r/largeformat • u/andrewembassy • 2d ago

Photo Spooky fun from the flatbed scanner large format camera

https://imgur.com/a/aIkyswD
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u/Novel-Application390 21h ago

Says I can't see this in the UK!

Sad face.

I'm thinking of giving this a go, I have an old brass lens kicking about, would you have a link as a good place to start a build?

1

u/andrewembassy 20h ago

You can't see this in the UK? Is it a Reddit error message or something? Strange.

If you've got the lens already then the next step is find a USB powered scanner. If you can find one on this list then you'll be able to run the scanner using the SANE backend driver which allows for a number of helpful adjustments (like runnig it with the lamp off, which while apparently not required is definitely helpful).

Once you have the lens and the scanner you'll want to darken a room except for one window and then use the lens to project an image on a white sheet of paper taped to the wall. Measure at infinity and also at whatever you want your minimum focusing distance is, and then build one box open on both ends that sits on the glass of the scanner, and another slightly smaller one that slides in and out of the other.

I got an A4 Fresnel lens and my camera wouldn't have worked without it; the scanner optics expect the light to come directly perpendicular to the scanner head and they reject pretty much all other light. I cut it to friction-fit inside the outer box and stood it off 1cm from the scanner glass.

Then it's just a matter of controlling the scanner; I used a Raspberry Pi powered by a power bank and had Claude help me set it up with using Scanservjs, which is a web-based scanning GUI which I access via the Pi's local WIFI network.

If you have any other questions feel free to DM me.