Since I've gone film, thought I'd save some money by scanning negatives instead of printing them.
I made a slide copy adaptor using some cardboard. It works great. Here's the setup:
The black base is cut from one side of a floppy disk. The hole fits nicely over the 28 mm lens. The reason you want a black base is to prevent any reflections from the reflective bits on the digital camera. I initially tried mounting the negatives onto the light box and taking straight from there, but ended up with mysterious brown artifacts which I finally figured out were the reflections from the camera after inversion and autolevels.
The cardboard tube is a bit bigger than your usual toilet roll, I cut it from one of those cardboard rolls used to hold cloth. You can get it free from Spotlight or any shop selling cloth. The slide holder is 2 pieces of cardboard with a hole in it (35mm x 25mm) separated by 2 pieces of cardboard such that you can slot your strip of negative film in.
My light source is an xray box, but any light box will do. Just set the CP990 to macro mode, slip in your negative, press the button. The autofocus and autometering takes care of everything. The length of the cardboard tube should be enough to make the CP990 zoom in halfway and just fit the 35mm x 25mm hole in the entire frame. You can zoom out slightly to make sure it's centred and so on, then zoom in to crop the picture.
Make sure you clean the negatives before scanning. I wipe mine gently with the Essilor microfibre cloth. Works very well. Just hold the cloth in one hand, put the film in between two fingers, and swipe through.
After that, all you need is to invert the image in PS, and use Autolevels. Viola! 3 MP jpeg scan. Make sure the non-exposed negative is not in the picture when you do autolevels (crop it out), otherwise the colours will be very funny.
Here is a picture I just scanned. This is straight out of the camera after inverting and autolevels. Amazing.
I made a slide copy adaptor using some cardboard. It works great. Here's the setup:
The black base is cut from one side of a floppy disk. The hole fits nicely over the 28 mm lens. The reason you want a black base is to prevent any reflections from the reflective bits on the digital camera. I initially tried mounting the negatives onto the light box and taking straight from there, but ended up with mysterious brown artifacts which I finally figured out were the reflections from the camera after inversion and autolevels.
The cardboard tube is a bit bigger than your usual toilet roll, I cut it from one of those cardboard rolls used to hold cloth. You can get it free from Spotlight or any shop selling cloth. The slide holder is 2 pieces of cardboard with a hole in it (35mm x 25mm) separated by 2 pieces of cardboard such that you can slot your strip of negative film in.
My light source is an xray box, but any light box will do. Just set the CP990 to macro mode, slip in your negative, press the button. The autofocus and autometering takes care of everything. The length of the cardboard tube should be enough to make the CP990 zoom in halfway and just fit the 35mm x 25mm hole in the entire frame. You can zoom out slightly to make sure it's centred and so on, then zoom in to crop the picture.
Make sure you clean the negatives before scanning. I wipe mine gently with the Essilor microfibre cloth. Works very well. Just hold the cloth in one hand, put the film in between two fingers, and swipe through.
After that, all you need is to invert the image in PS, and use Autolevels. Viola! 3 MP jpeg scan. Make sure the non-exposed negative is not in the picture when you do autolevels (crop it out), otherwise the colours will be very funny.
Here is a picture I just scanned. This is straight out of the camera after inverting and autolevels. Amazing.
didn't know it can be done.. great stuff! :thumbsup: 
