My Custom Film Scanner

[MAGNAchrom]

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:


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".

[Jordan]

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?

[Kai Hamann]

Hi Michael,

spectacular and well made.

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

All the best
Kai Hamann

[David A. Goldfarb]

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).

[sanking]

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:


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