SliderPro 1000

About 10 years ago I started making digital copies of old film negatives and color slides. The scanners I had access to produced disappointing results, so I tried taking a closeup of the film with a digital camera (Figure 1). The camera was the first DSLR I owned. This made very good copies, capturing most of the information in the old film. My more recent experiences with consumer scanners and commercial scanning services suggest that it is easy to get much better results using a camera than with a slide/film scanner.

Figure 1. In 2013 this rig allowed me to make good copies of old 35mm film and color slides. The camera is a Nikon D40 (6 MP, model released in 2006) with an old Micro-NIKKOR 55mm 1:3.5 lens with a 12 mm extension tube. A film holder from an old enlarger holds the film or a slide. This produces much better results than any consumer film/slide scanner I know about.
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