As I look at pictures of camera-scanning setups, I can't help but have a persistent worry: what if all of these weights on long poles are just pendulums waiting for a bump to start swinging. Of course, the manufacturers claim that their stands are as steady as rock, as stable as an Egyptian pyramid, as solid as gold bullions. However, I am not fully convinced. If I were to tell you that a camera on such a stand moving just 1/10 the thickness of a human hair during exposure would result in a loss of half the resolution, would you be concerned? So, in this article, I'll present my arguments and show you how to check and possibly secure your own scanning setup against vibrations. Blurring the edges Certainly, let's start from the basics and define what is meant by "blur".  Blurring on a camera occurs as a result of movement of the camera, subject, or both. Motion blur specifically refers to the streaking or smearing seen in the image due to this movement [1].   On th...

Keeping digital camera stable and film flat and pinned to the specific place in space while digitizing are of paramount importance. Without camera looking exactly at the center of the image and having lens optical axis strictly perpendicular to the negatives' plane the quality capture is simply impossible. Film holder takes special place in digitizing process. It has to: keep film flat keep film flat ;-) allow film transport in strips or rolls without any disturbances to the alignment allow framed transparencies insertion and removal without disturbing the system as much as possible ( we know  that transparencies/chromes/slides come in different mounts over the years so it would not be expected that some lens refocusing will not be required).  Good quality uniform light diffuser - preferably built-in. ideally film holder should not be terribly expensive, unless expense of buying tank-like-built  film holder is justified by huge volume of scans.     Let's ta...