Copying slides with OM-D and 60mm Macro
November 11, 2012 at 16:24 This is the promised follow-up article for my review of M.Zuiko 60mm Macro. I try to explain here quite thoroughly how I digitize slides.
This image shows my setup "in action".
It all starts with OM-D body and the new 60mm Macro lens.
This metal tube is from a Dörr Slide Duplicator kit. Similar kits are sold with other brand names like Polaroid or Bower. Polaroid HD Slide Duplicator seems to cost USD 35 at Amazon.com. These kits consist of a metal tube plus film holders. They have also a close up lens which is meant to be used with a normal (i.e. non-macro) 50mm lens (100mm lens in FF 35mm format). The results from any combination of a general photography lens and close up lens are too soft. Not worth trying. Remove the close-up lens from its ring for some other, non-serious use... Dörr tube has 52mm filter thread which means that a step-up ring from 46mm to 52mm is needed.
Next thing to attach is this frame for film holders.
There is a holder for two framed slides. Slides and negatives are shot with emulsion side to lens to get the best sharpness. You are looking at emulsion side when letters at edges are wrong handed. Framed slides should have darker side on emulsion side, but it is also easy to see that emulsion side has a slight structure when you look how light mirrors from the surface.
You can also copy un-framed slides or negatives.
The opening image shows how I shoot against a light box with even light surface. My light box is made by Just. They seem to call light boxes as transparency flat viewers. These boxes have an excellent light quality: 5000 K with very high color rendering index, CRI, at 98 (of 100). I set a captured white balance for the box. My OM-D reads the box to be 4990 K. For color negatives the WB must be set through the orange base mask. I expose using my ETTR method as explained in previous blogs. There is usually no need to do any bracketing. With color slides exposure time is usually around 1/5 to 1/20s at f/5.0 and ISO 200. My tests have shown f/5.0 to be the sharpest aperture with 60mm Macro at these magnifications.
I open RAW files into Lightroom. First thing to do is to flip images horizontally. They are wrong handed because of shooting from emulsion side. Other than that slides need very small, simple corrections. Negatives are turned into positives in Tone Curve window. The linear point curve goes from bottom left to top right as default. It must be reversed to go from top left to bottom right. Save this as a preset. After turning negatives into positives they usually need some adjusting to get tonal values and colors right. A reversed Tone Curve makes also tone sliders to behave backwards. If this feels awkward you can always make an Export into TIFF file after reversing of tones and then import this file into Lightroom. Now sliders work normally.
The length of the metal tube dictates your focusing distance or magnification. I have two tubes, a longer one for a magnification of slightly less than 1:2 and another shortened for magnification of circa 1:1.2. With the former I can capture 35mm slides or negatives as one capture. The latter one gives more pixels and resolution as the slide is shot as four quadrants. An easy way to make different length tubes is to use empty filter mounts.
This image shows how much overlap my system gives. It helps me to be fast and make combining quadrants easier for Photoshop.
I choose the four quadrants in Lightroom and use command Photo > Edit In > Merge to Panorama in Photoshop. Photoshop automatically opens these four files with Lightroom tweaks and combines them into a seamless image. This image is saved in Photoshop and it opens automatically into Lightroom. The process is quite fast and easy.
The combined image before final cropping. Dimensions are now 7789 x 5142 pixels and the quality is better than with any scanner except drum scanners. I have owned them all, drum scanners, Flextights, Nikons...
100% or 1:1 detail from the above image. The grain you see is film grain. I get it sharp from edge to edge, and there can not be any details beyond sharp film grain.
-p-
Pekka Potka
Update: Some more information
I measured a few usable tube lengths with my Dörr duplicator, which is the same as Polaroid or Bowens. (Note: These gadgets might not stay the same for ever. So there may be some variations with tube lengths...)
First I have a Heliopan step-up ring 46 to 52mm. It adds 4mm. The frame for film holders (as I call it) adds 10-12mm more beyond the tube depending on film holder and/or slide frame used.
To get the whole 35mm film frame with one capture I need a tube of 112mm. To make the film frame fill OM-D sensor (cropping the longer edges) I need a tube of 102mm. To copy film frame with two captures I would use a tube of 90mm. And for four captures I use a tube of 72mm.
