Category Archives: Photography

Nikon D800 film scanning – Part I

Film

For archival quality files.

For an index of all my Film related articles, click here.

I am at that point in life where legacies take on serious meaning. Wills, descendants, and so on. One of the precious legacy aspects of my photo archive is the significant number of images made on film. For the most part I scanned these some 20 years ago using a Nikon Coolscan 2000 film scanner. That machine did a good job but the speed of scans would see you to an early grave. Reckon on 5 minutes for a high quality 2000 dpi scan yielding a 5mp file. The quality is good but I thought I could do better. In addition there were many more images I wanted to scan which had missed this first pass because …. well, I got jolly tired of the waiting, and my new Canon 5D was impatiently waiting to be put to use. You see, I had finally given up on film and those Leicas and Rolleis had all been sold. They could not hold a candle to FF digital.

So the idea of doing a better job stuck in the back of my mind and when a used Nikon D800 was acquired it occurred to me that this would make for a good film ‘scanning’ device, with its excellent 36mp sensor. Extensive research on the best hardware setup concluded that the Nikon ES-1 and ES-2 film holder lens attachments would not cut it. Made from plastic with mediocre mechanicals and no lighting system, the whole thing resembled the chore of old with Rube Goldberg quality added to the mix. Alternatives using a film copying stand ($$$) and some sort of cockamamie lighting setup were quickly trash canned. Poor mechanicals, poor repeatability. The goal here it to be able to make 20″ x 30″ prints from the scanned files, not mementos for your wallet. And the whole thing has to be fast – fast to set up, fast to use.

Then I chanced on this JJC ES-2 Film Digitizing adapter. Mostly metal, it includes film and slide holders and, importantly, an LED light source. Be sure to get the version with the LED light source. Once assembled the whole thing makes for a robust whole, with the film held parallel to the D800’s sensor. It is very well made.

This tool calls for a Nikon Micro Nikkor macro lens and two are stated to fit – the 60mm AF-D of old and the latest 50mm Z optic for mirrorless bodies. I determined that the last DSLR version, the AF-S G Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 was the way to go – an easy resale – and picked one up for all of $265 mint and boxed. Nice.

Assembling the whole thing I had this:


All in one piece.

Before going further it bears pointing out that there is a host of variables in this process and the more these can be standardized and saved as presets the smoother the workflow.

Image size: My preference for the AF-S Nikkor over the earlier AF-D Nikkor ($150 or so) was a mistake. Using the smallest possible extension on the JJC, meaning the stock #1 tube and the #3 62mm filter adapter ring for the lens, I could not get close enough to the film to fill the frame. The #1 tube has a lip which prevents removal, but removal of four Phillips screws and replacement of the #1 tube with one of the pair of #2 tubes supplied reduces the lens-film distance to where the 24x36mm film frame almost fills the frame.


The JJC lens attachment assembly dismantled.

With the #2 tube replacing the #1 you lose the limit stop but that is of no consequence as the device will be used with the tube tromboned all the way in.


#1 and #2 tubes compared.

I reckoned that a small amount of cropping was no big deal given the high pixel count of the Micro-Nikkor, so I went with the modified version above. You can see how much shorter the tube extension is by comparing the image below with the first one above:


#2 tube fitted.

Lighting: Perhaps the major consideration in choosing the JJC device over alternatives is the included LED light source, with adjustable intensity. Use it right and film damage from heat is not an issue. See ‘Heat risk’, below. The ten levels of brightness saw me opting for maximum as I wanted to use the fastest shutter speed in the D800 so as to avoid blur from mirror slap. The LED light runs from a USB power source and a connecting cable is included. It uses one of those truly wretched MicroUSB connectors at the LED end so be careful, These are easily damaged.

The D800 shooting menu: Go to Shooting Menu->Set Picture Control->Vivid and set Sharpening to Max (level 9). Hit OK to save the setting. ‘Vivid’ works better than ‘Monochrome’ in my experience.

Exposure: You want ISO 100 (not Auto ISO) and Aperture Priority exposure automation. Set the lens to f/9.5 which is the optimum mix of depth of field and sharpness. Smaller apertures see diffraction limiting come into play and definition falls. Auto exposure? Yes. It works well. Forget what you read about using Manual everything. Using f/9.5 the D800 sets the shutter at 1/180 most of the time, short enough to obviate mirror slap blur.

