CHE/AG/2020/DIGITIZE – Peter / Broennimann / Fotoaficionado

CHE/AG/2020

Digitizing 35mm vintage photo material

During the Corona confinement I took on a project to digitize vintage photo material. There were still several boxes of old 35mm slides & negatives lying in the basement. I had postponed this activity several times over many winters (mainly due to an acute procrastination syndrome 😊) l have mostly diapositives shot 20-30 years ago with the very sharp Fuji Velvia film and some negatives shot with the quite grainy Kodak T-MAX 400 film.

Initially I planned on buying a specialized scanner to digitize the material in a batch-process but then several Fotoaficionados reported acceptable results by just taking photos of the slides. With the purchase of the Fuji X-T3, the course of action was finally clear enough and I bought a few additional accessories before starting the digitizing process. The gear I finally used:

Fuji X-T3 Camera
Laowa 65mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO Lens
Rollei Compact Traveler Mini M-1 Tripod
Dörr LED Light Tablet Ultra Slim LT-2020
Plustek Film Holder Kit for OpticFilm Series (any other 35mm Negative & Slide Holders will do)
Tether Tools TetherPro USB-C / USB-C Cable
Capture One 20 Software

Everything was extremely straightforward. The only small challenge consisted in positioning the camera at a perfectly aligned angle to the slides (horizontal, vertical & tilt angle). Double-sided tape on the table helped fixing the gear. Once set up, all I had to do is adjust the exposure settings and focus manually. I typically chose a low ISO number (< 400) and an aperture of around 4 on the camera. The X-T3 in "tethering mode" was directly connected to the computer running Capture One to directly transfer the RAW images from the camera.

In post processing I used the standard Capture One tools after slightly cropping the imported pictures (with the Laowa macro lens cropping would technically not be necessary, but seeing the frame of the slide helps control that all is aligned correctly).

Dust and scratches on the slides are a problem and Capture One does not provide a feature to address/remove these.

Update 24.05.2020: The new update to Capture One 20 brings dedicated brushes for Heal and Clone to remove spots and scratches.

Find below a few sample pictures. Feel free to check the “vintage” library on my website to see a collection of such digitized photos.

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