I have one tube which is shortened to 72mm. An easy way to get all the other lengths is to use empty, round filter rings, i.e. filters without the glass. Companies like Heliopan sell those and also you can find cheap used filters from shops selling second hand equipment. Just smash the glass with hammer or open the locking ring, depending on how you approach pimping. Duplicator kit includes close up lens, remove it from barrel and you have a long adjusting ring. Here I would go for opening the locking ring... This barrel plus four empty filter rings is all I needed to get all the above mentioned lengths.
The frame for film holders can be moved up/down in plane and film holder can be moved right/left. That´s how you get the four quadrants. I have printed single-capture images as A3 prints and get them with beautiful, sharp grain and crisp, nice details with 60mm Macro/OM-D combination. I would say that copying film in one capture either fitting into or filling (with slight crop) the OM-D sensor is good enough for "normal" images. Using four captures and combining them afterwards is only needed for the sharpest images where you absolutely want to be sure to copy them as well as possible.
Color negative has this pesky orange mask. Also there are lots of variations between mask colors and densities with different film brands. The quick and dirty way is to measure WB as said in original text and then use a blue filter, say 80B jsut like Jose Luis suggested above, in front of the duplicator, between light and film. Setting WB in Kelvins might help here, too. The rest can usually be taken care of in post processing. Color negative is so flat that it needs tweaking always. However, the best situation is to have a clear piece of color negative film in place of image when you set WB. If the film is clipped too tightly from the beginning and end there just might be not enough clear ares even with the longest tube length.
Someone said that slide holder is good only for thin frames. The holder in my kit is tight but even thicker frames go in without extra power. I only need pliers to get frames out...
This same basic copying technique works for bigger film sizes. I only don´t know any similar duplicators for them. Handy people build them quite easily I think. Various film holders are sold as scanner accessories. I copy my 120 size and sheet films without any kits. I have light box flat and level on table and camera attached to a small tripod above it with the lens pointing exactly right down on light box. Moving film holder is easy and there seems to be plenty of DOF at f/5.0. The important thing is to mask all extra light off (e.g. with black cardboard).
-p-
Reader Comments (16)
excellent post, thanks pekka
Hello Mr Potka, I´ve read your post on camera scanning slides, as you I´ve had different scanners, I still have a mini Drum scanner that I dont use any longer since I took the route of camera scanning some years ago. I´d like to share with you two tips that you should try, when scanning color negatives filter the light that hits the negative to neutralize the orange mask, if you still have a colorimeter at hand use to find the correct filtration ( an 80B filter can be used in a pinch ), doing so will make easier to white balance the mask without stressing the blue channel too much, the benefit will be a cleaner file.
I´ve also found that using Prophoto RGB as a color space when scanning color negatives helps in keeping texture in bright reds that are lost using Adobe RGB
Congratulations for your blog, I find it most interesting
best regards from Canary Islands
Jose Luis
thanks for posting this, I'm pleased to hear that the quality is really good. I have one question though about the light source, what about using a flash? how would the results differ?
Hi pekka:
Your way was my way when I had a fullframe canon DSLR. I was using a reversed Micro Nikkor 55mm 3,5 (far better than the 2,8 version) I used a small strobe reflected from a white surface. It gave optimum F stop ( somewhere 8/11) Now however I prefer the Flextight Precision II.I think the grain structure is optimum, especially in B&W negatives. best regards JW
Simon, you can use flash as well. Any evenly lit neutral surface works. The mentioned kits have a white plastic sheet included. You can have it in front and pop a flash against it. What you loose is the exact ETTR light metering which is possible with PENs (since E-P3) and OM-D without flash.
-p-
Hello Pekka,
thanks for your explanations, it seems to be a very interesting solution.
I have some further questions: I am using since two years a PANASONIC LEICA DG MAKRO-ELMARIT 2,8/ 45mm Asph./ OIS, now on a Olympus E-M5. I am expecting, it would work more or less the same, like the new Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm Macro. Or do you have another opinion or experience?
Further, you are writing in your article:
"The length of the metal tube dictates your focusing distance or magnification. I have two tubes, a longer one for a magnification of slightly less than 1:2 and another shortened for magnification of circa 1:1.2." With the former I can capture 35mm slides or negatives as one capture. The latter one gives more pixels and resolution as the slide is shot as four quadrants."
