Transcripts
1. Introduction to scanning with a camera: Hello and welcome. For those of you who
are new to my channel, my name is Jahan. In this video, I've
parked it up with the alloy to talk
all about cameras scanning and give you
an in-depth tutorial of cameras scanning with boys, setup and talk about some of the benefits of using this compared to something
like a flatbed scanner.
2. What is camera scanning: To begin with, I'm
just going to quickly explain what cameras
scanning actually is. Cameras scanning means that
you take a digital camera and you attach macro lens to it. And then you put this
setup on something like a copy stand or a
really sturdy tripod. And then you simply take photos of your negatives
while they are placed in a film holder that is illuminated from below so
the negative is visible. Then once you've taken the
photo of the negative, all you need to do
is import it into something like Adobe
Lightroom and either converted yourself or use editing software or a plugin
like negative lab Pro, which will convert
your negative image into a positive image and then something that
you can work with. It's actually a very
intuitive process and it's a lot faster than scanning
with a flatbed scanner, but more on that later. Next up, I'm going to give you a run through of all
the things that you need to scan your negatives
with cameras scanning setup.
3. All the things you need: The things that you'll
need for cameras scanning our digital camera, and ideally it has an
interchangeable lens because the most important
part is that you're going to have to
mount macro lens. Now it doesn't have to be a
very fancy or modern one. You can also use a very old
macro lens as long as it is still sharp and the lens
is damaged in any way, just to make sure that it's a macro lens and it
fits to your camera. Then you're going to
need something like a copy stand or a tripod. I use this very
fancy copystand by Nova flags and it mounts
directly to your table. You could just use a tripod, which is what I used
when I was traveling. And it's just
important that you can actually attach your
camera to its safely. Then you're going to
need a light panel. You can use one of
these sketching paths. Or if you want something
more dedicated that fits perfectly to the scanning
setup from Deloitte, you can actually get
one of these relay. No, I think they're called
relay, no. Video lights. And that will actually
slide right under into the alloy 360
scanning setup. And that will make scanning really easy
because everything is even more compact
and you don't have to worry about external
light sources. Of course, the most important
part of this whole process is the below 360 advanced
her and scanning rig. Now this consists
of a base where you can set the different types of film masks for
different film formats. It has the advancer which makes the whole process very
quick and very efficient. It has a duster to
eliminate dust from the negative and the diffuser
for your light source. And then you have these
different types of film masks, which I already
mentioned before, which will go for
specific films. So if you're using
medium format, you're going to use the specific medium format film holder. Or if you want to do a
Thirty-five millimeters, he used that one and
so on and so forth. Then finally, I would
recommend having something like anti-static cloth gloves and most importantly a mirror, and more on that later.
4. Setting up for the scan : The first thing
that we do to get started is just to insert
our film through the duster. If we have one and then through the mask and into
the take-up spool. Then the next thing that
we want to do is set our camera approximately to
a height where if you focus, you have the frame
more or less in focus. Now this doesn't
need to be exact. The only thing that I would
recommend is to center your first frame and then
get out your mirror. And this is where it
can be a bit tricky. You're gonna have to place
your mirror just on top of the film holder and
makes sure that the lens and the aperture is quite in the
center of your frame. If it isn't in the center, then I would recommend to adjust the feet and make
sure everything is in focus. And the reason why we
want to center the lens and focus on the outside
rim of the lens, is to make sure that
the film plane is actually perfectly
parallel to the lens. This will enable us to get sharpness all
across the negative. And this is a really
important step to make.
