Digitizing film requires an entire ecosystem

Posted on February 1, 2026 by Brian Lawler

This is the fourth in a series about how I am digitizing film from my past, and making it part of my digital archive. The start at the beginning, please click here.

I knew that once I started digitizing my film I would run into several challenges:

• Storage
• Indexing
• Searching
• Consolidating

After setting up my system for digitizing film, including making the stand, buying the macro lens (I’ve bought another that is on the way!), and then purchasing the necessary film transport mechanisms to hold various sizes of film, I had to solve the dust problem (dust never sleeps!).

This is my complete digitizing set-up: stand, camera, lens, light source, film transport, iPad for previewing, and the associated software – NegativeLab Pro for converting negatives into positives, and an app on my iPad that allows me to see a live view on that device.

I purchased a static-eliminating brush – which works OK, and film cleaner and special lint-free pads – that work quite well. So now my “scans” of film are usually free of dust, though it still remains a problem.

In this post I am going to refer to the process of re-photographing or digitizing film as “scanning.” I am also going to refer to the process as “digitizing.” Scanning is not the correct term for the process, but please bear with me.

I scanned two of my long rolls of 35mm negative film, and converted the resulting images – about 340 total – using Negative Lab Pro software – which works really well – and then for fun, I created a time-lapse movie from the resulting still photos – which didn’t work very well at all. The problem there is that the individual frames were made at 19-minute intervals, and the lighting in the hangar changed dramatically depending on the position of work lights, sunlight incursion, and occasionally the hangar door being opened.

I decided to put the long-roll time-lapse work on a back burner and concentrate on digitizing my still photos, starting with whatever box I find next in my garage.

I needed a method for storing the actual film after digitizing. I looked around at B&H and other suppliers and discovered that storing film in “archival” containers is stunningly expensive. I apologize to archivists when I say this, but that’s too expensive for me!

Instead, I have chosen to put strips of film, after scanning into regular paper envelopes. Regular – white – paper is bleached in manufacture, and acids that might damage film are removed in the process. I see the risk of acid incursion on negatives and transparencies to be very small, and I am willing to risk it. For the storage of 35mm mounted slides, I am going to use corrugated boxes that fit about 200 slides per carton. Kraft paper, from which corrugated boxes are made, is definitely not archival. But, the slides are protected from direct contact with the corrugated material by their paper or plastic mounts, and that’s OK with me.

This is the Adobe InDesign document to print the serial-numbered #10 envelopes for putting the film after it is digitized.

I had my students at Cal Poly print 500 plain white envelopes for film storage. I put information on the front of those envelopes, and put serial numbers on each envelope using the variable-data functions in Adobe InDesign. Those numbers form the storage key to my archive, and will provide an index number that gets entered into my…

Database – I wanted to renew my subscription to FileMaker Pro, but decided that it’s too sophisticated and way too expensive for this project. It also requires an on-going monthly payment, and I am not willing to commit myself and my descendants to that. So, instead, I bought a Mac database called iDatabase for $40.00. It is good; it gets reasonable ratings. And, after using it for two days, I can attest to its ease of use, simple design procedures, and basic functionality. iDatabase allows me to copy the information on the front of my storage envelopes, and then enter all the information that I have about the photos into the database, which I can later search and find a photo by its description, date, or content, as long as I enter that information into the database.

This is my custom iDatabase form for these envelopes. All of the information from the face of each envelope is entered here, and is thus searchable. I added a checkbox to indicate when the contents of an envelope have been stored in a corrugated carton.

After scanning a few hundred mounted 35mm slides, I decided to enter the information on the face of one of the numbered envelopes, but then put a sticker on the envelope indicating that the actual slides are stored in a corrugated carton with the same number on the front of the box. When the database refers a user to a specific envelope, that envelope will direct that person to get the slides from a carton with the same number. It should work, and will take up much less space than the many hundreds of binders I have with clear plastic slide holders in them.

These are the Corrugated cartons I bought to hold mounted 35mm slides. Each one can hold about 150 slides. The stickers indicate that they contain slides, and the Envelope number, that refers back to the archiving envelopes. The same data from the envelopes is entered into the database.

So, the system is in place. I have the process working, and I am now entering information on Envelope 0004. I have scanned 35mm color negative film, color transparencies and mounted color transparencies (slides). I have entered information into the database and tested it for searching. It seems to work perfectly well. Long-term use will tell, of course.

I bought a pack of small stickers on which I printed “SLIDES” to put on the face of envelopes whose contents are in the storage cartons.

Now I will begin in earnest to scan images from film, store the film strips in serial-numbered envelopes, enter the information about them into the database, and then put the material into banker’s boxes in my garage. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a system, and I think it will work pretty well. If it needs adjustment, I can change my process without much trouble.

By doing this, not only will I have very high quality digital reproductions of my film, but I will have reduced overall storage volume by consolidation, and will have a searchable database of the images in storage. With these elements in place, I should be able to save space, save time, and save the images as digital images of what was only available as film before. Film that I could never find. I am confident that it will give me access to tens of thousands of photos I took between 1967, when I became a serious photographer, and today.

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Making digital images on the camera stand

Posted on January 25, 2026 by Brian Lawler

This is the third in a series of posts about digitizing film. To start at the beginning, please click here.

My camera stand project is now set up and running. I am using my Canon R5 camera and my Laowa 100mm Macro x2 lens for making the photos, and I have outfitted my workspace with a host of Negative Supply devices that hold and feed 35mm and 120 film.

This is my digitizing system. At the back is my camera stand, the subject of two of my previous posts (you can read about it here and here). The camera is a Canon R5. The lens is a 100mm Laowa 2X macro lens. On the table are two devices from Negative Supply: a light source and the 35mm film transport. At the lower-right is my Canon remote shutter button.

The quality is extraordinary. After cropping, I have images 90 MB in size, which translates to a printable image of about 16 x 22 inches at 300 ppi. Not bad for a scan of 35mm film! (At some point after about 20 MB, more resolution is akin to gilding a digital lily.)

