Chris S.
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 Re: Copying 35mm Negatives with a DSLR (Lens question) | |
BayernFan wrote:
The setup I currently have in mind is a PB-5 Bellows Unit (not as sought after as the PB-4), PS-4 Slide Copy Adapter (allows uncut rolls to be pushed through), PK-13 Extension Tube (to give the digital body clearance), and a Micro 55mm f/2.8 AIS. Now it\'s just a matter of finding it all on the cheap.
This seems like a solid, rational setup. And each item is a sensible investment--if you ever decide to sell any of this, you\'ll probably get most of your money back.
I would raise a question mark about whether the PK-13 extension tube is actually needed, though I know that this requirement is widely reported. And I don\'t have experience with the PB-5 bellows. But the same is also widely reported for the PB-6 bellows, which I have a lot of experience with. On the PB-6, there is a workaround, which I prefer to adding a tube. I wrote a detailed description of it here, on a macro forum. You might try this trick, and buy an extension tube only if you still find you need it.
The main reasons that PB-4 bellows (and other Nikon bellows systems) have retained value is that they work really well, provide capability not found in cheaper bellows, have systems of components that work together, and--though they remain very useful for macro and copy work--are no longer made. There are a lot of cheap bellows being made today, but they tend to lack important features, such as moveable rear standards and fore/aft movement without changing the bellows draw. These features may not matter much for copy work, but they can be very important for macro work. Novoflex makes a nice bellows, but it\'s much more expensive than a used Nikon bellows. Collectors of vintage equipment do likely play a role, but I\'d suggest that in this market, their roll is likely small. Many more of us purchase Nikon bellows systems to get work done with them, so the market price is determined by functional use.
As you may know, the reason the PB-5 is less sought after than the PB-4 is that is lacks swing/tilt capability--which you don\'t care about for copy work. It\'s also somewhat less adjustable fore/aft, but you needn\'t care about this, either.
An older, often inexpensive bellows that is respected in the macro community is offered buy-it-now for $40 in eBay listing 181655947194. Similar bellows go by a number of names, and those names sometimes designate quite different bellows units--so it seems safer to simply point out an example item. Note that it is tall, so there is plenty of clearance for the camera without the addition of an extension tube. It also has front and rear standards that can both be moved. It would, however, require the purchase of adapters to make it work with your Nikon D610 and macro lens. But this shouldn\'t be difficult or expensive.
Your choice of lens seems sound. This said, back in the film days, I often had duplicates made of my slides by labs using pretty much the setup you are considering. The dupes were never quite as good as the originals. Was the problem in the lens, the film, or what? I never knew, but common wisdom in those days was that dupes were never quite as good as originals. We just accepted it.
I have a Nikon Coolscan 4000 ED scanner and SF-210 slide feeder, which I\'ve used for several years. I\'ve also sent slides out for drum scanning, and found the drum scans and Coolscan scans nearly identical. (Though I\'ve been told that there are better drum scanners than the one used by the lab I sent my slides to. But with both methods I\'ve tried, the film grains are resolved--so I question how much better another drum scanner would perform.) I\'ve never duplicated slides with my cameras, because I carried the memory of this being sub-optimal from the film days. But not long ago, I got to wondering if, with today\'s cameras and top-quality repro lenses, camera-shot slides might be better than scans. Desktop scanners are slow, while DSLR\'s are fast. Film is not flat, so if I shot several frames with the camera, I could focus-stack and get the entire piece of film in focus. And my Kodachrome slides have more dynamic range than the scanners could capture; with a camera, I could use conservative HDR techniques to capture both shadows and highlights.
Since I already have the bellows for macro work, and also for macro work, have top-quality lenses originally designed for film copying (such as the Printing Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 and APO-Rodagon-D 1x 1:1 75mm f/4), I got to wondering if these might let me raise my film digitization to a higher order. Just today, my Nikon PS-6 film copy attachment came in. So BayernFan, you and I are both about to embark on similar quests.
Good luck to you! And please let us know what you learn and how you fare.
Cheers,
--Chris
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