Sophia had a very good tournament, beating all of her opponents.

Sophia Pins Her Opponent

She took first place in her division for the first time.

Sophia and her First Place Medal

Lauren also had a very good tournament.

Lauren Throwing Her Opponent

Hunter had some great throws.

Hunter Throws His Opponent

Grant and John both fought hard.

Grant and John

Sophia, white belt, tried very hard to get her first win.  She scored two yukos.

And here she had her opponent pinned for about 15 seconds.  10 more and she would’ve won! But do you notice how her head is up?  That allowed her opponent to get her leg around Sophia’s head.  This lead to a reversal pin, which resulted in an ippon.  Sophia has really made great progress since her last tournament!

Lauren had a very good day, coming in first in her division with 5 wins and one loss.  This is from her first match.

Lauren won with a pin, which she doesn’t do very often.

Ellie Keenan, white belt, attempts a throw.

Mandy Race, blue belt, throws her opponent.

Cody and Kyle going at it.

Kyle Handy, blue belt, gets his grip.

Kyle wins!

Ellie with a nice throw.

Lauren goes for a throw.

Hannah, white gi, won the balance contest and threw her opponent.

Lauren had to beat Mandy twice to win her division.  The matches were very close!

Mitchell V., white belt, looks to throw.

Sophia and Lily Climbing the Hill

Sophia, Lauren and Lily

Incoming!

While we brought a sled, some other people brought a large cardboard box, which they let us use. It was very fast!

Sophia, Lauren and Janice

The Crab Walk

Lily, our Estrela Mountain Dog, enjoyed chasing the sled.  She’s 7.5 months old.

Lily at Full Tilt

We had to watch out for the snow trolls!

Troll!

Lauren (and Lily's Posterior)

Wipe Out!

Lily

Janice

Sophia, Janice, Lily

Sophia gave the jump a try.

Sophia Knievel 1

Sophia Knievel 2

Sophia Kneival 3 - We Have Lift-off!

Sophia Knievel 4 - Reaching Maximum Cruising Altitude

Sophia Knievel 5 - Re-entry

Right now, there’s a huge gap between scanners like the Epson v700/v750 and professional scanners, and even those of us with professional scanner know that their time is limited.  Mine, a Screen Cezanne, is about 10 years old, and service, if it’s available at all, is extremely expensive.

With an Epson desktop scanner, most of us think that they only allow about a 4x enlargement with very good quality, while pro flatbeds and drum scanners allow significantly greater enlargements, and the drum scanners do a much better job with high density materials, such as Fuji Velvia. We think that a modified copy stand style system with a dslr might be a viable option.

The idea is to build a structure that holds a dslr pointing straight down, similar to a copy stand.  Below the lens there would be a thick, and hopefully very flat, piece of water white glass.  A light source would be placed under the glass, and a film holder of the glass sandwich type would sit on top of the glass, which could be slid on top of the glass by a computerized x-y positioning system. The camera would be tethered to a computer with live view, and that’s how precise focus would be confirmed.

For quick scanning, the whole negative could “scanned” at once, using multiple exposures if needed for high density negatives.  For higher resolution, multiple pictures could be taken, with the x-y system moving the holder on the glass plate, and these exposures could hopefully be stitched together to produce a high-res file.

We’re hoping to make this affordable, say less than $2000 not counting the dslr, easy to build, easy to modify, e.g. different light sources, lenses…; and scalable, such that people with 8×10 or larger film could scan them.

I’ve done some fast tests with a light box, my PB-4 bellows, and an 80mm Rodagon with a fixed circular aperture of about f8.5.  Here’s the overall photograph, shot with a Toyo AX 4×5″ on Fuji Acros with a 120mm Super Angulon. (I know it’s not a very good photo.)

I scanned the film with a Screen Cezanne at 2400 spi.
The scanned file could produce a 30×40″ print at 300 dpi. (Actually the final shot is cropped in a bit, and so it’d be more like 26″ x 40″)

Using my very hodge-podge “scanning” setup, I got the following:

This would produce a picture 8.5×11″ at 300 dpi. On the negative the bible is about 5/8ths of an inch long.

Next is a crop of the adjusted Cezanne scan:

Here is a close up of hodge-podge scan:

And here is a closeup of the Cezanne scan:

Next is a dynamic range test. I hope that’s the right term. I was a liberal arts major:) I photographed a Stouffer 31 step step wedge on a Portatrace light box with a d200 and a 105mm Nikkor AF-D Micro lens. F-stop was f5. This is only meant to test how my equipment will see density with one exposure. The raw file was processed in Lightroom. All of the density/contrast settings were zero. I added what the eyedropper in Photoshop told me the LAB L channel values were and also visual density numbers from my x-rite densitometer.

Next is 3 exposures, 1 stop apart. I used Photomatix’s tone compressor to tone map the HDR file. Obviously, there’s a lot of room for adjustment, and you can always take more exposures.

The results seem encouraging.

One big question, and one I’m hoping you macro mavins can help with, is a choice of lens, hopefully not incredibly rare or more than, say, $1000.

Currently, I have a Micro Nikkor Auto P 55mm f3.5, various enlarging lenses, and a Nikkor 105mm Micro Nikkor 2.8D.  So far, I’ve only tried the Rodagon, as I’m going to build a better support structure before doing any more tests.

Apparently, we need about 17 microns of depth of field, assuming a perfectly flat emulsion, but obviously even with a class carrier and plates we’ll need a bit more.  For high quality scan, we’d probably use the system at 1:1  or so.  Going much higher would lead to an even crazier number of exposures that would need to be stitched, although I suppose some 35mm Tech Pan devotees might go up to 2:1.

In doing the tests, I learned that my PB-4 bellows doesn’t like to be vertical.  It works, but focusing is difficult.  A lead-screw positioning system would probably be a better idea.  I’m hoping that the 55mm Nikkor works out, as they are plentiful, inexpensive, and they go to 1:1 with their helical.  Microscope objectives have been suggested, as well as apo macro nikkor, ultra-micro-nikkors, Luminars….be these either seem to be very hard to find, super expensive, or best at much greater magnifications than we need.

Please let me know if you have any advice or suggestions.

Fierce!

Roar!

Sophia the Lion

Here’s Lily’s version:

Lily the Lion

Lily's First Time at the Beach

High Speed Ears

Lily vrs. Lake Michagan, Round 1

My mom and her dog, Murray, came along.

Lily, Murray, Lauren, Janice, Shirl and Sophia

Lauren and Janice

Lily’s father is Musgo, the 2011 Best in Breed winner at the World Championships in Paris.

Musgo

Her Mother is Suzette’s Otilia.

Otilia

Lily flew from Lisbon to Frankfurt, and then from Frankfurt to Chicago.  Here is a picture from when we picked her up at O’hare.

Lily and Janice at O'hare

Lily is doing very well.

Lily and Lauren at Hobb's Woods

Lily on Her Couch

Lauren's New Converse