Vintage 35mm digitalized images

[Old school]

Dear Alamy Contributors,

My wife and I are 'old school' photographers with 35,000 or so 35mm color slides using Nikon equipment and lens.  Most are Kodachrome 25 and 64.  We digitalized 1000s with the end result we have images with 150 to 250 megabits...too large to send by email.  Have any other ALAMY CONTRIBUTORS asked about submitting images in such large megabits and if so, what happened?  Also, there is an inherent loss of image fidelity between the original 35mm Kodachrome 25 and the digitalized results.  Any Contributors asked these questions? cheers, Flo and Paul

[Harry Harrison]

33 minutes ago, Alex Ramsay said:

Chuck is correct in saying that you can't fit a D800 onto an Illumitran

Actually since the previous discussion I came across an Illumitran locally myself. It's true to say that the Nikon D800 won't fit on the rail because of the distance between the base and the lens centre, so no, you can't use the 55mm Micro-Nikkor or indeed the standard 60mm enlarging lens. However you can use a 105mm enlarging lens and put 40mm extension  tube on the Nikon and it works very well, the camera is then above the rail. That way it should work with any DSLR provided you have the somewhat scarce correct BPM camera adapter for the bellows. As you say, the flash is too bright so you put cut sheets of ND8/3-stop ND below the opal diffuser (and in the contrast control unit if you have one). You can also get much brighter LED replacements for the focusing bulbs so you could just use continuous light if you wanted to.

Edited October 29, 2019 by Harry Harrison

[MDM]

27 minutes ago, Alex Ramsay said:

As far as Nikon goes, for 35mm I use a D800 body with the PB-4 bellows, an old micro-Nikkor 55mm, and the PS-4 slide copying adapter, with an SB700 flash for illumination. It works pretty well for me, and is fast to use and to set up. Regarding medium format, Chuck is correct in saying that you can't fit a D800 onto an Illumitran, but what you can do is use just the Illumitran base unit (without the column) with the camera mounted to a copy stand above it. You may need to use an ND gel filter to reduce the flash output, though.

 

Alex

 

 

 

Same end result as with my setup (D810, Nikkor 55, Nikon ES1,  an extension ring and daylight LED) but I think my setup is simpler than using bellows and a copy stand and most likely cheaper if starting from scratch. It could be used handheld although I use it on a tripod with mirror up for extra stability and exact positioning of the light. The PK-13 extension ring and ES1 cost me about £180 new and I already had the rest (camera, lens and LED). 

Edited October 29, 2019 by MDM

[Harry Harrison]

12 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Oddly though some DLSRs are fussy about firing the Illumitran flash

Mine is also, and I think the trigger voltage is worryingly high anyway. I think there is a Wein adapter you can get to sort out the trigger voltage but I fire an old flash on a remote cord set at 1/64 into a slave trigger on the cord from the Illumitran. Sounds clunky but works fine.

Edited October 29, 2019 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

2 minutes ago, MDM said:

using bellows and a copy stand

It's those two that stop me from recommending that route too readily, they can be really expensive but like you I have them anyway. I use a Durst enlarger with a 'Siriocam' camera arm in place of the enlarger head but one of those Siriocam arms went for £170 on ebay a couple of weeks ago, I think there may be a lot of people doing 'DSLR' scanning (or mirrorless obviously).

[MDM]

7 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

using bellows and a copy stand

 

It's those two that stop me from recommending that route too readily, they can be really expensive but like you I have them anyway. I use a Durst enlarger with a 'Siriocam' camera arm in place of the enlarger head but one of those Siriocam arms went for £170 on ebay a couple of weeks ago, I think there may be a lot of people doing 'DSLR' scanning (or mirrorless obviously).

 

I think you have misinterpreted my post there. I don't have bellows and a copy stand. I have a very simple ES1 with extension ring on the Nikkor 55. For someone with a D8xx series camera and a Nikkor 55 AIS, then I think mine is the simplest and probably cheapest route to high quality 35mm slide copying as there is no messing about - essentially one could think of it as a Nikon slide copying kit. It is also not difficult to get the slide mount to sit flat in the copier (as long as the film itself is not curved or warped). I use a smallish aperture to get greater depth of field. 

