Created by JackW01, a new ‘scanlight’ has been specially developed to improve the quality of film negative scanning.
To do this, the device uses a trio of red, green and blue LEDs that correspond to the colour sensitivity of the film stock, in contrast to the more commonly available white LED lights, which lack the relevant wavelengths.
To achieve the perfect scan, the wavelengths of the LEDs have been set to 665nm for red, 525nm for green and 450nm for blue, and are mounted on a grid behind a diffuser.
While this isn’t the first film-scanning concept to be featured by Hackaday, it is the first to delve into such depth about the crucial role of the light source.
The scanlight is also simple to adjust for different film types and the LEDs could even be made individually addressable.
However, the piece does not explore whether colour sensitivity is also a factor from the image sensor’s perspective.
