Digitaliza 120 Film Flatness

Hey There,

I’ve been building my mirrorless scanning setup (https://www.parkermusselman.com/photo-negative-scanning) and have run into flatness issues with the DigitaLiza. After cutting 6x6 negatives into three frames, they do not reach the long ends of scanning mask. When the film is curled lengthwise (hotdog style) I get a TON of bow after inserting into the mask. Without ribs to hold the film flat, there is nothing to resist.

Has anyone experienced this? Do I need to move to another film scan? Thanks for any feedback!

-Parker

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I had the same problem of flatness trying to scan war-time photos taken by my dad. In my case, there were multiple sizes of film, some of which was 116 format, as well as other odd sizes. Also, most were already cut into single-frame pieces. I hunted around on B&H for a solution without success. Then I had the idea of using the sticky part of Post-it notes to hold the film down long enough to take the picture. It is not very elegant, but it is cheap and it worked. I’m using the Skier Light Box, and a Fuji XPro 2 with the 80mm macro lens. Here’s a picture of my Post-it solution.

Thanks for the feedback Jay. I’m sure that does the trick, but I have to assume it’s fairly time consuming.

I think I have two solutions. One, don’t cut negatives, and just slide them through the mask. The downside here is how to store them. I like to keep negatives in a 3 ring binder.

Second solution for this week. Use a 150um printed windowed overlay to see if this will keep things flat. I’ll share the results and if successful the STL as well.

Anyone have a favorite 6x6 film mask?