My biggest problems so far have been dust and crud on the film. I have “fixed” the dust problem with an anti-static brush, and I purchased some film cleaning solution and lint-free pads from Climax Photo. These are helpful, but they do not solve the problem completely.

This is my Negative Supply light source, which the maker claims has a 97% CRI. Atop the light source is the 35mm film transport from the same company. It is well made and it holds film very flat when digitizing it.

Overall, I’m very happy with my camera mount. It is stable, reasonably solid and has almost no mechanical vibration. I’m using a wired remote trigger to take the photos, as touching the camera in any way will cause the camera (and the mount) to move, and it doesn’t have to move much to ruin an image. I focus, then I take my hands off the camera, take a breath, then push the remote button to make an exposure.

I have numerous long rolls of Kodak negative film, each one about 18 feet in length. These contain 250 photos per roll. I’m feeding them through the Negative Supply 35mm Mark II transport (above), which works flawlessly (unless you put a strip of 4 or fewer frames into it, which makes it necessary to fish the film out with a toothpick). I’m sure that there is another product from Negative Supply that will handle those short strips better.

The camera’s squareness is effectively perfect. I have carefully adjusted the camera’s position using a front-surface mirror to accomplish that task.

Exposure is easy: I did a custom white balance on the Negative Supply light source; I set the ISO at 100, the aperture at 8.0, and let the shutter speed land wherever it wants for “correct” exposure.

This is one frame from one of my two time-lapse movies of the making of the Global Flyer,
a carbon-fiber airplane made at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California. This plane would eventually carry its pilot, Steve Fossett, around the world to set the longest flight world record. The plane now hangs in the Udvar-Hazy collection of the Smithsonian National
Air and Space Museum near Dulles airport.
I have over 900 feet of 35mm film from this project to digitize!

I purchased the full-frame mask from Negative Supply, which allows me to photograph the sprocket holes and the film identification along the edges with each image. Negative Lab Pro software allows me to evaluate images and simultaneously ignore the sprocket holes and film rebate (you can see the sprocket holes in the image above).

I purchased two film reel winders from Climax Photo. These are the small ones that allow me to load a 3.5-inch plastic reel of film, and then turn the cranks to take-up the film after exposure. This is better than having 18 feet of film lying on top of my work table, making it possible to scratch, and to catch as much dust as possible while it’s exposed. I mounted those winders to blocks of plywood to give them mass. These are also removable, so I can put them away when I am not feeding these long rolls of 35mm film.

I installed Negative Lab Pro, and got it running as a plug-in with Lightroom Classic. I’m not a habitual Lightroom user, but I will be developing that habit in the coming weeks as I get further embedded in the process of converting my many thousands of film negatives and positives into digital images. My initial impression of Negative Lab Pro is that it is an excellent solution to converting color negatives into color positives.

One thing my camera stand does not have is a measurement index so that the camera mount can be returned to the same vertical position time and time again. I have a couple of stainless steel rulers at my desk, and have been using one of these to measure and set the position of the horizontal arm holding the camera.

Version two of my camera mount will have a metric scale built-in. That scale will make it easier to get the camera to the same position each time I need to photograph the same size of film. And, for my many thousands of color negatives from the Global Flyer project, returning to the same vertical location is critical. When making time-lapse movies, any change in camera position, exposure or focal length – even a microscopic change – is visible in the final movie.

I purchased a 35 mm slide holder from Negative Supply, and I photographed a box of slides with it. The results are excellent. One of the recent additions to Negative Lab Pro is that it now converts positive images – slides – into usable digital files. I haven’t tried that yet.

My next problem is that my Laowa 100mm lens is too long. It is a stunningly sharp lens, and it works perfectly for 35mm film photography. But, it (and my camera stand) cannot support the camera far enough away from the subject to photograph 120 film (6×6 cm.). This week I ordered a 60mm 2X macro lens from a Chinese manufacturer called 7Artisans. When that arrives, I will be able to photograph 120 film on the existing camera stand. Version 2 will be taller, and that will make it even easier. I want to photograph 4×5 inch film eventually, as I have quite a bit of that size film that needs to be digitized.

The process has been interesting and fun. I’m enjoying digitizing my film images, and also reliving the times in which those images were made. It’s emotionally satisfying and technologically challenging, a good formula for success.

Posted in Adventures, Color Management, Digital video, Gadgets, Photography, Scanning, Software | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

76 yards…what do you get?

Posted on January 21, 2026 by Brian Lawler

Yesterday at sunrise a huge concrete pumping truck showed up at my shop construction site. It was about 6:30 in the morning. I had set up my time-lapse camera on a tripod overlooking the site, and the shutter was activated every five seconds.

This is the construction site of my new shop. The form had been built in recent days, and it was ready for cement. The huge pumping machine on the left made short work of the contents of eight cement mixer trucks.

I put my battery base on the camera (a Canon R5 Mark II) because it holds two batteries. I have never used the R5 for time-lapse before, so I was unsure how many photos it would take before the batteries died.

Eight workers showed up at about the same time. They were fitting their cement boots and taping the boot-tops around their blue jeans to keep the material out.

The pump truck moved once to position itself better for the “pour.”

I asked the team leader when we could expect the first cement mixer truck to arrive. Seven! he said, and then added, “concrete waits for no man!”

At 6:58 a.m. the first of eight mixer trucks rolled up the road to the shop, made a three-point turn, and backed up to the pump. Four minutes later, that mixer was dispensing cement into the hopper of the pump, and the eight workers started their dance with the outflow of that machine – a long rubber hose that dispenses wet cement at an amazing rate.

This is the crane part of the concrete pumping machine. It can reach about 100 feet from the source of the material. I spent the morning dazzled by the weight of that material, and the ability of the machine to do its job so easily without falling over.

What transpired next was a fleet of trucks arriving on ten minute intervals, sometimes one, sometimes two at a time, unloading into the pumper, and dispensing their supply of cement.

After seven truckloads, and 66.5 cubic yards of material had been poured into the form, they ran out. I was told that this was normal. The contractor calculated for, and ordered seven truckloads, then had the men on the site do another calculation for how much more they needed to finish.

