Tips

Making digital copies of slides/negatives with your slr
(this article is also published in Scramble magazine and on the Fencecheck.com/magazine/ website jan. 2007)

From the moment I bought my slide scanner, the Minolta scan dual II, in the year 2000, I thought there must be a quicker way to digitalize slides/negatives.

The problem with my scanner was, that it took about 5 minutes to scan a slide/negative (highest resolution), and that it scanned also some dust, no matter how good you cleaned your slide. So it took some time to clean a slide in photoshop after scanning it.
That time I didn't have any software for the scanner to reduce dust.

Einstein moment
I think everybody has, at least a few times in his live an 'Einstein moment'. I think this was one of mine and I like to share it with you. I thought why not take my slide lightbox, lay down a slide on the light box and make a photo of it with my digital camera (back than I had a Canon 10-D), now I use an Canon 20-D. The lightbox I use is a MEDALight LP-2000 with cold cathode lamp, which has a perfect bright white light (5000K daylight).

How
This is how I do it. Put your camera on a tripod, and if you have custom settings put it on mirror lockup, so the mirror has minimal vibrations when it's going up and down.
Use a remote switch so you don't have to touch the camera .
The av (aperture value) is not so important because the slide is flat. For Tv, (shutterspeed) I mostly get the best results with 0,3 - 0,5 seconds.

I tried several lenses, from wide angle to tele, but I had the best results with a macro lens. That way you can get very close to the slide, about 10 to 15 centimeters. I use the Tamron 90mm 2.8 macro.

I always put a lens cap over the slide, this reduces the light from the side, like reflections from window, lightbulb or whatsoever.

Adjustments
You do have to edit the photo you took of the slide a little bit in photoshop.
I sometimes have the slide mount a little bit on the photo, so you have to crop that away.
And some dust removing (much less than scanned with a slidescanner).
And do some regular editing like sharpening, levels and contrast. But of course that is up to you, how you like the colors contrast and so on.

B/W and colored negatives
It is also possible to do the same thing with B/W and colored negatives.
After you took a photo of the negative you have to open the image in photoshop, and
do image>adjustments>invert, or Ctrl-i , then you'll have the the image of the negative in 'positive', it's really easy.
After that, you have to do some afterwork, like levels, contrast and so on, depending on your taste.

RAW or JPEG
I mostly use JPEG, I don't have much experience copying with RAW. The few I took in RAW setting do need much more adjustements with the same or less results as JPEG.

Prints
I have made some prints of the digital copies with the canon 20-d with about the same results like bringing a slide to the print store, with the advantage that the people of the print store can't damage your slide. And the costs are lower.

Costs and benefits
I know that buying a genuine macro lens is a big investment, but a slide scanner is only made for scanning, while a macro lens is also good for photographing like insects, people and so on.

I hope you are satisfied with the results when using this simple and quick method. None the less, it's a great excuse to see your old slides again! I had not looked at them since I switched to digital photography a few years ago. It was very nice to see the 'old' stuff again!

If you have further more questions about copying slides with your digital slr, please don't hesitate to ask! You can contact me through info at foto-expositie dot nl.