{"id":4355,"date":"2026-03-24T19:46:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T02:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/?p=4355"},"modified":"2026-03-24T19:46:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T02:46:30","slug":"der-fingerpokenspieler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/?p=4355","title":{"rendered":"Der Fingerpokenspieler"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is a tale of making unruly<\/em> film behave ruly<\/em> so it can be digitized. It started last November when I built a camera stand for digitizing my archive of actual film. I have written seven posts (To read them, you can start here<\/a>) about this, so far, and I have nearly perfected my process for making digital copies of thousands of images so that I can use them, know that they are safe (?), and consolidate my film collection into a smaller space so that it takes up less room in my garage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also opens up a huge base of images for storytelling. I am remembering some of the greatest adventures of my life, and I have the film as evidence that it was real!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started \u2013 but did not finish \u2013 digitizing my 35mm film, and that went well. Then I moved on to work on the larger film types, 120 and 70mm. In these cases I am digitizing from color transparencies, not negatives. I was always a transparency guy, so I have thousands of frames of medium-format film ready for the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My system for digitizing the 70mm film is to remove the film from those clear binder pages of vinyl or PET plastic that have held these films for decades. This process is more trouble than you would imagine. I absolutely hate those sheets, and celebrate each binder I have converted by making a toast to my progress. And, it turns out that the binder sheets are recyclable!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After I remove the film, I put the loose frames or strips into a carton to be digitized. Then I set up my copy stand, prepare the light, check focus and begin. This was working pretty well, but I had a lot of trouble with individual frames, and strips of two frames. I had purchased the film transports from Negative Supply to hold 120 and 35mm films, but those presume that you have longer strips. It was very difficult to digitize ones and twos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I decided to design and produce my own film holders for onesy-twosey digitization.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love the Negative Supply<\/em> light source, so I decided to work with that as a base. I was looking at a binder with over 500 frames of 70mm film, so I decided to make a base to hold that size film first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have never used 3D printing before, but my friend Bryn has a nice Bambu 3D printer, and he offered to print whatever I needed to make this project happen. So, I turned my moderately-mediocre knowledge of Autodesk Fusion to designing a 70mm film holder. The terms: it had to be able to hold a single frame; it had to hold a strip of three or four frames, and allow those strips to be moved under the camera for digitization. It could not scratch the film as it goes by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The design was relatively easy, and I managed to get Fusion to do it with only a few exasperated moments. When I was finished with the design, I exported an STL file, and Bryn printed it \u2013 in about an hour. The 70mm film didn\u2019t quite fit, so I modified the design a tiny bit and tried again. Once again, the film didn\u2019t fit, so I made version 3, and that one works perfectly! Hurrah!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
This is my 70mm short-strip film holder in Autodesk Fusion<\/em>. It allows me to put a strip of 70mm film into the holder, or a single frame. The dovetails along the edges hold the film in position during digitizing. After I designed this in Fusion, I exported the file as an STL file, and sent it to be 3D printed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So I digitized about 450 frames of 70mm film from a hot-air ballooning trip to Russia in 1990. In the process, I discovered a weakness in my system: 70mm film does not sit flat. It wants to bow upward, sometimes significantly, making it necessary to \u2013 somehow \u2013 hold the edges down. And, the 70mm Ektachrome film I used is 0.0065 in. (0.1716 mm) thick. This, compared to the thinner 120-size film at 0.0052 in. (0.1372 mm), makes it more resistant to flattening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That flattening required three hands and both feet, and it was frustrating. So, it was back to Fusion where I designed an accessory to my film holder \u2013 an accessory I dubbed der Fingerpokenspieler!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
This is version 2 of my 70mm film holder, with der Fingerpokenspieler<\/em> affixed to the top. This device holds the film flat while I am making the images with my digital camera and light source. It works splendidly!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This device is essentially a two-tine fork that comes down over the film, holding the left and right edges of each 70mm frame flat to the base. It requires only one finger to activate (left or right!), and does not require continuous pressure, though pressure is sometimes helpful). It also does not scratch the film. It only touches the space between frames, and never inside the image area, so it\u2019s a very safe device to use in this situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I modified my base design to add hinge brackets, and then designed the forks to hold my film in place. On the top edge of der Fingerpokenspieler I designed two interlocking hinge brackets. All these brackets have a 2.0mm hole that passes through them. These holes receive a hinge-pin that makes the fork rotate up and down. It all works very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I have now expanded my digitizing tool kit to include both 70mm and 120-size film bases complete with zwei Fingerpokenspieleren. This is working out pretty well!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a tale of making unruly film behave ruly so it can be digitized. It started last November when I built a camera stand for digitizing my archive of actual film. I have written seven posts (To read them, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,960,29,10,30],"tags":[1106,63,64,1105,1085,1104,108],"class_list":["post-4355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-building-things","category-gadgets","category-photography","category-technology","tag-70mm-transparency-digitizing","tag-blognosticator","tag-brian-lawler","tag-digitizing-70mm-film","tag-digitizing-film","tag-holding-film-while-digitizing","tag-the-blognosticator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4355"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4360,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4355\/revisions\/4360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}