Reddit reviews AGPtek A4 Ultra-thin Portable LED Artcraft Tracing Light Pad USB Cable + Wall Adapter Powered Brightness Control For Artists, Drawing, Sketching, Animation, X-ray Viewing, Sewing, Tattoo, Quilting
We found 4 Reddit comments about AGPtek A4 Ultra-thin Portable LED Artcraft Tracing Light Pad USB Cable + Wall Adapter Powered Brightness Control For Artists, Drawing, Sketching, Animation, X-ray Viewing, Sewing, Tattoo, Quilting. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
SUPPER THIN & PORTABLE DESIGN- Dimension:14.17”*9.45”. The thickness is only 6.2mm/0.24in and the light box weights 1.4LB/635g which can be carried in the bag and taken out to paint whenever.USB POWERED & USB ADAPTER- Comes with a Safe and reliable USB cable and a USB adapter, which were made by local famous factory. Power supplied by USB cable, convenient to access to any USB port like computer, USB plug or even power bank. With the USB adapter, it can directly connect into a wall outlet to work.3 LEVEL AJUSTABLE BRIGHTNESS- Touch sensor switch design, easy to turn on/off, pressing the button till you get the ideal brightness(30% / 60% / 100%). The illumination is perfectly and flicker free to protect your eyes.PERFECT FOR MULTIPLE DOMAINS: Such as 2D Animation, Calligraphy, Embossing, Scrapbooking, Tattoo Transferring, Sketching & Drawing, Sewing projects, Stained Glass, Quilting, Tracing, X-ray viewing etc.PACKAGE INCLUDES AND CUSTOMER SERVICE: 1* USB ADAPTER, 1* USB CABLE, 1* MANUAL, 1* LED LIGHT PAD. 24-hour customer service，making what you buy rest assured, using happy.
While true, in reality it's a little "eh", since tablets get used all over the house, require charging, and generally turn off constantly. (Though fine in a pinch!) having a dedicated box by your scanner or enlarger is a huge help in getting the images out. And when there's stuff like this out there ($35, but I'm sure even cheaper stuff if you look around, but this is a sexy thing), really no reason not to.
A light box is the best way. Or you can hold the paper backwards against a light source.
Like this:
Tracing Light Box, AGPtek® 17"(A4 Size) LED Artcraft Tracing Light Pad Light Box For Artists,Drawing, Sketching, Animation https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YA9GP0G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_90H4xb02H60X8
I have a cheap lightbox from Amazon, which I setup on a table. I use a large Vanguard tripod which has a tilt-head so I can hang the camera directly over the lightbox. I level both the lightbox and the camera with a small bubble level.
I'm using an OMD EM5 (mk 1), with the Olympus 60mm macro lens. I turn off IS, switch to manual focus, manual exposure, f8.0. I use the 2 second self timer to avoid camera shake.
I've been laying the negatives down with a piece of glass to hold them flat, but it is causing me some issues, and I've been advised to ditch the glass and rig up another way to keep the negatives flat. Sounds reasonable, but I don't have a good solution in place yet.
While shooting I use the MF magnification option to set focus, and check it every few negatives in case I bumped something. Using f8 gives you a little latitude there. I turn the histogram on and make sure that my exposure is right in the middle - this gives you density correction because you can just keep making the shutter speed longer to let as much light through the dense negative as you want.
In processing, I crop in photoshop to the image boundaries, then use the photoshop actions from this blog post, which work very nicely. I then export a TIFF (LZW compression, no layers), and import into Lightroom for final cleanup, exposure tweaking, and dust removal.
Then, put that shit on instagram.
I'm new to the film scanning side of it, but I've been doing macro capture for other scenarios for a long time, and this method is quick and easy to setup. Took about 30 minutes including fiddling-around time and setup to scan through two rolls of 120 film the other day.
https://www.amazon.com/Tracing-AGPtek%C2%AE-Artcraft-Sketching-Animation/dp/B00YA9GP0G
Yeah, I had ordered a V600. I did some research and decided to cancel the order and buy the light table and a tripod for it. The scans are a pain to learn, but once it's learned, they are 100% better looking.