They did the math to determine that one more truckload – 9.5 yards – was needed. The cement company is reasonably close, only about 8 miles from the site. They mix on-demand, so they mixed up another nine yards and dispatched the last truck to the site. It took about 30 minutes. While waiting, the concrete workers were using wooden and metal screeds to smooth the material, and smaller hand trowels to smooth around pipes and bolts. Others were loosening vertical wooden braces and removing them. I asked the pump operator if he ever gets nervous. He said he does, but this was a cool day, and the risk to the already-poured cement was small.

As the men approached the final corner of the form, the supply ran low and the pump started spitting rather than pouring its contents into the pad. I asked the contractor what happens if we run just a little short. He told me that they order as much as needed and the company dispatches another truck to deliver it. But, surprisingly, the men didn’t run out. In fact, there were about two cubic feet of unused cement left over when they reached the corner of the form. I was amazed.

These are the talented workers who converted 76 cubic yards of cement into a perfectly level concrete pad for my new building. They exhibited extraordinary professionalism and real teamwork in doing the job (and they shared their lunch with me!).

For the time-lapse, I used my Canon, and a radio-controlled remote trigger that can be operated from a distance. I set that trigger to take an infinite number of photos at 5-second intervals, and I walked away. I had about 512 GB of storage available, so there was no risk of filling the cards.

I have considerable experience with time-lapse movies, but I had never made one that started in darkness and continued into right sunlight (except my 365-day time-study project at Cal Poly, but that’s another story). I set the camera to shoot and store in JPEG large format (I usually shoot Raw, but that would be ridiculous for this application). I cleared both memory cards. Then I set the ISO to “auto” and the exposure to “aperture priority” and I let it run.

In the first shots, which began just before sunrise, the exposures were 3 seconds, the ISO at 12500, and the aperture at the fixed f5.6. As the sun came up, the exposures changed automatically to lower ISO, and faster shutter speeds.

After about four hours, the camera batteries died, and the camera stopped taking photos. That was OK, because the work was mostly complete by then, and the only thing still happening in the scene was the hand troweling. I took 2,828 total photos.

Last night I copied all those images to my Mac Studio, renamed them in Adobe Bridge, and then created a movie in DaVinci Resolve. The only settings change I had to make was the minimum frame value for imported still photos. I changed that to 1, then restarted Resolve and loaded all 2,828 images into a timeline to make the movie. The result is here.

I added titles and then exported the movie to .mov format and uploaded it to YouTube.

I hope you enjoy the show!

To watch the time-lapse video, click here

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It took 20 years to get all that in there…
and just a few days to get it all out for storage.

Posted on January 12, 2026 by Brian Lawler

14 months ago I announced with pride that I had received a building permit for a new shop to be built on my friends’ property here in San Luis Obispo County. It had taken about two years to get that permit, and a with a eye-watering payment for the permit, I had it in-hand.

And then it was rescinded. And I had to re-apply. That had something to do with the Scenic Highways and Railways Act, a local ordinance that prevents people like me from building buildings like this in sight of scenic roads and railroads in our area. I spent a few days with my camera, walking the roads and the rails nearby, taking photos in the direction of my wanna-be building. Fortunately there was a large copse of trees between me and the proposed site, so eventually the County said, “OK.”

That was in September, 2024.

By the end of October I had the permit. Then we entered rainy season, so we waited for a break, then staked the site in February, 2025. The tractors were lined-up and ready to begin grading when the landowner (and my dear friends) had second thoughts about the location. So we stopped.

This is me in my shop, a photo taken in 2023. In the left-rear is the Avid CNC machine, and I’m standing in front of my beloved Powermatic 14-inch tablesaw. This week we moved everything out and into a storage container. In a few months I’ll move all of it again to the new building being built now.

In April, 2025 I returned to the County and applied for a revised permit, this one showing the building 200 feet north of the original spot. Approval of that minor change cost only $140, and took only five months to get. For three of those months it was lost in a County official’s junk mail folder.

In September I contacted my contractor to tell him to move forward with the project at the new spot. He didn’t call back. I texted; I wrote e-mails; I went to his office. He was gone. So, I hired a newer, better contractor, and started over.

We broke ground on December 5, 2025, with 150 cubic yards of non-expansive soil being delivered to the site, along with a couple of massive earth-movers.

This isn’t a very big job. The finished shop building will be 40 x 40 feet. The grading expert dug a hole that looked like a swimming pool, then he pushed the non-expansive soil into the hole, then drove a sheep’s-foot (a 13,00 pound waffle-shaped roller) back and forth until the soil was compacted to 104 lbs. per cubic foot. A soils engineer stood-by with a clever nuclear instrument to measure the compaction until it was done.

Then it rained. And rained and rained.

So, here we are in January, 2026, and the building site is now being excavated for underground dust collection, electricity and compressed air. Pipes of three sizes are now under the surface, and the special soil has been replaced over them.

Here you can see the electrical conduits running underground. These were covered in about an hour after I took this photo. In the coming days there might be concrete poured here.

Today, the concrete engineer is digging the footings for the steel building. It’s exciting!

So, just 27 months later (plus the two years the building parts sat waiting for the first permit), we’re in the midst of some real construction!

This is the same shop, from about the same angle as the one at the top of this post. It took me 20 years to build and populate the shop. Now this room is (nearly) empty. All of it is stored in a 40-foot container at the new shop site.

Concrete may be poured soon (maybe next week?) and soon the pad will be ready for the erection of my building. That will be quite fast, with the builders spending just days to change a huge pile of steel (11,000 lbs.) into a finished structure. I’ll post more on this later.

A couple of weeks ago I rented a 40-foot container and had it delivered to the new site. It will house my tools and shop supplies until the new building is ready (several months). And, last Friday my friend Tim and I started moving the existing shop to the container.

I hired a couple of young (strong) men to help, and with a pallet jack, a rental truck and three days of work, we moved all the machines out and put them into the container. Sounds easy, but it was exhausting.

With just lumber left to sort and transfer (and discard!), the move is almost complete.

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500,608 Readers!

Posted on November 20, 2025 by Brian Lawler

My Blognosticator reader-odometer passed 500,000 today; that’s something to be proud of.

