Used Camera Database Blog

In The Scanning Problem Revisited, I outlined the basic construction of a do-it-yourself scanning project that would allow me to digitize my 35mm and medium format negatives.  This post describes the polished version of the idea: a combination light table / transparency scanning apparatus that gets my film photography into the computer for minimal cost.

Honestly, this project is really only applicable if you are incredibly strapped for cash.  A more permanent solution (and better quality) is to just buy a medium range flatbed scanner with a transparency attachment.  For instance, the Canon CanoScan 8800F, Epson Perfection V500, and HP Scanjet G4050 are all very capable film scanners for under $200 (my preference would be the Epson, FYI).  Granted, they are not suitable for scanning something you want to post in an exhibition, but for basic film scanning and printing at 8×10 or smaller, they are perfect.

And that is my goal for this project; to put off the purchase of a scanner for a little longer with minimal investment.  My basic requirements are to allow me to print shots at up to 8×10 resolution (approx 8MP), handling 35mm, medium format, and contact sheets.

The end result is simply a light table augmented with flash.  The light table lets me examine the negatives, and when I want to digitize something, I can just take a picture with my camera.  I’m quite happy with the end result and image quality!

Basic Construction:

The image above shows the basic idea of the project (as with all images, click to see it larger).  Materials are minimal if you already have a decent digital camera with an off-camera flash setup (Strobist is a great resource for that kind of stuff).  Of course, if you don’t have a camera and flash, it would be much cheaper to buy the camera!

Materials and Tools:

• Digital camera
• Macro lens
• Flash with off camera trigger (wireless is very useful)
• Sturdy cardboard box
• Plexiglass (I got an 8×10 sheet at my local hardware store for $2.75)
• Fluorescent bulb and mount with plug (I had one from Ikea that I removed the shade from — I believe I paid less than $6)
• Standard office paper
• Standard white school glue
• Scotch Tape
• Scissors, ruler, knife, etc.

Total out of pocket cost for me (since I had the camera equipment, tools, and lamp) was less than $3.

The entire device is enclosed in a large box (approximately 10″ L x 11″ W x 18″ H).  The flash (and fluorescent light) is at the bottom of the box, then there are two layers of diffusion material, and finally a clear viewing window is at the top of the box.  The camera is connected to the flash with a wireless trigger to allow high quality images with minimal blurring from camera shake.   The flash sits (unattached) on the bottom of the box, and a fluorescent light is mounted on the side of the box (not shown in the diagram or these first shots) to allow negative viewing and to aid the auto focus of the camera.

The box I chose was soymilk box from my local Costco — quite sturdy, and a perfect size and shape.  I cut off two of the top flaps and trimmed the other two to provide a sturdy place to mount the plexi. Then, I covered the inside of the box with white office paper — this was easily the most time consuming portion of the project since I ended up doing two layers over pretty much the entire inside surface.  It took me a couple of hours of work (while watching a movie).

Once the paper dried overnight, I taped two layers of office paper across the inside the box for diffusion.  The lower layer is about 7 inches from the bottom of the box while the top layer is about an inch from the top (although I honestly should have put it about an inch lower — more on that later).  The result is nice even diffusion of light when the flash is centered in the bottom of the box:

Admittedly, the continuous light source was an afterthought, but a very good one.  At first, I thought about just laying the bare light bulb in the bottom of the box, but quickly decided against it because even fluorescent lights get pretty hot.  Please don’t burn down your house with this project!

So, instead, I cut a hold in the side that was off-center, towards the top of the lower cavity.  This location is designed to avoid blocking the flash and to put more direct light on the first diffuser to make sure enough light reaches the top of the lightbox.

The light itself was very easy to mount since it comes with a plastic screw-on flange (this part normally screws onto the plastic shade).  Here is the inside view:

I chose a 11W fluorescent (60W equivalent) for my box, but I think you can easily bump up the power to a 100W equivalent using this mounting scheme without danger of fire.  Incandescent bulbs might produce a more pleasing white balance, but be careful because they generate a lot more heat and the box is very flammable!

Usage and Results:

So, how does it work?

Surprisingly well!  The two diffusion surfaces provide nice, even light across the entire viewing area.  In hindsight, I probably should have gotten a bigger box so that it’d be possible to do a full proof-sheet (approx 8×10) in one shot.  But it is not a big deal to just shoot each sheet of negatives twice — once for each side (three by two 6×6 medium format negatives).  Here is a proof sheet where I squeezed in three by three frames with minimal editing:

A 60W bulb provides plenty of illumination as for continuous viewing as long as the room is relatively dark.  In brighter rooms or outside you might like a brighter light.  Considering the light has to pass through two sheets of paper, it is quite good.  The paper itself though does not provide a completely uniform diffusion surface.  For instance, in the full frame shot below, you can see the mottling and texture in the paper:

The general design (placing the top diffusion sheet an inch below the film surface) is designed to place this mottling outside of the depth of field.  But, for large area shots (i.e. proof sheets) and medium apertures (f/8 to f/16) an inch away does not eliminate all the texture.  If I had to do it again, I’d place the top sheet two inches down to give me a little more leeway.  For now, I’ll just keep this in mind and try to use a lower flash power and larger aperture (to reduce depth of field).

