Capturing glass plates

[AGW]

I was intrigued by this weeks article by Alan McFaden and Jeff Mayer about capturing glass negatives. I was considering an Epson V700 for this task and had not contemplated this approach. My gut feeling is that the scanner will deliver better results....but the camera method does look reasonably effective and considerably cheeper, any thoughts?

Graeme

[Terrywoodenpic]

A camera would be much quicker.
But not many scanners would cope with the larger plate sizes.
As glass plates are totally flat I would tend to put the diffuser well behind them to stop any dust or other unevenness showing.

[Malcolm_Stewart]

I was intrigued by this weeks article by Alan McFaden and Jeff Mayer about capturing glass negatives. I was considering an Epson V700 for this task and had not contemplated this approach. My gut feeling is that the scanner will deliver better results....but the camera method does look reasonably effective and considerably cheaper, any thoughts?

Graeme

I've had a go at this and there's a few points worth making.
Capturing 35mm slides using a P&S camera:
Doesn't seem worth it. The default contrast setting is too high and the best slides tend to be too contrasty for a decent capture. OK for low contrast slides, and probably negs.

Capturing 35mm slides using a macro lens and a DSLR:
Much better as the DSLR can have its contrast lowered, but it's tricky getting the slide(s) in exactly the correct place for good framing - some form of jig is worth making, otherwise it takes too long getting the alignment precisely correct.

Capturing larger slides and negatives as per the article is probably OK as the alignment is much easier.

[LargeFormat]

it takes too long getting the alignment precisely correct.

The other week I needed to scan some near A2 size documents. It wasn't worth making a jig so I pointed my camera at them and adjusted the alignment in DxO. The result was fine and with a bit of tweaking comparable to a scanner. However, my camera does give around 300dpi on an A2.

[zx9]

..... I was considering an Epson V700 for this task and had not contemplated this approach. My gut feeling is that the scanner will deliver better results....but the camera method does look reasonably effective and considerably cheeper, any thoughts?...

Given how prone to scratches my Epson V700's platen is, I would not want to use it to scan a glass plate.

[Terrywoodenpic]

That is an important point.

Glass plates are usually cleanly cut, but the edges are not polished, so the edges can be very sharp. They should be handled carefully and not stacked on top of each other.
If stacking is essential put backs together and fronts together, but never front to back.

Better still put them in glassine pockets.

[Fen]

..... I was considering an Epson V700 for this task and had not contemplated this approach. My gut feeling is that the scanner will deliver better results....but the camera method does look reasonably effective and considerably cheeper, any thoughts?...

Given how prone to scratches my Epson V700's platen is, I would not want to use it to scan a glass plate.

I'd put a clear sheet of acetate between the plate and the scanner as well.

[beejaybee]

I'd put a clear sheet of acetate between the plate and the scanner

That will simply give you 3x the amount of dust spotting to do. Perhaps rather more than that because acetate sheet is more likely to attract dust electrostatically than glass.

Why not wrap the plate corners with masking tape - a 1mm wide loss of the extreme corner of the image will save any chance of marking the platen whilst causing no loss of definition during the scan. The masked part of the plate will almost certainly be the same part that was not exposed in the camera anyway.

[MarchHare]

I have been experimenting with photographing transparencies by projecting them onto a glass beaded screen. This has worked out reasonably well. I have experimented with this method as I have a lot of 3.25 square slides to digitise for my club, these slides are from the 1930's.

My only concern is whether the 1930's projector will be bright enough for the job (the transparencies were modern 2x2 slides and the projector an Agfa CS).