Digitizing medium format film with m4/3

[BDR-529]

Can you imagine the jitter involved with moving a sensor strip by 0.0002"? Then there's "skew," whereby one side of the sensor strip moves a few ten-thousandths of an inch further than the other side of the sensor strip. I'd guess such a device would use a lead screw, rather than belt drive, but lead screws suffer from backlash, causing positioning to be uneven.

There is no backlash in either belt or screw if you keep it tensioned and move it only in one direction as scanner does. CCD head is running on linear bearings on two polished quide bars and at least my Canoscan has a reduction gearbox (just a set of visible nylon gears) between stepper motor and belt so the minimun distance in one step can be as small as the designer wants.

That being said, 20MP sensor in my m4/3 camera has square pixels in matrix setup so any image taken with that gives a very precise dpi number assuming that the real dimension of object is known. In 35mm film case it's: 36*24mm

When I fill the whole 20MP m4/3 picture with 35mm film image area (3:2 ratio) and crop it out I get 5043 * 3362 pixels which is also 17MP.

This equals 3600dpi scan resolution and as already mentioned, in my case the film grain is already becoming visible so as far as resolution is concerned, this is as good as it gets untill I find Topaz AI version that is optimized for film grain instead of digital noise. Even when I compare these new 3600dpi m4/3 images with "4800dpi scans" I took from the same negative with CanoScan, the one with more details is definitely MFT camera image.

Other people might get somewhat different results because back in the analog film era I could not afford very fast and sharp lenses so I ended up shooting with ISO200 and ISO400 film which has fairly large grain.

 

[RAH]

I knew there was a 7 in it. A Perfection V370 photo. Thanks to you I have now got scanner GAS.

I have an Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner, from about 5 years ago. It's a pretty standard, consumer-level scanner, which is fine for many uses, but nothing special at all. Concerning GAS, yes, you obviously need a new scanner and it's fortunate that we were here to help you realize it!

 

[John Jarosz]

I use the older HP4050 flatbed scanner with Vuescan. I do 8x10, 4x5 and medium format as well. My 6x6 transparencies scan to 9500x9500 digital color files around 250 Mbytes.
I have used PS in the past but now I’m migrating to Affinity. Some may say what I’m doing is not optimum, but I am happy with my results. The 4x5 color scans can be a Gigabyte in size. Fortunately all my 8x10 are B&W

 

[RayB]

Problem: Need to digitize old Hasselblad 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 negatives.
Solution 1: Send them out to be scanned - Expensive.
Solution 1a: Buy a film scanner. Expensive and possibly lower quality results.
Solution 2: Figure out a way to shoot them with a m4/3 macro setup. (Lots of 35mm slide copying products out there, but nothing for medium format).

Here's the beginning of my attempt at solution 2:

View attachment 117307 View attachment 117308
So far, I have fabricated a masonite mask with a 6cm square opening, a PVC closet flange, the right length of 3-inch PVC for the 55mm Micro-Nikkor I will be using, and a 3- to 2-inch reducer. To follow: black paint for the inside surfaces, a negative carrier, and a 52mm to 77mm step up ring that will be epoxied to the 2-inch end of the reducer.

Problem: Need to digitize old Hasselblad 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 negatives.
Solution 1: Send them out to be scanned - Expensive.
Solution 1a: Buy a film scanner. Expensive and possibly lower quality results.
Solution 2: Figure out a way to shoot them with a m4/3 macro setup. (Lots of 35mm slide copying products out there, but nothing for medium format).

Here's the beginning of my attempt at solution 2:

View attachment 117307 View attachment 117308
So far, I have fabricated a masonite mask with a 6cm square opening, a PVC closet flange, the right length of 3-inch PVC for the 55mm Micro-Nikkor I will be using, and a 3- to 2-inch reducer. To follow: black paint for the inside surfaces, a negative carrier, and a 52mm to 77mm step up ring that will be epoxied to the 2-inch end of the reducer.

The problem is that the film never is perfectly flat. If you put it between glass plates you have to deal with other problems. I have just been finishing scanning about 3000 color slides. A project I have been postponing for 8 years but, thanks to COVID-19, I finally had the time. I am very happy with my Epson V700. It has autofocus that follows the shape of the film. Editing is a big part of the project. You will always have some dust or fibers plus older slides could be faded. The files get a bit large if you go for high resolution. I am using 4800 dpi for 35mm slides and TIFF format. After editing I save them in JPEG