Questions: How long are these two tubes, or how big is the difference in the lenght?
How do you proceed, to get the four quadrants? Shifting the slide in the holder?
Thank you in advance for your esteemed reply
and best regards from Austria
Franz
Pekka, thankyou for your kind explanation. I just ordered the " Polaroid HD Slide Duplicator" that should arrive at the same time that my new 60mm macro lens.
I am anxious to see in digital form my old slides, some of them "historic" in my terms. I am an architect interested in urban evolution so I am going to be able to compare my 30 or more years old shots with how it looks now.
As I live in South America, I am not going to be able to find a lighbox as yours. I will have to look for some other way, such as a a white plastic sheet illuminated with a 5000K lamp from the back.
Thanks again, :)
I particularly like that part of your workflow where you bring four quadrant shots into Photoshop and merge into one frame. Could you please elaborate on how you achieve the necessary movement of the slide to get the four shots.
Best regards,
Norm
Ah what a tantalizing post! So much great information - but so many more details that novices like me would love to know! Is it okay if I make a list - including some of the same questions that others have already asked?
1. the length of the tubes? I presume the actual distance isn't critical? Is there an optimum distance for capturing down to grain level?
2. what movement of camera, tube or negative gives the four quadrants? How do you avoid focussing differences when making these movements?
3. Do you know if this technique would work with 120 negatives? (this may not be your area)
I have a Nikon LS9000, but I'm afraid what I'll do if it ever breaks. This seems like a good way to save a couple thousand dollars on a replacement.
Excellent information on your blog!
This was a very interesting post. After some research on various options I bought a slide duplicator myself. The Polaroid is sold by another vendor through Amazon and the shipping rate to Finland was about $65. The Dörr seemed to be even more expensive. So I bought Bower version through ebay from the U.S. It cost $50, but the shipping was only $17. After the first experiments the good news is that it the quality with a good lens and without the supplied close-up lens is good. The bad news is that it came with just one slide holder for thin mounts. Thick mounts won't fit and there is no film strip holder. The manual states that it is supposed to be used on a crop DSLR with the close-up lens on a zoom at 110 mm focal length. I use it on an APS-C DSLR, but with a 100 mm macro lens and an additional tube and step-up rings which add about 40 mm. Fitting the whole slide in one shot would require a longer tube. Another difference is that it has ground glass in front of the slide. I'm not sure it provides as even light as possible.
Nice article, I've struggled with flatbed scanners and negatives, hard to get colors right... Could you provide more details considering "For color negatives the WB must be set through the orange base mask"
Do you place an orange filter in front of the lens and then measure WB with camera?
-Jalo
Thanks for everyone for reading and commenting! I added an update for my post. It should answer most of your questions.
-p-
A couple of ideas that hasn't been mentioned:
For light I'm using two flashes that illuminate a white tissue 10 cm under the slide. Combined with the milk glass included in the Nikon dia-duplicator the light is adequate. There's no vertical adjustment in the Nikon nor enough movement for horizontal quadrants, though.
Using the flashes in manual allows different exposures for the same slide. The Nikon holder is so tight that the exposures align perfectly. Thus it is easier to eliminate sensor noise by using the more exposed image for the shadows after appropriate exposure compensation in RAW processing.
Thanks for the update!
Hello Pekka,
Is there a similar method of copying MF slides with this 60mm macro lens or is some other lens to prefer, some OM Zuiko or what?
If thinking to use only as extensive "scanner unit", then the OMD5 (what is it really called, seems to have a million names?) body is a bit high cost to me, can you tell if some of the so called cheaper Pen-bodies has similar technology to the OMD5 and ccould be used instead of it as a "scanner unit" with the 60mm Zuiko? (Hope you understand what i try to ask)
Thank you,
Jani
Jani: Yes, you can also copy larger slides and negatives. Two things are important: shoot perpendicular to film and all light must come through the film. I have copied MF and LF slides with the help of light table. Slide on light table, all extra light masked off.
E-PM2 and E-PL5 give exactly the same image quality as OM-D. E-PL5 is handier because of tiltable monitor.
-p-