Dia-Neg 2000 for 35mm slide duplication

Does anyone here know anything about the Dia-Neg 2000 slide

duplicator or ever used one to make duplicate copies of slides or to

make negatives from slides? Does it require special film stock, or

can any positive or negative film be used? Does it produce high

quality duplicates?

I had never heard of it, but a google.com search brought up 2 for sale. 1 at $1000 model 1991, and another at $900, no date give. Another lists a manual (reprint) at $15.00 Most any film can be used, but films dedicated to duping and internegs are recommended.

Thanks Art.

 

I'm also considering a Bowens Illumitran for an upcoming project, which will consist of making duplicates of a couple of thousand slides. Many are lovely old Kodachrome slides, and many are sadly color-turned and faded Ektachrome slides.

 

It's too much material to scan. I'd really like to dup the most important ones on Kodachrome 64, but I can't afford to do them all that way. How archival are duping films?

You can get a duping device that attaches to a lens, or one that has its own optics that attaches to a camera body. Some even zoom in for cropping. As for duping films, I don't know for sure how they age, but there's no reason to think they'd be much different from regular films. Have you considered a duping service?

The lowest price duplicating services I've found charge from around $1 to $1.25 per 35mm E6 type slide, and around $2.50 each for Kodachrome. Those are the large quantity prices, more than 100 originals, or more than 500 originals, etc. Some duplicating services charge as much as $4 per slide.

 

So I'm investigating the possibility of doing it myself, the whole nine yards, from exposure to E6 processing in my CPP-2 to mounting. Ignoring my time, I know I can do it myself for less.

 

I know there are a number of ways to duplicate slides. I'm looking for the highest quality, fastest and easiest production method, which is why I'm questioning the capabilities of this Dia-Neg 2000 machine.

Duping onto Kodachrome just doesn't work. Way too much contrast gain, especially from a Kodachrome original. Blocked up shadows and highlights are the results. I've bought duplicate slides made this way (of streetcars), and the results were awful. The ones done on Ektachrome dupe film were better, and the best were from internegatives.

 

The reversal duplicating films are all Ektachrome, and are low contrast versions. More archival than the old E-2 and E-4 Ektachromes, but you really need to store them at controlled low temperature/humidity for something you can call archival.

 

Duping film to film is hard! More work than scanning slides, I assure you. Color balance, recipcrocity, light source reproducability, dupe film lot inconsistency, etc. You either have to do a lot of bracketing (exposure and color correction) on each slide, or you have to copy the same slide on a couple of different rolls of film until you get it right. There's a reason dupe film is mostly sold in 100 foot rolls, it takes a lot of it to get each slide right. There were plenty of articles on this in the photo magazines in the 1970's.

 

The reason that duplicating slide to slide is expensive is that it's like custom color printing, there's a lot of careful color correction required.

 

Also, you cannot fix faded Ektachrome with linear filtering. You've got to split the color channels, and that's only practical in the digital domain. I've scanned and fixed dupes of faded Ektachromes in the digital domain, and impressed the owner of the original slide that was duped.

 

If the scanning is too much work, batch them up in lots of 100, and have them scanned to Photo-CD by a Kodak lab. There's a decent price break at 100 per order. Kodak does know how to scan their own slide films, they really can back-translate from what's on the slide to what it saw, rather than what the slide looks like. (The know all the emulsion color sensitivies, and the dye colors.) But the top resolution of Photo-CD (non-Pro) isn't really that impressive anymore. The Photo-CD-Pro is much more expensive.

 

Unfortunately, there's really no good digital output to slides path. Your duplicates would be the corrected digital images.

Thanks, John. It sounds like it might be worthwhile to try to restore some of the faded Ektachromes by scanning and photoshopping, even if I can't output them to slide film.

 

As for the rest, perhaps the best course will be to edit carefully and duplicate selectively to keep costs down.

I have a Dia-Neg 2000 which I bought used. I found I had to calibrate it to get a good image. I sent it to Loersch and it cost $900. to calibrate and get the calibration slides. I used Fuji slide film and Kodak duping film and got good results. The machine is for sale as I closed my business. I also have a Lasergraphics Mark III film recorder and older tower set up for recording digital to film in slide of film format, but the equipment is not cheap. I also have a PhotoTherm for processing all of the film!

 

If I can help, let me know.

Barbara