Leveling
To ensure sharp scans, it's important that the camera and film are perfectly parallel to one another. If your film holder has adjustable leveling feet, like the VALOI Advancer, those can help get things aligned. Bubble levels that fit into the hot shoe of your digital camera and mirrors are great tools to help verify alignment before scanning. To use a leveling mirror...
Eliminating Excess Light
As much as possible, try to eliminate any sources of light in the room other than your scanning setup's light source. If you're scanning during the day, turn the room lights off, draw the curtains/blind, and use a lens hood, a Scanning Hood for the VALOI 360 system or Negative Supply system to cut down on stray light that could cause color casts on your image. Try to mask off any extraneous light from your scanning light source if it spills around the film holder.
Emulsion Side Up or Down
We generally recommend camera scanning your film with the emulsion side (dull side) facing towards the light source/ film base side (shiny side) facing towards the lens. However, if ambient room light cannot be eliminated completely, having the emulsion side face the lens can help to cut down on reflections that can cause color casts.
Avoiding Dust and Fingerprints
Because digital camera scanning lacks the Infrared-based dust removal technology found in some dedicated film scanners, it's important to reduce the amount of dust on your film as much as possible. A bulb-type blower can be a great tool for removing dust from the surface of your film. When using it, be sure to blow across the film on both sides. When handling film, it's advisable to use gloves to prevent fingerprints. Compared to the shiny film base side of the film, loading the film into the holder emulsion (matte) side up can help prevent unwanted reflections from any other light sources in the room. Fingerprints are also more visible on the film base side. However, scanning with the emulsion side up will require you to flip the images horizontally in software.
Camera Exposure Settings
RAW: Make sure you are shooting in RAW, which captures images with no additional processing. This is necessary for the software you'll be using to invert from negatives to positives.
ISO: You'll want to create digital images with as little noise as possible, so select your camera's base ISO. This can vary from model to model, but most cameras will have a base ISO of 100 or 200.
Aperture: Set your lens's aperture to F/8. This is typically where most macro lenses are the sharpest and exhibit the least vignetting.
Shutter Speed: Set the camera's shutter speed according to the camera's meter, or 1 stop over. Avoid auto-exposure modes like Aperture Priority, as that will cause greater variance from frame to frame, which can...
Focus: While autofocus is an option, it can fail at times, leading to out of focus images. Manual focus is therefore more consistent. When using manual focus, take advantage of focusing aids like "focus peaking," "magnification," etc. The goal is to make sure that the film grain is in focus.
Vibration/Shutter Release: You'll want to eliminate as much vibration as possible while the image is being captured. This can be done by using the camera's built-in self timer or by using a remote controlled/threaded cable shutter release if your camera supports one.
If you've scanned B+W negative or color negative film, you'll then want to invert the negative images into positive images using software. For help picking out which software option best suits your needs, check out this article.
For a full look at all of the digital camera scanning products we offer, visit the Scanning product collection of the CineStill online store here. If you have any questions, you can contact our Customer Support team at support@cinestillfilm.com.