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Slide copy problem with Nikon ES-1


tom_halfhill

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<p>You have 10 minutes to edit a response. You can't delete a post, but you can erase the contents (and leave an explanation). It's easy to get double posts by hitting the "confirm" button at the wrong time.</p>

<p>I bought a complete set of Nikon K rings from KEH.com. I haven't used them, but they weren't expensive and probably handy to have around. For example, using the ES-1 with an APS-C camera, or a macro lens longer than 55 mm.</p>

<p>For what it's worth, the Nikon 55/2.8 is as sharp as any lens in my kit, including the dedicated Sony lenses. The f/3.5 is supposed to be very good too, just an older model. The diaphragm is prone to sticking due to grease migration. It costs about $100 to fix, but Nikon now uses a silicone grease which doesn't leak. I had mine done about 12 years ago, and it's still as good as new. The macro is deeply set and almost immune to flare, so I used it for landscapes when shooting into the sun.</p>

<p>If you use Lightroom to do part of the editing, you can copy all the changes from one image to any or all of the others. This includes cropping, development settings and dust spotting (if the spots are on the sensor). These changes are non-destructive. If you want to lock them in, export the results to a new file.</p>

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<p>With regards to the 55mm Micro Nikkors, for several years I was using an early pre-AI 55mm f/3.5 for my duping chores. It and my Tamron 90mm macro were the sharpest lenses in my collection. Then recently I picked up an AIs 55mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor and figured I'd give it a try. Honestly, I didn't think anything could be sharper than that old 55/3.5 Nikkor, but I was wrong. The 55/2.8 has the edge, near as I've been able to determine. So, I've decided to retire the 55/3.5. Dunno if I'll sell it. I've owned it for over 25 years and I have a certain amount of sentimental attachment to it. Can't get much for them on eBay or Craigslist anyway.</p>
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<p>Here's another tip for duping slides with the Nikon 40mm f/2.8G Micro and ES-1 holder: After more testing, I'm consistently getting the sharpest results by stopping down the lens to f/22. This is contrary to the usual advice that f/5.6 or f/8 are the sharpest apertures. But the 40mm Micro loses almost nothing to diffraction at smaller apertures.</p>

<p>Part of the reason, I think, is that the extra depth of field at f/22 hides small focusing errors -- and focusing is very critical at these reproduction ratios. Also, the extra depth helps to keep the slide in focus from corner to corner. Slides in cardboard or plastic mounts are not perfectly flat. Some slides are so warped that even my Coolscan can't keep the whole image in focus. Fortunately, the Coolscan lets you choose a focus point or even focus manually, and you can do the same when duping slides with a camera.</p>

<p>The only drawback to f/22 is that clear sky areas reveal some stubborn sensor dirt in my camera that multiple wet cleanings have failed to remove. But the spots aren't too bad and are fixable in Photoshop. They almost disappear at f/16, which is nearly as sharp as f/22.</p>

 

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<p>It is very difficult to achieve sharp focus by setting the lens at 1:1 magnification (the near focus stop) and sliding the telescoping tube of the ES-1. You not only have to get the distance just right within a fraction of an inch, you must keep it straight relative to the frame line.</p>

<p>Instead, I pull the ES-1 a little further out than the best focus point, then tune it by focusing the lens. That includes more of the frame line than necessary, but the image is easily cropped in processing.</p>

<p>I use f/5.6 or f/8, which bracket the best resolution point of the lens. At 42 MP and no AA filter, you experience diffraction limiting smaller than f/8. Focus magnification removes most of the uncertainty. and the point being magnified can be moved with the 4-way. Somewhere between the center and halfway to the short edge usually works. At 12x, you're looking at the grain, not details in the image. If the subject material is out of focus, it probably left the original camera that way.</p>

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<p>I never focus by moving the ES-1 tube. The tube is strictly for zooming the image for tight framing. I use wide-area autofocus and touch up the focus manually if necessary. (The 40mm f/2.8G has full-time auto/manual focusing.) But I don't trust my eyes for such critical work. Once I determine the proper exposure, I shoot two or three frames. For each frame, I slightly defocus manually, then redo the autofocus. Usually all the frames are equally in focus, but sometimes one frame is slightly sharper than the others when examined at 100% in Photoshop.</p>

