Adapting Epson 3200 35mm film carrier to accept other formats

I've got a potential requirement to need to scan a quantity of

Instamatic 126 (28x28mm) and Bantam (28x40mm) negatives.

 

My question is ... how easy will it be to modify the 35mm neg carrier

for the Epson 3200 to cover these formats?

 

I already have a 35mm film scanner but the loss of 2mm top and bottom

(and side to side on the Bantam negs) is unacceptable for a lot of

the pictures.

 

I already have an Epson 7000 with tranparency unit, but at 1200dpi

it's a bit limited for these smaller negs.

 

TIA

 

Chris Eve

What I have done, is use an old 126 2x2 slide to hold the negative in the slide holder rather than the 35mm neg holder. I used a different scanner, but it worked well.

Nice idea Glen, but I've potentially quite a quantity of negatives to scan, and they're all currently in strips and neatly filed, cutting them into individual negs really isn't an option.

What I did was take the old slide, split the cardboard, sandwich the strip so that the negative that I was scanning was exposed, then placed the whole thing into the slide holder. I couldn't do it on the film scanner that I have now(slide holder won't allow this), but it worked on my old film scanner. I would think that a flatbed slide carrier would make it possible.

My question is how exactly does the film need to be held to get a good scan on the 3200? I had success just laying film on the glass and scanning but Ive heard tell this can cause some kind of weird artifacts. What about just taking a piece of heavy card stock cutting out a slot in the desired size and taping your length of film to the card to scan. Dont forget to cut out a window for the upper area of the scanner that has to be clear for internal scanner calibration.

Rather than cutting that extra hole for scanner calibration, you could cut the inside to the size of image you require, and cut the outside dimension to fit into the 4x5 holder.

Personally I've just laid the film strip across one of the larger-format film holder frames (usually the 120-size window).

 

Occasionally the film tries to sag and hit the glass (Newton rings!). I find that flipping the film, so that the natural curve counteracts the sag, is enough to solve the problem (the scanned picture is backwards but can be 'flipped' back to normal in PhotoShop). Otherwise you can insert a hand-made mask/stiffener, as mentioned, to hold the film flat within the 4x5 or 6x9 holders.

 

I'm scanning panoramic 35mm images - but it should work for other 'oversize' 35mm formats as well.

I don't know if sawing off 2 mm on the upper and lower side of the holder will be an easy feat, but in general I don't think it's too difficult to roll you own (or do as Andy proposes). Eg. I scan 9x12 negs and slides, which are a bit too small for the 4x5" holder. To solve this, I've cut a suitable piece of cardboards with a hole of the right size in the middle and the distance of the hole edge to the cardboard's edge is such that aligning it with the right side of the scanner's scanning window will align the image properly.

 

If you're a DIY man, then it shoudn't be too difficult for you to make a cardboard or wood frame which you could use (also old enlarger frames might work) The calibration hole is no problem as the mount can be slid an inch from scanner window's upper edge to facilitate calibration.

I created my own holder for just this purpose - had a ton of 126 negs to scan. I took a piece of 1/16" black styrene - possibly available from you local prolab. Cut out a slot for the image and the calibration section. Then I take a couple more chunks of the styrene - tape the negs to the styrene mask, and use double stick tape on the additional chunks of styrene to hold the negs flat, if necessary. I always scan emulsion down, better optically speaking. This way I can scan a strip of 4 negs at 16 bit all in one shot, then cut it up and do my corrections in photoshop. Make sure you save it first! Nothing like having your scan disappear when your system crashes.

It's not that hard to adapt the 35mm film holder to hold and scan the ENTIRE 126 Instamatic negative. But you have to destroy the holder for use with 35mm film, so buy another.

 

I purchased a spare one from Compass Micro (www.compassmicro.com). I actually purchased two, because I was afraid I would damage one. The total cost came to $23.

 

I then used my Dremel grinder and a glass grinder to remove most of the plastic material from the negative holder AND the negative cover.

 

I found that I needed to remove all of the top black material except for the width of a steel ruler. So I used a razor knife (don't do this on an airplane!) to score the black material so I would know how much to remove.

 

The Dremel grinder removes the material almost instantly. But it melts the thermoplastic material and leaves a lot of excess to be cut off or ground down.

 

The glass grinder (I used to make stained glass windows) was much slower, but did the work perfectly. It flows water over the plastic, which cools it. The net result is a fine black powder and no melted material.

 

I actually used a combination of both grinders to do the job.

 

The net result is that the entire 126 negative is visible. It took me about two hours to make the entire holder. Once I knew what i was doing the work went more quickly.

 

I fired up the scanner this morning to insure it worked ok.

 

You have to switch from Automatic to Professional mode. The automatic mode assumes you have 35mm film, and crops the sides of the pictures.

 

You have to do slightly more work in the Professional mode.

 

Set things to Transparency, B & W film, 16 bit, 1200 dpi if you are using black and white film. The software doesn't like black and white film, and will tell you it is converting it into an RGB image.

 

Set things to Transparency, Color film, 48 bit, 1200 dpi if you are using color fim.

 

Then ask it to do a pre-scan (I can't remember the term).

 

The Epson scanning software recognizes the film holder and only scans the area where there are negatives.

 

Sometimes it will pick up each negative perfectly, and show it as a single negative.

 

Sometimes it can't tell the negative edges, and scans the entire strip (say, four negatives) in one scan. Then you just make four copies of the final image and crop your way down to only one image on each.

 

Hope this helps you.