Speaking of depth of field and flash power, I was actually very surprised by efficiency of the flash in this setup and the evenness of the illumination.  Yes, near the edges it loses a tiny bit of intensity (see the above image), but the center of the shot is quite uniform, especially over a single medium format frame.  And most of these shots were taken at 1/8th power on my Sunpak 383 with ISO 100 and f/16!  Yes, f/16!  So, in the future, I’ll probably drop proof sheets to f/11 and 1/16th power to reduce the mottling artifacts, but keep using 1/8th power and the smaller aperture for single frames to decrease issues with film flatness.

All my proof-sheet shots were taken with my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and the single frames were taken with an antique Canon 100mm f/4 Macro (with FD-EOS adapter).

Processing:

Scanning negatives in this way puts a lot of the load onto processing, which tends to be a bit finicky.  Yet, at the same time, it is rather forgiving.

The basic idea is simple: take the shot keeping everything in the histogram, invert the image, then adjust the shadows, highlights, and contrast accordingly.

The finicky aspect comes in when thinking in terms of the dynamic range of the input image.  Based on how your negatives are exposed, I think you’ll find that 24-bit color (8 bits per channel) from JPEGs will not give you enough flexibility to adjust the exposure to your liking.  Shooting RAW (12 bits per channel) is pretty much a must.  In some shots, I found I needed to expand a very narrow range (sometimes an eighth of the available intensity range) and in other shots I found that I had to adjust the exposure a stop or more.  While you can fine tune that as you take the picture, I think it would be hard to really nail it consistently without using RAW.

For processing, I use Bibble Pro.  Of course, Bibble does not have a dedicated ‘invert’ option — I think most RAW processor programs don’t support negative inversion.  But, Bibble Pro 4.10 does have “Andy”, a black and white simulation with multiple types of film, paper, and the all important ‘See Neg’ button that lets you invert the image.  While I could do the same thing with Paintshop Pro or Photoshop, I find it a lot easier (and faster) to process the images in Bibble without dragging around huge TIFF files.

Also, I DO NOT recommend using this type of scanner for color negatives.  Sure, go ahead and try it, but office paper produces a bit of a blue color cast and I expect it will be very difficult to get color correct from a film negative.  Honestly, I’ll probably try it at some point, but I expect it will result in some very strange color images!

For black and white though, there are a ton of settings — everything from intensity curves in Bibble to the BW conversion options to exposure on my digital camera to exposure on the film camera to the film developing!  Luckily, you can usually compensate digitally from a RAW image and tune it to look like you want it.  For example:

I’m pretty happy with the scanner and the images that result, and I’m going to get started making digital proof sheets and scanning specific images I like over the next few days.

And, of course, shoot and develop more images!

This is the final post in a series of four related to cleaning my used Yashica Mat 124.  The first post in the series describes the task in more detail and includes links to all of the other posts.

A common complaint with used Yashica Mat 124 / 124G cameras is that that meter is inoperative.  On my camera, the eBay auction stated that the meter no longer worked, but I suspect the seller never even bothered to try a new battery in it.  So, it is often worth asking if they’ve tried the meter with a good battery before you determine that it no longer works.

The problem is that the 124 and 124G are designed to run off a mercury 625 cell (generating a nominal 1.4 volts) that has been banned due to mercury content.  As a result, it is very hard to find 625 batteries for these cameras, and even if you can find one, can you really deal with the guilt of putting poison into the environment?  The replacement 625, if you can even find one, is typically alkaline with a nominal (and unstable) voltage of 1.5 volts, which causes the 124 metering to read incorrectly (too high, I believe, causing under-exposed photos).

The best replacement (chemically) is a zinc-air battery, but zinc-air batteries are not commonly sold in the 625 size.  A readily available alternative is the zinc air 675 battery, that produces the needed 1.4 Volts stably across its life cycle but does not fit in the Yashicamat 124(g) straight out of the box.  The image below depicts this physical difference:

625 mercury battery (left) and 675 zinc-air battery (right)

As you can see, the 625 has a much larger diameter and slightly more height.  There are a variety of strategies to get the 675 zinc-air batteries into older cameras – this great page at KYPhoto describes many of the ways.  Probably the easiest are Wein cells — newer zinc-air batteries with the right size specification.  But, Wein cells tend to be harder to find and more expensive than similar batteries because they are a specialty commodity.

