Using digital to capture film capture

[gr82bart]

So the thread on the digital invasion has revealed an interesting 'alternative' process. What do people think about using a digital camera to make a 'dupe' of a film capture? Similar in theory to making slide dupes in the old days?

Who else does this? What are the results like?

Regrads, Art.

[glbeas]

Theres been a few members here who have used thier digisnap to get an image of thier print to upload because they either had no scanner or it was too big to scan. Nobody raised a fuss about that and I would think doing the same to a chrome or a negative to would be no different. A scanner is just a digital copier, and so is any other digibeast when set up to copy flat work.
It goes both ways, I've scanned flowers on my flatbed and got very pretty results but you won't see me posting any of that here. It's a digital capture.

[sanking]

So the thread on the digital invasion has revealed an interesting 'alternative' process. What do people think about using a digital camera to make a 'dupe' of a film capture? Similar in theory to making slide dupes in the old days?

Who else does this? What are the results like?

Regrads, Art.

My only use of digital is for scanning in-camera negatives for the purpose of making digital negatives for printing in carbon, kallitype or palladium. I seriously doubt that the use of a digital camera to make a dupe of a film capture would provide the same level of quality as a good scanner, unless it was a very high end camera, say a Hasselblad H1, and the negative was very large.

Sandy

[bjorke]

I have to admit I do it all the time. I am very impatient and when I hang 2-1/4 negs to dry I go fetch my DSLR and take some quicky loose snaps of them (hanging in the shower, which is white-walled) and preview them in Photoshop. Crappy quality, shaky, bent, with reflections, multiple frames per snap, whatever -- it's all about impatience, I can get to printing them after they dry overnight.

[Joe Lipka]

In updating my web site, I wanted to show my pt/pd work. So, I copied some prints with my digital camera. Used a copy stand and all the usual stuff to make a good copy print. Didn't work to my level of satisfaction. It's that whole thing about paper texture and subtlety of tone that just didn't translate well.

But, it is quite possible to start out with a bunch of pixels from your digital camera and wind up with a digital negative for pt/pd printing.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Before I had a scanner large enough to handle transparencies and negs bigger than 35mm, I used to use my Coolpix 990 on a copy stand with a 5000K light box to dupe MF and LF negs and transparencies for the web. I'm sure I still have some of these digital dupes on my website, but I couldn't tell you which they were offhand.

I wasn't interested in digital prints, but once I helped a friend with 5x7" transparencies make a digital file using this method to send to a printer who made a 4-color postcard for a gallery show, and 3.3 Mpix was plenty for this purpose (a postcard of around 4x6" with resolution comparable to a glossy magazine).

[Ian Grant]

A local lab near me uses a 5"x4" colour head as a lightbox for film duping and this would work equally as well for digital film capture.

I bid and won an Ebay auction for a Bowens Illumatron slide duplicator to digitize my 35mm negs via Digital SLR. Unfortunately it was supposedly lost in the post, I had my money refunded but as my winning bid was £5 (less than $10) I figure the seller renaged on the sale.

[Bob Carnie]

Hi Art
I have seen 6x6 colour negatives put on a lightbox and shot with a phase back. We then made enlarged digital prints. The results were quite good, I would imagine that this method of copying transparancys and negatives if controlled properly would result in very satisfying results.