The bendy straw LED light defused is a brilliant application of 2 bits of scrap material, the straws, and the non-working flash light. A brilliant solution! In fact, the whole project is in the genius category, IMHO!
Great little project! Here's a tip that can significantly increase the amount of light behind the slide: Simply place a piece of tinfoil behind the tubes to reflect all the light back, that went out of the tubes in the wrong direction and would otherwise just have been absorbed into the black bottom. Make sure it also covers the sides so that light can't escape that way either. You'll be amazed how much light you can actually get out of the leds that way. Anyways thanks for sharing. Great idea!
This is a good effort. I especially like your jigged foamcore construction techniques. I've built a few phone scanners. You can get a good result, especially with a good even lighting source and the Kodak app, but even the best phones (as of September 2019) struggle to get resolution at macro distances compared to a scanner or a proper camera. You will get results good enough for social media, but you won't make archival quality images or decent big prints.
scan them at high resolution with a scanner and use a colour printer to print them on a4 transparencies. :) then ... develop a really huge mobile phone... i dunno.. oO
@@parishna4882 Keep the goal in mind - if all you want to do is load up some old negs onto your cell phone to share, why make it any more complex? If you want more resolution/color control, then a proper scanner is the way to go. But there's no need to make it any more complex than it has to be.
Nice job! I might have glued (or use double stick tape) a piece of reflective paper (any foil/Mylar lined jar liner might do) on the inside facing the LED light tubes side of the base foam-board to take advantage of as much of the light as possible.
Brilliant! My father was a proponent of the hot glue gun and this McIver light box reminded me of him. I have a light source so will try to make the enclosure. Thank you!
The box is a great idea. However, cheap LEDs have very low CRI (colour rendering Index). I think using an old phone with the screen on full brightness would be simpler and gives better white light.
Thank you for the video tutorial very well presented you explained everything so clearly. I really enjoyed watching , well done and thank you have a good weekend bye...😃
I build sth. similar, using the cheapest flat LED ceiling light I could find in the hardware store and crafting a "stand" for my DSLR from a yoghurt cup (one of the larger ones. But: the "lightstraw" idea is gold! I would have never thought of this!! Thanks man. You earned a sub with these straws. I save that idea for the next time I need a small diffuse light source. You could even add adjustable blue and yellow LEDs to (sort of) adjust light temperature.
Straight from the "why the heck didn't I think of this" file...I've got a stack of 6x4.5 negs (and some positive films as well) sitting around that I'd really like to digitize but really can't justify the expense. I can so justify the expense of some foam board and translucent Plexi though!!
You might want to think on designing the whole thing around the camera position, that way you could bring your phone and expect it not to wobble. Also, you can review the camera's focus distance. That's the minimum distance that the camera needs to be to take a focused shot, and that should save you the focus measurement. Overall great video and I might go ahead and do it on my end. Thanks for sharing!
Regarding the lighting source, I bought a domestic LED panel light with a really well diffused light. I wouldn't want to use mains voltage in any project unless you're qualified, but I learned a lot about how it was diffused. Instead of shining straight through the diffuser, the LEDs shine into the edge of a clear panel. There is a reflective sheet behind the clear panel, then a white diffuser as you used, followed by a sheet of frosted clear plastic to spread the light. This last layer isn't needed for your kind of project.
This is so good! ✨ One question though - - overtime, will the plastic bendy straw melt coz of heat from the led light? I want to know your thoughts on that. Thanks!
🤣 I love the idea,but the foot safety part felt like this was gonna turn into another kind of video. Thanks for the info. I’m gonna build one for 120 film.
A very informative tutorial... youve inspired me to build one out of 1/4 inch MDF and tweak your rendition to accommodate my specifications I will now sub just because you've intrigued me Thx!
Has there been an update to this great build? I see you can buy little light panels now, a way to avoid all the desolder and soldering, just wondering 😊
Enjoyed your video very much. Do have a look at Negative Supply's product called Negative Carrier with a retail price of around US$300. Your product is already better than theirs with a built in light source. It would be even better if you could figure out a realistic costed alternative with a covered container on both ends of the scanning area to keep the roll of negative dust free. Keep up your good work!! Your solution for feeding the negative across a light source is very much like the pencil used by the Russian Astronaut in the 60s. The Negative Supply's beautifully designed and engineered carrier is like the American's Fisher Space Pen. Both allow the users to write things on paper in zero gravity but with humongous difference in costs!!!!
This is so cool! I'm definitely going to try to make this! I have so much black foam core sitting around my house. Need to find me some plexy glass and LEDs tho
I made a similar one using an old photo paper box (black inside) and I use an iPad as a light source. For an even better result: place your negative or dia under a piece of glass.
First , that is a great idea. 2nd you should have use some c clamps to hold the plexyglass not you bare foot . Safety first my friend. All in all great idea as i do have some old films that would like to digitize. Thanks.
Nice project 👍 but I would recommend to keep in mind that "data" on film will last for generations and could be read every time. Data on carriers like CDs, USB or disk are tend to fail with the time and OS and versions change due generations. My conclusion is to keep the negative after scanning and not throwing them away because all is scanned and needed no more space.
Or just simply place the film on a tablet which is displaying a white screen. Slightly more practical and helluva lot easier. Still, I admire your work. Liked and subbed
I think you should add more lighted straws. At the end of the video, I can clearly see very dim dark bars between the lighted straws. Excellent project nevertheless.
I'm wondering if this technique would be feasible to use in converting old 8 mm movie film into digital files which could then be restored using photoshop or whatever?
What about remove scratches from negatives and use infrared scratch correction? also it hve very bad dynamic light range and not work for hi quality sources. I use drum laser scanner. or restoration negatives in ultrasonic bath, and after scan negatives in liquid use some adapter for Nikon Scanner.
Yeah, nah. Colour negative films are more complicated than you may think. That orange base tone is a correction mask produced in the image during development, and it varies in density according to the colours of the original image. Also, different manufacturer’s film have different orange tints. For accuracy you need software that’s sophisticated enough to both detect the film brand, and to apply compensating filtration according to gamma (the degree of contrast according to exposure) for each masking layer in the original film. If you don’t have the right software, getting acceptable colour can take a lot of fiddling around with Photoshop or Gimp.