<p>Film scanning is no better in this regard. Nikon Coolscan's autofocus is sometimes slightly off, too, especially if the slide is warped. Sometimes I must rescan the film after manually placing the focus point on the most important part of the image, such as a person's face. Let everything else fall out of focus.</p>

<p>It makes sense to design a dedicated macro lens (like the 40mm f/2.8G) for good performance at small apertures, because such lenses are often used to photograph three-dimensional objects that would not be entirely in focus at middle apertures like f/5.6 or f/8. I'm definitely getting better edge sharpness at smaller apertures. Note that the slides I'm scanning are very old and not very flat. Many of the slides I'm scanning are infected with fungus, which gives me something else to focus on!</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>As a new ES-1 user who wants to scan colour negatives I will chip in my 5slides. </p>

<ol>

<li>Colour conversion shall not be a problem - it can be done with SilverFast or ColorPerfect PS plugin. The scanner does not scan negatives differently than positives - it has to reverse them via software as well.</li>

<li>What I dislike most about ES-1 is the loosens of the telescope tube. I was thinking to fix that via an O ring which I can tighten once I find the sweet spot filing up the sensor frame. The material seems soft enough for the outer tube to grip on the inner tube. Ideally the outer tube would have a simple screw which would tighten and lock the tubes, but it is not possible to bore one without harming the inner tube. </li>

<li>Second problem is copying film strips. I fixed that simply by sliding a 6x7 slide frame anti newton glass between the the springs. This protects the strip for mental springs and should also keep the film strip as flat as possible without a glass sandwich. I think the glass and allow are smooth enough not to scratch the film while fiddling with it.</li>

<li>Another annoyance is not being really able to distinguish what is the edge of the ES-1 film opening and what the edge of the film. I plan to fix this by simply marking the opening in the ES-1 with 4 white dots in it's corners. This way I can distinguish the the opening from the film edge.</li>

<li>Focusing this thing seems quite a pain. I use a Mikro Nikkor AF 55mm 2.8. In auto it hunts quite a lot. I believe once the telescope is fixed focus can be found via the green spot confirmation (which rather blinks then lights up solid). It is true that F11 might be the best regarding DOF and diffraction especially with mounted slides.</li>

</ol>

<p>I would be glad if all of you could share how you improved the copying experience with this, just a little to simple device.</p>

<p>Best, Rene</p>

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<p>Rene,</p>

<p>>>The scanner does not scan negatives differently than positives - it has to reverse them via software as well.</p>

<p>This is in fact a huge difference. The scanner inverts negatives (which is easy later), and for color negatives, the scanner also removes the orange mask (which is deep blue after inversion). This is difficult (to do well) in software later, because shifting color of digital images clips at 255. The scanner does this in analog (varying scan time by RGB color), so no issue then.</p>

<p>>>Focusing this thing seems quite a pain.</p>

<p>Focusing a DLSR camera requires some detail or edges to focus on. Focusing on blank sky doesn't work for example. But the solution is trivial, just move your focus point to be on some feature of detail. You do this without touching the film.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>Wayne,<br>

I would have to disagree - for the scanner to vary the scan time of each colour (I never hear of that before) it would need to know the type of negative film. Orange masks vary quite substantially from film to film. Additionally, you will see there often is a way to make a linear scan which produces a positive of a negative film (not inverted). Every scanner software have this option which bypasses scanners software postproduction. The inversion is of course problematic due to several things. You can read a lot about that on the page of the developers of ColorPerfect plugin www.colorperfect.com. I also have no idea what you refer to with with shifting colours to clip? Getting rid of the mask is done simulating correction filters which can be somewhat emulated with photo filters of other colour overlays. You are not trying to shift the orange mask but to get rid of it meaning getting the orange colour value low not shifting it same amount of another colour ...<br>

