Hi all first post
I am looking at designing a copy set up utilising a dsl, macro bellow, copy or enlarger lens for scanning 35mm, 6x6 6x9 and hopefully 6x12. My question is, would a horizontal set up be more ridged than a vertical design. I plan to mount the light source on one end of an aluminium profile with the bellows mounted at the other end, any thoughts or advise would be appreciated, Regards Richard
Welcome to the forum @Bogwot6
The forum hosts a separate thread that covers all kinds of setups. You might learn one or two things browsing the thread and reading the posts that look promising.
Stability etc. are very dependent on how a setup is made. From a purely mechanical point of view, anything that connects the negative (or positive) as tightly as possible to the lens beats everything else under similarly sound construction techniques.
Usability depends on other things too and again, several posts can help you discover more.
Note that other threads contain useful hints. Browse topics sorted per view.
Last, but certainly not least: Guide | Negative Lab Pro
It’s quite ambitious to design a horizontal setup that covers all 3 formats, fairly ambitious to cover just 135 & 120. Maybe take a look at the Valoi easy35 and easy120 ‘all-in-one’ solutions. If you’re not mounting the film holder/bellows to the lens then I’d rather go with a vertical copy stand route as to me that would make critical alignment easier.
The right L39 enarger/duplication lenses can be excellent for copying film but bear in mind that they’re not designed to hold any weight on the filter ring, and the filter ring is generally very small in the 40.5/43mm range.
I’ve thought about vertical vs. horizontal setups a lot and and with all the experiments I made, come to conclude that building one’s own rig can be interesting and get costly too. I therefore recommend to limit one’s own ambition to assembling a rig that doesn’t take a lot of tinkering with adapting things to two feet of profile, just because there is one.
Vertical setups can make scanning more comfortable. The closer the film gets to the working surface, the easier it is to handle the wiggly material. Horizontal setups are more “natural” in the sense that all the joints between camera, lens etc. are oriented in a way they were designed for. The key to work around this is to mount the lens (instead of the camera) or bellows.
For easiest use, the scanning gear should dangle below the table and the backlight could be either fixed or hinged like a waffle iron’s lid. In such a constellation, an enlarger negative holder should be usable and, if it uses glass, provide flat negatives. But again, such a setup needs quite some DIY.
