2005. At the time it had much better dynamic range than a digital camera setup like this, and this showed on the Velvia slide film of the time.
My good friend, I have been following your channel for a few years and have been amazed to see how excited you got at this new project. Never seen you so happy. Keep up the good Spirit and the great suggestions for this paranoiac times! Your friend, Federico.
Personally i use the Canon Bellows FL with the slide copier...great also for macro (with adapter on a Sony a7iii and a canon 50FD 1.8)
It's funny that you're wearing the "Back to the Future" version of I Shoot Raw lol
Jared -- love it -- thank you.
I like how this video has developed.
Fantastic pod cast !!!!
Perfect quarantine project!
I know it's even more boring than digitizing slides but: Did you use any particular system or software to efficiently keep track of all that metadata. The info printed on the slides, the extra notes. I know which EXIF fields to use, but how did you keep all the info together and in order as you were going through the whole process?
When you're previewing the photos from the iPad, why don't you Invert the colors of the iPad screen to make viewing the negatives less confusing?
Open Settings.
Go to General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations.
Tap Invert Colors, then choose either Smart Invert or Classic Invert. Either will reverse the colors of the display.
Airbender Steven You can also set a triple click on the home button to invert the screen so that you don’t have to set it in Settings each time. Very handy when using a mix of slides and negs.
arkkkkkkk what a slow process but so great to do. Love your work lol