The approach I’ve taken is to adapt a 675 battery to fit the space of a 625 battery — Rick Oleson has a good page on this which is similar to my approach.  The basic idea is to increase the diameter of the battery (by placing a spacer in the battery holder) and increase the height slightly since the 625 is usually held by the lip around the outside (not the positive terminal face) but the 675 does not have the lip.  In the image above, you can see the battery holder on the 124 (which includes a metal screw-in top).  But, where Rick Oleson uses wire, I use one of these and some aluminum foil:

Your local hardware store has a wide variety of faucet O-rings that work great for the spacer with the bonus of well-calibrated size and non-conductivity.  I used a 7/16″ I.D. and 5/8″ O.D. ring and it cost me less than $1 for two of them.

Battery-wise, I spent $6 at my local Fry’s Electronics for a pack of 6 Energizer 675 zinc-air batteries:

The image that started this post shows the materials used.  Just insert the o-ring into the hole in the camera (it will fit snugly), place the battery on top of the foil on the cap, and screw the cap back in.  I found it best to hold the cap up with the camera battery holder upside down keep stuff from falling apart.  The battery goes in snugly and securely and automatically centers itself.

And, the end result is a working match-needle meter:

Note the red needle, driven by the battery and sensor, that you need to line up with the yellowish-green ‘hook’.  Easy, costs less than a buck for the parts and a buck a battery, and works pretty well!

Update:  Well, I spoke a little too soon on things working well.  My meter has been malfunctioning and reading low.  Sometimes, when I open the hood up it does not turn on, and sometimes even when it does work it twitches all over the place.  I need to look into it more, but it is likely either the battery contact (which is somewhat corroded — I originally sandpapered it, but I don’t think it took) or, more likely, the switch in the hood is flaky.  I’ll open it up in the near future and see what I can do.  The camera is so much easier to use when the meter is operable, even if the meter is a little imprecise!

Update #2: (10/25/09) The foil ended up being less than reliable, since it tends to compress over time and it may cover the air holes of the battery (causing inconsistent metering).  Instead, I found a twisted spiral of copper wire (22 AWG) does a good job of spacing the battery without restricting airflow:

This is the third post in a series of four related to cleaning my used Yashica Mat 124.  The first post in the series describes the task in more detail and includes links to all of the other posts.

NOTE: I haven’t had a lot of success with this fix, but I can’t tell if it is the felt or something else.  More at the bottom of this post.

As mention earlier, my Yashica Mat 124 had some issues when I got it, specifically a decent-size light leak.  So, an important part of my cleaning task was to replace the old crumbly seals in the door.

The Yashicamat 124 uses a combination of black foam and black yarn in the light seal on the main door.  The foam fills in the larger areas at the top and bottom of the door while the yarn seals the narrow slot along each side.  In the shot below you can make out the yarn covering the sides (like all of the images, click to see it larger).

After almost 40 years, these seals tend to break down, causing areas of bright spots in images.  Luckily, fixing them is not a huge ordeal!  All you need is a little patience and a willingness to do work on your camera.

(Note: Yashicamat 124G seals are completely made from foam, even along the sides.  I have heard that they are more fragile, but that may be compensated for by the fact the cameras are not as old.)

For my light seal replacement, I used a variety of sources on the web.  The primary source of my techniques was Matt Denton’s page about replacing light seals.  It has great details about how to remove them, replace them, and what materials to use.  Of course, it uses a Yashica Electro 35 as an example and does not cover the 124, but it is close enough for me.   Also, on Matt’s Repair Tips page, he mentions materials for the light seals, including “Lily Sugar n’ Cream black cotton crochet yarn, product #CA00111″, and black Presto-felt (what I ended up using).  Another good source is David Richert’s Yashica 124 Rebuild Page, which includes some details about replacing the light seals with new foam.

As I mentioned, for my light seal replacement I only used black “Prestofelt” from Walmart — under $1 per sheet!  And to fix a single camera you only really need a fraction of a sheet.  It has a very gooey adhesive on it which definitely keeps it in the camera, but can be a bit of a pain to work with because it sticks to just about anything and leaves residue.  Just cut it, remove the backing, and stick it where you need it (I found it helpful to push it into place with a small screwdriver).  Just be careful not to get it on anything important (like the film plate!) and if you do, carefully clean it all off!

Of course, the first step is cleaning out the old seals.  For this, I used a toothpick.  The old foam seals pretty much disintegrated into black dust, while the yarn came out easily and cleanly.

While I was removing the old seals, I wrapped the camera body in standard household plastic wrap to keep any little black bits out of the film chamber.  I can only imagine how yucky that could get!

The adhesive that holds the foam in at the top and bottom of the door was very tricky to remove so I finally just gave up on it.  I figured it wouldn’t cause a big problem since the felt goes on top.  Once I had the old seals out, I just cut the felt to size and stuck it in:

Note that thin strips of felt can stretch if needed, making it easier to fit them into the grooves.  Here is the finished portion near the top of the door:

Anyway, that is it for now.  I’ll post the final page of this series in a few days, describing my solution for the now discontinued mercury batteries for the 124…

Update: Sadly, the new felt light seals really didn’t take.  I still had light leaks on my second (and third) test rolls, but I have to wonder if my leaks are somewhere other than the door seals since I sealed all around the doors with electrical tape yet I still had the light leak.  I’ll post examples in a bit.  I’ve also got a light seal kit from Jon Goodman, a very well-regarded seal maker, (see interslice’s items) on order that may help.  I’ll post and update once I have results (be they good or bad).

