[thunderbrick]

I assume consumer film or flatbed scanners do a lousy job, but for years people used slide copiers to duplicate slides.  Has anyone ever mounted a digital camera on a dichroic or flash-powered machine such as the Illumitrans or Beseler units?

Techniques?

Ideas?

High enough quality to make 16x20 prints ?

I have a ton of slides I'd like to convert and a boat-anchor sized duplicator that I'd like to put back in action.

Thanks!

'brick

[Photon46]

I use a high end Heidelberg flat bed scanner for scanning film at work and a Canon EOS 1Ds II for digital photography. Much of my work is photographing high end art for catalogs, book publishers, galleries, etc. While I've not had extensive experience using the Canon in macro copy mode, I don't see how it could even come close to equaling the quality of a good scan. I also think 16x20's from ANY image capture of a 35mm slide is optimistic (if you're picky about image quality.) When printing with either our Epson 9900 or 7990's, we use a 300 dpi image file. 250 dpi can work pretty good as well. In either case, you need a 4-6,000 pixel wide image to get a good 16x20 print with printers like we use. I can only get a 12x16 300 dpi image with a single frame of the 16 megapixel Canon EOS 1 Ds. When I need larger files, I shoot art in segments and stitch them together in Photoshop. (I find around 2500 dpi is the upper end of file size for a 35mm slide that looks good. Any larger and film grain artifacts start to become a problem.)
 Seems like it would be possible to adapt a slide copier to use with a digital camera, I just don't think you're going to get files big enough for 16x20's of quality. Here's a link to info about using the Illumitrans and digital cameras: http://members.bitstream.net/tlmartin/copiers.html
 One further thing to be wary of is that opening up your digital camera and attaching it to a duplicator is likely to expose the sensor to all kinds of dust and result in sensor cleaning headaches. Personally, I hate the sensor cleaning routine with a passion 
 Don't necessarily sell consumer slide scanners short, reviews I've read make one think some of them are pretty decent.

[thunderbrick]

Thanks, P46, just the input I was seeking!   

I'm not much worried about dust, because I'll have an enlarging or macro lens mounted at the bottom of the bellows, almost certainly in a fixed position.  That should avoid dust from the bellows being pushed into the body when they are compressed.

I've had great 20x24s made from high-res neg scans, but I just tossed out the 16x20 size as an example.  I'd probably just use the duplicator system to post photos, or help friends out with their family photos.

You hate dust?  I hate spending money when I can modify existing inventory to do the job.  Plus, I won't feel like such a jerk for buying the duplicator just before the onslaught of digital.     

[jarcher]

I can appreciate the desire to re-coup investment in gear, but honestly a decent scanner is going to work very well (particularly for 16 x20) and potentially save you a lot of time & hassles - especially if you've got many slides.

I had a big project (hundreds of slides) and got an Epson V500 for under $200 last year.  It has a holder to place up to 4 slides and more importantly good software to do automated color correction and dust removal.  It really revives 30-40 year old slides.  I've had no issues w/ quality.  Others who have seen the results have been amazed by the quality from such old slides.

Just a thought.......

[thunderbrick]

Very cool, jarcher!

I was half-way kidding about recycling old technology, but my copier handles up to 4x5, and I have a lot of those as well as 6x6, 6x7, and 6x9cm chromes.  Drooling over the potential; beats watching figure skating when all the football games are done.