Focus: Stick with autofocus. Nikon does a better job of it than you can using the ultra sensitive Manual focus indicator in the finder. Again, forget the nonsense you read about using Manual everything. I use the film strip holder with the glossy side of the film toward the lens. The film is slightly bowed so there is an argument to be made for focusing half way off center to minimize the effect of the bowing on focus. However, using f/9.5 I have found that edge to edge film grain definition is excellent, so I simply use the default center spot focus.

Cleanliness: Dirt in, dirt out. Handle your negatives using fresh cotton gloves – not the ones you just used for the oil change on the car – and blow away/antistatic brush away any dust on the negative before insertion in the provided glassless negative strip holder.

Heat risk: The device comes with a clear warning label regarding heat output of the LED light source:


Warning label.

It’s important to note that there are two film/slide holder slots:


Two film/slide holder slots.

Because I get a more frame filling image, and because it’s further from the heat source/LED, I use the one nearest the lens.

How hot do things get? There’s a big difference between the temperature at the LED surface – very hot – and the one at the film negative in the more distant slot. I measured these using a laser thermometer:


Temperature rise though steady state.

So, simply stated, if you propose keeping the negative illuminated – I am using the max power setting above – for long periods of time, the safe way to do that is to use the slot most distant from the LED light source. 141F is too hot. 95F is fine – and that is reached after 10 minutes of inaction. Kodak’s TriX film survives fine in the tropics, so 95F is no big deal. But 141F is 10 degrees hotter than Death Valley, the warmest place on earth!

Horizontal alignment: The holder is excellent, allowing only a small amount of slop with the end images in a strip of six. I turn on the Grid display in the finder (Custom Settings->d->d6) to ensure proper alignment before taking the picture/scan. There are detents as you slide the holder, making frame alignment easy.

Taking the picture/making the scan: No camera support is necessary as the assembly makes for a robust whole. I just rest the assembly on my desk and click away.

Lightroom and Photoshop: I use non-subscription versions of LR (v. 6.4) and PS (v. 12.0) on a 2010 Mac Pro running OS X High Sierra (10.13). Later versions of LR and PS add nothing, but do draw down your pocket book as greedy Adobe seeks to make you a lifetime subscriber. Heck, they probably even charge your estate after you have croaked. Another legacy consideration. What a dishonest business Adobe has become.

Anyway, insert the D800’s CF or SD card into your card reader and import the negative images to LR. You then need to round trip them (Alt-E) into PS where you hit Command-I on each, which converts them to positives. Don’t bother with obscure solutions in LR which would have you messing with curves. PS knows how to do inversions perfectly. File-Save gets the converted images into LR where upon you can erase the negative originals. Crop and adjust contrast/tint/clarity in LR on one image, save those settings for the session (Alt-C) and apply them to all the other positive images in LR (Alt-V). ‘Boom’, as Steve Jobs would put it.

Comparisons: The image comparator in LR makes for easy tuning of the D800 scan with the Coolscan 2000 original:


Nikon Coolscan vs. D800.

An enlarged comparison shows the TriX film grain is perfectly rendered to the edges and smaller and sharper than with the original Coolscan scan. Then again, the image from the D800 is some ten times the file size of the 5mp Coolscan original and I would guess the Micro-Nikkor’s optics are a step up from those in the old Coolscan.


Greatly enlarged comparisons.

Speed: How long does it take you to press the shutter button, move the CF/SD card to LR and round trip for inversion through PS? A whole lot less than the five minutes a scan in the Nikon scanner. And do not be tempted to buy that now 20 year old scanner. No one has parts to fix it and it will probably break, if you do not give up the ghost first. Plus try finding connecting cables which work on your modern computer.

Cost: The most commonly used scanning tool appears to be the $400 Epson V600 flat bed scanner. You are looking at 30-60 minutes (yes, 30-60) for the highest quality scan and will die of old age before getting the job done. Quality will not be all that great – I know, I tried it after careful dismantling of the scanner for proper lens collimation. Ridiculous. Fughedaboutit. Plus good luck reselling that behemoth when you are done.

Here is what this little lot cost me:

  • Nikon D800 body – I use that for picture taking, so it’s not an incremental cost factor.
  • Nikon Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 AF-S lens, used, mint, boxed – $265 plus tax and shipping. Easily resold for cost. I would prefer the earlier AF-D version for $100 less, see above.
  • JJC film scanning attachment – $95
  • Total cost – $360

It’s not nuclear physics to solve that one.