This is the second post in a series of four related to cleaning my used Yashica Mat 124.  The first post in the series describes the task in more detail and includes links to all of the other posts.

My second task once I overcame the first hurdle (cleaning the taking lens) was to clean the mirror box, including the viewing lens and the viewing screen.  I don’t have any pictures from this procedure, but a great resource for viewing what is involved can be found at David Richert’s Yashica 124 rebuild page.  His page has great coverage of removing the viewfinder, replacing the light seal, cleaning the mirror and viewing screens, etc.  So I’ll just add my experiences here, but refer to David’s page for pictures and a great description.

Removing the viewfinder is very, very easy.  There’s two silver flat-head screws each side of the waist level viewfinder which are easy to access and remove.  Just be gentle with them, since they are pretty small screws!  After seeing these screws, I will never pick up the camera by the viewfinder again (not that I was doing that a lot in the first place!).

Once I got the viewfinder off, it was pretty clear that I wasn’t the first person to muck around in there.  Someone had clearly replaced the light seal against the meter (kind of a small light seal, but it did it looked like a good replacement) and the mirror had clearly been cleaned very clumsily resulting in a ton of little scratches in it.  The ground glass and Fresnel lens were in very good condition though, and other than many bits of dirt, everything looked good.

So, the first thing I did was remove the mirror to clean it.  The mirror has a clip on the back that I pulled down to slide the trapezoidal mirror out.  Sadly, it wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds, since the mirror is small, space is tight, and I had a lot of trouble keeping the clip down.  But I got it out by wiggling it back and forth a bit and gently pulling until it came out.

Removing the mirror revealed the focus wheel shaft — that was covered in thickened, old grease (a common problem on Yashica Mats).  I tried to clean some of it off, but gave up after it started eating my q-tips! (not eating like acid — eating like a tar pit)   The focus wheel is a little stiff, but well damped and controllable, so I won’t mess with that gooey mess until I need to!

While I had the mirror out, I used a lens blower (rocket blower?) to blow the dust out of the chamber, inspected the meter electronics (all looked good), and cleaned the inside of the viewing lens.  Overall, very easy and painless.

Next, I turned my attention to the ground glass and Fresnel lens.  The ground glass is the part on the top of the viewfinder (closest to your eye).  The top of the ground glass is normal, smooth glass, while the bottom is frosted with the red painted grid.  The plastic Fresnel lens is under the ground glass with the ridged side facing up (toward the ground glass).  Since my camera had some dirt between the two, I decided it would be easiest to just remove them both and clean them that way.

From various articles and forums on the internet, I knew that each of these items (the mirror, ground glass, and Fresnel) are very fragile.  The mirror has the silver part exposed and is very easy to scratch when cleaning.  The ground glass’s red guide lines are quite fragile and easy to scratch or remove when cleaning.  And the Fresnel is just plastic, so it is super easy to mess up the ridges that make it work.  So, my plan was to remove everything, then carefully wash them at the sink.

The key part to removing the Fresnel and ground glass were the clips, shown in this great shot from David Richert.  At first, I got pretty frustrated because I was trying to push the clips down and slid them out — toward the center of the glass.  Once I referred back to David’s page, I realized that I needed to push them down and slide sideways — that worked a lot better!

With the mirror, ground glass, and Fresnel out, I took them to the sink and carefully cleaned them with hand soap, windex at times, and paper towels.  The first step was to rinse off as much grunge as I could, then swish them in soapy water to get more off.  Finally, I used the tip of my finger to lightly scrub the really dirty areas.  After that, I carefully dried them on paper towels, using windex to get stubborn parts streak-free, and that was it.  It took a while (a half-hour for the removal and cleaning) but I did not damage them at all!

So, then, I put everything back together.  The mirror, in particular, is a pain because of the way the clips are organized.  All I can say is, don’t force it!  The clips toward the front of the camera often get in the way and I had to push them down with a separate tool.  The viewfinder went together a little better (remember, the ground glass on top, lines down, while the Fresnel is on the bottom with ridges up!).  On one side my hands got a bit awkward and I ended up scratching the Fresnel a little bit with a screwdriver — I was using two screwdrivers — one to push down, one to slide the clip in.  You can see the scratch if you look closely at the image that starts this page.

Once that was done, I put it all back together, and while I didn’t notice a big difference in viewfinder brightness, I am very happy with it.  The cleaning was pretty easy, overall, although take your time and be gentle!

Next up: Replacing the light seals.

The next four posts will be on the cleaning I finished today on my Yashica Mat 124.  This was not a full CLA (clean-lube-adjust) mostly because I’m not confident I’d be able to get it working again if I got into the precision mechanisms on the camera.  Instead, I focused on fixing the major problems I mentioned in First Shoot Results: Yashicamat 124 Issues: an oil-fogged taking lens and a major light leak.

