Camera Scanning - Quick And Efficient

I've been camera scanning film for at least a dozen years and am always looking for better ways to do it. I don't have a dedicated workstation for this, so I needed a setup that could be easy assembled and taken apart. 

If you're in the process of setting up your own scan station, it helps to look at different approaches that might work for your needs. Here's mine:

Gear

1. Camera: A Nikon D810 that I bought used just for scanning negatives.  It's 36-megapixel sensor is plenty for scanning 35mm frames, and acceptable for 120 films. It cost less than the Nikon LS-5000 scanner did back in the day.  I have also gotten great scans from a 24-megapixel Nikon D610, and have made beautiful 16x20" and larger prints from both cameras. A crop sensor camera would also work fine. A cable release is a helpful accessory.
    
2. Macro Lens. A decent lens is important. I use a Nikon 60mm f/2.8 with manual focus. An adapted film camera macro lens can also give excellent results as well, though focusing might be more difficult without a focus confirmation dot in the viewfinder.
    
3. Copy Stand: Mine is a swing-arm Leitz model that I've had for years. New stands are pricey. I've come across several YouTubers who made their own with galvanized pipe, a board and a camera clamp. 
    
4. Focusing rail: The swing arm on my copy stand moves in an arc,  so any minor height change requires repositioning the light and the negative. A focusing rail lets me make precision adjustments requiring only a slight change in focus. The one I have is a Manfrotto 454 Micrometric, but there are many less expensive options available.
    

5. Negative holder. My prior setup used an enlarger negative carrier taped onto a base diffusion sheet. Perfectly positioning the negative could be tedious, especially for frames at the end of a strip. When I first looked at the Valoi 35 film holder, I thought it was expensive for how simple it looks, but the value is in the design. The Valoi keeps the negative almost perfectly flat and  usually reveals film border all around the negative. (I still stop down the lens to accommodate and slight variations at this close focusing distance.)  A film strip easily glides through the holder and positioning takes only a second or two. 

   

6. Light source: I bought a Cinestill CS-Lite. It provides bright, even light and the Valoi holder nestles snugly on top of it. The unit has a high CRI, and temperature settings for color film, b&w negatives, and color slides. I've used it for both b&w and color negatives with excellent results. That said, I prefer electronic flash because it lets me use smaller apertures for better depth of field and because it eliminates any stray room light striking the negative.  

   

7. A stand to hold the negative carrier over the flash. This has always been the hardest part of the setup. What I finally came up with that worked was constructing a simple box out of half-inch black foam board held together with gaffers tape.

   The box has no bottom (no flat surface to make it wobble) has and a removable lid  with a cutout slightly larger than 4x5". I covered the cutout with a sheet of acrylic (for stability) and topped that with several sheets of diffusion material. The carrier sits on top of it. The box raises the negative far enough above the flash for even lighting and also elevates the film holder enough that I don't have to bend over the camera while I work. Don't underestimate that over a 2 to 3-hour session. 

8. Focusing light: A short LED strip (marketed as a sewing machine light) taped to the inside walls of the box gives me just enough light for focusing. 

   

   The benefits over film scanners

• Edge to edge sharpness. Both the Nikon and Minolta scanners I've used had shallow depth of field, leaving many scans (especially slides) soft at the edges. Being able to stop down the lens gives me edge to edge sharpness.
   
• Source light diffusion. Black & White grain was always enhanced by the culminated light of the scanner. With this setup, grain looks as beautiful as it does in a print, and dust specs don't seem as intense. 
   
• Speed. I can scan a strip of five in less than a minute.
   
• Tethering. Hooking the camera up to the computer shows me a huge display of the scan right after capture. Also, no more fiddling around with a memory card.
   
• Having a raw file. The files can be non-destructively edited in any number of ways.
   
• Connection. It puts my eye back into the viewfinder where the process began.

 For this process to work without becoming an organizational nightmare, it's important to set out a precise workflow and to stick to it. File naming,  converting to DNG (for later storage), captioning, converting to positive and outputting a TIFF or JPEG file ... I'm still streamlining these steps and would love to hear anyone else's ideas. One added complication for me is that Lightroom is not my Digital Asset Manager. 

My favorite conversion tool is a reasonably priced Lightroom plugin called Negative Lab Pro, created by Nate Johnson. It works with LIghtroom 6.14, which is great because I will not rent software tools that I might use every day or might not use for months at a time. The plugin gives fast and beautiful results with both color and black and white negatives and will even output a tiff or jpeg file following the conversion. Nate maintains a forum providing tech. support,  and new releases often bring new features and tweaks. NLP works from LR 6.14 up to the latest versions and a free trial is available. An Internet search will reveal a number of other options as well.

One other product worth a look is the Essential Film Holder, a nicely made unit that holds the negative flat and as with the Valoi, comes in both 35mm and 120mm options. I have one and will do some in depth testing with it when I get back to my 120 negatives and slides.

Good luck and happy scanning!