Digitizing your Slides and Negatives

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This post is meant to inspire you.  Using a Digital SLR with Macro Lens and Strobe to copy slides and Negatives is perhaps the fastest way to get your film based images onto your hard drive.  It is considerably faster than using a Digital Slide Scanner.  Resolution of the image is likely to be higher than a scanner since you are using a DSLR.

Assemble the parts shown above into a configuration that make sense for your camera model.  DO NOT use a cheap optical slide duplicator from E-Bay, because you will not be satisfied with the results.  The package below is ready to copy, just add a strobe.

Here is one configuration using a camera mounted strobe shooting into a white reflector.  You can use a strobe extension cord and shoot directly into the lens as an alternate setup.  That is the one I use.  I dedicated a "clamp lamp" as a focusing light as shown.  You can keep it on when the strobe fires.

Set your camera on Manual and experiment with exposures, bracketing exposures until you are satisfied with the results.

Once you are set up, you should be able to shoot three exposures within 30 seconds.  Don't forget to dust your slides and negatives.

At the beginning I said inspire you.  If you are still unsure about the process and want detailed instruction, check out my one-on-one, on-line / over the phone Seminar.

Marketing Lenses: Industry Failings

I think that camera and lens manufacturers such as Canon, Sigma and Tamron have missed the boat in the way they market lenses. Similar to the great, deceptive MEGAPIXEL wars (much ado about nothing) giving a "35mm equivalent" is not especially helpful.

I frequently like to shoot fairly wide, around the magic angle of 90 degrees, the full frame equivalent of 20mm.  To do this using the highest quality lenses from Canon is a challenge as their L series ZOOMS  mostly stops at 24mm.  At this end of the lens spectrum, every millimeter counts.

The Sea Lions below were shot with an 11-18mm Tamron Lens at 11mm.

See more of my Sea Lions and Seals here.


The following chart I derived from a  Wikipedia  chart and illustrates typical angles of view.

What does this all mean?  For real meaning, I want the camera and lens manufacturers to start marketing lens angles using DEGREES of Diagonal coverage, not Focal length.


The Sea Lion shot above is available for sale as a T-Shirt here.