Other bodies: I see no reason why this should not work with any number of bodies. For the FF set there’s a large selection of Nikons at bargain prices as everyone dumps them for mirrorless, which they mostly do not need. A good 12mp D700 can be picked up for $250 and is still an excellent daily user. If you use Canon, MFT or other makes, check the JJC listing linked above to see whether your camera/lens combination will yield full frame ‘scans’. The large number of filter attachment adapters provided, covering 46mm through 67mm should do the trick at the camera’s lens end.

In Part II I look at the additional variables which arise when ‘scanning’ color slides and negatives. I will also look at an approach to batch processing of conversions of multiple scans in one step, further speeding this tedious process.

Minox B

Cameras

For the spy in you.


Minox B and 36 exposure film cassette.

Having made 150,941 of its various predecessors, with production starting in Riga, Latvia in 1936, Minox had refined their spy camera to the extent that a dual range, coupled selenium meter was included in the ‘B’ model, first made in 1956. Production totaled a startling 384,328 through 1972, suggesting there were either more Russkie spies than even the CIA counted, or that there were some 300,000 plus twits who thought they could get decent sized prints from the 8 x 11 mm negative the camera produced. They couldn’t.

That’s not to denigrate the ingenuity of the design which includes neutral density and green filters, shutter speeds from 1/2 second to 1/1000, B and T, and focusing to a scant 8″ using the included lanyard as a distance scale. Film cassettes held up to 50 exposures and the very decent viewfinder has a suspended, illuminated frame. The lens has a fixed f/3.5 aperture and with a focal length of 15mm the depth of field is large.

The Minox was part of a complete camera system which included a binocular attachment for the super spook, a projector, an enlarger, a tripod holder and tripod, and a flash attachment for AG1 peanut flash bulbs for midnight spookery.


Minox B with flashbulb attachment. The reflector retracts.

This is the latest addition to the Home Theater photographic hardware display and dates from 1962. Believe it or not, it has a properly functioning exposure meter, activated with the button at right. By the time the B was made production had moved to Wetzlar in Germany and the camera is quite beautifully made, just like the Leica M3 next door. But now that everyone on earth has a spy camera – it’s called a cell phone – the Minox is no more than a charming period piece on display with a variety of other classics, and it is most assuredly a classic piece. However, if you need huge prints, stick with that iPhone.


Michael Caine has at it in The Ipcress File, 1965.

Framing really big prints – an update

Technique

New supply sources.

I last addressed this topic in 2006 and the only things changed since then include the usual bankruptcies and disappearances of vendors.

With a new batch of mounted prints ready for framing (you can read about dry mounting here), courtesy of the fine Epson ET-8550 printer, it was time to procure mats, mounting boards, frames and glass, and some research disclosed two vendors with good quality and affordable products:

  • Mat Board Center. Ten 18″ x 24″black mats cut for 13″ x 19″ prints, along with 1/8″ thick mounting boards and glassine sleeves ran me $126.20. This vendor has frequent special offers and I got free shipping, so check before you order. The mats are perfectly sized, the boards were 1/16″ too wide for my frames of choice, easily remedied after a few minutes with a sharp Stanley knife. Avoid their Plexiglass frames – Plexiglass is awful, a dust magnet and scratches as soon as you clean it.
  • Four 18″ x 24″ wooden frames with glass (yes, not the awful plexiglass alternative) with a backboard came from The Display Guys at Amazon at just $104.99 for four. Packaging could not be better and the frames and glass arrived in perfect condition. All you need add is some wire and hooks or use the attached saw tooth hangers.

That figures to a total of $38.87 per mounted and framed print compared with $75 back in 2006 ($145 in today’s money!) with no need to clean the glass and no need for a framing points driver as the backboard supplied has latches. Given that the frame and glass are encased in Saran Wrap, the best way to unpack this is to slit the clear wrap from the back, inside the frame. That will give you free access to insert the mat and mounted print with the front glass still protected by clear wrap. Insert your picture hanging wire, hang the mounted and framed print and remove the wrap as a last step. You never risk touching/fingerprinting the glass.

Because the foam mounting board I use is 1/8″ thick, the swivel locks for the backboard cannot engage, so you may still have to invest in a framing points driver to retain the backboard with this combination. It’s a modest one-off cost which will repay over many years.

I attach the mat to the mounting board with a couple of strips of 3M double sided mounting tape. Alignment can be critical and you do not want white borders showing in the event that the mat shifts relative to the print during the process of inserting the ‘sandwich’ in the frame.


Frames unpacked and ready for insertion of mounted prints.