Fourteen years ago I began writing The Blognosticator. Since then I have written and illustrated 354 posts, received 680 legitimate comments, and have enjoyed not having to delete 883,255 spam comments. Those were rejected by the Akismet software I have running to protect my blog site (thank you Akismet!).

That is 0.07 percent legitimate comments! (And, it’s 99.93 percent spam.)

Akismet has also killed 183,668 malicious attacks on my site, again saving me from lots of trouble, I am sure. That lowers the ratio to 0.006 percent legitimate. That’s a lot of spam!

On my best day, April 30, 2012, I hosted 856 readers. On a typical day I have 97.84 readers. I am happy to have those sincere readers every day. If you are that 0.84 reader, I expect your full participation soon!

I have never made a dime on this blog site. No sponsors (I tried). No advertisers (I didn’t try). My wife seldom reads these posts. I have no friends who read these posts (I have no friends)..

But I believe that I have contributed to the graphic arts and photography industries by writing my missives. I have answered a few questions for people experiencing some of the same problems I have encountered, and I have learned a tremendous amount about a large number of things.

I hope I have steered a few people away from disaster, and I am sure that I have steered a few people toward products and services that I feel are valuable.

I have tried not to whine. I occasionally gripe about a lousy product, but I am sincere in my opinion of that product or service, and I am not doing it to spite anyone. I think I am being helpful.

I don’t use inappropriate language in my blog posts (I reserve that for the thousands of times I misspell a word or click the wrong button on my screen). The Blognosticator is a family-friendly site, though admittedly it’s for a family of folks who are interested in some pretty esoteric topics.

When I published (actually re-published) the matrix catalogs of the Linotype and Intertype companies, I did a service to the industry. My pal Bill Berkuta suggested that all twelve people alive who care about these catalogs are grateful for my efforts. Fortunately he is one of them. I really hope there are eleven more out there!

I have discovered a small but lively community of people who own and operate 100-year-old Smyth book sewing machines. Lovely crowd! I am thrilled to have been helpful to those people too (there are more than 12 of them!). Among the most appreciative of those people are my students at Cal Poly who have actually used the book sewing machine to produce case-bound books. That has been fun.

I have discovered and analyzed the output of the Landa production ink-jet presses, which I consider the most important printing technology in the industry today. For that work I have assembled a following much greater than 12, but still shy of a few hundred. Again, I am working to educate, to share my excitement, and to help people to enjoy the fruits of my studies.

The driving force behind my work here is to share what I have learned, and to help people get their work done more effectively. If I have helped you, that’s all I want. Thank you for reading The Blognosticator.

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More on the camera stand project

Posted on November 18, 2025 by Brian Lawler

In yesterday’s post I described how I built a camera stand to re-photograph (“digitize”) my film.

In order to be more helpful, I thought I would share here my working drawings and my engineering drawings so that others might make a similar camera stand. It requires precision, but anyone with metal-working skills and basic tools should be able to make a similar device. A CNC machine or milling machine would be helpful, but you could do this with a bandsaw, a drill press and a set of mill files.

Here are my Illustrator sketches of the camera stand as I conceived it. The vertical post and the horizontal arm are both aluminum extrusions from 80/20, the company that has revolutionized extruded aluminum beams and connectors for makers.

My idea was simple: Hold my camera vertically, with good precision, so that I can copy analog film to digital files. This requires nothing more than making a stand, purchasing a light source, making or purchaing a film transport mechanism for 35mm film, and making or purchasing masks for my 120 and 70mm films. And a lot of work.

The digitization step is a desktop operation. It requires a comfortable workspace (because I’m going to be spending a lot of time doing this!), and freedom from extraneous light. I suspect that I will do this at night to remove ambient light from the equation. To use this set-up in daylight would require masking the image to prevent extraneous light from entering the lens and causing flare.

These drawings describe the detailed workings of the moving camera bracket as I intended to make it. On the right I put an accurate silhouette of the 80/20 aluminum bars where they would connect to the moving bracket. The gear rack runs vertically in the post, which I had to machine to fit the rack, which is made of steel.

I have been researching light sources on YouTube “University” (my favorite educational go-to location), and I ordered a light source from B&H Photo that is made by made by Negative Supply. It was moderately expensive ($200), but it is large enough for 4×5 inch film, and with a 97 CRI (Color Rendering Index), it is good enough for anything that I will be re-photographing. The same company makes one with a 99 CRI, but it is much more expensive, and I am not convinced that it’s worth the additional expense. We’ll see.

For my camera, I will be using a Canon R5 Mark II. Its 45 MP sensor will yield extraordinarily high-resolution images from these pieces of film – more resolution than necessary, but that’s OK with me. My lens is a Laowa 100mm 2X macro. I bought this a few months back for this purpose, and I am quite impressed so far. It’s very sharp, and it goes beyond the 1:1 ratio for re-photographing 35mm frames. Canon’s 100mm lens goes to 1.4:1, and that would work well also.

These are my engineering drawings. They were used to make the machining drawings for the CNC machine. I made these drawings in Adobe Illustrator, using its relatively new Dimensioning tool, which is quite nice. I updated the drawings after machining to reflect changes I made to the parts when I machined them and assembled the bracket.
There is a link at the bottom of this page for a PDF version of the updated plans.
(Click to enlarge the illustration)

I will be recording all of my images as Camera Raw, then converting to DNG on the fly as I import them into my Mac (using Adobe’s Photo Downloader software, about which I have mixed feelings). I want every file in my digital archive to be either DNG as source, or TIFF as destination. I have come to the conclusion that these are the only file types that might be “archival” in the long run. Adobe PSD is fine, but not open-source, and there is no guarantee that Adobe will be in business in 75 years, or that PSD files will be legible in the future with any software. TIFF is the file format chosen by FADGI, the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative. The Library of Congress and the National Archive are both adherents to this standard.

Also, the the international museum photography group has endorsed FADGI. If they believe in it, I do too!

