DDoug

Hi Regis, I'm just a couple hours up the road from Fuji's facility in Germany, but still it would be a real bother to have to send the camera to them to get the sensor cleaned. Perhaps it's worth it to hold out for the X100V. One of the things that appeals to me about the X100 series is the unlimited synch speeds, making fill flash in bright daylight a snap.

Good point. Probably a good used X100F would be the most bang for the buck and the earlier models wouldn't work for me. As to pockets, I usually have a vest in summer and jacket with large pockets in winter, so my idea of "pocketable" is fairly lax.

I've also been considering getting a small, inconspicuous camera at some point. My main kit consists of Fuji XT bodies, generally at least two since I don't change lenses in the field. One thing I don't want is to pack along a different charger and set of batteries that would largely defeat the “small and light” benefit. I have an X-A5 I could use for the purpose if I could stand arm's-length photography, squinting at an LCD in bright daylight. For a pocketable camera with an EVF, I think something in the X100 series would be ideal.

Desaturating magenta gets rid of the purple look without changing the red leaf much. Sometimes in resurrecting old images, one of the channels, often red, will be very muddy. Replacing it with one of the other channels will clear up the image, but the colors will be off. If they are selectively corrected (such as for skin tones), then an unusable image becomes at least passable.

As some contributors are East Asian, it's probably a good policy to skip from three to five.

Five. I have a low CTR, so-so sales and don't upload as much as I should, so it's probably just the absence of QC fails.

To solve a problem such as Steve described, or to change the overall appearance of an image, I sometimes use channel substitution. For example: select and copy the green channel; convert to LAB color; select Lightness channel and paste the green channel; convert back to RGB color. This yields an image which has the same colors as before, but with the tones such as they would be on a black and white photo shot with a green filter. Similarly, a sky can be made more dramatic by using the red channel. Sometimes this works well and sometimes it's awful. Fun to experiment with in any case. edit: Coincidentally there was bright sunlight on a yellow Johanniskraut flower in the back yard this afternoon, so I made a sample including the basic shot, modified with the green channel and also with a mix of green and blue channels.

I'm in much the same situation, glad to have something to keep me busy while sequestered but somewhat daunted by the scope of the project. As well as the time to digitize the images, there is the fact that a lot of them are in cardboard mounts with rounded corners and, upon examination, raggedy edges. So I'm removing those and snapping the film into plastic mounts, marking the dates with indelible pens. Such fiddly hand work was never my thing. Anyway, in the process it's being handed off to my son and between us we decided that the best solution for us is to put them on the Web server we share for our sites, since the allowable storage is gigabytes more than we actually use. For backup, images are stored on BluRay M-discs. Cheers, Don

Two P.U. sales netting almost enough to pay my monthly Photoshop bill.

I tried again and it sort of worked. I have a K&F Concept adapter for Minolta and it isn't bad. Not able to find one at the time I was looking for Nikon, I settled for a cheapie which goes by the brand name "Massa". It's wobbly and the f/stops come out on the bottom of the lens instead of the top for some reason. However, I can focus on the slide it takes up most of the frame so I'd have to say it works.

I have a cheap, generic Nikon AI TO Fuji FX adapter that's on the short side, so it focuses beyond infinity (a term that makes sense only to photographers and Buzz Lightyear). To that I added the shortest of my several Nikon extension tubes. Shown side-by-side with the Kipon NIK-FX M at its maximum extension, it looks like it's about 5mm taller and thus focuses closer than the Kipon. There is probably something equally inexpensive that would work better than what I have. But basically, I'm sure you're right. If the purpose is only slide duplication, something a lot less expensive than the Kipon would no doubt work. About the 52mm extension tubes: I bought mine from someone who sells odds and ends on eBay and no longer has them on offer. There's something similar to the one you referenced if you search “Photo Plus 52mm Diameter Extension Tube” on Amazon. Several lengths are offered.

There's definitely more than one way to accomplish the task. I used to have an old, bordering on ancient, Novoflex bellows with a Fuji X mount adapter, slide copy attachment and an APO-Rodagon lens. It did a good job of copying slides. I would still have it, except that I also wanted a macro lens for general close-up photography and got the Micro-Nikkor. Then I figured, “Why have both?” The current kit does double duty. I tried a combination of extensions, but, unlike you, I couldn't get it right so I got the Kipon. If I were starting from scratch today and didn't have the Micro-Nikkor, I'd look at something which wasn't on the market before, the Laowa 65mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO.

