Everyone has a box or two at home somewhere full of family photographs and slides from decades past. That holiday with Uncle Joe in Florida perhaps, or an unwelcome reminder of 1987’s Christmas jumper. It’s fair to say that some memories deserve to be left to gather dust, but what about the others in a world of digital images?
You could of course buy a film scanner to digitize Uncle Joe on the beach, but aside from the dubious quality of so many of them where’s the fun in that? Instead, how about 3D printing one? That’s what [Alexander Gee] did, in the form of an adapter to fit the lens mount of his Sony camera that contains both a 50mm enlarger lens and a mount for the slide. It’s a simple enough print, but he’s made enough parts parametric for users to be able to adjust it to their own camera’s mount.
Sometimes builds do not have to be complex, push boundaries, or contain more computing power than took us to the Moon. This one is simple and well-executed, and for anyone prepared to experiment could deliver results with a variety of cameras and lenses. Of course, you have to have some film to scan before you can use it, so perhaps you’d like to try a bit of home developing.
Better than using digital ICE?
http://www.digmypics.com/filmmakeover.aspx
Yes, you do it yourself, paying someone to do your bidding has zero bragging rites, and is not at all cool or hacky, and it involves a 3d printer to fix something.
The technology, more than who does it.
Digital ice is (mostly) just a post-processing. I’ve used it on cannon scanners, and while I don’t recall right off it might also make use of an infrared channel to detect dust and scratches. If you’ve kept your pictures in decent condition it doesn’t add much.
So, several hundred dollar scanner or 30 dollar 3d printed part to use with your several hundred dollar camera. Personally, I like the DIY way, especially if they’re family photos.
For a universal mount he should just use T2 and a T2 adapter on his camera.
I feel relieved that I did not get a jumper in 1987, or any other year!
B^)
Or I could use it to scan the film I took out of my camera and developed yesterday, because I can’t quite afford a commercial scanner at the moment…