I am a long time user of the D-610 DSLR. I have purchased an ES-2 for the purpose of slide scanning. I have approximately 5,000 Kodachrome slides from the 1940’s to 1995 from my family. I have a Dimage Scan Dual IV. I am looking to cut down the workflow time using the camera approach. I will be using Photoshop for all the fine tuning. Not looking for pro quality. This is a archival project for personal viewing.
My equipment is:
Nikon D-610
Nikon AF-S Micro Nikkor 60mmG ED
Nikon ES-2 Digitizing adapter
Four additional Nikon FH-4 slide holders
Slide editing light box for illumination
I would appreciate any suggestions on camera settings and any other tips on getting good quality scans.
Your ES-2 setup should eliminate one of the main problems which is getting precise alignment with your slide and the need to support your camera very solidly on a copy stand or tripod as would normally be the case if the camera/lens was separate to the slide stage. Your best aperture will be in the f5.6 to f8 range I would think but you can test for that, 24MP should give you very good results and you should be able to get through your slides at a good rate. Ideally you’ll have a means of removing dust and a bright light that will show it up.
A slide sorting lightbox is probably going to be quite dim for this purpose, particularly as you have the extra diffuser of the ES-2 to deal with. You might consider something like the Cinestill CS-Lite which could be mounted on a cheap table tripod at the correct distance and angle to your slide which I would say is going to be around 2 to 5 cms. Alternatively there is always flash but then you have to mess around providing a focusing light as well.
No reason why you shouldn’t get ‘Pro’ quality actually, it will be interesting for you to compare your results with the Coolscan. I would find it much easier to do this tethered into Lightroom rather than Photoshop, and much easier to caption and keyword as you go.