digital slide copying

I've been using Pentax for over twenty years, and am starting to think of going digital with the *istD. Has anyone copied slides using slide copiers and a digital camera? I'd like to make some use of the thousands of Kodachromes that I have--not large format prints, but something pretty useable (e.g. website, submission, etc.). I've copied a lot of my slides onto Kodak copy film for submission, and was wondering if digital copies are useable.

I have lots more digital questions, but I'll stop here.

You will need a zoom slide copier because any non-full frame digital slr will crop the slide considerably.

Thanks. I have the standard Pentax bellows and slide copier. I was hoping to use my 50macro, but with the 1.5x of the digital, might think of using a 28. It's been a long time since I've used it, so I don't remember how effective the copier bellows is for cropping.

Anyone have any information on digital image quality from the copy process?

I'll tell you in a few days. A *ist D is currently winging its way towards me, and I've got a lot of slides to copy. I'll probably spend an hour or two every evening over the next year on it!

I copied slides for about a year using a light box and a point 'n shoot compact digital in macro mode. The quality was excellent, not very different to what I can now obtain with a decent slide scanner, but obviously at a lower resolution (1200x1600). I needed to add a supplementary lens to fill the frame with a 35mm slide, although it just about filled the frame with 6x6 trannies. One slight negative point; using a camera rather than a scanner proper may introduce slight barrel or pincushion distortion particularly if, like me, you were using a wide angle lens in effect (onj the digicam). It was only obvious however on buildings or the like.

I have used the Pentax Auto Bellows for some time to copy slides. I have never found a problem with cropping. There is an adjustment for moving the slide in one direction and by moving the slide in the holder you get movement in the other. If you want an enlargement of one corner you might run out of movement.
As to the lens, I wouldn't use a wide angle or if I had to I would use one of the earlier F3.5s for sharpness. What you are looking for is flatfield performance and for this I always found the 50/1.7 to be better than a the wider aperture 50s and as good as a macro. The bellows is going to give the extension which is the usual advantage of a macro. As there is a fair amount of movement in the slide copy attachment, you may get away with a 50, failing that a 35 should work. Alternatively, why not try the bellows with the slide on a light box. With your macro, you will be that bit further away which may make life easier. In any case you aren't going to waste any film!
Regards
Kim

Thanks all for the info. It sounds like the slide copying should work well. I have the 50macro, so things sound great--not having duped slides for some years, I wasn't sure if the bellows was adequate with the 1.5x digital change--sounds like it is. Now all I have to do is to buy the camera. It's promising that the new firmware will allow better use of the M lenses--I have a few. (And I'm looking forward to trying my 600 with the *istD! (and with the 1.4L converter?)).

Bad news for using a slide copier. As I should have realised, the zoom allows you to zoom IN and crop the slide; it doesn't allow you to zoom OUT and shoot a wider area, which is what you need to do with an Ist D.
If you can get a medium format slide copier, you may be in business. Otherwise, a bellows seems like the way to go.

Thanks George--were you using the one piece slide copier (as I remember them), or the macro bellows + slide copier bellows (as I have)? I have a 100 and 50 macro lenses (use the 50 for normal slide copying), but also have a 28/2.8 WA. I'm sure it's not as sharp as the 50, as the 50 is corrected for flat-field, but I might give it a try. I'd think that would give me a similar field fo view as the 50, and so a pretty full-field copy of the slide.

Could anyone supply the equipment (bellows, lens, etc.) that they've used successfully? Kim C--it sounds like you're using what I have, but with a recommendation for perhaps a 35.

Thanks.

The best solution is to use a scanner for slides such as a Nikon Coolscan or similar, but for a large quantity the process is pitifully slow.

For larger formats than 35mm slides I would try a good lightbox and use a camera to make copies, but all the lights in the room should be switched off and it would take a lot of care in the copying. Again, a very slow process if a large number of slides is involved.

Frankly, I'm leaving my slides as they are as an archive and scanning them as required. Life is too short...

Hank,
I am using the Ohnar one-piece slide copier. I think John R is right that whatever process you use is going to take a long time. Not only is it fiddly to set up, but the pictures do not come out well, unless you do a lot of tweaking.
However, I shall continue to experiment.
George

I have just copied about 100 35mm slides using a lightbox 90mm Tamron macro lens and a tripod mounted *istD. I set the white balance manually (by pointing the camera at the lit lightbox) and used the mirror lockup/self timer function.

It was much, much quicker than scanning each slide separately and my only complaint about the images is that they are not as sharp as I would have liked. I guess this is because it is difficult to get precise focus with macro photography? Some of the images required between 0.5 and 2.0 eV overexposure (looking at the histogram helped here) mainly because many slides were snow scenes.

I do have a one piece 35mm zoom slide copier but it was of no use because of the crop factor. I think the lightbox/macro lens method actually is better anyway.

I have used this technique also, but only for preparing pictures for powerpoint presentations, not for high quality prints. It works quite well but there is a loss of quality - probably because most lenses are not optimised for the very close distances involved. An enlarger lens on a bellows might be more successful.

I have several spotmatic bodies and 35.50.85 and 135mm screw in lens that can be used with an adapter on the 1stD with the pentax auto bellows and slide copier, but understand the auto stop function will not work and the lens must be set in manual mode. Has anyone used this combination and what results did you obtain? Thanks JCM

Your posts in this thread reminded me that I have (somewhere) an add-on slide copier which uses the existing lens. Can't find it right now but I will dig it out and see what happens on my *istD with the 18-35 lense. I have a Nikon Coolscan III as well which is why I forgot all about it! I used it on my MZ-5 with a 28-80 lense OK but a long time ago!