So price inflation is not all you would expect and I have found the above supplies to be indistinguishable in quality from the ones used 17 years ago, and I did not even have to assemble and glue the frames.

A note on the Seal/Bienfang (now D&K) 160M mounting press I use: these retail for $2200 new, which is a ridiculous sum for so simple a piece of hardware. They are regularly available on eBay for $500. Don’t waste money on a new one. Repair parts remain easily available. Replacement thermostats are here. Other than that there’s not much to go wrong here.

Epson ET-8550 – monochrome printing

Epson ET8550, Printing

Not at all bad.

Keith Cooper of Northlight Images has an excellent video about monochrome print making on the Epson ET-8550 here. He knows better than to obfuscate with fancy words but his opening dissertation on the issue with many dye ink jet printers reflecting color casts under artificial lighting is important. That behavior is known as ‘metamerism’, and you really do not want it. Suffice it to say that using HP Premium Gloss paper there is no evidence of metamerism and Cooper reports that all is also well with Epson Premium Luster paper.

What is intriguing about the design of the Epson ET-8550 is that it uses no fewer than three monochrome inks:


Pigment Black, Photo Black Dye and Photo Grey Dye Epson ET-8550 inks

Because the ET-8550 doubles as an office printer, printing on regular paper, it includes pigment ink for that purpose. Pigment ink, like wall paint, dries on the surface and is not absorbed into the substrate, whereas dye ink must be absorbed and the paper chosen in photographic applications must be capable of absorbing ink. Not all photo papers will do that.

Whereas you might think that that no pigment ink would be used in making monochrome photo prints in the ET-8550 Cooper avers this is not the case and it appears that Epson is using some clever combination of the PB Photo Black Dye ink and the BK black pigment ink in printing monochrome images. Do we care? Well, the only thing that matters is the result, so to test things I made two 13″ x 19″ monochrome prints:


Nikon D3x, 35mm f/1.4 Sigma, color original converted to B&W in Lightroom


Leica M3, 50mm Summicron, TriX, scanned in a Canon 4000 film scanner, monochrome original.

In both cases I used the Freestyle custom profile described here. Both prints are drop dead gorgeous – no color cast, no metamerism, just pure monochrome tones.

So it appears that the ET-8550 does a fine job of monochrome printing, but take heed of Cooper’s warning that papers differ, so experiment, and use the right color profile. Epson Premium Luster appears to be a safe bet, based on his experiments, or HP Premium Gloss, based on mine. The Epson printing utility Cooper refers to in the video linked above is not to be found in the US and I much prefer using Lightroom as it simplifies work flow – one tool for all prints. I suggest you adopt a similar philosophy.

Paper jams:

Confirming that with photo printers “It’s always something”, I find that if more than 5 sheets of paper are loaded into the rear paper feeder, the printer will jam. This is for relatively thick paper. The HP Premium Gloss I use weighs in at 280 g/sq. m. So keep it to 5 sheets or less, or be prepared to try and decipher Epson’s arcane un-jamming instructions, invoking garage language and generally wasting time in the process.

Epson-ET8550 – using a tailored ICC profile

Epson ET8550, Printing

Nailing down the variables.

When it comes to getting good color matching out of your printer the exercise has much in common with rocketry. It’s always something. There is a host of variables and just when you think you are prepared for take-off some new gremlin comes along and your rocket or print leaves a useless mess on the launch pad or paper, as the case may be.

What follows reflects my experience with a 2010 Mac Pro running OS 10.13.6 High Sierra with an Epson ET-8550 ink jet printer. An old Mac Pro because “it just works” (remember those days?) and an old version 6.4 of stand-alone Lightroom because it will be a cold day in hell before greedy Adobe extracts a license fee annuity out of me, with the near impossibility of ceasing monthly payments, short of death by the payor.


See what I mean?

Most of this piece is likely of generic applicability to Mac users with this Epson printer who opt to use the Epson non-AirPrint driver, the only driver which will properly allow the user to invoke custom ICC paper profiles in Lightroom. If you have a supply of paper where an ICC profile is not available from the manufacturer, having a tailored profile made is the way to go.

In this earlier piece I explained how my large stock of obsolete HP Premium Gloss photo paper required procurement of a tailored ICC paper profile to optimize screen-print color matching. The HP paper is no longer made and the standard HP profile for that paper, while close, rendered Caucasian skin tones slightly too pink to be acceptable.