So those are my standards. I also have to come up with a post-photography system of storage, labeling and indexing. My collection is currently a mish-mash of film in boxes, slide carriers, slide trays, paper envelopes, and floating loose in my file cabinets somewhere. I want to re-photograph, then store in a coherent system so that my heir (sorry, Patrick) can find a photo if he needs it.

Camera stands are nothing new. They are exceedingly simple. Mine is no different, except that I wanted to make it myself.

I share the plans here in case you might want to make a similar stand. All of the parts are available on Amazon. They are all metric. All of my measurements on the plans are in inches (sorry, world). It’s easy to convert:

1 inch = 25.4 mm
1 mm = 0.03937 inch

All of my holes are drilled to metric sizes, and all of my tapped holes were made with metric taps. I added 6mm bearings and collars to the control knob shaft, and I added 6mm threads to the friction knob.

In the edges of all four box parts are tiny little setscrews called “grub screws.” These are an integral part of the design. These are made of steel with tiny nylon tips on one end. They are adjusted to slide gently against the vertical beam, providing a small amount of friction. They also allow for very small adjustments to squareness of the moving bracket. They are adjusted with a tiny hex wrench.

If I build this again I will make two significant changes: I will use 50mm 80/20 extruded aluminum for the vertical post, and I will use 5mm grub screws instead of 3mm. That will give me more control over these friction points, and more accuracy in the alignment of the moving bracket.

The aluminum plate I used for my parts is supposed to be 0.25 inch. I measured mine (Amazon) and discovered that it is close to 0.25 inch thickness. This did not require me to change my design, as the grub screws afford enough adjustment to take out the tiny difference (less than 0.25mm) between the actual thickness of the aluminum and my planned thickness. I did have to adjust the position of the holes I drilled in the edges of the two side plates to compensate for this, but that was a microscopic change, made on the CNC machine.

I used all metric capscrews for assembly, except on the 45-degree 80/20 beam, where I had to use flat-head metric machine screws to clear the rack gear running through the middle of the block.

You can download a PDF of my engineering drawings here.

Posted in Art, Color Management, Gadgets, Photography, Photoshop techniques, Printing and Printing Processes, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Building a camera stand on the CNC machine

Posted on November 17, 2025 by Brian Lawler

I have thousands – tens of thousands – of photos on film. These include 35mm negatives and slides, 120 film from my two Hasselblad cameras, and a boat load (a small boat) of 70mm sprocketed Ektachrome film. The 70mm era was when I was editor of Ballooning Magazine (1979-1984). During that era I was shooting with the Hasselblads (one was a 500 CM, the other was a 500 ELM) because many of my photos ended up in print, and I wanted the larger film to provide more room for enlargement and cropping.

The 70mm film made it possible for me to shoot more than 70 frames on a roll, in a special film magazine on the Hasselblads. This magazine was developed in the late ’60s by Hasselblad for NASA. The silver version of the back was the consumer model of the back they took to the moon several times.

This is the 70mm film magazine for a Hasselblad 500 series camera. My film cartridges held about 70 frames of Kodak Ektachrome 64 transparency film.

I “rolled my own” as was often said in the ’60s, using a light-tight film-rolling machine that would take a 100-foot spool of fresh Ektachrome 70mm film, and then spool it down to smaller steel cartridges to put in the camera. At my graphic arts business we had an Ektachrome film processor, and I had a special reel for holding the long rolls of 70mm film for processing.

For those not familiar, a normal roll of film for the standard Hasselblad back allowed for 12 frames, max (there were other film backs with different formats). That meant changing film magazines constantly, which was a pain – even in the studio. On the surface of the moon, or on the balloon launch field, things happened too quickly for 12-frame magazines. I loved being able to shoot 70 frames without interruption.

Now, these many years later, the 70mm film creates a challenge for me. I am planning to digitize the entire archive, and to do so I am going to have to make my own masks and some equipment for re-photography. But, this also gave me an excuse to build my own copy stand. Though the image size is identical (51 mm x 51mm), the film itself is considerably wider than 120 film, and thus does not fit any standard scanning masks.

As for the stand itself, I certainly could have bought one, and I almost did, but I decided to make it myself, using my CNC machine, and some aluminum plate. And, I told myself that it would cost less, which of course was a bald-faced lie because it took me several weeks just to make the engineering drawings. Buying the raw materials has been fun, and it has enriched Jeff Bezos.

Over the years I have learned a thing or two about cutting aluminum on my CNC machine. The cutters are expensive, but they work beautifully. That is until you make a dumb mistake and tell the machine to break a $72 end mill in half in two seconds. Ouch!

This is a single-flute aluminum cutting end mill. This one, made by Vortex, has a 0.108 inch diameter, and works very nicely for projects like mine. When they break, it’s a small tragedy.

Fortunately, I had two of that particular tool, so I cursed my stupidity and mounted number two (then I ordered two new ones for future stupidities).

Then I cut the aluminum parts, and began to build my dream copy stand.

I started with a section of extruded aluminum from 80-20, the clever company that pushes hot aluminum through macaroni dies to make pieces for fabricators worldwide. At the same time I ordered two smaller pieces to mount the camera – by attaching a camera bracket made by Really Right Stuff, the wonderful people who make the best tripods in the world (not sponsored).

I ordered the rack-and-pinion gears from Amazon, along with two knobs, a stack of bearings, 6mm brass rod, and various other small parts to put the whole thing together.

I machined a channel along one edge of the 80-20 vertical beam to accommodate my gear rack. This involved machining one of the grooves on the vertical beam wider to fit the steel gear rack (I don’t cut steel on my CNC machine). Then I drilled through the 80-20 vertical to drive screws through and into the steel gear rack to hold it in position.

When I ordered the 80-20 pieces, I had the ends threaded for 1/4-20 US machine screws. These will be used to attach the vertical to a small table, and the attach the Really Right Stuff camera bracket to the end of the support arm. The custom-cut parts from 80-20 are always precisely made, and perfectly cut. The table and most of the working parts of my CNC machine also were made by 80-20 (also not sponsored).

Most of my milling operations in aluminum are done with what is called a single-flute mill. This means that there is only one cutting wing at the business end of the cutter. When working in aluminum this is important to prevent hot aluminum chips from melting into the cutting surfaces of the end mills. My chips are varied, but very small, and always clean. That means that they are cut and thrown away from the material (I also use compressed air to blow the chips away).