There are four parts to this series (I’ll link them up as I get them done):

1. Cleaning the taking lens (this post).
2. Cleaning the viewing lens, mirror, and screen.
3. Light seal replacement on the door (to fix the light leak).
4. Fixing the light meter (a.k.a. retrofitting a battery to work).

I am posting this information because I believe it can be helpful to the general public, both for fixing up old Yashica Mats (these techniques will likely work on a 124G also) and just to show that if I can fix up an old camera, you probably can too!

Of course, I need to give the standard disclaimer: attempting this procedure could easily damage your camera and/or lenses.  So know the risks going in, and if in doubt, take it to a professional!

* * * * *

I started by cleaning the taking lens mostly because it was the task I was most afraid of, and if I screwed up the main lens or shutter, there’s no point in putting time into the other stuff.  Cleaning the taking lens requires removing one or more of the lens elements using a spanner tool.  The spanner tool fits into these little notches on the lens:

Of course, I don’t have a spanner tool.  And, they cost $20 or more (and I do not think a regular spanner can reach into the back of a 124, but correct me if I’m wrong!).  The other option was to take the $70 camera into a shop and pay more than the camera is worth, so it was time to figure something out.  I eventually settled on this odd tool:

Yes, this is two blocks of wood, screwed together, with nails through the cube-like chunk.  I drilled holes in the wood to prevent the wood from cracking.  The idea was that the nail points would act like the spanner tips, and I could bend the nails to adjust it.  I hit a snag when I first applied the tool to the front lens element and it popped out of the notches, scratching my finish.  Yikes!

So, I backed off and regrouped, resigning myself to buying an actual spanner tool online.  But, after reading more (including this great thread at photo.net on cleaning the taking lens of a 124G), I realized that most people just jimmied something together to replace the spanner tool, and the lens really isn’t on there that tightly.  I also realized that my nail tips were way too blunt, so I sharpened them with a rotary tool:

Then, placing the ‘tool’ (I loose the term loosely) into the notches, I was able to easily rotate the front element out.  It really does not take much force at all, which was a nice surprise for me.  I’ve heard you can do it with a screwdriver and a small hammer, but try to get a spanner before you try that!

Note the scotch tape over the lens to protect it in case I slipped.  The tape also makes it easy to rotate the lens out without using the tool once it is loosened.  Once removed, the blades of the shutter are revealed (the aperture is wide open and hidden):

Now, some people recommend cleaning the front of the rear element by forcing the shutter open on bulb with a locking shutter release.  Of course, I do not have one of those, and I did not want to run the risk of getting solvent on the shutter mechanism (which often wicks into the internals) so I decided to remove the rear element also.

I read online that it is possible to unscrew the rear element with your fingers (in gloves) so I tried that, but all I accomplished was smudging my lens with whatever lube was on the household gloves I used.  I DO NOT recommend that because it was quite hard to clean off.

Instead, I bent my homemade spanner into shape and got it out easily.  This is the back of the shutter:

And these are the lens elements, front and back:

Note the paper towels that I laid down under my work area to keep everything clean and unscratched.

In my camera, pretty much all the oil residue (that was ruining my images) was on the front of the rear element.  I used rubbing alcohol, q-tips, and lens paper to remove it, but I’d recommend a better solvent if you can get it.  Definitely don’t use rubbing alcohol if it has anything in it besides alcohol and water!  And, avoid getting it in the camera body because the water in it can cause things to rust!

Then, I reassembled the lens elements.  Again, scotch tape came to my aid because it gave me good grip on the front element (screwing it in and finishing with the homemade spanner):

It also helped with the back element:

Allowing me to lower it into place with pliers (I don’t want anything scratched in the light box!):

Sadly, it was too hard to screw it back in with the tape, so I used a pointy tool to push on the notches until it was screwed in, then tightened it (lightly!) with the spanner.

And, the end result?  A perfectly clean lens (well, there are a few specs of dust in it):

I’ll tell you, this fix had me very worried and it took me two weeks to start on it because I did not realize how easy it would be to remove the lens elements.  Don’t hesitate to try this on a cheap camera yourself if you can handle the risk of damage.  Just go slow, be careful, be careful again (one slip of a screwdriver can do damage!), but realize you don’t necessarily need to hire someone to clean your lens!

If you have any questions, let me know.  And next time, I’ll let you know how the viewing lens and screen cleaning went!

Once back to my car parked outside Keeble & Shuchat, I eagerly examined the images from the first roll of film I put through my Yashicamat 124.

And I wasn’t very happy, because this is how my prints turned out (click any photo in this post to see it larger):

So I went back inside to talk to one of the guys at the desk.  Not from a What the hell did you do to my pictures? point of view, but from a What do you think is wrong with my camera? point of view.  The guy I talked to was relatively knowledgeable, but his answer (light leaks) did not totally explain my issues.  Yes, the flare in the lower left corner of many of my frames was likely a light leak. From the research I’ve done, it is common (almost expected) for the foam/string seals on Yashicamats to stop working after 20 or 30 years.  After all, these are what my seals look like:

Not so nice, and I’m planning on replacing them.