[spacecadet]

17 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Mine is also, and I think the trigger voltage is worryingly high anyway. I think there is a Wein adapter you can get to sort out the trigger voltage but I fire an old flash on a remote cord set at 1/64 into a slave trigger on the cord from the Illumitran. Sounds clunky but works fine.

Trigger voltage is OK for Sonys, but I put a zener diode circuit in to reduce it anyway. Yes, I need to get one of those cheap Chinese triggers.

Same for my old studio Multiblitzes- the factory in Köln confirmed that they need a low resistance to fire. That could be the problem with the Illumitran as well.

[Harry Harrison]

1 minute ago, MDM said:

I think you have misinterpreted my post there

Yes, misread more like, sorry. I could delete my post but then that might look sinister.  I think your route is the definitive way in for this method of scanning for those starting from scratch,

[Harry Harrison]

6 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

the factory in Köln confirmed that they need a low resistance to fire. That could be the problem with the Illumitran as well.

That could well explain it, I wish I understood more about electronics and circuits in general.

[spacecadet]

Depends on the budget. If you can find one, Illumitran, £35. Enlarger lenses, in stock. Nikon slide copier, £180. Plus a macro lens.

My return from archive images has paid for the Illumitran but I wouldn't have laid out £180 and I don't have a macro lens.

Edited October 29, 2019 by spacecadet

[MDM]

57 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Yes, misread more like, sorry. I could delete my post but then that might look sinister.  I think your route is the definitive way in for this method of scanning for those starting from scratch,

 

Yes I woiuld say you are right on all counts. Seeing a deleted post does make one wonder what was actually said. 😀

 

50 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Depends on the budget. If you can find one, Illumitran, £35. Enlarger lenses, in stock. Nikon slide copier, £180. Plus a macro lens.

My return from archive images has paid for the Illumitran but I wouldn't have laid out £180 and I don't have a macro lens.

 

I think the difference here is that slides copied with the setup I suggest should pass normal QC if given appropriate post-processing rather than the archival route. The quality is really very good when downsized to 3000x2000 pixels. I will post a few examples on Dropbox when I get time. I would never risk anything I did with my now dead slide scanner. I have so much else going on that I haven't had time to do any serious copying of old slides and negs but maybe this winter.

 

EDIT - the £180 included a new Nikon 25mm extension ring. This could be done a lot more cheaply with second hand gear for anyone with a Nikon FF camera (or maybe even a DX camera). According to Harry the Nikkor 55 AIS can be had cheap second hand.

Edited October 29, 2019 by MDM

[spacecadet]

4 minutes ago, MDM said:

 

 

 

 

I think the difference here is that slides copied with the setup I suggest should pass normal QC if given appropriate post-processing rather than the archival route. The quality is really very good when downsized to 3000x2000 pixels. I will post a few examples on Dropbox when I get time. I would never risk anything I did with my now dead slide scanner. I have so much else going on that I haven't had time to do any serious copying of old slides and negs but maybe this winter.

I should like to see those- my method wouldn't pass QC. But back to those earlier thoughts- would my originals actually be sharp enough anyway?😀

Edited October 29, 2019 by spacecadet

[Old school]

For everyone who has taken the time to help us figure out a good method to submit scanned copies of our vintage 35mm slide to ALAMY, we thank you again.  We sent our question to ALAMY with a request to know more about the method suggested by Harry Harrison: 

"Alamy Quality Control (QC) is very strict in terms of quality and so if uploading in the normal way your scans would have to compare favourably with digital images. However there is another route, Reportage/Archival, that doesn't have the same QC requirements but are then displayed with the rider that "This image could have imperfections as it’s either historical or reportage." 

 

In the meantime, we are mulling over recommendations from ALAMY contributors that worked for their scanning of vintage slides.  Part of our considerations is cost and taking on learning about PHOTOSHOP and other software.  Our scanned slides have been put on a dual-layer disk so we can select images (about 40-images per disk), copy and paste as needed and send the disk to prospective customers with return postage along with a short-story of location in the images.  We do not have high skills in using additional software and buying adapters for our Nikon D810 to scan slides one-at-a-time is not practical given we have some 35,000 slides. Even if we cull out the very best of the many locations we have, the number of images to be scanned is huge.

 

All in all,  we truly appreciate the time and efforts ALAMY contributors have recommended to help us with our original question.  And, from the replies, contributors have helped each other as well. 

