Filmwasters
Which Board? => Articles => Topic started by: Francois on September 14, 2011, 06:23:07 PM
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Well, it's been a while since I last presented a contraption. Since fall is in the air, I thought I'd present you with a work in progress.
This idea came from an annoyance. I have a ton of pictures that were taken before labs offered index prints. While I have some sort of identification for them, it is rather vague and searching through boxes of prints just to find one is annoying. While scanning all of them would be a solution, it is a real pain in the neck to do. It is slow and time consuming even at low resolution. So, I though about photographing them instead. Fast, simple and you get a pre-digested jpeg right away that's good enough for indexing and web use. This is something that has been done before using a repro bench. But I had a few issues with the already existent material. First, repro benches are big. Second, they're expensive. Third, my Canon Powershot has an off-center tripod mount which is all plastic. If I put enough torque on the tripod mount to hold it steady, it also makes some very unhealthy sounding noises... not an answer.
What I really needed was something small that allows me to take pictures of 4x6 prints, that cost nothing and folds flat. So this is what I came up with. A simple rail with a caddy to hold the camera. A board that is fixed at 90° to hold the print. But how do you hold a print vertically? I thought of using clips... but that would get in the way. Magnets... same thing. To me, the only solution was to keep the print up using vacuum. So, I use an old computer fan hooked up to an old printer's power supply to draw air through a series of holes cut in a piece of laminate flooring.
To use it, I just have to put the camera on manual focus, adjust everything, turn the fan on and simply feed the machine. I can now digitize 24 prints in record time. Quality isn't so bad either... granted it won't reach a film scanner's resolution. But I could probably get a surprisingly good 8x10 from it. Now, all that's missing is lights to get an even exposure... but will probably come at some other time :)
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And some more pictures
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François, you constantly leave me speechless. Mrs TK has been looking for a way to shut me up for years so I'm not telling her about you! ;D
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Brilliant!
You need a router....the woodworking sort, so you could make fancy cutouts!
:)
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I have one... but lost it in my messy garage :)
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Genius! as we say here in Australia, "he's an ideas man!"
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vacuum, ofcourse! you are a genious! :)
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Top marks as always, Francois. This is something I'd actually consider using myself. Well done.
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Quality. It occurs to me a little, pocket-sized, battery powered (or squeezy air-bulb?) one for polaroids would be something a lot of people could use- snap-the-print-before-you-give-it-to-someone type thing-gizmo.
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Thanks guys. Indeed it probably would sell quite well on the market.
One of the problems I have to fix is the reflections when duplicating shiny images...
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cool contraption, i agree that scanning photos are slow and time consuming, i once thought about archiving family photos using a flatbed scanner and quickly dismissed the idea because I may have to scan thousandsn of photos for days or even weeks.
are you setting your digital camera at its macro mode?
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The trick is to use the manual focus mode. Otherwise, the focusing sometimes misses the mark even in macro mode. Also, the camera's format is not exactly the same proportions as a 4x6 print so cropping is necessary.
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I will say it again, you are a genius..whenever I am wondering how to do something and I mention it to my husband..his classic response is now "why not ask Francois?!"
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;D