Scanning Minox Transparencies

For a short time in the 1960s my wife had a Minox A (AIIIs) camera with separate meter. As well as monochrome films, she tried some Agfacolor CT18 reversal film. The results from the first two films were originally mounted in Minox's own slide mounts. They were then shown, using a home-made adapter, in a projector made by one of the other manufacturer's of sub-miniature cameras, possibly Minolta. Then I made an adapter to hold the small mounts in a conventional 2 x 2 projector. The results were not good in that they would take little enlargement — an 8 x 11 mm film size with 'grainy' film was not a recipe for high definition.

When it came to scanning the slides, I realised they would not fit into my Nikon film scanner. So I bought some Gepe 2 x 2 slides with Minox masks in order to scan them in those. A few transparencies were destroyed in the process. They had become stuck to the glass of the mounts and the emulsion was left behind; a few others were damaged. However, 59 survived the move and were scanned. The results, as expected were not wonderful but at least we had a record. I have written in previous posts of the 'grain' and 'dye clouds' of CT18. On an 8 x 11 slide the grain really shows.

More recently, I have tried removing a few of the transparencies from the Gepe mounts and scanning them in the Epson V500, using a variety of masks to prevent newton rings. I did so in order to see if I could get better scans without interference from the glass of the mounts. In short, it made little difference and I stuck with the original scans.

We also had a film that had not been cut and mounted. It was in the three lengths that came back from Agfa. These I held in the film-strip scanning device for the Nikon, scanning each shot in turn and moving the strip occasionally to avoid the horizontal bars that marked the edge of a 24 x 36 mm frame.
However, the curl on the film from top to bottom (like a steel tape measure) was fairly marked. Again more recently, I have rescanned these lengths in the V500. Newton rings proved to be a problem because no matter how I tried to mask and anchor the strip, the non-emulsion side often touched the glass of the scanner. Eventually, I did get a scan of all 34 shots on the film without newton rings and a little better than my original efforts.

Neat Image again proved useful in removing some of the graininess but one film in particular was markedly worse than the others, again raising the question of whether Agfa had real problems with quality control at the film making or processing stages. The colour though has survived very well from 1966.

Here is a scanned Minox slide:

Dissatisfaction with the Minox (a good-size enlargement was only 5 x 7 cm) led to its postage back to UK and its theft (most likely at Heathrow airport) in transit.

At least I could say out loud (as I say silently to myself): 'if only you had stuck to 35 mm and Kodachrome, I would not have had all this trouble in scanning YOUR slides'. I should have known better. The riposte was instant: 'Well, YOU persuaded me to buy that Minox and it did fit in my handbag'.

All our slides (and negatives are scanned). I only hope that the occasional requests from friends and relations to scan transparencies are for 35 mm Kodachromes.

Slide Scanning: Nikon LS-40 vs Epson V500

After I bought my Nikon LS-40 ED (Coolscan IV ED) I scanned all our 24 x 36 and 24 x 18 (half-frame) slides using the Nikon Scan software. When Nikon disgracefully stopped supporting its software and when I switched to Mac, I changed to the excellent VueScan software in order to use the LS-40.

The LS-40's gate size is approximately 24 x 36. I could only scan the central slice of a superslide. Anything larger, I scanned in the office SCSI-interfaced HP scanner. After I retired I decided to scan all my old 6 x 6 cm negatives and bought an Epson V500 running it either with Epson Scan software or with VueScan.

Originally I had scanned all my slides as they came - some in cardboard, some in glassless plastic and some in glazed mounts. Recently, I decided to remove the glass and remount the 24 x 36 slides in glassless plastic (Reflecta) in order to scan them free of the anti-newton rings glass.

Scanning transparencies in the V500 is less time consuming than in the LS-40. However, reading the various comments in discussion fora, I should have been discouraged from using the V500 instead of the LS-40: 'dedicated film scanners are always better' blah blah. Well, having done extensive trials using both for the same slides, I can say that I have found that the LS-40 is no better for 35 mm slides than the V500. Indeed the higher resolution from the V500 to me gives it the edge. I find it easier to get a good scan using the V500 with Epson Scan in 'Professional' mode than using the LS-40 with VueScan. I can get there with the latter but it takes longer to get the settings right.

Having scanned all my slides, my LS-40 has been relegated to a box at the back of a cupboard. When the inevitable request comes to scan a few slides for somebody, I shall use the V500. The LS-40 is not on the 'to be disposed of' list though. The filmstrip and the APS attachments could still prove useful in the future.

