Best Lens Setup for Photo Scanning

<p>This seemed like the right place to post this, but if I'm wrong, I apologize in advance.</p>

<p>I have a D90 and was thinking for a scanning project of old paper photo prints (color and B&W) that I could use my D90 on a tripod mounted vertical with the photo underneath to achieve much faster results then using a flatbed scanner. In theory, I could scan them as fast as I could get them under the camera. I recall years ago before the digital age that my father in his darkroom did something similar to duplicate photos from customers.</p>

<p>One thought I had was to tripod mount the D90, use the remote trigger and place the photo under a sheet of non-reflective glass to flatten it out. Of course lighting would be key to the whole thing, but I would probably use continious lighting just to make life easy and could preadjust the white balance.</p>

<p>Does anyone have any experience with this? Any suggestions? Is the quality going to be a lot worse then if I had simply scanned them at a few minutes per scan? And I totally crazy to think this could work? BTW these are all photos without negatives, but I have a lot to do.</p>

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<p>An inexpensive Ai Nikkor 55mm f3.5 micro (macro) would work well. Or if you want auto exposure with your D90 a 60mm f2.8 AF-D or G micro.</p>

<p>But after recommending the lenses I personally would scan the prints. Remember your father did not have this option when he photographed his customers prints.</p>

<p>The f3.5 AI Micro-Nikkor will not meter with your D90. I'd recommend using the 60mm AF-D version.</p>

<p>While the older manual focus lens won't meter, all he has to do is set his exposure with the LCD/Histogram. Since he will be using continuous lighting, the exposure settings won't change. The older MF lens will cost hundreds less than the 60mm AF version & it was made for copy work such as this...</p>

<p>Couple of things come to mind regarding speed and/or quality. You mention they have no negs which kinda implies the pics are unique records deserving of a proper job, not a quick 'record'. Just how many and of what size and do you actually have a flatbed? Using a scanner will be slower (although you can probably do more than one at once, ie up to 4 on the glass) but if your scanner is any good you will get a much better result, especially if any of the prints have started to age badly. My Epson 4990 (and it's driver) have all sorts of controls for squaring-up, unsharp masking, colour restoration etc. Nothing that P'shop can't do, but you do get a squared, colour corrected, sharpened and guaranteed flat image in one shot. The D90 images will probably all need cropping (~96% viewfinder) and maybe squaring. So total time to a happy result may not be much different. If required, you can also get a much higher resolution with the scanner.<br>

If you do go down the camera tripod method, the 55mm macro is THE way to go, very flat field, no distortion etc. (BUT ensure it has a firm helicoid and doesn't 'drop' when pointed straight down.) I'd also recommend one of the remote camera control bits of software. It files the images where you want them with no downloading etc. Put the tripod on the bench pointing straight down, the small mirror trick will be vital here. Hopefully the tripod has a centre column that can be raised and lowered in the vertical plane to frame different sizes (maybe pre-sort into batches of the same size?) Tape a piece of black paper on the bench and some sorta guide to align the print's edges. Hinge the glass using some duck tape as a hinge. Pop laptop on bench close enough so you can reach both the print copy-station and keyboard and off you go. Pop lights on, f5.6/8 is ideal and you should be able to pre-set focus for each same-size batch. Maybe even tape the focus ring if it is prone to drop as the set-up gets warmer under the lights. You could use Live-view for set-up framing (per same-size batch) as it would give you a nice accurate 100% view.<br>

Watch for Newton's Rings from the glass/print contact area. You may not notice then straight away, but are impossible to remove sensibly in P'shop afterwards.</p>

<p>I do all the time with a 55mm f3.5. NO metering, no problem. Does NOT matter for stuff like this. I just got a D90 and have been doing some of this in just the past few days. maybe I'm crazy, but I prefer the results of this to the mid-range flatbed scanners I've used. Make sure you light from both sides, not behind the camera, and eliminate ANY light from above.</p>