I always make two outline cuts in my aluminum parts, meaning that I make a rough cut about 0.003 inch away from the final dimension. Then, when that is complete, I make a trimming pass to the final dimension. This usually results in a near-mirror finish.

These are my aluminum parts after machining. The two bearing brackets (top) have the bearings in-place, and the front plate has the 80-20 aluminum extrusion standing where it will eventually be attached.

When machining anything on the CNC, the most important part of the job is how you hold on to the material. I recently rebuilt my machine to use devices called bench dogs. I drilled large holes on six-inch centers all over the spoilboard, into which the dogs are placed. One type of bench dog is a solid steel pin with one flat side. The other side is a pin with a threaded rod going through it. On one end of that rod is a brass bar, and on the other there is a hex head. When I use these, I tighten the brass bar to squeeze my material, holding it in place.

For this I also cut some scrap plywood at a 10 degree angle to hold the aluminum plate on top of the spoilboard. The slightly-sloped edges force the board downward as I apply pressure along the edges. I attach the aluminum plate to that scrap material with wood screws. Rule number two in CNC work is never hit the screws with the $72 cutter! (I didn’t, but I have in the past).

Several hours later I had cut most of my aluminum parts. These came out beautifully. The only problem I had was drilling tiny holes into the edges of two plates. This kind of work is always challenging, and I had the usual difficulty this time. I stand the cut pieces in a vise, then I bolt that vice to the spoilboard using the bench dogs. I use an aiming laser in the spindle to position the edges of the material exactly. Then I move the spindle under computer control half-way across the material. Then I insert a centering drill into the spindle and make a program to cut the three vertical holes in the material.

Once all the parts were complete, I had to thread about half the holes to put threads inside. This is tedious work. I managed to get all of them threaded without breaking a tap (a minor miracle for me!). With the threads cut, I was now able to put the parts together.

The most difficult part for me was connecting the 45-degree 80-20 bar to the square arm that holds the camera on my stand. 80-20 does not offer a 45-degree attachment device, instead suggesting side plates. Though these would work, they will not fit into the device I have designed. Instead, I made a jig, mounted the two aluminum bars to that jig, the drilled 45-degree holes through the pieces. After that, I threaded the resulting holes and put M5 cap screws inside to hold the pieces firmly in place. This worked well, but does not offer any adjustability.

This is my 45-degree angle drilling jig. It holds the 80-20 aluminum bars in position while I drill holes to thread and later, hold them together accurately.

With the pieces complete, I sanded the parts, brushed them with steel wool, and painted them flat black. This was done to reduce reflections.

I mounted the tall vertical post on which my camera mount slides to a sheet of nice plywood, faced with black Masonite-like material (Formica would have been better). After mounting the post, I realized that it is sturdy, but that there is not enough connection strength at the base. I ordered some 90-degree L-brackets from 80-20, and will add those to the base connection when they arrive. I believe that this will add the additional sturdiness I need.

This is the finished camera bracket mechanism on the vertical post of my camera stand. It features one knob (silver) for raising and lowering the camera on the rack gear in the vertical post, and another (black) for tightening the mechanism in-place. It works very nicely.

My Big Plan is to begin digitizing my film soon. I’ll write more as I get going on the project. There will be a lot to learn here!

To see more on this project, and to download PDF of the engineering drawings, click here.

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The Smyth Model 12 Manual

Posted on October 28, 2025 by Brian Lawler

Greetings to those who are interested in Smyth book sewing machines!

UPDATED November 2, 2025!

I had been dawdling on the scanning of the Smyth Model 12 instruction and parts manual. I am sorry. Scanning is pretty easy, but retouching and straightening the pages, then cleaning them up to be consistent is a lot of work. I put it off and off and off, until now.

I scanned the pages last week, and have since cleaned up all the pages and made a full-resolution version and a reduced resolution version for download.

Click on this link to download a PDF (both low-resolution and full-resolution versions are available.) of the manual. The link is below:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/0b4a8h2w17lrc5uvu8xdh/AKeyyFjJ-FT4EfLYQ1IZgBw?rlkey=ku9onelycec5bkf61mk9t3c92&st=b207hj6q&dl=0

Posted in Bookbinding, Gadgets, History, Printing and Printing Processes, Restoring antique printing machines | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Landa avoids financial failure

Posted on September 12, 2025 by Brian Lawler

In my last technical analysis of the Landa press, I mentioned that the company had gone to the Central District Court in Tel Aviv to seek bankruptcy protection. Facing about $500 million in debt, they hoped to prevent total failure by getting the court to rule in their favor, giving the company time to find new capital.

The judge in that matter, Hana Kitsis, made her ruling stating that it was smarter to allow the company to continue to operate under supervised protection than to force it into insolvency. This seems especially smart in my opinion because Landa’s salable assets in Israel are only $127 million. That, against its debt, doesn’t resolve the greater problem, and fails to supply continued support for its customers.

By granting a short – one week – extension, she gave them the time needed to find an investor, Israel’s FIMI Opportunity Funds, who rescued the company at the eleventh hour. This has not been a completely clean transaction, with FIMI arguing that some of the terms of its purchase were established without their consent. Regardless, FIMI has agreed to continue to pay the court-appointed financial supervisors while the transaction is completed and these disputes are settled.

The speed of the entire transaction is surprising to me, as similar situations in the graphic arts industry in the U.S. have taken years to resolve. This one was opened and closed in a matter of months.

Landa’s workforce – about 500 people in the Spring – has been reduced by layoffs to about 350, and this was also approved by the court-appointed supervisors.

The company has also suffered a number of crises not of their making. The Israeli war with Hamas, and Israel’s continued hostilities in Lebanon and Iran, have contributed tremendously to the troubles at Landa. About one quarter of Landa’s workforce are reservists in the Israeli military, and many of those workers have been in military service since the Hamas invasion in October, 2023.