The Hollywood place I used (Freestyle) was happy with my second set of color patch prints (I messed up on the first pair and they did a bit of hand holding – thank you, Eric! – to help me get it right) and emailed the new profile to me last night. $99 well spent. To complicate matters Apple Mail kept erasing their emails and I had to resort to an old Gmail address which, of course would only work with iOS as my Mac Pro is too old to allow the use of Gmail, if you can believe that. More planned obsolescence.

So having installed the non-AirPrint Epson printer profile, and deleted the default AirPrint version, as explained here, I found that I could not print on 13”x19” paper. After some whirring nothing happened. I am limited to 8”x10” with the Epson non-AirPrint driver. It’s best pointing out that exactly the same thing happened trying to print using Apple’s Preview application, suggesting the fault lies with Epson not with Adobe or Apple. As with Lightroom, the printer would happily make 13″ x 19″ prints using the AirPrint driver but resolutely refused to print anything with the non-AirPrint driver.

This is why it makes sense to beat this to death before moving on. You really do not want to revisit the large number of variables when it comes to making prints – paper size, margins, paper quality, print quality, ICC profile, printer driver and on and on. Once it’s right, save everything in LR presets – see below – and printing becomes a one-click affair, as it should be.

Having determined that the Epson absolutely refuses to print on 13” x 19” paper if that’s what you dial in in LR when the non-AirPrint Epson printer driver is used, some experimentation was in order. LR works fine with the AirPrint driver at that size but that driver does not invoke custom ICC paper profiles correctly, if at all, and the colors are unacceptable. So the AirPrint default driver that Epson forces you to use unless you know better is useless, in practical terms.

However, the Epson prints 8” x 10” prints just fine on either 8.5” x 11” or 13” x 19” paper. Thus I had to try some sleight of hand and discovered that if you tell the printer the paper is a tad under 13” x 19” it will print, if not borderless, using the Epson non-AirPrint printer driver. The mats I use have an opening of 12.75” x 18.75”, so borderless makes little sense. You simply lose some printed image with borderless prints once matted. And if there is a benefit to using borders then it’s that here is no overspray from the ink jet nozzles messing up the innards of the printer.

In the LR Print module go into Page Setup and you will see:


Click the Paper Size drop down and click on Manage Custom Sizes, and input the variables shown:


This enables you to tell the Epson that your paper is 12.75″ x 18.75″ in size.

Now click on Printer in the LR Print module, clicking Color Matching in the third drop down box. This is an important check. You must see the radio button against Colorsync checked and both buttons greyed out. This confirms that the ICC color profile will be used by LR when printing, not Epson’s stock profiles:


Cancel out of that screen and now click on Print Settings in that same third drop down box:


Conform your setting as with the above. I have chosen Ultra Premium Photo Paper Glossy, which is consonant with my HP paper.

Next, in the Print module of LR scroll the right hand panel (hit F8 to toggle it on or off) and look at the Margins section at the top. Set your Margins and Cell Size as shown:


Then scroll down to the Color Management section:


Click the Profile drop down and choose the ICC paper profile you previously placed in Finder->Your username->Library->ColorSync. You do not want ‘Managed by Printer’ in this box. That setting passes control to Epson’s printer profiles. Select your profile and that’s what the printer will use.

You are ready to print and the Epson ET-8550 will print on 13″ x 19″ paper as long as you tell it that the paper is 12.75″ x 18.75″. The result fits the cut out in my mats perfectly with no white border showing.

Using the new profile from Freestyle the results are excellent. The slight pinkish tinge in Caucasian skin tones (using either Epson Glossy or HP Glossy ICC paper profiles) is gone and the print is a close match to the profiled Benq display used, in as much as that is ever possible. After all, we are comparing a device with a large dynamic range with its own controlled trans-illumination light source – the display – with one with a very poor dynamic range – the print, judged by reflected midday daylight of uncertain color temperature.

Ink use? I must have made some 20 13” x 19” prints – you need to judge at full size, IMO – and can confirm that the ink use from those generous capacity 70ml ‘tanks’ the EPSON uses is very frugal. Here are the levels now. Bear in mind that a good part of the drop from full results from the fact that the printer was new when first filled and the first fill uses maybe 1/8 of each tank to prime the heads and feed tubes – that’s equal to one half the distance between the quarter marks in the image. Paper use? What do I care? I have hundreds and hundreds of sheets in my inventory.


Ink levels after the first fill up and some 20 13″ x 19″ prints.

Like I said at the start of this entry, with printers it’s always something. Here’s to the next problem …. and no thanks to Epson for their poor printer driver designs and installations.