<p>A flatbed scanner will work in many circumstances. However a camera on a stand gives you more flexibility in handling the exceptions.</p>

<p>1) There are no practical size limitations (i.e., compared to the bed size of a flatbed)<br>

2) You can control the lighting, hence reflections (flatbed scanner light is basically coincident, causing problems with glossy material and textured surfaces).<br>

3) You can copy work mounted on pages or in frames, with minimum handling (everything on a flatbed must be pressed down to fit agains the glass).</p>

<p>While you can use a tripod, it's better if you can find a copy stand. It's much easier to adjust the height on a copy stand, keep the work centered and keep it parallel to the camera, and light the work without obstructions. If you use a tripod, it's hard to keep the legs (or shadows thereof) out of the picture. This is one (possibly the only) instance where it makes sense to invert the column.</p>

<p>In general, you want the shortest practical focal length in a (macro) lens designed for flatness of field at close range. Autofocus is optional, and an inexpensive Nikon 55/2.8 Micro (sic) would be my first choice. (This is a great lens, very sharp with low flare, and one I always have in my bag.)</p>

<p>On a D90, I would use a Tokina 35/2.8 macro lens. It will then has a FOV of ~50mm and you can then use standard 35mm camera copy stand (ie. Nikon PF-4). The plus of using a copy stand is, it let you use all different kind of lighting options. A flatbed scanner has only one lighting options.</p>

<p>Great suggestions - thank you so much! I'm glad this sounds like something that is not totally hair brained. I'll give it a shot, most of these are family photos going back years of all sizes, but if I can do it fast enough I'll actually get it done vs having a pile of work that I'm not getting to. So if I can get close to flatbed scanner quality and I can actually save time, I'll probably go this route. Though I might end up trading scanner time for photoshop time and come out a wash. For me its the time vs quality equation.</p>

<p><br />I should have provided a few more details. I have a couple of thousand prints. And as I get older and I move up the family tree I'm going to get more. I have a Canon LiDI 20 scanner, which is actually nice, but slow and is a low end scanner. I have an AF-S 35 1.8 a nifty-50 f1.8, and a 18-200 VR. So it sounds like I'm in the right focal length range for the fixed focus lenses. The 18-200 would only work vertical since the barrel creep will keep me from pointing it down while keeping a focal length.</p>

<p>I'm going to start with a tripod, but if that works a copy stand could be in my future. I'm not sure on remote software yet, but that would really make it a lot nicer, especially since I'm in a fixed environment with power, etc. Seeing it full screen before I remove the work would be a plus. If my test setup works, I envision a background of black or netural grey marked to a size of about 9x14 (thats about 300dpi on a D90) and a piece of matt like glass over it so I can slip in photos of different sizes or several for a single shot - not sure on work flow for several photos in one shot. And of course a taped hinge. ;-)</p>

<p>Again thanks for the help. It's awesome to have a good community to bounce ideas off and get good ideas back.</p>

 

<p>that's a lot to scan.</p>

<p>imho, invest in a 55mm f3.5 or f2.8 MF lens, a copy stand, and a couple of lights, and do it RIGHT.</p>

<p>Stephen I've used a similar technique to digitize all of my family's many old B&W prints using a D50 and now a D90 with great success. I've not used it for color. I have negatives (or positives) for all my color photos which I have digitized with a 35mm film scanner. So I can't comment on the issues associated with color.</p>

<p>Instead of a tripod, though, I invested a (very) few $$ in an old second hand enlarger stand. It provides an easy way to insure that the the camera is perpendicular to the print and to change the distance between camera and print. I suspect that this would be somewhat tricky using a tripod.</p>

<p>What I do is position the print on the base of the enlarger stand and cover it with glass from a picture frame to flatten the print. Lighting doesn't seem to be very critical with B&W although I expect that it is very critical with color. With B&W the only issue seems to be make sure that the camera doesn't see any direct reflections from the glass or the glossy print surface.</p>

