Lightbox

I found this home made lightbox - something my Dad whipped up for my Mom.  It was meant for tracing - used in art projects.  It's just a cardboard box with a small fluorescent fixture inside, fixture was probably for under kitchen cabinets.  There's a clear plastic top.  It's all held together with the handyman's secret weapon: duct tape, see:

https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/10/my-3-favorite-red-green-videos.html 

I think the pontoon boat may be the only time on the show where duct tape was used on ducts !

But I might use it for a different purpose than tracing.  I have a lot of black and white negatives which I've never printed and am unlikely to ever print.  I've seen videos where a camera is used to take a picture of a negative and through the magic of Photoshop or similar software, the negative becomes a positive.  I can do this on my old Canon scanner but it takes forever and will only do 35 mm film (or slides).  I also have roll film negatives which are too big to fit in the 35mm holder.  To hold the film I have the negative holders for the Testrite Enlarger.

I may eventually change to some different light source, the fluorescent light may give an unpleasing color tint to color negatives or slides.  But for black and white negatives, color doesn't matter, just want an even illumination.  The Testrite copy stand should also be useful for this type of copying.

Update evening: here is a first try at using the lightbox and the Testrite copy stand to take a photo of a negative, this is a Field Day picture, a natural power contact with Bob Hamel at the key, Sam Sansone and Mike McGillen in the background and Rick Evans cranking the telephone ringing generator for the natural power:

here is the positive after inverting the file using Gimp:

It's too dark, the 55mm macro lens must be used in manual exposure mode on the Nikon D40 so I just guessed.  I'll have to dial things in but then it should be fairly quick to crank out a number of scans.

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm