Hi all! I’m quite new to film photography and scanning as well - haven’t ever used any sort of scanner and have always had the local lab scan my negatives.
I’m currently traveling full time and am hoping to set up a rig with my Fuji xt3 and my 80mm Fuji OIS macro lens to digitize my negatives. I got a (semi) portable copy stand and was hoping to use my Ipad Pro (late 2018 model setting image to white background 100% brightness and true tone off) and a couple pieces of glass to hold the negatives in place. The problem I’m running into is that the camera picks up pixels on the Ipad screen, even if i put tracing paper to diffuse it, and a sheet of glass on the screen. My guess is that I need to elevate the negatives even higher from the screen which I will try to do in the next couple days. Is there anything else I can do to improve my setup? I know some people will block out the light source and do the process in a dark setting - how important is this? Also I don’t have access to anti newton ring glass and it has surprisingly been difficult to find a negative holder here in Tokyo where I will be for the next few months - so I am using regular glass. I’m pretty invested in every sense of the word and am looking for some guidance from someone who has used a setup similar to mine. I’ve searched many forums and everyone seems to have their own way of doing this.
Any help or guidance will be very appreciated! Thank you!
Hello, I’ve been doing something very similar over this side of the world too, I’ve had a bit of success with using a cheap light pad covered in a few layers of tracing paper. You should be able to pick up a pack of 10 pages in Daiso for about 110 yen. That with your iPad should eliminate the pixels showing up.
As for film holder, you could get one from amazon japan, have a look for opticfilmholder. They’re about 3300 yen, which is pricy enough for 2 bits of plastic, one that you probably won’t use unless you’re doing slides. I use the same one from my opticfilm 7200, it works grand. Alternatively you could get one from Aliexpress, search for Epson v500 film holder, there’s some for around 1400 yen.
To elevate the film off the light source I just cut 2 longs strips out of either side of a cardboard box and set the holder on top, I have plans to investigate some more cheap stuff in daiso to make something better but the box has worked well in the mean time.
Hope this helps.
This is helpful, I think I’ll have to order something from the internet, as nowhere seems to carry the negative holders on their own.
For the opticfilmholder - would it work for regular 35mm film or only slides?
Thanks!
Yeah, it actually comes as 2 holders, one for 4 slides and one for a strip of 6 35mm frames.
Here’s mine that came with my scanner.
Great, thank you for the recommendation. I tried using non reflective glass but it seems to skew the texture and it’s a pain with dust as well as moving the frames.
Not to toot my own horn, but I think the technique I show in this YouTube video would work well for you – very compact, easy for travel, no alignment problems. I think you’d get enough diffusion on your iPad if you found a sheet of white acrylic plastic, but it cuts down on brightness a lot… might be simpler in the long run to get a small light box like the one shown in the video. Good luck and have fun! Link: https://youtu.be/nDUupxM_418