Ragnar Olsen wrote:
Good grief, yes!! Of course you can make one yourself!
All you have to do is to make a template of an existing film-holder,
complete with calibration window at the top, and cut out the exact size of
the negative itself. The calibration window must be precise, of course.
What you might want to do is determine the plane of critical focus, which
may or may not be above the glass (it appears that mine is below the
surface of the glass, as the scanned images get sharper as the image plane
of the film approaches the surface of the glass). If that's the case, then
one would want the image plane of the film as close as possible to the
glass surface *without touching it*. Otherwise, create a shim-base for the
holder that will also serve as a mask for the image area of the film.
Now, the difficulty will be in keeping the film from sagging and touching
the glass surface, which means you need to craft a way of holding the film
taut in the holder. Touching the glass surface allows the film image to be
degraded with Newton's Rings, and that won't do at all!!
I haven't done any of this, but I've done similar things: The film holder
can be made of black faced craftboard, with the cut edges suitably blacked
with appropriate ink/dye/whatever. The shim-base can be made of craft
paper, also black, which is then affixed to the bottom of the holder. It
remains then to devise a means of keeping the film taut. This may or may
not be difficult, depending on one's creativity/resources. Several
strategies occur, but I'll leave that to you, I think.
Not hard to do, just tediously pains-taking work, with the patience to do it
over until it's done right.
Bill Tallman
