Copying my slides and negatives

No doubt most of us from pre-digital days have collections of slides and/or negatives, waiting to receive a new digital rendering. I have been asked what process I use to copy these slides and negatives: here's a short summary of what I do and why I do things this way.

Over the years I have owned a couple of dedicated slide/film scanners and, frankly, I was never totally satisfied with the results from them. One of the characteristics of the old slide film, particularly Kodak, was that it was fairly contrasty and high in saturation. The typical consumer-level scanner, in my experience, has real problems handling those darker more saturated areas because of a lack of dynamic range. The result is either "soot and whitewash with some colour" or electronic noise. I tried using specialised third party software and, although it helped, I still was less than satisfied with the results.

Finally the penny dropped for me. The commercial scanners rely on a sensor chip in the same way as our cameras, but the camera sensors are far more capable in terms of pixels and dynamic range. On that basis, why not use the camera to do the copying? Even more so when I already had a perfectly good macro lens. Using the camera also allowed the slide/film to be copied as a RAW file, with far greater scope for adjustment than would ever be possible with the JPG from a scanner.

I make no pretenses, my setup is quite crude and could easily be built with more refinement and quality. But that would take more time to build and needs to be appropriate to the volume of material for copying. The main thing is that, even at this rudimentary level of construction , the system works. Care to have a try? First of all, mount the macro lens (I have a 100mm) on the camera. I have a bellows outfit that I mounted between, as it gives a base for mounting - a tripod alongside a table would be equally suitable. I also fitted my remote flash drive to the camera.

Next, mount an external flash on a small tripod with the remote flash receiver.

Finally, and this is the only time-consuming stage, make up a scanning box. I used an old cardboard shoe box. First of all, line it with white paper. Now measure the 35mm slide dimensions and cut a matching hole in the end of the box. Next find something the thickness of the slide (or carrier) and cut a couple of strips (I used thick cardboard). These are glued above and below the hole at a the right spacing to allow the slide/carrier to pass between. Finally, add some more card overlapping the cardboard strips, as a facing lip above and below the hole: and there's a holder frame. From here it's fairly easy. Set the camera up in line with the slide/film hole. Given the sophistication of my setup, I added books and magazines beneath the box and camera to raise both to the right relative height. Place the flash close to the box, facing over the top. I found that it was useful to place something above the slide (I use a heavy paper folder) to stop any sidelight reflections. Now just take macros of the slides/films, adjusting either the camera or flash output as necessary.

I have found it useful to have a small LED torch inside the box, facing toward the slide/negative to provide back lighting to check for centring and focus with the camera. This need not be turned off when copying, as the light from the flash comfortably overwhelms it.

Finally, from experience, the most frustrating part of the process is to find grit on the output images when the copying is done. The processing time to remove these marks from just one image can easily take longer than it does to copy quite a few images - you will save an awful lot of cursing and time by cleaning the originals with a blower brush (though some grit always seems to remain).

I hope this proves interesting and helpful, I'll be interested to hear how you go should you try this approach.