I have been off the blogging grid a bit. I was a little active on twitter and facebook but
not really, I mostly took pictures and uploaded them on flickr and deviantART.
Nevertheless, I still have project for here do not worry.
I will publish soon some open-source free way to scan slides and
negative for cheap if you already own a DSLR and some way to make
macro. It is actually a simple frame that will enable you to properly
light and hold in place a slide or a negative while you are taking a
macro shot of it with your camera. So far, I have been happy with the
preliminary result I got
Why do I need this in 2011? Because I still love film photography, I
always have been a nostalgic of old technologies, which is not a
secret. Recently I bought a lomography
Diana mini, fun it use regular 35mm film (check some of the
result here: thesite), but it take picture in square format, so it is
not appropriate to just have the film printed or scan at the lab, they
don’t know how to handle this. I have an old flatbed scanner that is
able to scan negative and slide, but it is an early model and I never
got satisfied with the result I got, I always had to put a lot of post
processing to get something minimally usable.
So you see, compared to the example I made by just holding in my hand a
slide with a white lit surface in the back, it is already better!
So instead of buying a new scanner maybe I will perfect this for a
while.
When I have something solid I will give on this website the instruction
and material needed to make this device. However, it will be easy to
make, so it will be accessible to everybody.