The other issue confused me more.  It seemed like contrast was lost in bright areas, almost like a soft focus lens.  While soft focus is not always a bad thing (in fact, I kind of like it on some of the shots of my kids) it is obviously pretty extreme, and I wasn’t satisfied by the K&S guy’s answer to it.  This was not just a light leak.

Well, the problem turned out to be this:

Yes, that is the taking lens of my Yashica mat 124.  And that dot… that’s actually closer to the proper transparency of a lens; the rest of it has a nasty film on it.

But, it turns out that this is a pretty normal problem for Yashicamats (and many old cameras).  Apparently, over time, the lubricant in the shutter evaporates and re-condenses on the optics leaving an oily film that kills contrast.  The solution is to disassemble the taking lens, clean the oil off, and reassemble it, being careful to not break anything.  I’m a bit nervous about this process, because it involves brewing up a spanner tool substitute to remove the lenses:

And yes, the spanner tool needs to get into those notches — believe it or not, I’m planning something involving sharpened nails!

But it does not seem that difficult.  In fact, in the camera repair business, this is termed a CLA, for Clean-Lube-Adjust (although many shops don’t like to use the term “CLA”).  An old used camera boasting a recent CLA is definitely worth something extra.  On the other hand, sometimes a CLA means very little.  In this case, a professional CLA would cost just as much as the camera itself ($70) so I’ll be doing it myself.  Besides, it will be a fun project that will get me that much more attached to the hunk of metal.

Expect details soon — I’m planning to post before, after, and during photos of the procedure(s).

In The Scanning Problem I gave my first, rather unsuccessful, experiments in converting 35mm negatives to a digital format.  After I little more thought, I realized that my failed attempt with my flatbed scanner was for an obvious reason: negatives are transparencies and my scanner only scans reflective items!

After all, think about it — to scan a negative, it has to emit light, pass the light through the negative, bounce off the white cover, go through the negative again, and then get sensed!  No wonder the images were way too dark!

I’ve looked into other scanners and they generally go for $150-$200.  While I plan (hope?) to get one in the future, I promised my wife I’d hold off until it was clear that I was going to have a lot of film to scan.  So, until then, I want a do it yourself solution that fits my budget.

And I think I’ve found a solution…

* * * * *

See, it turns out I already have a very high quality optical scanner at my disposal… my camera!

So, I set up a quick little experiment to see if the result was practical.  Here is the setup shot:

The basic idea is to shoot a flash (Sunpak 383, the trigger is barely visible at right-center), forward through two layers of copy paper to make sure that it is very diffused and even.  The second piece of paper is kept an inch away from the film to keep any texture in it out of focus.  The film is mounted on a black colored piece from the back of a notebook, held by a Costco negative holder that has been sliced to give access.  In hindsight, I sliced way too much off the negative holder, because it was incredibly hard to get the film in there securely and relatively flat.  The holder was taped on, and a clip was used to keep the board upright.

With the flash firing, it looks like this:

I believe I was firing at 1/4 power at 100 ISO, using an old Canon 100mm f/4 Macro lens (FD mount).  Not ideal, with more flare than I’d like, but it did the job.

And the film itself looks like this:

Not too bad, right?  The film has a definite color cast to it, partially because copy paper has a slight blue cast, and I think my camera’s white balance got a bit confused.  Actually, because of the cast from the paper and the lack of precision with this method, I would not recommend trying to do color negatives this way.  Color negatives are notoriously hard to scan correctly, even with a good scanner.

Of course, the true test is how the scan looks.  With a full frame negative capture, here is a 100% crop from the DIY scanned image:

For comparison, here is the scanned image I obtained from Costco:

The Costco image is clearly sharper with nicer contrast (although I bet I could improve the contrast in PaintShopPro pretty easily).  But, the real question is, would it fit my purposes?

Absolutely!

I would estimate the effective resolution is around 2-4 megapixels — plenty for a 4 x 6 print, and way more than needed for web images.  For example (click to see larger):

And, there are a number of improvements that I could do.  Most notably the slide mounting, but also some more consistency in focus and flatness.  So, I’ve got plans to whip up a better version of this nearly free DIY scanner — stay tuned!

I added the new code to the main portion of the site today. Yes, aesthetically it may not be quite as good, but I did not want to wait any longer.

I also put in a reconsideration I also put in a reconsideration request to Google, so hopefully that will get search re-enabled…

I’m backlogged as usual, but luckily I made some notes after trying a Yashica-Mat 124 for the first time about two weeks ago.  Since I think it might be useful to some of you to hear my first impressions when using an old-school TLR, I’ll provide my thoughts here.

