Light source for photo copy stand...LED or fluorescent

[zahc]

I made a copy stand out of an old enlarger. Like this:



It holds my DSLR and has markings for all the common print sizes so you can just lay a print down and snap a pic. I made this so I can start digitizing the boxes and boxes of old family photos...there's no way I have the patience to do it with a scanner.

For right now I just set the copy stand by a window, but I would like to have a repeatable light source--I don't want to do any editing (at least, any editing I can't apply globally with ImageMagick).

The light should hit the paper from a low, controlled angle, and be even.

2 small fluorescent tubes on each side of the print would be great, but from what I hear those can be a real pain to color-balance. Places like superbrightleds.com sell LED strips which are cheap and bright. It basically comes down to which is worse...cheap LEDs or fluorescent tubes?

I could use incandescents, like MR16 bulbs, and just use my camera's incandescent setting. However, the light is not going to be even unless I put the lamps "far" away from the paper. Same with small flash units. Any ideas on something I could repurpose to make articulating army things like in the image above? Maybe I need to head to Ikea.

[zxcvbob]

The most important number (IMHO) is the CRI - color rendering index.  It's 100 for incandescent, you just have to adjust for the color temperature.  *Some* fluorescents are up in the mid 90's but most are much worse than that. 

No idea about white LED's.

The easiest to work with would be linear fluorescents with CRI=93 or better.  F15T8 "full spectrum", maybe? 

[AJ Dual]

I'd say whatever you can get to pump out the most light.

I'd figure with image correction, white balance on the camera etc., you could make most any reasonably "white" light source come out looking decent. The more full spectrum, or at a calibrated color temp the better I guess. I know Mrs. Dual has a big Curly CFL-type bulb she uses for fill that's supposed to be a guranteed 5500K etc.

Looks like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Square-Perfect-Professional-Fluorescent-Photography/dp/B000W07Y5M/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1371440076&sr=1-2&keywords=cfl+photography+bulbs  Uses a standard screw base so any type of reading light or tensor-arm lamp should do.

Did we have this thread just a few months before?  

Even a cheap retail/consumer-grade flatbed will far exceed the image quality of doing it with a DSLR. And most of them allow you to lay out as many pictures as you can fit on the bed, and it'll snip the scans all apart into their own individual files, or give you a pre-scan image on the computer where you can drag and fix the bounding boxes if need be.

Mrs. Dual and I scanned in close to 10k family photos with a flatbed, and I've got the reverse impression of the work than you do. "There's no way I'd have the patience to do it with a DSLR..."

We just set up the laptop and flatbed on TV trays, and did a few hundred photos a night while watching TV etc.

[Brad Johnson]

Like AJ said, if your camera has decent white balance, pretty much any light source will give acceptable results.  That being said, there are some stellar LED-based illumination panels.  If you want something with an Edison socket, a couple of the Cree or Philips 2700k A19 LED bulbs should work well.  Tests at home with my Canon t4i and using the Philips lamps gave stellar results.

Also like AJ said, a scanner is a much better way to go.  Unless you use a glass cover plate on your FrankEnlarger it will be darn near impossible to get the photos perfectly flat, resulting in all manner of generally ho-hum results.  Excellent scanners can be had for under $200 (Canon, Epson, et al), and the widely-praised Epson V500 runs about $250-ish.

Brad

[Harold Tuttle]

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/93126-REG/Kaiser_205558_RB_5004_High_Frequency.html

emulate this one

Reflector 20 x 8" (500 x 210 mm)
Lamps 4 x 36 watts
Color temperature 5400 K CRI 98

[Harold Tuttle]

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/White-Balancing-Accessories/ci/12260/N/4077634549

[Monkeyleg]

Fluorescents aren't a good choice for lighting in photography, unless you get tubes that are specifically made for photography. Fluorescent lights don't have a continuos wave, and so colors don't always reproduce accurately. An incandescent light would be a better choice.

Here's a chart showing the distribution of various light sources.