Again, Flo and I thank you all.  cheers, Flo and Paul

 

[Harry Harrison]

Just a couple of thoughts. You might find that someone is running a course in Photoshop Elements over the winter, that's not a bad place to start. Also perhaps you could try getting one of your slides professionally scanned by a reputable bureau just to see how it compares with your own.

 

Good luck with your venture,

[Old school]

4 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Just a couple of thoughts. You might find that someone is running a course in Photoshop Elements over the winter, that's not a bad place to start. Also perhaps you could try getting one of your slides professionally scanned by a reputable bureau just to see how it compares with your own.

 

Good luck with your venture,

Hi Harry, Excellent idea.  There is a place in Tempe, AZ. that is a top-notch camera store.  If they can't 'scan' one of our slides, they will know someone who can.  Cheers, Flo and Paul

[MDM]

32 minutes ago, Old school said:

Hi Harry, Excellent idea.  There is a place in Tempe, AZ. that is a top-notch camera store.  If they can't 'scan' one of our slides, they will know someone who can.  Cheers, Flo and Paul

 

The problem with that might be the cost. Let's say you could get it done for 40 cents a slide - it would cost $14,000. I don't know exactly what you would pay but I can't imagine it would be less than that. Perhaps it would be more sensible to be selective and just get the slides you really want digitised done professionally. You would also need to work a bit in Photoshop or similar editor on the basic scanned images if you wanted to submit them by the normal route. 

Edited October 29, 2019 by MDM

[MDM]

3 hours ago, spacecadet said:

I should like to see those- my method wouldn't pass QC. But back to those earlier thoughts- would my originals actually be sharp enough anyway?😀

 

If you were using a half-decent lens and you used a shutter speed fast enough to avoid shake, there is no reason why your film shots should not be sharp. I think most of the problem is in the digitisation and perception of sharpness on screen. Just speculating really. Something to do this winter maybe. 

[Inchiquin]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

 

If you were using a half-decent lens and you used a shutter speed fast enough to avoid shake, there is no reason why your film shots should not be sharp. I think most of the problem is in the digitisation and perception of sharpness on screen. Just speculating really. Something to do this winter maybe. 

 

 

The vast majority of my slides taken before 1996 turned out to be less than sharp, much to my chagrin. I imagine it's a total coincidence that 1996 was the year I bought my first camera with auto-focus...

 

Alan

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

The problem with that might be the cost.

No, I was meaning just the one for comparison, just to have something to compare with the Pacific scans. Maybe choose a slide with a wide dynamic range, plenty of shadows and highlights and detail, a townscape on a sunny day perhaps. The difficulty is choosing the place to do it, I imagine a lot of places that offer affordable 35mm scanning use Fuji or Kodak minilab scanners. Nothing wrong with that, they're good. but I think they have a limited maximum resolution.

[Old school]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

 

The problem with that might be the cost. Let's say you could get it done for 40 cents a slide - it would cost $14,000. I don't know exactly what you would pay but I can't imagine it would be less than that. Perhaps it would be more sensible to be selective and just get the slides you really want digitised done professionally. You would also need to work a bit in Photoshop or similar editor on the basic scanned images if you wanted to submit them by the normal route. 

Yup.  You are correct...the cost to scan even the best of the best of 35,000 slides is prohibitive of us.  When we did our initial search for a 'scanner,' NIKON's scanner fit the bill...but, at $8.000, it was simply too much.  So, bought the PACIFIC model @ $1,200 and that was several years ago.  I received a reply from Shaun at ALAMY regarding our initial question and Harry's suggestion of the PORTAGE program.  We'll apply and submit assuming we can get a file at is 150-250MB to go.  Again, our thanks to you and ALAMY contributors.  Cheers, Flo and Paul

[Old school]

Just now, Harry Harrison said:

No, I was meaning just the one for comparison, just to have something to compare with the Pacific scans. Maybe choose a slide with a wide dynamic range, plenty of shadows and highlights and detail, a townscape on a sunny day perhaps. The difficulty is choosing the place to do it, I imagine a lot of places that offer affordable 35mm scanning use Fuji or Kodak minilab scanners. Nothing wrong with that, they're good. but I think they have a limited maximum resolution.