Introduction

TLR stands for Twin Lens Reflex.  The twin lens stands for the two lenses involved — the bottom ‘taking’ lens (that actually puts an image on film) and a top ‘viewing’ lens that puts an image on the viewing screen.  The reflex portion of the term stands for the fact that a mirror is used to reflect the image from the taking lens to the viewing screen or focusing glass.  If you’d like to see the mechanical drawings for the camera, check out Assembling charts for the YashicaMat 124G — it can clarify a lot of these terms.  Of course, I have the 124, not the 124G, but the cameras are near identical in construction.

The Yashica-mat 124 is a popular Rolleiflex clone that is reasonably well-respected by used camera enthusiasts yet still relatively inexpensive on the used market (mine was $70, including shipping, although I got a good deal on it).  If you’d like to see current prices, check out my CamNotes page on the Yashicamat 124.

Anyway, I’m coming from a background of digital SLRs, so the 124’s waist level viewfinder and all-mechanical operation was definitely something new.  This first time I ran a single roll of black and white film (twelve 6×6 frames on a roll of 120) through the camera to test it out and check the quality.  The film was Ilford Delta 400 Pro, although I claim to know nothing about film variants at this point.

I’ve already gotten negatives and prints back for this shoot, but that’s another post entirely.  This post is just about first impressions.

Using the Yashica-Mat 124

Holding it in my hands, I constantly felt like I was going to drop the thing, but that is mostly because I do not have a camera strap for it.  Once I got used to it, it felt pretty good in my hands, and the build quality is quite good, much more solid than my Canon 350D (Rebel XT) and even more solid than my 20D.  Of course, pretty much everything on the camera is made out of metal, so that should be no surprise.  For reference, I believe the Yashicamat 124 was sold from 1968-1971, so this camera is almost forty years old.

Whoa, I didn’t think about it before, but the camera is older than I am! (and, sadly, in much better shape)

To use the waist level viewfinder, flip up the viewing hood and look at the viewing screen that it protects.  This screen provides an image equivalent to the film area (a little over two inches square), so it is pretty large.  Brightness is decent, but if you’ve got direct sun on your face or you are aiming into shadow, the viewing screen can be hard to see.  You can also flip up a magnifier (by pushing on the area on the face of a hood) which you put your eye to just like a normal viewfinder, but looking down instead of horizontal.  The magnifier does provide a much larger view and it can be easier to tweak focus, but I had a harder time focusing my eye through the magnifier and composing.  I definitely prefer the normal viewing screen.

And the viewing screen really is one of the neat parts of a TLR.  With a bright scene, it really is like there is a small TV in the camera showing you the view.  And the image itself is just beautiful (even though the mirror and viewing screen on my TLR are pretty dirty).  Strangely enough, the view seems almost 3-D to me — it is hard to describe, but I feel like I’m getting more than just a flat image from a viewfinder.  The one gotcha, at least with the Yashica line, is that the image is reflected left to right.  This is probably a result of the refractive image reversing through the lens and then the reflection correcting the image vertically but not horizontally.  The image reversal definitely interferes with my use of the camera though — I constantly moved the wrong way when composing and the whole process of framing a shot took a lot longer than I’m used to.  I’ve heard that you can get used to the reversed image, but I think it will take me longer than most people.

In practice, I found it was best to frame my shot by eye, then bring the camera up, focus, and shoot.  The prime lens (75mm, approximately a 45mm equivalent for 35mm cameras) is somewhat restrictive, so moving closer/farther from the subject while using the reversed image was quite difficult for me.  The focal length (equivalent to a normal lens) is fine, but the lens suffers from another big problem: the close focus distance is not very close at all.  I constantly found myself running out of focusing room as I tried to get details or a single face.

Flare is also a problem with the camera — many sites mention this — so I’ll likely invest in a hood in the future.

Focusing is achieved with a wheel on the left side of the camera that is very smooth and well-damped.  I had no problem getting good focus.  The shutter release is at the front of the camera under your right finger.  The winder falls on the side of the camera near your right hand.  I found that operating the camera (in terms of winding and cocking the shutter) was very fast and easy.

The “Mat” in Yashica-Mat stands for automatic shutter cocking — after taking a picture, you flip out the winding lever, wind it approximately one revolution clockwise until it stops, then go counterclockwise a quarter of a turn to cock the shutter.  It makes a strange ratchety noise when you wind it that is pretty loud.  I’ve heard that the 124G is much quieter to wind, but the 124 has a more robust winding system.  FYI, earlier Yashica TLRs use a knob for winding and a separate knob or lever for shutter cocking.

The shutter itself is quite a departure from a DSLR shutter.  First of all, there’s no mirror to lift out of the way before firing the shutter — so you can see the image the whole time you release the shutter, and the sound of the shutter is minimal.  Usually just a tiny little ‘click’ that is easy to miss.  For longer shutter speeds, you can hear the mechanical shutter timer ticking down with a noise like one of those wind-up toys they gave kids in the 50s.

