The fastest slide copier I've ever used is an Otek, which must use a sensor covering the whole field of a 35mm frame (negative or slide), and uses an internal light source and flat field lens: each frame takes less than a second to copy to a CF card. The drawback is that the illumination is slightly uneven, so there is a vignetting effect. If the manufacturers were able to develop the system to eliminate that, it would be a winner. It has been marketed under various brand names, I think. I've used bellows and flash arrangements before, and the significant issues have tended to be evenness of illumination and getting the subject aligned so that there is no focus fall off at any edge of the frame.
I'm currently using an Epson V500 to digitise my archives, and there is no doubt it is a slow process. There is also the need to correct the scans in PS for dust removal, as I found that using ICE technology (at the medium setting) blocked up shadow areas, so that, for example, a child's eyes looked like something out of a horror movie! John in Brisbane -----Original Message----- From: PDML [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Malcolm Smith Sent: Wednesday, 1 June 2016 03:27 To: 'Pentax-Discuss Mail List' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Slide & film copying - yet again.... Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote: > For 35mm transparencies and negatives, a Spiratone Dupliscope II with > the negative accessory (can't recall the name) is commonly available > on EBay for $35-60 and does an excellent job. These units have a > dedicated flat-field macro lens and use a T-mount to fit to nearly any camera. > > In my experience, more than the equivalent of about 4000 dpi scan nets > no additional advantage with most films. Only with some very high > resolution films (exposed to maximize resolution with sturdy support, > etc) is there any real value gained from the increased scan/capture > resolution. In fact, the vast majority of hand-held work on standard > color or B&W emulsions sees very very little gain between 2400 and > 4000 dpi capture resolution. There's just very little additional real > data there ... Godfrey, Igor & Mark, Thanks for your comments. In my case, I pretty much know I'm looking for the impossible; a much more rapid way to transfer slides to digital images. I know that the Epson I use does a great job, but it's a slow process, and I have thousands and thousands still to do. As I've found from the Epson, larger dpi scans above 4000 tend to show up imperfections in - or rather on - slides, such as really tiny specs of dust which even with decent cleaning and dust reduction still show, giving more work in Lightroom at a later date. A K3 sensor sized image is really all I need, but it is keeping the quality that the scanner provides that is the issue. Some of these scans from slides I enlarge to A3 prints after work to correct all the howling errors, such as 100% level horizons etc have been adjusted all these years on. The fact I can restore or improve pictures taken in the 1970s still amazes me, but now I want it faster. Some people, you just can't please. Malcolm -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
