Digital Scanning Backs for Use with a 4 x 5

<p>I am just a hobbyist and am looking for a digital scanning back to go along with a 4 x 5 camera. Trying to combine the best of both worlds. Do anyone have any experience doing this and if so what it is?</p>

<p>Gary, for large format digital capture, the "quad stitch" system is the way to go. See more about it here at <a href="http://www.kapturegroup.com/solution/three.html">Kapture Group Inc</a>. There are Chinese copies, but nowhere near as good.<br /> Bear in mind that first you need a lot of RAM to process even one medium format digital image with any quality, at sensible working speed, and without fear of crashing your system. To stitch four such images, be prepared to budget for an upgrade.<br /> Stitching is only suitable for static subjects.<br /> If I need digital files of large format, I expose with film and scan. This way I enjoy the full benefit of full frame 4x5 or 5x7, with no restriction in terms of subject. .. and with all the image quality you could ever dream of.<br /> Otherwise you can settle for a smaller scale technical camera, such as the <a href="http://linhof.de/M679.html">Linhof M 679cs</a> or Linhof Techno, but these is not hobby budget gear. I'm just showing you what the pros use.<br>

You can of course use a simpler single frame digital capture using the <a href="http://www.kapturegroup.com/solution/three.html#sba">Standard Sliding Back</a>, but then it will always be a substantial crop of the 4x5 image. For product shots this is not an issue, but it depends on where you field of interest lays. (Again there are cheap Chinese copies to be found on eBay)</p>

<p>Following on from the above, you will find that most such adapters are made for Hasselblad-fitting digital backs. It's worth spending some time reading through both the Kapture Group and the Linhof websites. Their products have been developed to meet the demands of today's professionals and offer the best available. (Linhof have English text as well as German)</p>

<p>I used a Betterlight 6K II scanning back, on a 4x5 cambo, with older legacy film lenses, for about 4 years in a commercial studio enviroment. The file size was easily 30x40" at 300 dpi (I think), the file was beautiful, really beautiful.<br>

Potential Problems: the scan rate is between 30 secs and 2.5 minutes and mostly I remember being close to 2 minutes, on every scan. You need continuous light and I was using 3200k tungsten lights. You need a very sturdy floor, concrete is probably best, to prevent any camera movement during the scan. You could shoot on a wooden floor but would have to keep everyone away from the camera position during the scan. It is very sensitive to electricity fluctuations, even very small ones, this does not effect the stepping motor that moves the scanning array across, but does effect the scanning array itself. I might get 2 to 8 very soft dark lines in a scan. I simply had to redo the scan, another two minutes more.<br>

The most serious problem comes from the lenses. Because the scanning backs live area is about 2.25x275" it is about 50% of a 4x5" piece of film. So, where normally I might be 6 or 8 feet from a standard tabletop setup, I now needed to be 12 to 16 feet away to fit it all in the scanning backs live area. This is not so much of a problem if you have lots of space to move back, but mostly I did not. The other solution is to move to shorter lenses. My normal lenses in the 4x5 film era were 210mm as a normal, 150mm as a wide angle, 300mm and 360mm and 90mm f8 super angulon for very wide angle work. So on the scanning back, the 150mm and even a 135mm were the normal lenses, rarely used the 210mm and never above. When I tried to use the old 90mm super angulon lens, there was horrible color shift on a third of the image and found that I could not use this lens. Eventually I bought a used 75mm super angulon xl which worked much better. Was unable to justify the high cost of the new digital lenses for the work that we were doing. In general, your film lenses will seem to double in size, so a 150mm will act more like a 300mm, most old wide 4x5 lenses from 135mm and down will have problems with color casts and the longer lenses 210mm and up, will usually work out fine.<br>

A scanning back is a tethered solution only. It comes with the required daylight (a lighter blue) filter and a tungsten (a darker blue) filter. Also with a controller/storage unit that could be scsi or the newer usb, that will hook into a laptop or desktop computer.<br>

Check out www.betterlight.com to see what can be done with the backs.<br>

Brian Woolf</p>