Illumitran

[Inchiquin]

The current thread on slide copying has prompted me to dust off my Illumitran and take another look at setting it up. I bought it 3 or 4 years ago for the specific purpose of digitising my 6x6 slides (I already have a Coolscan 5000 for 35mm), but the Rodenstock 75mm that came with it is too long to cover the whole of a 6x6, so I put it in a cupboard with the intention of finding a shorter focus lens when I could be bothered. The latest discussion prompted me to pick up a 50mm EL-Nikkor on eBay which should do the trick. I've tried to find a manual online for it but without success. Google has links to online manuals but they seem either to be non-functional or to lead to a download that looks decidedly dodgy. I don't suppose any of you Illumichaps have a PDF manual?

 

Because of the likelihood of frying the 5D2's flash circuitry I'm thinking of firing the flash manually while the shutter is open. Trouble is, I've never really worked with flash and I've no idea how to do it manually.

 

Alan

[Harry Harrison]

15 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

I've tried to find a manual online for it but without success.

This site has the manuals at the bottom of the page, and some useful information also:

 

http://members.bitstream.net/tlmartin/copiers.html

 

In my experience the Illumitran needs modification to make it work with digital. I think you will find that the flash is too bright as it was designed around very slow duplicating film. I bought 3 stop ND8 gel sheet off ebay and cut it to fit below the opal diffuser as well as behind the contrast control diffuser. This makes focusing more tricky as the image is dimmer but you should probably use Live View in any case for checking accurately. I've also bought some LED replacements for the two focusing bulbs but I haven't got around to fitting them yet.

 

Your 5D Mk2 will slide on the bellows rail (many cameras don't) but do you have the correct BPM adapter for fitting it to the bellows? I'm not even sure that they made one but mine has a Nikon adapter so I just needed a Canon to Nikon lens adapter which I had anyway.

 

You can fire the flash in the dark manually on bulb, spacecadet does that, an old film camera with a PC socket would be handy for that. However although I haven't tried one there seems to be a cheap Neewer radio transmitter/slave kit, PT-16GY on ebay that looks like it ought to work.

 

The downside to doing 6x6 is that you'll need to crop each side which seems a shame, so a maximum of about 3700 x 3700 px. I wonder if you can come in closer and combine two exposures by flipping the slide. I do something similar but not on the Illumitran so I simply move the slide and light source along below the lens the requisite amount to get more like 5500 x 5500 px.

[Inchiquin]

2 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

This site has the manuals at the bottom of the page, and some useful information also:

 

http://members.bitstream.net/tlmartin/copiers.html

 

In my experience the Illumitran needs modification to make it work with digital. I think you will find that the flash is too bright as it was designed around very slow duplicating film. I bought 3 stop ND8 gel sheet off ebay and cut it to fit below the opal diffuser as well as behind the contrast control diffuser. This makes focusing more tricky as the image is dimmer but you should probably use Live View in any case for checking accurately. I've also bought some LED replacements for the two focusing bulbs but I haven't got around to fitting them yet.

 

Your 5D Mk2 will slide on the bellows rail (many cameras don't) but do you have the correct BPM adapter for fitting it to the bellows? I'm not even sure that they made one but mine has a Nikon adapter so I just needed a Canon to Nikon lens adapter which I had anyway.

 

You can fire the flash in the dark manually on bulb, spacecadet does that, an old film camera with a PC socket would be handy for that. However although I haven't tried one there seems to be a cheap Neewer radio transmitter/slave kit, PT-16GY on ebay that looks like it ought to work.

 

The downside to doing 6x6 is that you'll need to crop each side which seems a shame, so a maximum of about 3700 x 3700 px. I wonder if you can come in closer and combine two exposures by flipping the slide. I do something similar but not on the Illumitran so I simply move the slide and light source along below the lens the requisite amount to get more like 5500 x 5500 px.

 

Thanks for all this Mark. Yes, I have an adapter. I've already used it to try things out when I first bought it. I'm not too worried about the image size because I'm not expecting many of my 6x6s to be anywhere near the quality required for QC so I'm doing it mostly for a digital record plus maybe archival use if any are of historical value (they're all from the 80s).

