I’m the same way i will get whatever is needed to meet my standards I’m starting to give up with them as well the mirror trick has been getting me by for now, i Will try a few things before adding this to my arsenal. Which version of Zig-Align do you use?
Basic is more than enough. All you really need is their disc with the hole in the middle mounted in an adapter you can screw into the accessory mount on the front of your lens (perhaps with another adapter), and a small mirror from any shop that sells reasonable quality mirrors. It’s been a while since I bought mine and I see it has been taken over by Better Light who have expanded on the concept.
I use a mirror for alignment, self timer with a remote camera app., manual focus with red focus peeking and silent shutter.
All this combined produces sharpness across the field and avoids several issues that causes motion blur.
Hope this helps
F
Just a few thoughts:
- I had very bad luck with my Negative Supply copy stand and had to return it. My camera would literally drift before my eyes and by about 30 minutes it would be at a complete angle. If you keep your camera on the stand overnight, does it drift at all after some time? Even if not as terrible as my version, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of your issues were simply from lack of stability from the Negative Supply product. They may have fixed this in newer iterations but I’m not sure, For the record I replaced mine with a Beseler and haven’t looked back.
- I was always under the impression that focus peaking wasn’t the way to go for critical macro focus? I always zoom just about all the way in and focus on the grain. is it possible that the focus peaking in your fuji isn’t 100% accurate?
- I echo everyone else that using your camera tethered and activating shutter through lightroom several feet away along with a 2s delay is probably best practice. Oh and electronic/silent shutter so no mirror slap. (but look into whether the Fuji lowers the bit depth when using the electronic shutter because some cameras do, in which case I think you have to choose bit depth vs electronic shutter)
I’m in the same boat the negative supply copy stand isn’t stable enough i switched over to a tripod for now while i work things out. I’m not sure i never kept my camera on there long enough only while I’m scanning. Too bad i can’t return mine i will try to sell it for cheap if possible.
I’m using focus peaking with Vlads test target and my scans have been consistent after introducing the test target, it could be but I’m not sure.
I’ve been looking online and it doesn’t seem that the xt30 has a way to tether i could be wrong but i haven’t seen anything yet. I’ll see if silent shutter improves the scans
Thanks, I presume that you are still using the 120mm Makro-Symmar, I believe the Schneider Apo-Digitar is also designed to take account of the sensor glass. I’ve also seen excellent results from the 80mm Makro-Symmar on a Hasselblad back when copying 35mm, the best I’ve seen actually but only by a whisker from the 1:1 75mm Apo-Rodagon D 1x. That’s using Vlad’s Test Target which I believe you don’t use. Presumably the two 75mm Apo-Rodagon D lenses, 1x and 2x weren’t designed in this way either, I use the latter on my APS-C Fuji X-T2, it’s the best that I’ve tried but it’s only 24MP, things are different at 61MP on Full Frame. However I think the reasons for this particular problem with sharpness is a world away from such refinements, I think there’s something much more basic going wrong here.
The mirror “trick” is all you need. Just make sure that the mirror surface (usually below the glass) sits in the same place as the film. If the film or mirror have some tilt, alignment will not be correct. If alignment is spot on, the sensor and negative planes are parallel and, if the lens has no misalignment, will provide what you need.
There is no need to align anything with e.g. the center of earth’s gravity, only the alignment relative to the optical axis is relevant.
In the real world, lenses can have some field curvature and the negative can bulge a little. Both will probably make the takes look unsharp, depending on how far from the centre you look. Flipping the negative can improve or worsen the effect.
Hi Mark, not that one, I’m using an 80mm Schneider Apo-Digitar Macro lens - so yes it is corrected for digital capture. Correct, I do not use Vlad’s target, though I own one. I use a Thorlabs NBS 1963A R2L2S1N1 (https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_ID=4338) It’s expensive, but when you read about how they’re made it’s understandable. I’ve tested several targets and found this to be by far the best of the lot for easily revealing the ultimate resolution of which one’s system is capable. All that said I think the last two sentences of your post are correct - the OP’s issue is most likely more basic.
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Simple screenshot of upper right corner: Group 0, set 1 easily, which is 55 lp/mm using a Minolta 5400 scanner lens, with a 24 MPix APS-C sensor. The 24 MPix sensor resolution is limiting:
Mirrors are far from accurate enough at this level. Vlad has a little video on his website on how to do alignment: Move back and forth so that focus peaking just starts to happen on the Siemens rings. It should happen by the same amount on all four corners simultaneously. If so, alignment is good. Focus peaking itself has too much slack, but observing the onset of it happening in all four corners works. I had to introduce a rotatable camera mount since I have to re-adjust every time I remount the camera on its L-holder.
I hope that you are getting nearer to finding a solution now. You’re right to want to get all four Siemens Stars to focus at the same time but I wonder if there is still an alignment issue, or if your setup with the tripod is proving too awkward to adjust consistently and accurately.
I must say that I still don’t understand when you say that if you try and zoom in further you begin to cut off part of your film. It seems to me that when you photographed your strip of 3 negatives of Vlad’s Target you were actually copying an area of around 56mm x 37mm and so of course included parts of the neighbouring two negatives. 56mm is the width of 120 film so that is closer to the area needed to copy 645.
As of now i’m still in the same position, it’s possible it could be an alignment issue but I’m not sure, my tripod was a step up from the negative supply copy stand. I started experimenting with stitching in hopes of getting better results.
I’m new to this i might be wording it wrong. The test target i provided a link to in the drive was shot at 1:0.75 (not sure if thats correct) i believe, if i increase it to 1:1 or 1:1.25 i get a better scan but it starts to cut off parts of the negative. I believe the test target i provide only showed 1 out of the 5 negatives i don’t think it included the other two (i have to double check).
Well, for APS-C you need 1:1.5 or 0.67:1 to copy a full frame 35mm negative, actually a little less to give you a little bit of border. Maybe you could just use the link above to download your own file, hopefully that wil make it clear what I’m describing. Actually on APS-C the magnification to cover what seems to be 56mm x 37mm is 1:2.37.
Yes I see what you mean now sorry I photographed a bunch of different test targets and don’t remember which one i uploaded. I will photograph both to see what my results are and post them, hopefully that does it.
This is what I’m currently getting messing with my setup, I’m not sure how to tell exactly the magnification but its a little under 0.75:1 to get some of the border. I included the test target from that scan and added an extra negative in case the one i been showing is maybe out of focus. I turned off the sharpening as well.
f4 (3).RAF - Google Drive, f4 (2)-instagram.jpg - Google Drive, f4 (1)-instagram.jpg - Google Drive,
Sorry for the delay and thanks for uploading these files. That is an out and out excellent result that you have got from Vlad’s Test Target, clearly Group 0 Element 1 from all targets. That must be a terrific lens for 35mm slide copying and there is no problem with your setup assuming that you can consistently get this quality. I haven’t yet tried to work with your other scans but on the face of it they look very good as well, the grain seems sharp across the frame. Well done.
Also, don’t get hung about the magnification, you’ve filled the frame with the target and your transparencies which is what matters so it will be around 1:1.5 as I’ve said. The required magnification is useful to know when comparing lenses etc.
Also consider losing pixels as shown here:
Losing pixels means that you don’t get the full resolution and hence sharpness.
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I find scans almost always have to be sharpened either in PS or I use imagemagick on export - Lightroom’s sharpen has always sucked and just makes digiital worms appear
But not with your GFX hopefully!