When we started our search to scan, we looked at the cost to do so at COSTCO...that was $.25-each...still too much.  We will apply for the VINTAGE option and see what happens.  We are re-reading the PACIFIC  manual to see what options we have by using our already scanned images or, the worst case scenario is, we re-scan the best of the best at JPEG and see how much degrading of the scanned image is to the original slide.  Again, our thanks.  cheers, Flo and Paul

[spacecadet]

6 minutes ago, Old school said:

When we started our search to scan, we looked at the cost to do so at COSTCO...that was $.25-each...still too much.  We will apply for the VINTAGE option and see what happens.  We are re-reading the PACIFIC  manual to see what options we have by using our already scanned images or, the worst case scenario is, we re-scan the best of the best at JPEG and see how much degrading of the scanned image is to the original slide.  Again, our thanks.  cheers, Flo and Paul

It doesn't matter for archival, but a scan direct to jpg is unlikely to get the best out of the slide.

[Harry Harrison]

10 minutes ago, Old school said:

we re-scan the best of the best at JPEG and see how much degrading of the scanned image is to the original slide

As Spacecadet says, even the best scanners don't usually produce a perfectly formed image, you do need to adjust them in software so it is usual to scan to a tiff file, preferably a 16-bit tiff as I think you have been doing. They have much more leeway for brightening/darkening/adding contrast etc., with jpegs highlight and shadow detail will already have been lost. The 'DSLR' scanning method which many of us recommend enables you to produce a camera RAW file, which is perfect.

[John Mitchell]

18 hours ago, Colin Woods said:

There are so many slides that I thought were quite good, that are now jarringly bad. I can also now see just how weak my cheapo zooms that I had when I first started were. There is something nice about physical film but I do not miss it at all. My D750 files are just so good.

 

I don't miss film and film cameras either, and I tend to be something of a Luddite when it comes to a lot of things. For instance, I really miss phone booths. I'd like to see them brought back for cellphone users who yap away in public. But that's another story...

 

It's true what you say about those cheapo (and not-so cheapo) manual focus zooms. Interestingly, though, the quality didn't seem to matter as much in film days. A lot of film images that I had published in newspapers and magazines looked fine in print, even at large sizes. However, after being scanned and viewed at 100%, the same images looked horrible, much too fuzzy and CA-ridden to submit to Alamy.

Edited October 29, 2019 by John Mitchell

[Old school]

38 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

As Spacecadet says, even the best scanners don't usually produce a perfectly formed image, you do need to adjust them in software so it is usual to scan to a tiff file, preferably a 16-bit tiff as I think you have been doing. They have much more leeway for brightening/darkening/adding contrast etc., with jpegs highlight and shadow detail will already have been lost. The 'DSLR' scanning method which many of us recommend enables you to produce a camera RAW file, which is perfect.

When we first started this odyssey of finding a suitable scanner, we found the use of our D810 plus some add-ons to take the slide and work from there.  That idea was overcome when we looked at 1000s of slides.  At the moment, we're looking at the VINTAGE path and see what happens there.  We probably will not live long enough to re-scan our slides at it took several years of dedicated scanning to get most of the 35,000 slides scanned.  Cheers, Flo  and Paul 

[KevinS]

On 27/10/2019 at 20:52, Old school said:

Dear Alamy Contributors,

My wife and I are 'old school' photographers with 35,000 or so 35mm color slides using Nikon equipment and lens.  Most are Kodachrome 25 and 64.  We digitalized 1000s with the end result we have images with 150 to 250 megabits...too large to send by email.  Have any other ALAMY CONTRIBUTORS asked about submitting images in such large megabits and if so, what happened?  Also, there is an inherent loss of image fidelity between the original 35mm Kodachrome 25 and the digitalized results.  Any Contributors asked these questions? cheers, Flo and Paul

If it were me, I'd edit heavily and get the best ones (ones that show change) in through the archival route. If the subjects are American, getting them on sale soon would exploit the current booming economy here.  Maybe off-topic, but I'd spend some time adding keywords to your existing port. I took a quick look and found a photo of an isolated moose, but no way for a customer to find it other than by location. Only takes seconds to add the word moose, and a scientific name would help as well. Similarly, a photo of a vintage vehicle in some weeds; no keyword saying vehicle, or type, etc.   

Edited October 29, 2019 by KevinS