Building a Copy Stand to Scan Film for $100

Building a copy stand in order to scan film, utilising three easy to find items. A flange, a pipe and a piece of plywood. A cheap and sturdy DIY solution that can be assembled in a couple of minutes allowing to scan film at home with ease.

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SCANNING GEAR & TOOLS

[juku]

Thank you for making a nice 4 minute video and not a 16 minute art film !

[lawrenceivy]

Thank you for thinking- then sharing the concept and solutions. This is YouTube at its best😊

[andrefelixstudio]

Excellent presentation very inspiring to go out and build your own !

[brianssparetime]

Nice work - your stand looks a great. And thanks for the closeup on my reddit comment - glad to know it was useful!

[dave]

Well now, I'm impressed. Looks awesome and very clean. Now I have a weekend project...

[Owwliv]

Ebay is full of cheap tripod heads- maybe not the most fun to adjust, but, if you leave it on a stand like this, you'll only have to adjust it once!

[pushingfilm]

Great work Alexander, this will help many people. Beautifully made stand (and video!)

[arnonart]

i used to dslr scan with a tripod but eventually bought a stand. the film holder is partly my own creation. a combination of a film scanner film holder and a rail i built myself. i find the dslr scanning fast and accurate. however, i don't intend shooting films anymore. i have a ton of old negatives and slides that i shoot prior to the digital era that need to get digitized.

[DPImageCapturing]

Thats awesome ALEX!! I use my Manfrotto Tripod as it can go horizontal. I level the lens X & Y in a few seconds and get the correct height. I use my 5D III with a EF24-105 f4L with extension tubes so I can get really close. I have a new light table/box and I hand made my own film holder from card stock, sheet plastic, & felt. I made it to hold both 35mm and 120 medium format in 2 cutouts side by side. I also lettered it and made cleaves for either side as I shoot 1 format at a time. It works very well and keeps the film flat and level. Keep up the great ingenuity!

[bradleysmith]

I built almost the same copy stand about three years ago. 2 foot long 1.5" pipe and flange mounted to an old, thick wooden cutting board. Mounting clamp attached to pipe, then tripod head attached to mounting clamp. It was rock solid. As I was only going to photo scan B&W 4x5's, color temp and full spectrum weren't important, so I used a light box I built as the light source for reviewing slides and negatives over 30 years ago. It worked great. Disassembled the copy stand at completion but kept all parts in case I ever want to do more photo scanning. It all goes back together in about 5 minutes.

[MKB]

WOW..thank you so much for this video and additional details of items you used.

[satyarod]

Lovely video and dare I say a beautiful bespoke Copy Stand. 😊 You have given me some ideas!

[hankfoto]

I have a copy stand from my film days and film holders from an old scanner.So thanks for jaring my brain. Best to you and yours.

[NatalieArriola]

You are amazing!! Thank you so much for this! :)

[bwinston]

Such a great video, I've been frustrated with the cost of home scanning equipment and this is a very easy solution. I've just purchased everything I needed (Pipe + Flange, Manfrotto Super Clamp (+ 3/8" pin), Film Holder (+ 6x6 mask), Ball tripod head) for a total of £167 which is the cost of a prebuilt copy stand alone. I already have a light source and plywood which would have added another £40-50 however which is worth noting if anyone is planning to build this in 2024.
Thank you for sharing!

[michaeljenner]

I lucked out years ago; purchased a Kaiser copy stand from eBay, like new, for $125. It's been working fine for me with a standard little 4x5 daylight balanced lightbox. I use a piece of anti-Newton ring glass to hold the negs flat on the 4x5 plexi top of the lightbox. I tape the glass, about the size of a 120 negative strip, along the long edge to the top of the light source. I've made super sharp images from 35mm b&w and color negs as well as medium format negatives of various sizes. I used a Nikon Z7 with the 50 macro lens. Having a flip up screen with touch focus made it very easy. I used some black paper to cover the remaining area of the lightbox to avoid flare. It might be overkill for most people but I really liked getting 45mp digital images from all my old negs. I was able to digitize all of my negs in about 40 hours. I could shoot about 150-200 images in an hour or two each evening. I have a flatbed Canon scanner, and the quality of the scans for medium format were a little better using the Canon scanner. Between the ANR glass and a thin sheet of plastic diffusion plastic (like tracing paper) I think I was getting better tonal range. Canoscan software feels preferable to Epson 4990 software. I really liked your copystand with cutting sheet for alignment. I think it's every bit as good as the Kaiser stand. Thank you for this video.

[mosfear]

Thanks for posting. I went a similar route, although instead of a pipe and flange, I used a £2.50 black table leg from IKEA which I mounted from beneath the ply board (12" x 15") and protruding upward through a suitable diameter hole (40mm) for a clean surface appearance. I also covered the base with a neoprene mat to protect the surface I used the stand on.
To ensure the camera axis remained parallel to the table leg and was easy to reposition vertically to cater for different media, I employed a 30cm arca swiss rail secured to the table leg with a pipe clamp at each end and then used a back to back arca swiss clamp to attach the camera to the rail.
The other advantage of this approach was that the leg (optionally with fittings) can easily be unscrewed from the base for storage convenience. 
Total cost inc taxes and shipping £32.50 (crab claw clamp x2 £8.54, Bexin QR-50B double sided arca swiss clamp £14.44, PU-300 arca swiss 30cm rail £7 - all from AliExpress, except the off-cut of ply which I got from a friend for free and the £2.50 table leg from IKEA . lol)

[dmytrochaika]

I have an enlarger (Don-111, cost me an equiv. of $25). For scanning film I remove it’s head, which is quite easy, and place on it’s mount a crab clamp with a magic arm on. I find it more convenient than the simpler setup shown in a video, since I have a height adjustment knob which makes focus and framing adjustment simpler.

Also, quite critically, you need to either eliminate all lighting in the room, or, like I did, use something like a tube between the lens and the film holder - this eliminates stray reflections on the film that may spoil your scans.

[anetaracheva]

You gave me hope !!!! Fantastic IDEA 👌

[pickspics]

been looking for a cheap and effective set up to build, thanks!!