 

I wish now that I hadn't sold all my film cameras, apart from the pre-war Rolleiflex but that doesn't have a flash connection. Somewhere I have an old set of Cokin filters and I think there may be an ND, so from memory that might be about the right size.

 

Alan

[Chuck Nacke]

Alan,

 

I bought a really perfect Illumitran with 50, 75 and 105 top flight lenses with the idea of copying 35mm and 120 chromes and I

was not happy with what I got, so I just went back to my desktop film scanner.  Several years ago I had a really good flatbed

scanner and a really rare 120 chrome, so I just scanned it on the flatbed and was surprised by the quality of the scan, it has

been licensed by Alamy a number of times.  If you are just doing it to have a digital copy of MF film,  a good flatbed scanner

should be just fine, quick and easy to do? 

 

FYI: I would never scan a 35mm chrome on a flatbed

 

Chuck

[Harry Harrison]

2 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

If you are just doing it to have a digital copy of MF film,  a good flatbed scanner

should be just fine, quick and easy to do?

Yes, I agree, for medium format a flatbed can be very good particularly if it comes with the right holders and you're not concerned with extracting the maximum amount of detail. Often they are fixed focus so for best results you sometimes need to play about with the precise distance off the glass. Epson 700, 800, 750, 850 or even an old 4990 would be fine as would some from other manufacturers.

[Harry Harrison]

7 hours ago, Inchiquin said:

hadn't sold all my film cameras

Oxfam should have something uncollectable for a fiver, though that slave trigger set at £12 or so looks potentially much better, no messing about switching the lights off. I see it has the all important PC socket on the side of the receiver/trigger.

 

7 hours ago, Inchiquin said:

think there may be an ND

 

Look on ebay for Lee 211 lighting gel, people sell cut sheets and you don't need very much. You would probably need a 40.5 to 49mm step-up to fit the Cokin to the enlarger lens but that would work too.

 

 

[Inchiquin]

2 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

 

I bought a really perfect Illumitran with 50, 75 and 105 top flight lenses with the idea of copying 35mm and 120 chromes and I

was not happy with what I got, so I just went back to my desktop film scanner.  Several years ago I had a really good flatbed

scanner and a really rare 120 chrome, so I just scanned it on the flatbed and was surprised by the quality of the scan, it has

been licensed by Alamy a number of times.  If you are just doing it to have a digital copy of MF film,  a good flatbed scanner

should be just fine, quick and easy to do? 

 

 

 

I can't justify the cost of a flatbed and I picked up the Illumitran for £0.99 so it was really a no-brainer. As I said, I already have a Coolscan 5000 so I won't be doing any 35mm on it. OK, I had to pay £30 for a 50mm EL-Nikkor but hopefully that will be useful in the future for closeups with the bellows, and maybe I can sell the 75mm Rodenstock that came with the Illumitran anyway.

 

I don't know yet whether the flash still works, though now I have the manual (thanks to "Harry") I can see that I should be able to test it with the Open Flash button.

 

Alan

[Harry Harrison]

4 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

maybe I can sell the 75mm Rodenstock

I would hang on to it if it's a Rodagon, it's a very good lens for the DSLR scanning route on 35mm, gives you a bit of extra distance. Optimum aperture with all enlarger lenses (apart from super-expensive APO versions perhaps) seems to be between f8 & f11.

Edited February 7, 2020 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

4 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

I have the manual

As you'll see, much of the manual is taken up with how to work out the exposure, something that is blissfully unnecessary on digital but fearfully complicated on film, just adjust the flash power by looking at the histogram

[spacecadet]

That same link says that Canons will take a high sync voltage, but I measured my Tran and it's only about 5V IIRC. Don't take my word for it- you may have a different model or my measurement method might have been wrong. Anyway, I built a zener diode circuit to reduce the voltage, but don't need it as the A58 won't fire it at all for some reason. So I use bulb, but if I had a lot more to do I'd get one of the cheap triggers.

As Harry says you hardly need a manual. But you do need the camera and lens adapters. If it came with the adapter for the Rodenstock at the bottom end you obviously need one to go from M39 to Canon female. At the top, you will need the adapter to fit the bellows if you don't have it- if there isn't one on ebay SRB might still have them. Or here

http://www.macrobellows.com/shop_mounts.php

I find there's quite a lot of vignetting on 6x6 unless you work out a way of getting it a bit further from the diffuser. I actually use a kit zoom on close focus, not the bellows, for 6x6. But I'm not trying to get through QC, though I think they probably would pass.