5. Scanning workflow: Before we actually
start scanning, it's important to set the
camera to manual settings. The things that
you need to watch out for are the following. Set your ISO to the lowest possible natural
ISO over your camera. And that's usually ISO 100. Some cameras go to
ISO 50 or lower, but that's not the natural ISO. It's more of like a pooled ISO. So kind of like
an artificial one and we want to stay
away from that. Then set your aperture to
something between F5.6 or F11, depending on your camera
lens configuration. Most lenses have like a sweet spot where
the focus is perfect. And if you do some research, you'll usually find that out yourself or you
can take some tests, photos and see where the
lens is the sharpest, especially on the corners and that's where it
matters the most. Then the shutter speed
is what you will work with in terms of adjusting the shutter speed to give you the best results for the
actual scanning process. What I like to do is I like
to set my shutter speeds so the histogram on the camera
gives me a good reading. But at the same time, I think it's also important
to trust your eyes. So if the negative, It's completely off,
just readjust that. Then really important
use a remote control or the self timer in the camera
to expose the frames. Because if you don't actually use a timer or remote
or something like that, you're going to create
too much wobble on the camera and you're
going to probably just get shaky images. Finally, what I would
recommend is to do your final focus now. And most cameras,
especially modern ones, if you do manual
focus on the camera, it will actually zoom in
quite a bit and then you can really make sure that you
have everything in detail. Once you're all set and you have your settings comes really the easiest part of
this entire workflow. And that's just taking
photos and advancing, take a frame and advance to the next and take a frame
and so on and so forth. It's really quite simple.
6. Post processing on the computer: Okay, so once you've got
your files on the computer, you can open your image
editing software. I'm using Lightroom Classic
and my Lightroom Classic. I have a plugin which
is negative lab Pro. Now using negative lap row is a huge advantage
because it will make your entire workflow a lot more controlled and you will
have much better outcome. But having said that, you don't actually have to do
its width negative lap row. The first thing
that you do is you import your photos
from your camera. And then what you wanna
do is you want to to a white balance by pressing on anywhere within the frame which is not actually
in the photograph. So like where the sprocket
holes are for example, and then make an adjustment. And then you will
see that your frame will change quite a bit. Then the next thing
that you want to do is you want to
crop the frame. The good thing about
using Lightroom is that I could crop the frame
quite tightly now. But the adjustments that
I make with negative lab Pro will only be
applied to this frame. But if I wanted to add the sprocket holes
afterwards, for example, I can just increase the crop again and then the sprocket
holes would be there. For now. This is the crop that I've made. Then all you got to do is
open up negative lab Pro. If you're using a Mac
that's just Control N. The first time you
open negative lab Pro, you're gonna get this window. There are a few
things that you can play around with and can select. The first thing that
you want to do is obviously your source is
from a digital camera. You could also use files coming from a
scanner, for example. But since we're
cameras scanning, we're going to do this
with a digital camera. Then the color model. There are different types. For example, if you want to have the kind of look
from a Noritsu or a Frontier scanner than
what you could do is you could select the
frontier color model. And you can already
see that there is a change in the
color of the film. But usually what I do is
I actually don't select any color model and I do
a default pre saturation. And essentially that's all
the edits and advanced. This is only
something for later, so we have this selected and then all we do is
press convert negative. Now that the negatives
have been converted, we can play around
a bit with the tons and there's a few settings
that you can choose from. You could go for more
like a cinematic look, lab standard look, or
something more linear, which is usually what I go for. And then what you do is you can play around
with the exposure. And you really have endless opportunities
that you could do. Play around white stark slides, all sorts of things. You could add. This
kind of faded look. Clo, it's really the
opportunities are endless. Now the trick here is not
to get too lost in it. And what I really like is that there is the amount of control that kind of gives you an authentic look of what the
film actually looks like. Without adjusting
too many things, you can get a good white balance without adjusting
too many things, you can get a very
neutral look to the film. This film obviously is
very neutral acidosis, which is portrait 400. But essentially, if you want to get something that
is more cinematic, you can go for these
so on and so forth. I'm not gonna go
into too much detail with the colors and the
mids and the highs. These are all things that
you can play around with. You could change the tint in that way and things like
that, which is really, I guess at that
teaches if there are small corrections that
you might want to make or you're using a film
that is more complicated, something like
sinister at a 100 t where you maybe want to work with specific tones
or something. When it comes to simple
scanning of, let's say, normal color films, or
even black and white films where there's even less issues with
color. Of course. That's essentially all
that you have to watch out for and then you just apply. And that's it. Like I said, if you
wanted to actually make frame bigger now you could
just go back to the crop. Just make that bigger. And then you'd have
something here, like the sprocket
holes are visible now. That's essentially
cameras scanning. And yeah, the next thing that you
could do now is you could maybe straighten it up a
bit and maybe printed out, hang it up on the wall
or something like that, and enjoy your photos.