Regarding the focusing I was rather talking about critical grain focusing via life view magnification. Do you seriously think people who scan negatives in 21st century do not know the basics of autofocusing? :D<br>

Cheers!</p>

 

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<p>OK, good luck then. But you really should experiment a bit first before you make elaborate plans, to see what's involved. But yes, of course film scanners (not camera type, but those with actual scanner carriage motion) scan color negatives differently, to remove the orange mask. For color negatives, Red channel is about 1x time, green about 2x, and blue about 4x time. The red can be division of linear, no clipping then. This acts as an analog filter to remove the orange. Better scanners do have film brand options to adjust this. Have you ever used a film scanner? Film scanners provide three options for film, positive, monochrome negative (inverted), and combinations of color negative (inverted and filtered with time). As to post processing, if you have Photoshop, see its Curve Tool (CTRL M), and its Preset, Color Negatives, and then try to imagine "no clipping". :)</p>
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<p>I am sorry Wayne, but you should get rid of your arrogance assuming the knowledge of other people completely without any firm base ... <br>

If you only searched web you would not be so ignorant. There are books written about digitalising transparency materials and reprography - the category which this falls into. I have no lust to give you a lesson for free since I am sure you can google alone. Star at the SilverFast page where you will see that they provide software which will convert linear scans according to chosen film material even if you never had a scanner connected. Also you can scan the edge of the film to have a sample of the orange mask and later cancel it out. This is a process even included into VueScan linear scanning. There are plenty of people building their own dslr based repro devices for large format critical scans converting them via several processes none including a scanner. You should sometimes check analogue photography forums such as APUG or http://forum.luminous-landscape.com ...<br>

Meh, no, I never used a scanner - before dslr I scanned with trained squirrels painting photos with pigments produced out of walnuts and mushroom. Later I used to edit my photos with steam machine ...</p>

 

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<p>Good luck then. Since you say you've somehow never heard of color negative RGB scan times, and mentioned Vuescan, then check out the Vuescan manual (Color Negatives, page 33, says 2015 manual). Color tab Film Base color RGB will modify it.</p>

 

On most scanners, setting Input | Media (p. 50) to "Color negative" will increase the green exposure time by 2.5x and the blue exposure time by 3.5x. This results in adjusting for the

green and blue absorption by the orange mask of the film. If the film doesn't have an orange mask, then using "Color negative" will result in a raw scan file that looks very cyan.

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<p>I never said some software doesn't try to handle this problem in this way. Scanning time is a bad description though. Maybe you are talking about exposition time. However there is a myriad of scanning software which does not. I can say it for certain for Minolta, Creo / Scitex and Hasselblad.<br>

What you probably referring too is the problem of the exposure of the red channel which ends in clipping since it is offset the most. This is a problem which is not unknown in old good colour wet printing yet easily solvable. It depends chiefly on the colour temperature of the light source. You are aware that scanners have different light sources as well. Take a 5600K LED light source and you will greatly reduce this problem. If it is not enough use some simple Rosco gels like Cinegel #3202: Full Blue (CTB), Cinegel #3204: Half Blue (1/2 CTB), Cinegel #4415: 15 Green. This will align the red channel into a very comfortable exposure zone. Use a high CRI on camera LED panel and some gels and you will be exposing like a chief.<br>

There are high end professional solution using this process by now as the Phase One DT Film Scanning Kit which of course costs a fortune. <br>

So, thank you for your good luck wishes, but there isn't really much luck required. Truth is , there is more fiddling in PS for such repro scans then with a scanner. </p>

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<p>Btw, unless you are unapologetically defending your skeptic position, I am attaching a link to where some basics are covered. And this is way back from the year ... Todays equipment yields better results but the principles stay the same.<br>

http://www.frogymandias.org/imagery/index-camera-scanning-negatives.html<br>

You also have astonishing ultra high CRI LEDS with vario color temperature. Stuff like this http://www.akurat.lighting/en/products/on-camera<br>

So basically only the physical problems of the process remain. That is if you want to keep it cheap. Given you have money just buy a Kaiser repro stand for transparencies ...</p>

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