# Could Someone Do Me A Favor?



## Mike_E (Mar 10, 2009)

Hi, I don't have an enlarger or I'd do this myself.

Would someone with an enlarger and a flat bed scanner put the scanner under the enlarger, open the scanner (make sure it's perpendicular of course) and put a sheet of copy paper on it and then focus a neg on the paper to as large a size as possible still fitting on the scanner, then remove the paper and scan the neg?

If the scanner isn't over- or under-powered by the enlarger's lamp it should be just like scanning a *Huge* negative and greatly increase the detail in the file due to the scanner's limitations in DPI.  Grain might be problematic but nosieware should handle it alright, it might also be a huge file.

Please let me know how it turns out.  

Any takers?  If it works, I'll defiantly be in the market for an enlarger!


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## compur (Mar 10, 2009)

That would only work the way you intend if the scanner has ground glass on
it.

You could try laying a very flat sheet of wax paper on the scanner and
focusing on that and leaving the wax paper in place during the scan. That
might work.


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## Mike_E (Mar 10, 2009)

Maybe, but then why does just putting the negs in the carrier work?

I may well be wrong but it seems to me that you would just be increasing the apparent size of the negative and effectively increasing the DPI density.  Somewhere around a 10X increase.

I realize that it doesn't work quite that way but 28,000 DPI would beat 2,800 all to dust.  

As an aside, I am fully aware that these numbers would surpass the detail in a 35mm negative or slide and likely a 120mm as well.  I don't know about a 4X5 as that would only be about 3X.

Worth a shot anyway, right.


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## compur (Mar 10, 2009)

You can't watch a movie by looking into the projector lens. 

A projected image needs a reflective plane to focus on and be reflected from
for the eye to see it. A ground glass is a reflective plane that reflects the
image in both directions so the eye (or scanner) can see the image from both
sides of it.



Mike_E said:


> Maybe, but then why does just putting the negs in the carrier work?



Because you focus the image onto the paper where it is then reflected (as an image) to
your eye.  If you looked up into the enlarger while it was projecting (not recommended)
you would just see a bright light and maybe the little negative (if it wasn't too bright)
but you wouldn't see an enlarged image.

And, that's all a scanner would "see" -- a bright light and maybe a little negative in the
distance which would be out of focus because scanners have shallow depth of field.

But, if you had a ground glass (or something that acts as a ground glass) on the scanner 
then it would then have an enlarged image to scan.


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## Mike_E (Mar 10, 2009)

Thanks for going along, Compur, but I'm not sure your analogy has a direct relationship.  The human eye takes in the whole scene at once but a scanner goes slowly across and stores a little at a time untill it puts it all together as a whole.

My flatbed scanner doesn't use anything like ground glass- just a frame to hold the negs flat and a backlight to shine through them to send light through to the scanner.  

If I just place the negs on the scanner glass I just get a darkish blob.

I am wondering though if focusing on the glass might be a little off as the normal way has the negs a few mm's above it.


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## compur (Mar 10, 2009)

Well, I admire your tenacity.  I hope you can try it and let us know how it
turned out.


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## Paul Ron (Mar 11, 2009)

Perhaps you can build a LF scanner camera too? I've put flowers on my scanner n took pictures of em that way but I have always wondered if hooking it to the back of my LF camera would work?

Maybe I'll get around to it this summer. 

Probably need the GG to scan anything. ummmmm......


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## Mike_E (Mar 11, 2009)

LOL  Critical focus would be tough!  

You would probably have to disable the Lighting circuitry too to keep it from overpowering the image.


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## Judge Sharpe (Mar 11, 2009)

With a good quality ground glass it might work. It would take some apeture to obtain a well exposed image. The typical scanner acts like a contact printer- the old kind with a light bulb in side a box. Having a surface that the enlarger would focus on would produce an image that the copier/scanner could read, like the image on a focusing screen in a LF camera. It would not read any more data than was on the image, and the  quality is questionable. sort of like copying a photograph on a copier. It would be better to make a mask and place the negative on the scanner plate with a light source, maybe the enlarger above it. Do the enlarging post processing on your computer. 
JS


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