I need a lot of extra ND and diffusion. A lot of what I've said is on the other slide copying thread.

+1 on the Rodenstock. Keep it unless you need the dough.

Edited February 7, 2020 by spacecadet

[Inchiquin]

On 07/02/2020 at 07:41, Harry Harrison said:

 

I would hang on to it if it's a Rodagon, it's a very good lens for the DSLR scanning route on 35mm, gives you a bit of extra distance.

 

 

It's an Ysagon. Not as good?

 

Alan

[Harry Harrison]

43 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

It's an Ysagon. Not as good?

I haven't actually come across it but Google is my friend:

 

"The Rodenstock Ysaron is a variation on the Ysar, which was their Tessar clone."

 

So, no, the Rodagon is 6-element, the Ysaron will have fewer. 6-element Rodenstock Rodagons, Schneider Componons and El-Nikkors aren't that pricy so it's worth using them.

Edited February 8, 2020 by Harry Harrison

[DCSmith]

You can use a Wein safe sync to isolate the camera from the flash trigger.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/273330-REG/Wein_990_515_SSPC_Safe_Sync.html/?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&lsft=BI%3A514&gclid=CjwKCAiAvonyBRB7EiwAadauqeU28-6gxSUQ13e9EcHFACpe7GF-RhKVTbOrxpcr-Nl78NcZe9iLfBoCkuEQAvD_BwE

[Harry Harrison]

9 hours ago, DCSmith said:

You can use a Wein safe sync to isolate the camera from the flash trigger.

Yes, thanks, in the UK you can get these from Morco:

 

https://www.morco.uk.com/studio-accessories/safe-sync-hot-shoe-to-hot-shoe.html

 

However that's £67 over here and the cost of wireless triggers has come down so much that they might be the best solution these days. The Bowens can be a bit temperamental when fired from a modern digital camera but for me it seems to work fine when fired by an optical slave.

[Inchiquin]

I think a wireless trigger is OTT for me. I only have a few hundred 6x6s and I don't suppose I will scan them all. When that's done I will have no further use for the Illumitran and will sell it.

 

I've discovered that I didn't sell all my film cameras after all. I've got  two Canon EFs hidden in a cupboard. So I will use the open-shutter-in-the-dark method and fire the Bowens either from one of the EFs or the button on the unit.

 

Alan

[wiskerke]

9 hours ago, Inchiquin said:

I think a wireless trigger is OTT for me. I only have a few hundred 6x6s and I don't suppose I will scan them all. When that's done I will have no further use for the Illumitran and will sell it.

 

I've discovered that I didn't sell all my film cameras after all. I've got  two Canon EFs hidden in a cupboard. So I will use the open-shutter-in-the-dark method and fire the Bowens either from one of the EFs or the button on the unit.

 

Alan

 

Last time I bought a wireless trigger it was around $15. That was a complete set. On Aliexpress or Ebay, not sure. They're probably cheaper now.

 

wim

[spacecadet]

21 hours ago, Inchiquin said:

I think a wireless trigger is OTT for me. I only have a few hundred 6x6s and I don't suppose I will scan them all. When that's done I will have no further use for the Illumitran and will sell it.

 

I've discovered that I didn't sell all my film cameras after all. I've got  two Canon EFs hidden in a cupboard. So I will use the open-shutter-in-the-dark method and fire the Bowens either from one of the EFs or the button on the unit.

 

Alan

Well I did do 6000 on bulb but it was tedious. It takes longer to decide whether to scan an image than actually to do it so I just did the lot.

But I paid so little for the Tran (£30) that it's hardly worth selling on, packaging, posting and all that.

Anyway I could offer the service now, even only to friends and family.

Negs have a habit of turning up at our house (and garage) from decades past, and the Tran setup is quick enough to be able to grab a single scan in a few minutes. It's not quite as quick as holding it up to the window and snapping it with an iphone, but it's not far off, and the quality is decent.

Edited February 13, 2020 by spacecadet