Converting Old Photographs to Digital

Chubby

Senior Member
One last question, I shoot with a D7100 and everyone says to get a 60mm Macro lens and a ES-1, then add a 20mm extension tube to adjust for the crop sensor in my camera. My question would be should I get a DX 40mm Macro lens instead of the 60mm, and would that make the adjustment for the 20mm extension tube?
 

WayneF

Senior Member
The ES-1 is designed for a full frame camera, with a 55mm lens to do 1:1 macro, to copy slides.

DX cameras have a smaller cropped frame, so 1:1 would be an unacceptable cropped copy. So DX has to back off to about a 1:1.5 copy. For the 60mm macro lens, this requires about 20mm greater extension than the ES-1 can provide.

But the 40mm lens is shorter, a bit less magnification.

So yes, multiple users do report that the 40mm macro lens works OK on the ES-1 without the additional extension.


See Scanning thousands of slides? Try a digital camera
 

aroy

Senior Member
All macro lenses will give 1:1, but at different lense to object distance. The reason for recommending 60mm is
. It is linear geometrically and sharp end to end. So it is the easiest for technical copy work, where geometric non linearity will not be tolerated.
. The ES-1 is a tailor made solution for the lense. That and a ring for DX is all you need to copy slides (and negatives). Other solutions may be better or more versatile, but this combination has the simplest setup and a practically no brainer execution.
. 105mm the most popular focul length for macros, suffers from CA in certain cases. That means that you have to be extremely careful while copying.
 

aroy

Senior Member
Reviving this thread.

Recently, I had to digitize B&W photographs of my parents. They date from early 40's to early 60's. Here is how I went about.

Initially I used my HP 5610 3-in-one printer for scanning. After a few trial runs, here is what worked best
. For small MF contact prints - 1200 DPI
. For 5x3 prints - 600 DPI
. For larger prints 300 DPI.
Initially I scanned in TIFF, but saw no distinct advantage. So I shifted to JPG. I had also tried scanning 4 or more images, but the time taken to separate and straighten the images was more than scanning them separately. After scanning I used NX-D to post process them, though the JPG allowed only basic level and curve adjustment.

Then I shifted to DSLR - D3300 and used the kit 18-55 VR-II lens. I mounted the DSLR on a tripod, with camera facing down and levelled the whole system for minimum skew. The advantage of DSLR are
. Faster throughput
. Higher resolution
. Ability to use all the tools in NX-D - WB, NR, Curves and lens corrections.
. Better DR, so that I could recover a lot of shadows from the prints.

Then I started on colour prints. Here the DSLR route proved to be much better and faster. Most of my prints were from 1980's, and had acquired a red tinge. PP game me enough tools to regain colour and recover shadows, apart from sharpening.

My aim is to digitize over 2,000 B&W and over a 100 albums of prints. Later when I can, I will get the 60mm and software to digitize the Slides and Negatives. I will post my experience and some samples as I progress.
 

Revet

Senior Member
I recommend trying out the program Sparky had recommended, AutoSplitter. It allows you to scan as many photos as you can fit on your scanner and easily separate them as single files in the program. I ended up scanning thousands of photos in a couple of hours.
 

aroy

Senior Member
The problem is to align the photos so that there is no skew. Correcting skew degrades the image, unless you scan at insane resolution.

One reason I moved to DSLR based system is the DR of the source and more options in PP.
 
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