Creating a makeshift film scanner

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If you have a lot of ‘old-fashioned’ film laying around, you may want to consider a film scanner. But what if you only want to do simple scans, and you only need them in relatively low quality – say, for posting them on a web-site?

If you own a digital camera, why not just build your own?

Note: Images with blue borders are clickable for bigger versions

Allow me to begin this DIY guide by killing off some of your hopes: A film scanner is a high-tech device that cannot be replaced by a piece of PVC pipe and a few pieces of plastic. Even a regular flatbed scanner with a dias or film scanner attachment will give far superior results. But if you are anything like me, you’ll get a lot of enjoyment out of building something yourself. Believe it or not – this ultra-cheap device is actually perfectly usable, at least for use on the web!

Introduction

Because quite a few of our recent guides have been for Digital SLRs, we decided to tune it down a little – this guide is done by the help of a decidedly average digital camera: The Kodak DC 4800. It has its own unique little limitations, but it’s not bad at all for using it as a makeshift film scanner. Depending on the abilities of your digital camera, you may find you have to change a few things around, but with a little experimentation, you should be able to get it to work.

In theory, all this tube is is a primitive light box and a distance stand. There are half a dozen ways this can be done easier (use a light box, flatten the film against it, and use a tripod to hold the camera in place. Take the photo – hey presto), but they have their own disadvantages, and wouldn’t make for much of a DIY project, either.

Materials used

The items used in this experiment are quite simple: A piece of white translucent plastic, a length of PVC piping, some composite glue, some spray paint, and an elastic.

Tools used for this project include an angle grinder, a sharp knife, a Dremel tool, a hacksaw and a ruler.

Building the film scanner

First of all, I cut the actual film holder. It will be the business end of our makeshift film scanner, and is arguably the most important bit of this project.

The cuts into the sides are about 37mm wide, to make sure that the film will fit snugly. This part will be loose, to facilitate replacing the film between shots.

The film holder will be held at the right distance in the tube by the simplest way possible: Three small plastic triangles fitted at the right distance from the end of the pipe.

The other end of the tube – the lens holder – is build out of the same material as the film holder.

The hole is just big enough that the lens of the digital camera will fit snugly. This part is to be glued in place into the PVC pipe, for stability.

The final production drawing on the right shows how the film scanner is built – a pipe with a plastic bit at each end. The left side of this drawing is where the lens goes, and will be fitted to the pipe permanently. The right side is loose, and rests on the small triangles mentioned above.

For the pipe itself, I just used what I had at hand – an old piece of disused PVC piping which I found underneath the house. It took a good clean, but there is nothing like recycling old junk into photography equipment, is there?

The length of the pipe is decided by the shortest distance at which your camera can comfortably focus. For my DC 4800, this was around 20cm in the camera’s macro setting. I decided to use about 25 cm, to prevent any problems later.

The required length was measured and cut off with an angle grinder. A file came in useful for removing the plastic splinters that resulted.

The next step was to cut out the end-pieces carefully. I ended up doing the rough cutting with the angle grinder, and used a Dremel cutting tool to finish the job properly, and making sure the cutting edges were as nice as possible.

To affix the lens-holder end of the film scanner, I used a sturdy two-component glue. It turned out that the disk didn’t quite fit into the hole of the pipe, but a little bit of persuating with the Dremel, and it was a perfect fit.

In order to make sure there would be no light-leaks from the wrong end of the pipe, I used spray paint to block out all light from the camera-end. A little bit of masking tape made sure that the inside of the pipe stayed dry – not strictly necessary, but I was being a bit impatient, and really didn’t want to wait for the inside of the tube to dry.

For the film holder, I decided to do it all as simple as possible – and to use rubber bands to hold the film in place. It turned out that the plastic was quite slippery, so I cut a set of grooves that would aid in holding the rubber bands in place.

The little triangles mentioned earlier… I carefully measured the same distance from the end of the pipe for the triangles, and then just glued them into place with the composite glue – it was quite a fiddly job, but eventually it worked out reasonably well. Spaced evenly around the pipe, I installed the three spacing triangles.

Finally – Taking photos!

To affix the film to the film holder, a simple rubber band does the trick. It could probably be done better, if there was any way to keep the film flat against the holder, but practically, it doesn’t really matter that much – the quality of the results are going to be quite low anyway, so I just decided to find out if it worked or not.

To hold the film holder disc in place, I used the most high-tech device ever invented: Clothes pegs. Okay, you can stop laughing now – it worked, didn’t it? To get the lighting right, find any strong light source. Aim the whole device at the light source, put the camera into the lens holder at the other end, and carefully take a photo.

From the inside of the lens, the black and white negatives I decided to test it with look approximately like this – even lighting is important, of course, as is careful focussing, to make sure you can capture as much as possible of the available detail.

The photo above is a macro photo (taken, in fact, with an early version of my macro tube) taken with a Canon A1 film camera. The photo is of the inside of a photo lamp reflector, and was one of my first ever macro photographs. As you can see, the ‘film scanner’ result is perfectly acceptable for use on the internet!

Future improvements

There are a couple of things that could be done to improve the effectivity of this DIY film scanner. The simplest improvement would be to increase the distance between the rear end of the film scanner and the film: in the version built above, any imperfections in lighting, or dust on the film holder is shown very clearly. By increasing the distance between the film and the film box at the back, you drop it out of focus, and thereby get a better backdrop.

Instead of using the film holder, you could use a thin slot cut into the PVC tubing to hold the film. Be very careful to cover the edges with soft fabric, however – you don’t want to be scratching your negatives!

Good luck with the DIY-ing!

Money made from this advert will be invested in prime lenses.

This post, "Creating a makeshift film scanner", is part of these categories: All articles, was posted by Haje Jan Kamps and saw the light of day on the 18th of December 2005. I hope you liked it.