Having recently acquired a newish iMac computer I was faced with having to upgrade some software to continue using my old flatbed. It seemed like putting money into keeping my old scanning technology going was not the wisest course.
Spending hundreds on a digital camera was also not very appealing, so I decided to see what I might be able to do with my iPhone 14 as a scanner replacement. The only additional piece of equipment I decided to get was a cheap LED light pad.
To use the setup I put negative strips into the negative carriers I had been using with the old Epson scanner. I covered the exposed light pad surface to avoid light on the phone camera lens. In making the exposure I just handheld the phone and zoomed in from about five inches to fill camera screen with the image. Here for comparison are the images from the Epson flatbed and the same images from the cellphone:
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| Yashica-Mat Flatbed |
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| Yashica-Mat iPhone 14 |
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| Leica IIIa Flatbed |
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| Leica IIIa iPhone 14 |
I'm pleased with the outcome of my little experiment. It seems to me that the quality of the iPhone scans is equal to what I can get from the old flatbed, and the time required to make the cellphone scans is an order of magnitude better.
2 comments:
Those look really good. How are you arranging to hold the phone parallel to the film? That seems like the big challenge. I know an app called FilmLab that has some ability to detect and correct that lack of parallelism.
I'm still scanning 120 on a flatbed and 35mm on a dedicated scanner. But I'm not replacing either when they break. I'll switch to DSLR scanning, and buy the equipment for that.
I'm just hand-holding and doing the best I can with framing, focusing and leveling. Some kind of frame to hold up the camera would be more reliable, as well as creating a smoother work flow. There are some apps which may also help in the scanning process. However, most of them want you to pay an ongoing subscription price, which I am not willing to do. Kodak has a free mobile phone scanning app which is very nice, except that it only seems to want to do low resolution scans. Still a lot to learn. I'm looking forward to seeing what others are doing.
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