build your film scanner with your digital camera

with movement from digital to film camera, a scanner to digitize a film is a big need. a scanner with capability to scan film is rather expensive than a simple scanner. i have read some article about making a film scanner with a digital camera. so i try and try to made some improvement about the light diffuser.

the cost is so cheap if you already have a digital camera. it cost me less than 2 dollar.

here is my project:

take a box and put a cheap 5 watt TL lamp while all of inner box must be covered with shining material, like alumunium foil. the position of lamp must not placed in front of the film but on the top of film. it makes no lamp texture on your film, and the film is not shine to much

the reason why there should be a reflective material i to make tke light diffuse everywhere.

put a white paper in te back of film as a reflective but not to close its make a good reflector if it no paper the reflectivematerial will give the film to much light made a texture on your film too

the camera is positioned in front of film and should be on macro posisition, so you can get close enough to capture the picture. put both of it light box and the camera in the table. see my picture for the positioning of camera, you dont need any tripod :

position on my prosummer fuji s700

on my pocket camera kodak cx6330 3,1mp


on my web cam


THE RESULT
from fuji s700





from kodak


compare with scanner flatbed epson photo perfection 4780

epson scanner


by my scanner camera fuji s700
upss i forgot to flip it

computer process:
set white balance in auto, than take the picture of your film, use photoshop, or gimp or anything else that have a invert mode.but before invert it do cropping, auto level then invert. also do the color balance correction
if you wnat black and white, do auto level, invert and desaturate, or take the red channel or green channel .
contoh

conclusion :

not to good to compare with the real scanner, but it easier and faster ,please try it if you like.

best regards

shade