Finally a solution for those of us who like scanning photos which has the sprocket holes areas exposed! The DigitaLIZA from Lomography. The solution came just in time … as the new fun Spinner 360 churns out super long frames with exposed sprocket holes that make scanning and stitching the frames a really painful process (especially for people like me who has not much patience sitting in front of the computer doing post processing).
I was expecting a delay in the shipment of mine because Lomo Asia’s online store stated that the status of my order was something like ‘waiting for shipment’. That’s why I struggled to scan the roll (from Spinner) using the 120 mask last night … but the DigitaLIZA appeared on my desk this morning. Grrr!
Here are the contents of the DigitaLIZA set …
from top to bottom … the film mask, the upper magnetic film plate and the metal plate.
What you actually do is to place the metal plate at the bottom of the film mask … then open up the film mask and carefully place the strip of film in it. Once the strip of film is in place, put the upper magnetic film plate on top of it and then close the film mask. Hmm. Sounds confusing eh? Hahaha! I got a little confused (blame my old brain) in the begining but it all looked pretty easy after a short while. Once you have done all those … just remove the metal plate (from the bottom) and the upper magnetic film plate. The upper magnetic film plate and the metal plate seem to be used to keep the film strip firmly (and strait) in place. No more going crazy trying to keep curled up film strips on the 120 mask! Yay!
Take the film mask and place it carefully on the scanner and then scan the strip of film like you will normally do.
Someone asked me how I scanned the photos with sprockets and yet not mess up the exposures (by the scanning software). I am using Silverfast … so I ain’t sure about other software but I guess they are pretty much the same. What I normally do is to turn on the ‘auto exposure’ option in Silverfast … then select the center portion of the frame (ie. without the sprockets). The software will then automatically give you a good exposure (provided you got the exposure right when you shot the frame of course!). Switch off the ‘auto exposure’ option and then enlarge the frame selection to include the sprocket holes. Now that will prevent the software from being ‘tricked’ into inluding those black sprocket holes as part of the auto exposure processing.
Back to the DigitaLIZA. One thing I was wondering before it arrived … was how it could hold the film strip without covering a little on the sides (near sprockets) of the film. Taking a close look at the DigitaLIZA … it seems that a little of the sides do get ‘covered up’. Here a comparison using the strip I tried scanning …
You will realise that a bit of the top and bottom are not appearing (when scanning using the DigitaLIZA). Well I guess that’s a little sacrifice you’ve to take … in exchange for a super simpler way to get things done. Honestly … I personally prefer the more ‘raw’ looking edges (at the sides near sprockets) from scanning using the 120 mask. Still the convenience of using the DigitaLIZA is an easier way to get things done. Don’t get me wrong … I ain’t paid a cent by Lomography to say this. Hahaha!
As I’m not planning to include some broken glass and plastic bits into my scanned results, I decided not to follow the instructions found in the photo below …
So is the DigitaLIZA a good buy? I definitely think it is (if you have the need to scan film strips with sprocket holes)! Do make sure your scanner is a backlit one though … for the DigitaLIZA only works for such scanners.