7. Benefits of camera scanning: Before I wrap up this video, I'd like to talk about some
of the benefits that I really enjoy with working with the cameras scanning setup. The thing that I
liked the most about cameras scanning is that
as just in general, extremely efficient,
especially when you compare it to using
a flatbed scanner. If you have your roll of film processed and in the best
case it's not cut yet, then all you need to do is
feed it into the film holder. And if you already have your
tripod or your copystand in a position where you know the sharpness is all right and
all the settings are made. You can really take those photos very quickly and you can
be very efficient with it. And that's a real game changer. Another factor that I really like is that if you
have something like a full-frame camera or something even crazier like a medium
format digital camera. What you can do is
you can really take advantage of that sensor size. And that means the scan
negative will have a really high resolution and a lot of things that
you can play with. And even if the camera
isn't a full frame sensor, there are still so
many excellent results that you can get from it, especially because you're really making the lens do the work. And that's such a big advantage to something like
a flatbed scanner. Another thing that
I really liked is obviously using it camera. You can take photos
and you probably shouldn't take photos
in a raw format. When you do these raw
scans of your negatives, you can really take
advantage of what a negative can give you
in terms of tonality. Essentially, all
these means that your image quality will
greatly, greatly benefits. Now, personally, I don't
think I would ever use a flatbed scanner anymore unless I was doing something like scanning a print that I
made in the dark room. But even there I've done things
like reproductions where I take a photo of a framed print and it's probably much better
than scanning up.
8. Conclusion : Personally, for me, I don't
think I would want to use a flatbed scanner
anymore now that I've been using this fellow I
setup for quite some time. And there's two
reasons for that. Now, the first reason is
obviously the time factor. That's even if you have like a big scanner like the
UPS and the 800 where you can get three and tires scripts of six frames of
Thirty-five millimeters. It's still such a
hassle to work with, especially because these masks, those film holders,
they're out of plastic. And I'm never quite sure about the height that
you have two sets. And then even if
everything is right, You're still kind of scanning
through that plastic cover. So you're putting another layer between the negative
and the scanner. And that's just a layer that doesn't actually
have to be there. I remember when I started
shooting film the first time and I didn't work
in the dark room yet and I was just
scanning my negatives. I remember how frustrated I got not because of the bad
results or anything, but just because I spent so
much time just scanning and I remember shooting
like 1020 rolls of film and getting
it all developed. And then sitting
there and thinking, I need to scan all
of this now and it's just such an uninspiring
process because it takes so much time with a setup like the
cameras scanning setup, you completely
eliminate that factor that you have to
sit there for hours because you can actually get
the scanning done so much quicker and you'll have a results on your
screen much quicker. And then if you want to
do fine adjustments, then you'll have to put
in the time for that, but you have to do
that no matter how you get a scan or if you
work in the dark room, it doesn't really matter if you have one image that
you really like. You're going to put in the work. Unless you're someone who doesn't edit their
photos at all. The thing that I
didn't like about flatbed scanning as well
was that I was always bound to the desk that I was
working from wherever the scanner was and that I really couldn't
take it anywhere, especially because the VA
100 was just the beast. It's huge, it's not
portable at all. So I always had to work
from that one place. When I started cameras scanning, I noticed that I could take
the scanning setup wherever I went because if I was
traveling with my photo gear, I usually had a tripod
with me anyways. And if I was filming something, I'd take my digital camera and the actual cameras scanning
setup from Deloitte. It's so portable, it's so small. I could just put it into a really small case
and take that with me. And then that meant that I could scan my negatives
wherever I went. And that's a real plus side
because if you, for example, have a lot of work
that you want to do somewhere that you
want to take with you or you're
shooting on the road and then you are able to get
your negatives developed. But you, for example, don't want to pay extra
to get them scanned, or you'd rather
scan them yourself. Then this is a real, real game changer
because you can actually shoot and
process all your work, even if it's film photography. On the road.
9. Outro: That's pretty cool. This
was cameras scanning. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you have any more
questions about the setup, about cameras scanning or
anything photo related, please feel free to leave
a comment down below. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much to
Malloy for partnering up with me and making all
of this happen and yeah, take care and see you soon. Bye.
Jahan Saber