Compounding this worker shortage is the fact that Tel Aviv is a common target in that conflict. On May 4 of this year, a missile fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen avoided Israeli air defenses and hit targets in the neighborhood of the Ben Gurion Airport, including the Landa facility. Though there were no fatalities, this was another setback to the imaging company.

Additional pressure on supplies coming through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea (attacks perpetrated by Houthi warriors) have adversely affected Landa. The printing press components in the Landa presses come from Komori in Japan, and those shipments have been slowed by the ongoing hostilities in the region.

Those delays, the ongoing war with Hamas and others, workers in conflict, incoming missile attacks, general chaos in Israel as a result of the war, and international uneasiness about doing business with any company on the border of military conflict have added to Landa’s endemic troubles.

The press, which has extraordinary capabilities, took many years and many millions of dollars more than predicted by Landa. Originally announced in 2012, the machine struggled to meet expectations, and was written-off by many pundits and even some supporters in the early years.

Benny Landa, the founder and brain-trust of Landa, is famous for being an eternal optimist, and is among the industry’s most talented and successful inventors. He is also guilty of more than an erroneous technology or sales prediction. His announcements were wrong by many years. But he was right about the primary capabilities of the machine. On that he was absolutely right.

The Landa press took longer than promised, or expected, to be delivered. Today, according to industry publications, there are 51 machines in 14 countries. At about $4 million each, complete, they are competitive in the marketplace. But apparently the company does not break-even on any press sale. Instead, they rely on ongoing support and consumable sales to be profitable in the long run. To me that makes little sense. Landa has not published the cost of manufacture, so we don’t know how much is lost on every sale.

This business philosophy, combined with other fickle market conditions, does not bode well for those daring enough to purchase one of these machines. If Landa were to become insolvent or be forced to liquidate (unlikely at the moment) where would its customers get ink, and the famous imaging belt?

How would any company with a Landa press survive the company’s failure?

Certainly after-market suppliers could step in to provide ink, and given time, even the belt. But it would cause severe disruptions in those operations that have invested in the Landa presses.

What will probably happen
My estimation of the situation is that the FIMI organization will help Landa to survive and succeed. Their track record is extraordinary, and this is not the first company-in-distress they have absorbed. FIMI has already announced that they will provide ample cash to Landa to allow it to continue to make presses and to support its existing customers. Then FIMI will fund an effort to grow Landa into a more successful company. The fact that the machine now works beautifully means that it has overcome the most significant hurdle to success. Now they need more customers.

When I look at the field of digital ink-jet printing machines I see a market with several impressive competitors, each producing one or more good offerings to the graphic arts industry. Most are devices that feed a niche market.

Kodak makes the Prosper series of presses. These machines produce stunning quality printing at very high speeds. The machines have been most successful in document printing, specifically bank statements, credit card statements, and collateral printing. They are much narrower, dramatically faster than the Landa, and more limited in the ability to print on various substrates. Prospers are web-fed.

Hewlett-Packard has its line of extraordinary web-fed PageWide ink-jet presses. These are very impressive machines, capable of printing on uncoated substrates. The company offers them in 22-inch width, and up to over 100-inch. These are used for book printing, business document printing, ballot printing, and other purposes. Probably the most important use is producing the faces for laminated packaging with corrugated liner added or other packaging substrates. Amazing speed, excellent quality, and the ability to scale for specific needs are the cornerstones of the PageWide presses.

Fuji makes a series of 74 cm. and 100 cm. ink-jet presses. Some of sheet-fed while one is web-fed. I don’t know as much about these as I should. I have seen output, and it looks good. I spoke with a sales person at Print United, and learned that the substrate selection is limited.

Komori, the company that makes the large components of the Landa press, makes a machine that is called Impremia. Looking at the company’s web site, it looks suspiciously like a Landa press. Coincidence? The company calls the machine a “Nanoprint” press, using one of the terms coined by Landa: Nanoprinting. Snooping around the web today I have learned that Komori has installed one in Japan, one in China, one in Germany, one in Canada and one in Kansas City at Boelte-Hall Printers there.

So, let’s assume that the Komori press is indeed a “Landa” machine, built with cross-licensed technologies from both companies. That boosts the importance of the Landa restructuring to an even higher plateau because it involves more customers in more countries.

I’m sure there are other production ink-jet offerings that I have not mentioned.

The printing industry cannot afford to have Landa fail. It’s simply too important to our industry that this innovative company continue to operate and prosper (apologies to Kodak).

I believe that the Landa press technology is the most important printing technology in the industry today. In the coming years we will see increased competition and improvements to the existing technology. Landa’s summertime announcement of the S20P press shows continued improvement. All of this is good for the industry. I am pleased that the Israeli court gave Landa enough breathing room to survive this financial situation, and that we will have Landa in the industry to provide excellent presses and excellent printing in the future.

Posted in Business, Graphic Arts people, Printing and Printing Processes, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Thin lines and fine type

Posted on August 29, 2025 by Brian Lawler

This is the fourth in a series of analyses of the output of the Landa S10P press. If you would like to start at the beginning, click here.

Whenever a printer gets out a magnifying glass, there are bound to be conversations about the behavior of a printing process. That has been my focus, if you’ll excuse the pun, for these posts. My “magnifier” has been a clever new lens from Laowa, a new 2.5X “macro” lens for my Canon R5 camera. Because it magnifies more than 1:1, it is really a “micro” lens, but who cares about the title? What matters is that it’s a spectacular close-up lens that allows me to move in close enough to get images of these printed sheets that show how the machine is making its marks on the substrate.

Resolution of the press
The absolute resolution of the Landa press is 600 spi – machine spots per linear inch. I use that term to describe the smallest size of a single droplet of ink from the machine’s ink-jet heads. It cannot make a mark smaller than that. Compare that spot – 0.00167 inch (0.0042418 mm) – to the smallest mark possible on a Kodak Trendsetter platesetter – 0.00042 inch (0.01668 mm), when used to make aluminum printing plates for offset printing, and the Landa spots look large. But that is only when we have our magnifying glasses out. (The Trendsetter can make smaller spots, but is commonly set to this resolution.)

