So I’m back to the suboptimal Durst carrier again. The 120 model is excellent and works really well, the 35mm one on the other hand isn’t fit for purpose. I’ve all but given up on ever receiving my Pixl-Latr so I bought both of Lomograph’s DigitaLIZA masks.
To give a recent example, I’ve been unhappy with using my old Durst negative carrier as it cuts off about 4mm of the frame in each direction and its a faff to align the film well in it, especially at the ends of the strip. Each step has cost more money and I’m incredibly fed up of it. Trying, failing and trying again, replacing and tweaking each of the many components that make it up. That puts you well into the ball park price of the highest end prosumer scanners like the Epson v850, the Plustek OpticFilm 120, the Reflecta MF5000 and so on.įor my DSLR* scanning I’ve tried a variety of things, starting off with the bodged solution outlined above. The solutions to improving this setup are all really expensive – once you’ve added up the costs of a high quality 1:1 macro lens (£300-1000 depending on system), a proper sturdy copy stand (£200 or more), a high CRI light box (£50-100) and something to hold the negatives themselves flat (£30-300) you’ve easily spent £1000 or more. Oh and you’re on your own when it comes to turning your digitised negatives into positives. But this creates a really awkward setup, once the initial euphoria of “it works!” passes, you’re left with this really cumbersome and unreliable system that probably produces uneven sharpness and is a nightmare to align each time you set it up again. Yeah you can just about cobble something together with any semi-recent digital camera, a macro extension tube and a nifty fifty (because proper 1:1 macros are expensive), you can sort of use a tripod, you can find a cheap LED light panel that produces whiteish light and so on. Why is it terrible? Because it requires a shed ton of expensive gear to be done remotely well. It works, it can produce arguably great results – on a level with the very best quality you can achieve from a high end commercial scanner. There I said it! Since my journey back into film photography started in 2017 I’ve been using my digital camera to digitise my negatives.