Shutter speed and aperture are adjusted with two small knobs between the two lenses (just to the side of them).  There is a readout on the top of the viewing lens that is easy to see when using the waistlevel finder.  I had no problems adjusting the exposure controls.  Of course, I had to do it manually, so I first shot an image or two with my 20D, then set the Yashica Mat to the same settings and shot a frame or two.  This was a very awkward and slow process and I’d really like to get the meter on the Yashica-Mat 124 working at least a little bit.  Oddly enough, the meter actually responded sometimes when I was shooting, and showed an exposure very similar to what I got from my 20D.

The Yashica-Mat 124 meter is a match-needle type, meaning you have an orangish ‘hook’ and a ‘needle’ (actually, just a meter indicator) that you try to get to line up.  The aperture wheel and film speed setting move the ‘hook’ mechanically, while the combination of shutter speed and light sensor move the needle.  The idea is that when you match them up, you have a good exposure.

Of course, the meter in the 124/124g is notoriously unreliable and imprecise, but at least it would be something to keep me from dragging around my 20D every time!

Subjects and Results

My main subjects were my kids, although I took a shot or two of my house to test exposure and different apertures.  The kids, of course, were one of my problems — my kids move a lot!  Furthermore, 400 speed film is great for shadows, but with direct sun you have to stop down significantly to get a shutter speed the camera can actually do.  Luckily, my kids were good sports, because I spent way more time struggling to frame the image and mucking with the settings and focus than I spent taking pictures.  Ultimately, a camera is only as good as the images it lets you take, and this TLR, at least for the first time, got in the way more than it helped me.

With practice, I think I can do better, but ultimately this is not an action camera.  Which is probably why editorial shooters shifted from TLRs to SLRs in the 60s.  But, the larger negative can definitely help out with landscapes or detailed portraits for a much lower price than a large format camera or a 20MP+ digital camera.  I’d like to experiment more with my 124, but ultimately, it will not be a camera I grab when there’s any action involved.

Anyway, I hope this information helps you, especially if you are considering an old TLR like my Yashica-Mat.  If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

And, expect a post in the next few days about the results of this first shoot!

I’m finding that film photography ends up being very expensive per image, on the range of 50 cents per frame on 35mm and $1 for every medium format frame (still crunching the numbers a bit on this, but I hope to post an analysis soon).  The actual film and developing is not the majority of this cost, surprisingly, especially for black and white film — if you process it at home.  The main bottleneck is getting from the negatives to a published image, be that an image online, or 4×6 prints, or a framed photo on the wall.

As much as I like the purity of film, it is important for me to be able to use my images in a digital format, even if I take them on film.  I know, I know, you are probably wondering why I’m bothering with film in the first place — that’s a debate for another day.  But scanning costs, especially for medium format, quickly skyrocket.  Again, 35mm scanning is readily available, often for $2-$3 more at the same place you get your film developed with 4×6 prints — simply because they just develop your film and then immediately scan it for printing digitally.

For example, the image above was processed at my local Costco.  I ordered the scanned images on a CD and found that the scanned images were about 6 MP, or 3072×2048.  This is approximately 2200 dpi.  You can see from the 100% crop below that these scans are pretty clean, and the resolution is right around the resolution of the film grain.  Not bad, right?

Granted, this is a 400 speed C41 process film, so it is not necessarily the most fine-grained film out there.  But I suspect the only time you’d ever need more resolution than this is if you want to print 8×10s or larger.  And for web use, you could get away with a lot less.

So, that got me thinking… why pay the extra $2 on each roll of 35mm film, or more appropriately, the $10-$20 that it takes to scan medium format film professionally, if I have a flatbed scanner right next to my computer?  Wouldn’t it do a pretty good job of scanning film?

Well, apparently not:

Yes, this is the best I could do from my Canon MP470.

It boasts 2400×4800 dpi, which should be at least as good as a pro film scanner, right?  Uh… no.  The biggest problem, other than limited resolution (1200 dpi was the best I could get it to do), is tonal range.  I had a really hard time getting it to scan film negatives, which look pretty dark compared to what the scanner is designed for (paper), and then inverting the image without losing the light colors.

Granted, I’ve heard that some of these flatbed scanners have attachments for film, but there’s got to be an easier, cheaper way.  And, for the 120 film I’ll get out of my Yashicamat 124, it should be even easier to get a decent scan (i.e. 4MP or so).

So, I’m going to look into some DIY scanning techniques.  I’ve already formulated a plan using my digital camera, a macro lens, a flash, and some diffusion, so I just need to try it out.  I’ll keep you posted.  FYI, some DIY scanning pages I’ve found are Photocritic’s Makeshift film scanner and DIY scanning solution at Photoforum similar to what I was thinking of.  From what I can tell, the biggest challenge is getting color and dynamic range correct, especially with negative film.  Heck, I might even need to worry about gamma adjustment!

Either way, I’ll keep you posted.

And, in other news, I got some 120 film for the Yashicamat today.  I went ahead and got one of each chemistry: black and white negative, color negative (C-41), and color slide (E-6).