Tired of the performance and limitations of flatbed scanners, I decided to make my own scanner from a bunch of spare parts I had lying around the studio. My rig consists of the following:

- Beseler 45mx enlarger head
- Linhof Kardan M studio camera
- Schneider Super Makro 120
- BetterLight Super 6k-2 scanning back
- Various 4x5 and medium format film holders

Here is a picture of the rig:
http://static.flickr.com/34/73356250_45471cfd4f.jpg

What is nice is that I can control the light in ways that is impossible to do with normal scanners. I can also use perspective control in the camera rather than doing it in Photoshop. The BetterLight gives me 11-stops and up to 9000x12000 pixel 16-bit scans with the need for any RAW conversion. It is very "familiar" too -- brings me back to the days of the wet darkroom!

Anyway, just thought it might inspire some of you to consider "rolling your own".

Wow. Impressive setup but probably out of the question $-wise for most people around here. Do you have any examples of scans you've done with it?

Hi Michael,

spectacular and well made.

I´d really like to seen an example of the scans too.

All the best
Kai Hamann

I'm not interested in digital negs or digital printing for the most part except for some prints from color slides, and for those I'd rather get a drum scan.

The more I use my little Coolpix 990 on a copy stand, though, the more I realize how much handier a camera on a copy stand is than a scanner for documents that I want to digitize (much faster than a scanner for the quality needed), and for prints, negatives, or transparencies that I want to digitize for the web. For opaque media, I have two Norman portable flash heads mounted on my copy stand, and for transparent media I use a small 5000K light pad.

I might just upgrade the camera to one of the new 10 Mpix cameras, maybe get a nicer light pad, and I can probably get rid of my scanners. I've already tossed my old Nikon 4500, which had developed registration problems (but I saved the film carriers which I can use on my Omega D-II and salvaged the lenses for experimentation).

Tired of the performance and limitations of flatbed scanners, I decided to make my own scanner from a bunch of spare parts I had lying around the studio. My rig consists of the following:

- Beseler 45mx enlarger head
- Linhof Kardan M studio camera
- Schneider Super Makro 120
- BetterLight Super 6k-2 scanning back
- Various 4x5 and medium format film holders

Here is a picture of the rig:
http://static.flickr.com/34/73356250_45471cfd4f.jpg

What is nice is that I can control the light in ways that is impossible to do with normal scanners. I can also use perspective control in the camera rather than doing it in Photoshop. The BetterLight gives me 11-stops and up to 9000x12000 pixel 16-bit scans with the need for any RAW conversion. It is very "familiar" too -- brings me back to the days of the wet darkroom!

Anyway, just thought it might inspire some of you to consider "rolling your own".

There must be quite a lot of change in that set-up. Other than the perspective control what advantages would there be over a very high end flatbed scanner, say one that costs in the $15-20K range.

Sandy