This diagram shows just how small a spot 1/600 inch is (too small to show on any computer display at this size). In the same space that the Landa S10P puts 600 droplets of ink, a Kodak Trendsetter will render 2,400 on an aluminum plate for offset printing. Both are almost too small to imagine, but they represent the state of the art for graphic arts imaging.

The secret to quality imaging is using the resolution of the machine to its fullest and making excellent images with the resolution available. Both processes do this handily, and without a magnifier it’s difficult or impossible to tell the difference.

All printing processes are designed to create the illusion of detail, or the illusion of tonality, in the eye of the beholder. That is the reality of our printing processes: illusory techniques. If done well, they are invisible to the viewer; it’s just an image, or it’s just lettering, or it’s a just a line on a printed page.

We in the graphic arts industry know that these marks on paper are much more than an image, lettering or a curvy line. Images on various substrates are created by technologies that have been under development for over a century, with the greatest concentration of technological development being in the past 40 years.

The parts of my test sheets that I analyzed for this post include those showing fine lines and very small type. These are clearly reproduced on the Landa machine, and the quality shows that the sophistication of the Fiery front-end on the machine has methods for handling extremely small elements effectively. Combining the Fiery software and the ink-jet delivery technology of the press, these images are visually comparable to those possible on offset presses with greater resolution.

This is the rendering of thin lines by the Landa S10P press. At the point highlighted in yellow, the minimum resolution is met. After that, all requested line weights are drawn with the same line thickness, that drawn by one ink-jet spot. Note the little line shift on all of these lines, just in from the left side. This indicates that the lines are not being drawn exactly 90 degrees to the paper path. I cannot explain this. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Too thin to print
Low threshold line thickness is a factor of any raster-image processor. It applies here. As the line thickness gets smaller, the machine draws lines with the closest number of ink droplets possible. This creates a small problem where line thicknesses are limited by the number of available machine spots. For example, with a minimum of one line of machine spots, the Landa press can draw a line as thin as 0.00167 inch in thickness. Lines with more weight are drawn with more than one row of ink-jet spots. But lines thinner cannot be rendered at all. So, the RIP will draw any line with a requested weight less than that 0.00167 inch at the same weight. To do otherwise would mean that the line would not be rendered at all, and that’s not an acceptable response.

Reversing those same lines out of black (or a rich black) creates a slightly more complex problem for the machine: it has to print up to, but not beyond the position of the white line, and then not print ink along that very small path.

This is the same line pattern, reversed. Interestingly, the little line jiggle isn’t present in these horizontal lines.

Angular anguish
These line weights assume that the ink-jet heads on the Landa machine are perfectly perpendicular to the paper path, and my micro-photos show that this is – almost – true. On the example shown there is a point where the thin line suddenly jumps one machine spot downward before continuing on its path. This could be the result of the ink-jet spots landing a microscopically small distance away from their target, or it could be that the original, which was drawn in Adobe Illustrator, is not “square” to the path of the ink-jet heads. On offset presses there are screen angles to consider; the Landa press does not have the exact analog, as it does not draw halftone dots. This makes imaging simpler, I think.

So, creating a very thin line at any angle other than zero or 90 degrees will certainly cause a jagged edge along its path. This is true for any raster imaging process.

Very small type
Type in very small sizes will challenge any imaging engine. Imagine how thin the crossbar of a capital A in Times Roman is when the type is being set at a common size like 12 pt. The same challenge that we face with thin lines applies to type: the thin lines of letters are very often thinner than the smallest machine spot available on the machine. So the RIP must overcome this by adding weight to the thinnest elements of letters in order to render them at all.

For this test, I set lines of Times and Helvetica at sizes starting at 8 pt. and getting smaller down to 1 pt. At that size, the letters are rendered on the press with only three or four machine spots (ink droplets). Curiously, it works. Even at 1 pt., the type is legible – barely. I have done this same test on offset presses and the same is true there, though there are four times as many machine spots available.

These are my samples of small type printed on the Landa press. Even 1-point type is legible! Click on the image to enlarge it.

Overall, the rendering quality of type on the Landa machine is extraordinary.

When we reverse-out white type on a black background on offset presses, we often create a multicolor or “rich black” screen combination for that background. This is to make the black more black – increasing the density and contrast of the printing. It also creates an opportunity for the lettering to get ruined by any small register error on press.

The Landa press does not need rich black to be effective. The density of a single-color black is adequate. But, I tried a rich black nonetheless, and the results are very good. Since the Landa press generally does not go out of register (it’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely) the multicolor background with white reversed-out is rendered very effectively. I would argue that rich black colors are unnecessary on the Landa machine, as single-color black is dense enough to look perfect.

This is a thin italic type reversed out of black only. Click on the image to enlarge.
The same type reversed out of rich black: 20, 20, 10, 100. If you click on the image it will enlarge to fill your screen. There, you will be able to see individual colored ink-jet spots here and there, peeking out from the black surround.

Reg marks the spot!
And, speaking of register marks, I printed some using black only, CMYK, and CMYKOGB to see if the press shows any tendency of going out of register. It does not, though there are some individual color ink spots that are trying to sneak out from under their neighbors. That effect is nearly invisible, even at magnification.

Here is proof that register on the Landa press is essentially perfect. Both CMYK register marks and marks using all seven colors are in “perfect” register. Click on the image to enlarge.

Summary
The Landa S10P press does an extraordinary job of printing fine lines, fine type, and reversed-out lettering. Register of colors on the press is effectively perfect. Density of ink is excellent. The detail in the printed images is comparable to excellent quality offset printing, though the machine’s resolution is not as fine. The combination of an excellent imaging engine (the Landa part of the machine) and an excellent front-end processor (the Fiery part of the machine) make this press a quality production machine.

Something to try next time
It would be interesting to run the fine line and fine type tests at a slight angle, not zero or 90°. This would make any effect of lines not fitting the digital raster pattern of the machine stand out. It would be interesting to run the same test sheet with the entire page rotated slightly. That would really put the machine’s imaging engine to the test. It’s moderately expensive for me to run these tests, but I promise that I will do that on my next press sheet test.

Posted in Art, Color Management, New technology, Printing and Printing Processes, Software, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment