On Aug 7, 2005, at 7:54 AM, Vic Mortelmans wrote:
I'm currently trying to 'enable' me with the cheapest sort of
scanner: we happen to own a Canon G2 digital camera (fast lens!,
that was my major requirement when bying the digital camera) and it
takes filters, so I'll by a close-up lens for it (49mm thread, so
if I want, it can be used on the Pentax-lenses as well). With a bit
of woodworking, I hope to build a usable frame that will allow me
to take pictures of a negative and convert it on the computer to an
image that has enough quality to use it as a preview to decide
whether the image is worth printing and to publish it somewhere.
This seems to me a money-and-time-efficient workflow, since I will
be developing b&w film myself, but won't be doing the printing.
If that 'scanner' succeeds, I won't be needing a real scanner at all.
Using a digital camera as a scanner is generally quick and easy, once
you get a setup that works, but the results are rarely as good as a
cheap film scanner. A Konica Minola Scan Dual IV is around $260...
you'll get a higher quality scan out of it that's at least twice the
resolution and doesn't have any optical aberrations compared to doing
macro-scanning with a fixed lens digicam.
I have been using an A50/2.8 Macro lens on the DS in conjunction with
extension tubes to obtain a 2:1 magnification for "scanning" Minox
negatives into a 5Mpixel image. This is better than I can get out of
my 2820ppi scanner (on a submini neg like that I get only 1Mpixel).
But go up to 35mm format and the film scanner outstrips it very
quickly. Plus it's much easier to use a film scanner when it comes to
color negatives... inverting them in image processing takes a lot of
effort.
Godfrey