After some trial and error, I settled on this set to get the full 35mm frame focused on the Fuji APS-C chip:

Today I received a Nikon ES-2 film digitizing adapter, purchased because the ES-1 with FH-2 film holder was too much bother. A less ham-fisted and more patient person might find it not so difficult to work with. By contrast, the plastic holder for film strips that comes with the ES-2 is easy to use. The ES-2 holder for mounted slides doesn't accommodate thick mounts, but the ES-1 doesn't have a problem with them. Thin mounts work well in either. I was reluctant to spend more money on the project, but the obvious answer was to have both the ES-1 and ES-2. My Fuji kit with Kipon helical adapter and Micro-Nikkor 55mm lens also required around 45mm of extension tubes (52mm screw-in thread) in order to fill the frame with the entire film image area.

There's another approach I've tried for MF film, but it's a work in progress and I'm not sure it will be successful. I built a simple box to go over the Viltrox LED light with a matte board on top with cut-outs for various film sizes. Unlike a scanner, the camera can be set for f/11 or so if there is a problem with film flatness. In doing that, I found that I could see the individual LEDs in the grid that makes up the light, so I covered it with a 13x18cm acetate film sleeve that is frosted on one side. My last efforts with this were when I was still trying to make it work with my X-T2. I expect results with the X-A5 will be better but haven't tried it yet. I have some images that were scanned on Nikon LS 9000 and Flextight X5 scanners, so there's something to compare results against.

Thanks back. So far, I've been cautious and have only uploaded scanned 35mm as archival, and only if they had some historical value. The medium format scans have cleared QC.

I think the ES-1 is better for that. I find the FH-2 strip film holder a little fussy to work with, but have no problem with thick mounts. Although the ES-2 is pricey, I think that for strip film it might be better than bothering with the FH-2 as I have been doing. If trying to digitize film at either end of the strip, the imbalance causes it to tip to the side and that's after getting it correctly inserted in the first place.

I do like the idea of reducing the number of steps and keeping everything from raw processing through keywording in Photoshop would no doubt work best for me. I'll work more with noise and sharpening in ACR. Thanks for the help.

Thanks for your suggestions. I started with the original TIF which was processed from RAW using Photoshop with only minimal image modifications and without the up- and downsizing. I downloaded the free trial of Topaz Denoise AI The slider was set at 34. I then did the same with Neat Image, letting the software sample and set the amount of denoise to apply. Lastly, I went back to the RAW file and applied noise reduction in ACR, slider set at 17. Most of what I have in my backlog of film images is on transparency film, but at the meantime I'm working on some black and whites. Results on Ektachrome, Fujichrome, Kodachrome, etc., might be different. Also, I've had the Topaz software for all of a few minutes, so any comments have to be taken with several grains of salt. That said, I'm still leaning toward Neat Image as the best balance of noise and detail.

I have a PC-Nikkor 35mm f/2.8 shift lens which, combined with the Kipon tilt adapter, gives a pretty good range of view-camera movements. The pair of them cost around 600 EUR. I prefer it to Kipon's tilt-shift adapter because tilt and shift rotate 360 degrees independently.

I lived for some years in a coastal village in northern California, across the street from an octogenarian Swiss gentleman, erudite, multilingual, a great conversationalist. Once he read my palm and said, “You lack meticulosity.” Right. I could be more disciplined about testing alternative software and such, but I tend stick with whatever works. Years ago Michael Reichmann wrote that Neat Image was the best noise reduction software, that it caused the least degradation. Perhaps it was true at the time and not now, but, whether or not, I keep on using it because I lack the “meticulosity” to try others and scrutinize the results. I do also treat images in different ways, put them in layers and erase through, however. So I'll apply Polaroid dust and scratch removal to sky and other non-detailed areas, or develop an image as both Velvia and Astia in Silkypix and end up with Astia faces in a Velvia environment.

Along the way I went through a phase with a Novoflex bellows and APO Rodagon. It was good, but I also wanted something to go out in the garden and shoot bugs and flowers. For that, i prefer the set-up I use now (although I'put the lens back on the X-T2.) I also would use a Kipon tilt adapter, which allows for interesting effects. My opinion of the Rodagon was that it was apochromatic with respect to lateral CA, but not longitudinal. That wasn't their interest, only flat-field stuff. After a lot of trial and error, I've got a kit which suits me now and the time is right since i can't go anywhere thanks to Covid-19 and have a bunch of old film. Since six of my last seven sales were for archival images, I'm hoping the process will be worthwhile.

No doubt you could, with the right one. I tried it with a Nikon extension tube, from a set of them, but the smallest one I had gave me too much extension and cropped in too tightly. I also tried it with a Heliopan +1 diopter close-up filter. That was good, but I didn't want an extra piece of glass. The Fuji versions are too expensive. I settled on the Kipon adapter because it is continuously adjustable from infinity, so I could dial in just the right amount to get the whole slide

Very similar. That one is designed to be able to adjust apertures on Nikon G lenses. Mine works only with manual focus lenses. They're about the same price, so the one you referenced would be better if you want to use it with G glass at some point.

Yes, equal, and the phase detection wouldn't matter unless you also want to take it out to shoot general subjects.