Experiments with the DigitaLiza Max scanning device from Lomography, 19 July 2023

Experiments with the DigitaLiza Max scanning device from Lomography, 19 July 2023

For the #FrugalFilmProject this year I've been using an Agfa Clack and Fomapan Retro. The idea is to choose one camera and one film for the whole year, and I have been out each month recording the neighbourhood and beyond. 

My major snag (aside from being plagued with 'fat' roĺls) is that I have to take my film to Aveiro to be developed in a local lab. On the whole they have been really satisfactory, the turnaround is fast and the scans are good. The only thing is that they will insist on scanning the negatives in 6×7 format, where of course the negative size of the Agfa Clack is 6×9. 

This has meant that sometimes the framing of the scan is not quite as I had intended, and of course approximately 2cm of my image is missing. Normally this has not really mattered, but with my last two rolls for the #CameraChallenge, which were mostly trichromes, the framing was all over the place and I wasn't too happy with the results. 

Fortunately I have a DigitaLiza Max, the smartphone scanning device from Lomography. Although I have had this device for a while, I've never really managed to get decent results from it. But I really wanted to have a go at making some properly framed images for the trichromes so I dragged it out if its box and assembled the 'scanner'.

Instead of using a smartphone, for which the device was intended, I use a little 16MP Canon point and shoot. This weighs roughly the same as most smartphones and probably produces 'scans' of equal or better quality.

With the camera levelled as best as I could I made quick work of the fifteen frames on the two rolls of film (there were, of course, sixteen frames but the one was so awful I did not bother making a copy if it.

Once complete the images were copied to a pen, loaded into GIMP photo editor and the tones inverted to make a positive image. With the positive images in GIMP I constructed trichrome images from the red, green and blue filter images. These came out a little dark but the framing was much better and they were certainly easier to work with. Back in Snapseed the tones and brightness of the images were finalised. 

I was really happy with this batch of images, and the trichromes came out really well. I have attached some of the scans from the lab and by the DigitaLiza Max below.

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