Copying 35mm Slides With The Nikon Z7; Part IV; Finalized Settings

Another early test.  From Promontory Summit, the place where the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in May, 1869.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't bring out any shadow detail from under the caboose.  In slide film, when its lost, its lost, unlike original digital files.  This is from a 1996 Kodachrome. (click to enlarge)

Recently, I purchased a Nikon Z7 camera body.  One of the main reasons I made the purchase was to copy a significant number of 35mm slides (and some negatives in several formats) from my archives.  Many of these slides are of family as well as landscapes, travel, railroads, old infrastructure, old bridges, barns and other miscellaneous subjects of which I am interested.  In the previous posts, I talked about setting goal, defining what testing needed to be conducted to achieve efficiency and maximum quality and the results of those tests.  You can read Part I here, Part II here and Part III here. 

As I have now finalized my setup, procedural testing and process, before getting into the assembly line of slide copying, here are the camera and lens settings on which I've settled.

Nikon Z7
Nikon 60mm f/2.8 G Micro Lens
Nikon ES-2 Film Digitizing Adapter
Camera Mounted on a sturdy tripod
Acculight Daylight balanced light box as my light source
ISO 64 (base)
Full FX file size (not a reduced file size)
RAW format
Aperture Priority
Aperture at f/11 (alternatively f/8, which proved equally sharp)
IBIS off
AF-S
Pinpoint Focusing Spot (uses CDAF)
2-second shutter delay
Single Frame Advance
Auto Shutter Setting (Electronic Front Curtain to 1/250th second)
Adobe RGB Color Space
4900 K white balance
Flat Picture Control with a -1 Saturation, others 0 (these are carried over into Lightroom)
All other settings turned off

As I mentioned in the last post I have made over a hundred tests using several different slides with differing subject characteristics using Kodachrome, Ektachrome and Velvia.  I have tried using the JPEG setting with all parameters turned all the way down (sharpening, contrast, saturation, clarity, etc.), all the way up and about several settings in between.  I have photographed slides in their correct orientation as well as emulsion side facing the camera.  I have tried the Flat, Auto and Landscape Picture Controls as well as change the camera profile to Adobe Color after import into Lightroom.  After all of these tests, I see subtle differences using the different settings.  Nothing major or anything that can't be changed during the editing process.  The bottom line is basically many of the settings are to your individual taste and preferences.

Now for a little eye opening assessment of the results.

It now has been reinforced to me what my thoughts were before I started this process that copying 35mm slides this way or in a scanner, can in no way match the sharpness, smoothness of tonality nor overall image quality that we find in even inexpensive digital cameras was dead on accurate.  I've really been spoiled by the extraordinary image quality of digital versus 35mm film.  Really spoiled.  There is a remarkable difference between an original digital file and a copy of a film slide using this method, unfortunately—at least when looking at a high quality monitor at 100%.  I think one would have to use drum scanning or make a large custom internegative to extract the absolute best quality out of 35mm slides as well as use software to reduce the film grain.  That would be unaffordable to most of us.  

Also, It appears that less than perfect technique when using film was normally not noticed when we visually examined our slides in the past as the lower resolution and sharpness of film compensated for lack of perfect technique.  However, when one is used to photographing with top quality digital gear, one gets used to extreme resolution and sharpness.  I'm not finding that with my experiments.  Thirty-five millimeter film is not nearly as good as digital imaging.  Not even close.

I have to resolve that none of the slides I will be copying will look close to the quality I get from my digital cameras, even copying them with a 45mp sensor and a top quality macro lens.  I have found my test slides to look grainy, and not nearly as sharp as digital files.  That is also considering I used top quality film cameras and lenses when I shot film.  I've found that 35mm film can simply not match a digital file from even a moderately priced digital camera with a kit lens.  That disappoints me but it is reality.  So, how do I improve the imperfect?

One way I've found to improve the slide copies quality, sharpness and have less grain from the film is to copy a slide at 45mp, edit the image with the exception of adding any sharpening or noise reduction, then send the file to Photoshop to down-sample the file to 24mp.  Upon return to Lightroom, add sharpening and appropriate noise reduction.  The file looks so much better than fully editing the 45mp file.  Reducing the file size also reduces and tightens the size of the film grain and reduces the size of edges which, to me, makes the slide copy appear sharper.  That extra procedure is something I would consider for select files and not all.  Again, I think printing these files is a different story as we know how digital files look on a monitor versus how they translate to enlargements.

Don't get me wrong.  The 45mp copies of 35mm slides are nice and will look good if printed or posted on the Internet, but when you are used to seeing digital image files from Fujifilm, Olympus or Nikon, they just don't compare favorably.  Now, with copies of my medium format negatives, that is a different story.  They do compare favorably to digital images.

An early Kodachrome test.  I tried bracketing to pull out detail from the burned out front of the house.  I was able to
pull out just a tiny bit of detail but it looked bad and really isn't worth the effort.  Nothing was gained
to improve the image by doing so. (click to enlarge)

The fix for the grainy shadows with the color anomalies is less exposure when copying the slide.  It seems when you try to expose to the right and bring up the shadows, it does ugly things to the shadow detail.  The detail is just lost in the original image and trying to bring it out just brings out trouble.  I think I'm better off exposing the slides so they look "best" on my LCD rather than try to eek out a bit of extra shadow detail.

As far as the the magenta/purple creeping into medium toned blue areas (sky, open shade shadows,  etc.) I seemed to have found a satisfactory fix.  I tried reducing the overall magenta and purple saturation in the image using the HSL panel in Lightroom.  That didn't work.  I tried using the sliders in the Lens Correction Panel in Lightroom to eliminate chromatic aberrations/purple fringing, thinking it might somehow be that.  No good.  What I found that seems to work is that I can adjust my Hue sliders for the blue and cyan channels to move them away from the magenta/purple hues and toward the cyan hues.  That seems to pretty much eliminate the problem so it is not noticeable.  

One other thing, I noticed in some other slides that blue jeans and blue garments had acquired a lot of magenta/purple in them as well so I'm thinking somewhere in my process, or something about the light I'm using or something about the slide emulsion is causing magenta/purple to be introduced into the blues in the digital copies.  I think I can easily make a preset to compensate for this as I work my way through the project.

In Part V, the final in this series, I'll show you my slide copying setup.

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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