Scanning Uncut 35mm Film Rolls

>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=a8peJ_dliyM

I want to share a solution for DSLR scanning of UNCUT rolls of 35mm film that uses a sprocket wheel to automatically advance each frame. Though it is a common method to use a digital camera with a macro lens and copy stand to scan 35mm film, most setups require manually advancing the film frame by frame. This works fine. But, if you have a lot of full length rolls of film to do — I had over 100 rolls — this can be very tedious and error prone. However, it’s important to note, this solution would not work well for 35mm films that has already been cut into 4-6 exposure strips, because you need a few frames of leader to thread the film onto the sprocket drive. • The ready made and affordable DSLR scanner solutions that I found rely on advancing the film manually. So I decided to try building my own automatically advancing drive. The film transport uses a sprocket wheel salvaged from an old 35mm camera, rotated in increments of one frame by a stepper motor, and controlled by a Raspberry Pi computer. • Actually I did find one ready made device that might have worked for me. It is the CAMERADACTYL MONGOOSE Fast Automated 35mm Film Scanning by Ethan Moses — Kickstarter (see link below). It transports the film frame by frame based on detecting the the image edge. In my case, I thought that method might not work when the edge of the image is not easily detected. But, perhaps most of all, I was looking for an excuse to learn a little about the Raspberry Pi computer while saving a few bucks with a DYI project. • With the help of my good friend Gabe I was able to modify a Python program that triggered my DSLR and advanced the sprocket wheel precisely to the next frame . As the program writes each scan to a thumb drive, it names each image with a roll number and the actual frame number. This enabled me to easily locate any negatives that might need to be rescanned. • Here are some specifics for my setup: • My capture camera was a Nikon D610 with a 1005mm f2.8 macro lens. • I modified a Nikon F film/slide copy attachment by attaching a sprocket wheel on a brass axel. This served as the necessary film holder which I mounted between the camera and the light box. • I controlled the operation with a Python language program on a Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB). The program was a slightly modified version of a program shared on The Zan Show Tutorial 41: Control a DSLR Camera with your Pi! (see link below)This program uses gPhoto2 (see link below), a free camera controlling module that works with Raspberry Pi. My customizations of the program were specific to the configuration for my DSLR camera, stepper motor and thumb drive. • The stepper motor I used was a Bipolar Stepper Motor (17HS16-2004S1) (see link below) . A circuit board which attaches to the Pi, known as a “hat”, is also needed. • I scanned over 130 rolls with this setup. I used Photoshop and Lightroom for post processing. I found that manual focusing worked best because when you come across frame that cannot be focused automatically, the camera stalls. Also, in order to gain a little more depth of field I did not fill the frame. Then I made Photoshop actions to automate the post processing. The actions cropped and inverted the negative images. I shot all frames in RAW with the same exposure settings. This gave me sufficient latitude for the the post processing adjustments. • A word of caution: Though the actual scanning went pretty well, about 8 min. a roll, the post processing was fairly time-consuming. Despite the automation tools available in Photoshop and Lightroom, almost every negative required some tweaking before it was acceptable. I had 4,500 frame to tweak and that took a very long time. • LINKS: • https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/... • http://www.gphoto.org • https://thezanshow.com/electronics-tu... • https://www.omc-stepperonline.com

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