Scanning Old 4 x 4 Super Slides — Part 2

Following on from the last post on 4 x 4 cm superslides, I scanned those in glassless plastic mounts in the Epson V500’s frame for 5 x 5 m (2” x 2”). For the transparencies I removed from edge-bound glass mounts, I left the thin paper or foil mask around them. For those I removed from the glazed plastic mounts, I simple dropped them onto the bed of the scanner, fully expecting to see Newton rings. But I didn’t and so carried on.

One problem I did have early on with the V500 was sometimes getting purplish-pink vertical lines on the scans. A quick Google search showed this problem is caused by dirt on the first few inches of the scanner bed. A good clean of this area was the answer; cleaning the area to be scanned was not sufficient.

At the outset I set out what I was trying to achieve. I did not want to have to scan these transparencies ever again. Therefore, I decided to scan at a resolution that would yield a reasonable-sized print in the unlikely event that I would want a print. Most of my old photographs are viewed either on the iMac screen, iPad, or on the television either as HD video or DVD.

I decided to scan at 3200 dpi. Printing at 300 dpi would give me a 15” x 15” (38 x 38 cm) print from these superslides.

Incidentally, I have found a lot of utter rubbish written about the scanning capabilities of the Epson V500 on internet fora. Some people have claimed (without providing any evidence, visual or historic) that the maximum ‘optical’ or ‘hardware’ (i.e. non-interpolated) resolution is about 2400 dpi and that anything above that is interpolated. However, the Epson website clearly states that the optical resolution of the V500 is 6400 dpi.

I did actually check that I was getting better resolution at higher dpis by enlarging in Photoshop the scans at 1200, 2400 and 3200 dpi to the same size (in cm) as that reached at 4800 dpi, with all set to 300 dpi. I then cropped a small area of detail from each, copied them to an A4 sheet and printed them on glossy paper. Resampling for the enlargements was kept at bicubic throughout. My argument for doing this check was that if 2400 were the maximum optical resolution, then scans at 3200 and 4800 should appear no better since they would have been resampled in scanner. In fact, at this enormous final size (nearly 2 feet or 60 cm square) there was a discernible difference on the printed output. 1200 dpi, not surprisingly, gave the poorest resolution since interpolation to the final size was greatest. Both 3200 and 4800 dpi were sharper than 2400 dpi but I really could not separate 3200 and 4800. Clearly though, 2400 is not the maximum optical resolution in this scanner.

I should stress that these comparisons were made on a print at 300 dpi. Unfortunately, at screen resolution the small differences cannot be seen and so it is not worth trying to show the print in the space available in a blog post.

I scanned using Epson Scan software in ‘Professional’ mode. I compared in trials 24- and 48-bit but found no difference in output. So I settled on 24-bit, with a considerable saving in file size. I also tried various settings for unsharp mask, grain reduction, dust removal or digital ICE. Here is one comparison:

Slices of scans of the same slide scanned in the Epson V500 (Epson Scan software)

A. No additions

B. + Unsharp Mask - Medium; Grain Reduction - Medium; Dust Removal

C. + Unsharp Mask - Medium; Grain Reduction - Medium; Digital ICE

D. + Unsharp Mask - Medium; Grain Reduction - Medium; Digital ICE; Colour Restoration

For these old slides, I eventually settled on: Unsharp Mask - Medium; Grain Reduction - Medium; Colour Restoration and Digital ICE (Quality or Speed, depending on condition).

The .tif files generated (63+ MB) were imported into Aperture for final tweaking.

I said in the earlier post that my Superslides were either Agfacolor CT18 or Ektrachrome X. I shall return to CT18 in another post but there is no doubt that the Ektachrome X slides have been the better survivors overall. However, CT18 slides survived either extremely well or fared badly in relation to the development of a purple cast. There was nothing in between. By contrast, the Ektachrome X slides seemed to have survived with little or no colour degradation. I was not that keen on the colour rendition of Ektachrome X in the 1960s (a cold, blue film). The irony is that they look better after scanning and with some colour correction than they ever did in a viewer or projected on a screen.

I have been able to improve on the originals by using gentle manipulations in Aperture or Photoshop. Details have appeared from shadows, for example, while highlights can (sometimes) be held in check.

Finally, two scans of superslides taken with a Rolleiflex 4 x 4 in Macau in March 1966.

Macau. March 1966. Agfacolor CT18. Rolleiflex 4 x 4
A photograph extending from deep shadow to direct, sub-tropical sunlight
on the wall

Macau. March 1966. Agfacolor CT18. Rolleiflex 4 x 4