Epson Perfection 4180
Film scanner

Scanning Kodak Instamatic negatives:

Kodak Instamatic was a common camera and there are a lot of photos taken with this camera system. It was sold from 1963 to 1980s by Kodak. This camera used a different film, the 126 format. It's a 35 mm wide film and it has registration holes only on one side and one hole for each image. Normal 35 mm has an image size of 24x36 mm, this 126 film has an image size of 28 x 28 mm and that's what's causing the problem when you want to scan the Instamatic film.

My Epson 4180 scanner takes different formats, 35 mm slides, 35 negative and medium format. Non of these match a 28x28mm image size.

Epson 4180:

This is my old Epson Perfection 4180 Photo scanner. Bought it many years ago, maybe 2006. Still working, only had some dust problem. High native resolution 4800 pixel / inch but I use it at 2400 dpi at most. 16 bit depth and optical density of 3.4 Dmax.

Adapters:

But how to scan the 126 film ? In the beginning I used the adapter for medium format film.

With a piece of cartoon I got the 126 film in correct position. Not very practical.

This the adapter for 35 mm film. But the opening is only 24.5 mm wide and it crop the images on a 126 film. Not a good solution.

DIY 126 film adapter:

I didn't got many 126 negative films from my parents, but my girlfriend has a lot of them. To make it easier for her to scan them I designed this adapter in 3D-CAD and then 3D-Printet it. One problem is that my 3D-Printer can only print a circle up to 230 mm and I had to do some compromises. Still this can take up to four images in a row from a 126 film. Maybe it's possible to have two rows but no meaning with that, still the scanner must be operated in manual mode as you will notice.

To hold the film negative in correct position there is one more device needed. This one together with the adapter above squeeze the film to hold it 1 mm above the glass surface of the scanner. This is important to get the film in focus.

This is how it looks when the negative film is mounted in the adapter. Much better than I thought was possible when I started this DIY project. The width of the mask is 31 mm, a bit too much. Next version it will be 30 mm. The image size should not be more than 28x28 mm, still, sometimes I found it bigger but not more than 29.5x29.5 mm. It's 3D-Printed in high resolution, 0.1 mm with matte black PLA filament.

First test:

Now it's exciting, can the scanner scan this 126 film with this DIY adapter? First I setup it to automatic recognize the border of the film. But the scanner software are looking for images of the size 24x36 mm. And this is the result, not usable and I couldn't find any way to change the setup to accept a 28x28 mm image size.

Manual mode:

In manual mode it scan the film perfect. I have to setup four small windows to mask out the four images, scan them one by one. About 2 minutes each in 2400 dpi mode.

Zoom in and looking for details, I can notice it sits in an angle. But when checking it up it was positioned perfect. I found that the film was a bit curved in one end and that cause most of the problem. A support between each image had been good but it will be very thin and easy to broke. This film adaptor only take four images on a row, but I have found that it could be five images on a row sometimes. I have a version 2 adapter going on with this support and five images.

This is the raw image, I made the crop a bit narrow and cut the left side. Otherwise all part of the image is there with some margin.

Next version and maybe the last. It can take five images and have support for the film. I found that the area below didn't have any with the function to do and removed it. It's on the limit that I can 3D-print this big size in my scanner.