<p>Lens wise the choice depends on the print size. With my 18-70mm lens a 4X6 print appears about full frame with the lens at 70mm and the minimum focus distance of about 1 foot. So anything less than 4X6 doesn't utilize the full resolution of the camera. Larger prints can be accommodated by the 18-70mm. For smaller prints, though, I use my 90mm 1:1 macro if I am interested in maximum resolution. And I am many times since some of these old prints are quite good. I use my remote to trigger the camera but let the camera automatically do its magic relative to focus and exposure.</p>

<p>I have a flatbed scanner but my results with the camera are much better than any results I can get with my scanner. But I'm sure that is dependent on the quality of the scanner. Time wise if only a few prints are involved then the scanner is faster since it takes some time to set up the camera. But if you have a boatload of prints (as you seem to have) then, once you are set up, the camera approach is MUCH faster than a scanner.</p>

<p>You didn't mention negatives. In my family treasure of old photos there were many negatives where I didn't know whether prints existed. The same approach works for negatives except that you place the negative on a light box to illuminate it from the rear before photographing it. Then invert the photo using some photo application. Works like a charm.</p>

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<p>Wow, I didn't think that you could do that with negatives, but that makes sense. The good news for me is I have my negatives under control. I looked on B&H and Adorama, and they sell affordable copy stands, and I guess I never put two and two together, because that makes total sense. So thanks Edward, Tommy and Denton. Thats exactly where I'm going to head with this. And I'll see if my existing lenses will do. A used enlarger stand also sounds like a great option.</p>

 

<p>And thanks everyone else for the other suggestions. This is close to a how to guide for me.</p>

<p>A macro lens is the way to go, very good quality at close ranges. Nikon's macros tend to be optimized around 1:10, which gives a subject size of about 10x7" on DX if my math is right. A nice aspect with using a full frame lens is that you don't get practically any vignetting. A short lens is useful, since if you want to copy larger prints you don't need so much distance between camera and print.<br>

Alignment is easy; it should be quite enough just to use spirit levels. There are more advanced mirror based methods too, but the spirit levels should suffice for this.<br>

I wouldn't shy away from using flash; once you get the setup done, you won't need to do any color work in post processing, since the WB and color reproduction will be correct. In addition, vibration is not an issue with flash. But if you don't have flashes lying around, then continuous lighting is a viable alternative.<br>

From a workflow perspective, it makes sense to set up the system and copy a large amount of similarly sized prints. That way the camera position and focus doesn't need to be adjusted between shots. However, do a couple of test runs first to determine that your setup works and that your workflow is good before you do a large run.<br>

Oh yeah, use a lens hood; it's surprisingly easy to get a little light to creep in from the wrong angle making the blacks slightly less black.</p>

<p>I did a test this evening. I scanned at 300dpi a photo on my LiDI 20, then took my AF-S 35mm on my D90. It was only a quick test, so I stuck it on a tripod and used ambient day light in the room. After resizing to 300dpi the scanned photo looks better, but the black levels on the D90 are better. I can totally see this working as well if not better then the scanner, especially if I do some camera adjustments and add in better lighting, use the correct focal length lens and a copy stand. It might be extra setup, but I will gain in my bulk operation. I'll have to reread the thread for lens suggestions, because this is the type of thing where it's worth renting the right lens for a few days and then just plow through all the photos.</p>

 

<p>I have the 55mm 2.8 micro and it is cheap and great for the purpose, although I have also used the AFS 50mm 1.4 sometimes. Do you have a SB600+? then I really like the flash setup. I put the flash in a softbox for diffuse light. The D90 can remotely trigger the flash (two flashes would be better). Make sure you block the direct flash from the D90 otherwise it will give reflexions. Nikon has an IR filter especially for this.<br>

I also like to include the computer in this. Wire the D90 directly to the computer with USB, use the nikon remote control software to automatically save the picture in a watch directory where Lightroom automatically imports them. The batch conversion (cropping, straightening, white balance, etc) is soo easy in lightroom.</p>