A slide copier is a simple optical device which can be fastened to the lens mount of a camera to enable slide duplicates to be made. Whilst these devices were formerly used to make duplicates on to slide film, they are often now used in conjunction with digital cameras to digitise images from film-based transparencies. This method usually gives better resolution than using attachments for digital A4 flat-bed scanners.
The devices are typically about 30 cm long, and screw into an intermediate 't-mount' attached to the camera. The lens in the copier does not need to be complex, because the systems are usually stopped down to small f numbers (e.g. for the Makinon Zoom Unit, f/16 at 1:1 magnification, falling to f/22 at 3:1 magnification), and the object and image distances are similar, so that many aberrations are minimised.
Famous quotes containing the words slide and/or copier:
“We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.”
—Henry Reed (1914–1986)
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)