Which way to digitize 1000 4x5's?

If you have to digitize 1000+ 4x5 slides and negatives, to enable print sizes up

to 11x14, and the choice is:

(1) buy a scanner and scan at 4000 dpi or so. I'm not sure which model scanner

would be best and how much it would cost, but I think it can't be cheap, say

>$500? One would also have to consider the time to do it, and also the cost of

storage, because the files will be big. It would also be tedious.

(2) since I have a 4x5 enlarger, I'm thinking about rigging one up for copying

by cutting a lensboard and mounting a lens reversing ring on it. I would then be

able to mount a 10-12 mpx or so camera, pointing up, with a right angle viewing

attachment on the viewfinder. I can also borrow a medium format camera with a

digital back and use it that way (at 16 mpx). With the medium format camera, I

would avoid having to crop too much off the 4x5 films. Using the enlarger would

be less tedious, because I would be doing something all the time instead of just

waiting for the scanner.

Would the scanner be any better than either camera, for prints up to 11x14?

which is more important to you: money or time?

 

if time is: have a service like nancyscans.com or nasheditions.com do it for you.

 

if you have lots of free time on your hands: get a good scanner like the Epson V750 or the MicroTek M1.

 

Figure that, once you have everything dialed in, it takes about 10 minutes (including handling time) per 4x5.

 

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Isn't it a bit unlikely that you'll want to print all 1000 of these? If so, why not scan when you know you want a print? The solution you adopt if you're actually going to use 100 scans over a year or two may well be very different from that which you need if you seriously want to do them all at once.

 

Whichever method you choose, doing the same task 1000 times will be extremely tedious. A month off work should do it.

Scanning takes time. <BR><BR>Whats your time worth versus farming out the job? <BR><BR>What is the quality of the scan you want and the resolution? <BR><BR>Once a decade plus ago a typical drum scan for a 4x5 was only 800dpi/lpi and a service bureau charged 2 dollars per megabyte of file size for the scan; sometimes folks drum scanned higher ie 2000+ if warranted. Our ancient usb 1200U Epson scans a 4x5 at 1200 dpi; with its resolution approaching these old 800 dpi/lpi drum scans. <BR><BR>Scanning a 4x5 negative for a 11x14 print is not alot of requirement; say a 3x enlargement with zitch cropping. For 7 to 8 lines per mm on a print thats 21 to 24 on the negative; about what a modern Epson 2400, 3200, 4800 dpi scanner can do with no problems. Beyond that carrier focus, roll of the dice begins to matter with a flatbed. Specs on flatbeds are abit inflated; like shop vac peak horsepower. <BR><BR>A hybrid approach is to get flatbed and scan some/all say at a practical 2400 dpi setting; and farm out better ones to a real scanner. <BR><BR>

Here at our shop folks often bring in a shoebox full of negatives, slides, 116/616, 4x5, 110, polaroids, 4x6 prints and want it moved into the the digital domain. It costs time to scan each item. Its cost to sort them in directories and burn cd's. It costs time to select whats the *practical* resolution to use for each item. It costs time to vacuum/sweep off mold and dust. Often somebody dies and the kids squable over who gets the shoebox; and thus its digitized for all. Task like this require time.<BR><BR>The owner of the shoebox; group of 4x5's etc can a save money by scanning them theirselves. They know whats important; whats crud.<BR><BR>If its *film pack* 4x5 then it often is abit wider than a standard 4x5 flatbeds holder; and thus the negative has to be trimmed a micro grunt; or a custom holder required. <BR><BR>

*Lets throw some numbers around for fun*<BR><BR>With our old obsolete Epson 1200U scanner; lets say a 1200dpi/ppi scan really pulls out a real 800 ppi of info. Over 4x5 image thats about 3200 by 4000; ie 12.8 million elves; pixies, santas. Thats in the *ballpark* with your target camera scheme of shooting the image off an enlarger; and thats an older flatbed that has a transparency adapter. Any more modern Epson 24xx, 32xx, 48xx flatbed typically can pull out say 1200 to 1600 dpi/ppi of info; when the scanner is at a 2400 dpi setting. Thus a consumer flatbed would be an easier settup than a hybrid dlsr to enlarger rig.

An ancient method from *Exakta 35mm slr* era of the 1950's is to connect the camera body to the enlarger. One places the 4x5 in the enlarger; and a 50mm lens is reversed; the lens relays the light to the 35mm camera. The threads of the LTM go into a closeup spacer; the spacer to the 35mm camera/dlsr. The lens cap part of the 50mm lens connects to the enlarger lens board; the bellows is used to focus; the 4x5 image gets maped to a 1x1.25 image on the 35mm camera; if its at a 4 to one ratio. This was a rig that labs used to shoot 35mm slides from 4x5 tranys say 1/2 century ago.

Personally I like the idea of using a camera, I just wanted to copy a couple of slides so I clipped them on a holder in front of the window with tissue paper behind to difuse the light. and shot away. AWB took care of the colour fidelity .. results were great.

 

For a thousand I would organise a proper holder. The camera takes a split second to record the copy .. it is the changing of the subject which takes time.

 

In those days I used a 5Mp Nikon camera today I probably would use my 10Mp Panasonic. It is much the way I copied slides to neg-pos back in film days. You MAY get better results the way others suggest but even 3Mp cameras through an good editing programme gave me excellenmt 11x14s way back.

 

You can see the 2 dioptre CU lens I used to permit the x8 zoom of the Nikon 5700 to focus tight on the slide sitting on the table.

Sorry preswsed the wrong button :-)

hers the photo ....<div></div>

If you want to store the scans you are going to need lots of hard drive space or burn DVD's. Just figure out all the pieces and price it all out.

 

I would go to the Large Format forum here on Photo.net, so you can ask the experts there for help figuring it out. I read a post on the 7xx epson lack of sharpness.

I agree, the digital camera idea sounds very promising.

 

I got an Epson 4990 a couple of years ago and began scanning a bunch of 4x5 and 8x10

negatives. It took a long time per image and, at the higher dpi numbers, the files

produced were enormous. The results were OK with the 4990, but nothing special.

 

As a comparison I decided to photograph some 4x5 transparencies using a tripod-

mounted D70 with a 60mm 2.8 micro. I simply placed them on a light table, with a dark

masking frame around the image area to cover the entire lightbox surface. I made a series

of exposures at various settings; the camera's matrix metering and an aperture of about

5.6 to 8 worked well. Results were very easy to verify immediately using the camera's

preview screen and the histogram. And by shooting in RAW I was able to fuss with the

digital images later in photoshop.

 

The results were surprisingly good. I printed out a couple at smaller sizes and had a hard

time distinguishing them from the Epson's output. It was extremely easy to do, took no

time at all compared to the flatbed scanning process and the file sizes were very

manageable. I would imagine that for simply archiving a box full of LF transparencies

using a digital camera would be a very good idea.

Even a mediocre flatbed scanner, used properly, is going to give you better results that shooting a slide of negative with a camera. If you are getting better results with a camera, you aren't using the scanner properly.