Does anyone use the Nikon 60mm f/2.8D for scanning on a DX body? Is there any issue with this? My current scanning setup is a D3300 with an ES-2 and the 40mm Micro lens. It works fine, but I am not thrilled with the ES-2, so I am switching to a more traditional copy stand setup. In that configuration, I’d like more distance from the film than the 40mm gives me, so I was thinking of getting the 60mm. But most posts I find about that lens are in reference to using it on an FX body. But is there any major problem with doing this? Am I going to regret it? I realize that I could get better results with a better camera, but for my needs the D3300 is more than enough, and it’s not high on my priority list to upgrade.
No issues at all, most people adapt old vintage lenses to modern cameras using a dumb adapter with no electrical contacts. Using it on a DX body will turn it into a 90 mm equivalent which should be just fine. I scan with a micro 4/3 camera and a 60mm macro from Olympus, which is the equivalent of a 120mm macro on full frame.
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The 55mm f2.8 Micro-Nikkor certainly performs better on an APS-C camera when copying 35mm, the corners are quite a lot sharper than they are with the same lens on a full frame camera. Although both the 55mm and 60mm lenses will focus to 1:1 (the 55mm needs a 27.5mm extension tube) they are not optimised for 1:1 so using them at the lower magnification of 1:1.5 (0.67x) has clear benefits.
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Yes, that was something that crossed my mind. Cropping out the corners can be beneficial on a lot of lenses.
I think it will be fine, I don’t know if you will be able to get away with AF. The ES-2, like all solutions that attach to the lens, does solve the problem of alignment which is critical. It does also minimise or even eliminate any problems from camera shake caused by using longish shutter speeds. So your copy stand will ideally be pretty solid and you’ll need a mirror to check alignment.
I don’t really trust AF in this kind of setup anyway. In fact, one of my complaints with my current configuration is how bad the manual focus action is on the 40mm. I’m hoping that the AF-D 60mm (which the D3300 can’t autofocus anyway) will be a bit better in that regard. I suppose I could go even further back and get the A-IS 55mm, but my impression (maybe wrong) is that the 60mm is a bit better optically. And it would be nice to have AF when/if I want to use that lens on any of my other cameras that can support it.
Really the trick (in my opinion) is not to focus with the lens at all. Just set the focus for the correct framing/magnification, even tape it up, and then move the camera and lens together. That way you are only dealing with the miniscule depth of focus at that magnification. This means of course that you need some kind of focus rail/slide.
If you focus on the lens that results in also moving the point of focus either away or towards the film and at the same time changing the extension from the sensor which introduces a vague indeterminate feel in my experience. The manual 55 might be better for this but I can see that it may not be as useful to you for general photography.
Yeah. I saw someone (maybe it was here? I can’t remember) mention using a macro focusing rail for that, so I might give that a shot.
Well it could have been me again I suppose 
. Another option is to get a double rail bellows (e.g. Canon FL or Nikon PB-4) and use an enlarger lens. Something like a Componon-S 80mm is excellent, or a Rodagon 60mm or 80mm perhaps, both great on APS-C for copying 135 and the ‘macro rail’ is built in.
What’s the problem with the ES-2 … apart from handling 135 film only?
I just find it fiddly. The film holder is annoying to use, it can’t be used (easily) with uncut rolls, I always end up doing a lot of messing around to get the framed right and straight and then a single bump on the adapter throws it out of whack (and often out of focus), etc. It’s totally serviceable but I just find that it has a lot of paper-cut level annoyances. Only handling 135 is another point against it (I do have some 4x5 and medium format), but honestly fairly low on the list for my needs.
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Early on I bought an ES-1 just to see, this only takes slides and was introduced many years before the ES-2. I also found it fiddly but this was mainly because since no light reaches the lens side it was hard to establish when the slide was entirely central as you simply have to slide each one in individually from the side. The ES-2 has a 2-slide carrier so perhaps it clicks into place. I also thought that the diffuser was too close to the slide and not easy to get as if it needed any dust removed, and it probably would.
The film carrier (both the strip carrier and the 2-slide carrier) does click into place, but there’s a lot of play, so that doesn’t guarantee perfect alignment. And with the strip carrier, I actually find that when I’m scanning a frame on the end of the strip (so the entire carrier is sticking out on one side), the weight of the carrier wants to pull it down so it is stubbornly crooked.
All that said, it is nice that it always keeps the film parallel with the camera. And it allows for a much more compact and portable setup than a copy stand rig. For casually scanning a few frames here and there, it’s not a bad solution. I have just found that over time the annoyances have added up, and I want to try something different. Maybe I will find enough new annoyances with the copy stand rig to miss the ES-2? Who knows.
…and there’s always the Valoi easy35 (now improved considerably with v.2 I think) or even the JJC ‘ES-2’ which may even be better than the Nikon product that inspired it, certainly better value. For 35mm only those options are certainly the cheapest and easiest ways for anyone to get into ‘camera scanning’ but a copy stand setup is so much more versatile of course.
Also get Vlad’s test target which will help with alignment and judging sharpness across the frame:
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Oh nice. I hadn’t seen those before. I will grab one. Thanks!
I don’t know the lens you are intending to use, but whatever it is, for best results you want a flat-field macro copy lens. These are designed especially for the kind of repro work that film scanning is. The camera these days almost doesn’t matter as long as it delivers enough pixels for the resolution you want to end-up with. The lens is the key determinant of capture sharpness across the frame.