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Digitizing slides with an EOS Rebel T6s

kvbarkley
VIP
VIP

(I want to talk about something besides 3rd party RF lenses)

I volunteered to digitize some old slides. No problem, I thought, since I have a slide scanner. It turns out these are (I think!) 127 film, 1-5/8 square, which while they fit in the scanner, the scanner only scans the 35mm area, so I lose 30 % or so of the slide.

One option is to use my T6S and 60mm macro lens and copy them that way (Though that is not ideal since I will be transferring a square slide to a 3:2 format, so I will only get 2666 pixels on a side with a lot of wasted space.)

As a test, I am going to put some wax paper on the window, and shoot some test shots.

Any thoughts as to good settings to use?

(If the test shots come out OK, I will get a light box and macro rail)

6 REPLIES 6

Tronhard
Elite
Elite

(I want to talk about something besides 3rd party RF lenses)  Totally agree - THANK YOU!

That's a bit of a challenge, given that you will always be tied to the native 3x2 format in your camera.  I sent some slides that I had to a bureau in the US and they scanned them for me, and they did a good job at reasonable prices.  I think they have the ability to deal with square format using their specialist gear, FWIW.


cheers, TREVOR

"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow", Leo Tolstoy;
"Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase" Percy W. Harris

jrhoffman75
Legend
Legend

I think you could compose the image and let camera determine the exposure. depth of field and motion won’t be issues, so you don’t need to be preselecting a particular setting. Add exposure comp if necessary to account for any influence of the aspect ratio difference. 

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic

jrhoffman75
Legend
Legend

What brand slide scanner?

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic

kvbarkley
VIP
VIP

Minolta Dual Scan IV. I use VueScan with it, since the manual lists a Pentium 166 MHz / Power PC G3 for the software specs. Though actually, I think the mirror is getting pretty dirty and the lamp pretty dim since it seems to spot a lot.

Waddizzle
Legend
Legend

Do you have the software to stitch together images in a panoramic shot?

In my experience, any flat bed scanner easily outperforms any consumer camera on the market.  The number of DPI from a scanner way outperforms a DSLR.  The only way [a] DSLR can come close is to use a macro lens to sample portions of the subject just like you would create a single landscape panoramic image.  

You may have to capture multiple rows of images with a 5x macro lens to even come close to your average flat bed scanner.  But it sounds like you’re sampling small negatives, which only makes the high resolution issues more [acute] when trying to capture the entire sample in a single shot.

[ Think “life size” on the image sensor. ]

Back to the top, if you have software that can stitch together multiple images from your scanner into a composite whole, then that may be your best option with your current gear.

 

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"The right mouse button is your friend."

I have Photomerge in Photoshop elements. I have heard conflicting things about the scanner vs the DSLR, which is why I want to try it. If I zoom in to life size (1:1)* I should be getting close to the scanner resolution so I can see if a scanner buys me much.

*(6000 pixels for .878 inches (22.3 mm) or 5260 dpi.)

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