Graflex.org

[djon]

You love Graflex. Therefore you may also have antique negatives or glass plates, or may be shooting a format that you can't enlarge due to cost or equipment (eg 3X4), or you may be relying on Polaroid PN material and don't have an enlarger. You may wish to investigate the latest inexpensive flatbed scanners.

I've just finished scanning a collection of negatives shot by my family in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1890s and turn of the century (some of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire). Most were Kodak Bullet #4 4X5 rollfilm negatives. All were oxidized and hard to view until I washed and finger-squeegeed them using Photoflow. Then they became wonderful images.

The standard negative carriers provided by my
Epson 3200 (recent ultra-sharp flatbed model...Canon also makes good ones) aren't fully adequate. But there seems no depth of field or flare problem when, with no mask, you simply lay the negative on the scanner's surface, flattened in place by beveled-edge glass from a disused contact printing frame. Good picture frame glass would do as well, but you'd need to tape the sharp edges.

These negatives can often enlarge attractively, grain sharp to 11X14, and it's far easier to deal with the inevitable myriad hundred-year-old spots and scratches digitally than with Spotone. In your heart you know that Graflex would be selling a leather-covered wooden scanner today, if they'd managed to survive.

[Sjixxxy]

[45PSS]

I parked a 1640su. Would it make a good graflex slr? There is even a transparency adaptor. I might make a good graflex slr scanner.



_________________
The best camera ever made is the one that YOU enjoy using and produces the image quality that satifies YOU.

[djon]

Epson is Seiko (Sekei Mamiya) is Mamiya (Sekei Mamiya again) is Copal.

And Mamiya continues to make excellent Graflok accessories, including the new 22MP replacements for 120 backs (that should be mountable on Graflex press cameras) and the new, compact 22MP "medium format" digicams.

[frohnec]

I wanted to buy a scanner to use with the Polaroid 72 prints. At Best Buy the Epson rep was showing off the 600. It is a $399 photo scanner. I had a polaroid and he scanned and printed.. The image was considerably less sharp and the print was greenish.
What scanner printers do justice to the 4 x 5 black and white prints?

[David A. Goldfarb]

Polaroid prints in general aren't sharp enough to stand up well to enlargement, and flatbed scans usually require some post-scan sharpening, which may be done by default in the scanner interface or may need to be done in your image editing program. If you want to scan from Polaroid, you'll do better to shoot type 55 and scan the neg. The Epson 4870 flatbed has been getting very good reviews and is in your price range, and it will handle 4x5" negs.

[djon]

Epson and other flatbed scanners in midprice range have been equal or superior to "dedicated" film scanners such as Nikon's for the past several years...go ahead and scan your Polaroids for whatever size prints you think will be fun.

If you want big prints from little Polaroids the way to go is "interpolate" , the way museums and graphic designers and photo professionals do, with Genuine Fractals or similar software...you lose no impression of sharpness that way, much better than the best copy negative .

Ansel made 6'X8' folding screens from Polaroid 52 negatives, whined all the way to the bank about it (I've seen them, they were miserable). If he was alive today he'd get better results with common flatbed scanners and digital printers than he ever did in the darkroom.