Glad it’s working for you, but part of this doesn’t make any sense to me. One of the big selling point of medium format is how much more resolution and detail you can capture than if you used 35mm. You are suggesting applying a 35mm system resolution at best being applied in a lossy manner.

I’m sure you can get well focused results in this way, it it sounds like you are throwing away most of your resolution. Am I missing something? Are you stitching I ages together? If so how are you managing positioning?

If I haven’t missed something: if you compared this to a digital back on a ’blad with otherwise the same image and blew them up I expect the difference would be blindingly obvious.

6x6 film captured much more detail than 35mm film. But modern digital cameras of "35mm frame" are way beyond this, that's why nobody uses them with lenses from last century. So it's not crazy to hope that using one as a scanner (which is ideal conditions) might not leave much detail behind, from negatives shot on an old Hasselblad.

> But modern digital cameras of "35mm frame" are way beyond this, that's why nobody uses them with lenses from last century.

I would be really interested in hearing more about this (noob in this area). Are you saying the old Nikon / Canon lenses from 90s are a bad choice for modern DSLRs from these companies, or did I completely misunderstand you? If so, why is that?

Newer digital sensors can resolve a higher 'resolution' than 35mm film.

Using an older lens with a camera sporting a 20+ MP sensor will give you less sharp results than a similar new lens. But the image will be no worse than that old lens shooting film. And the lens will be much cheaper!

If you (or others) like the results, the technical details do not matter.

Thank you!

Modern 35mm frame sensors still aren’t anywhere near the best MF film can do, though, unless things have changed radically in the last few years? I mean in spatial resolution, specifically. I must admit I haven’t paid attention for the last handful of years.

That is the case, and a bit of quick googling suggests to a greater degree than I expected (depending on film and optics I saw estimated ranges of MF being able to resolve the equivalent of 80 to as much as 150 megapixels! I guess it makes sense that modern medium-format digital backs are often in that kind of range).

If a digital SLR and a light table can get you enough resolution for what you want to use the images for though, that's fine. You could use that for most of your images and then get the ones you want to print really large professionally scanned later.

Even many phones can capture insane amounts of detail in ideal conditions.

The selling point of bigger sensors now is that they don't need ideal conditions.

For stitching I recommend Hugin. If you resolve grain, it should have no trouble aligning, and you can easily script it.

I stitch multiple shots for formats larger than 35mm.

Ok, that makes sense then. Thanks!

I recently made a 60"x48" print from a 4x5 negative scanned with a Epson V700 scanner. You're simply not going to get that kind of resolution with a DSLR. I don't doubt you get good results with your setup, but your statement that "the results are better than any flatbed scanner" is nonsense.

For film negatives this scanner will get about 2300 dpi according to [0]. A DSLR with 24 megapixel will get the ~4000 dpi form a 35mm negative in a fraction of the time.

A 4x5" negative takes 33 minutes to scan with 2400 dpi. In this time I can make several photos and stitch them together do some spot removal and will get a better quality.

[0] https://www.filmscanner.info/EpsonPerfectionV700Photo.html

The DSLR+adapter solution does sound more convincing to me, with the right lens, right sensor and settings. Correcting distortions should be a tractable.

One problem with many flatbed scanners (not all of them and not the film scanners) is that they illuminate the film/object from the same side as the sensor, so the light has to travel and bounce more, creating more chances of stray light.

I will counter that my statement is non-nonsense: I stitch multiple "full frame" shots for formats larger than 35mm.

I use Negative Lab Pro and a Nikon ES-2. The time saving is immense.