shortscale photography thread.

Plug your music, photography, graphics, shows of any kind or other creative works.

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Dillon
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Post by Dillon »

Mages wrote:that picture I posted above is from flickr. if you go to the image page and click on 'view all sizes' you can then choose the size you want, right click and select copy image URL.
Huh, that's the most roundabout way to get an image link ever...

I was happy with my prints from Walgreens. It's not terribly expensive, either, so if they don't come out right, no big deal. Nice shots, by the way!

Speaking of Walgreens though. I see you're using a V500; how do you like it? I've been thinking more and more about getting a film scanner. I don't like the way the drug store scanners try to "fix" the exposure. I assume this is because it's all done automatically by the computer. Low light shots typically end up coming out with lots of green grain, and I don't know for sure, but I get the feeling that I could get better scans with a bit of tinkering.

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Mages
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Post by Mages »

yeah I have a V500. there is also a V600, V700, and V750. the V700 is the one that everyone mentions but I can't really tell if it's really that much better. the V750 is like the deluxe version of the V700 that they released because it was so popular. I've looked at a lot of V700 scans and they really seem the same as the V500 in all practical reality. I'm talking about the optical resolution. there are really expensive scanners that have insanely high optical resolution like the Nikon COOLSCAN and all that. also the stations they use in photo labs are going to be really high optical resolution.

...ok I might have to write a lot here because it's kind of complex topic and it took me a while to figure this all out because nobody tells you any of this on the internet anywhere (or if you can find anything it's often conflicting and confusing information). so just bear with me, don't be frightened by all the text. :wink:

so it depends on what you're scanning right. you can scan medium format with pretty much any scanner because it's such a big negative. 35mm is a little more tricky. the scanner has to be able to scan really fine detail. the epson flatbed scanners can scan 35mm film at an optical resolution about good enough to do an 8x10 print. that's like 2400dpi to get a 24x36mm frame to like 3200 pixels wide which will allow you to print 8x10 at 300dpi (but you could probably print it at much lower dpi and it would be fine). the V500 can do up to 6400dpi but what I'm saying is there is not much point because the resolution of the actual optics of the scanner max out a little above 2400dpi. and as far as I can tell it's the same optical resolution (or very close) on all the epson Vxxx scanners. the same goes for the image viewing size on a monitor. you can get 35mm to look good when displayed at effectively 8x10 inches on a monitor (on my monitor that's about 1000pixels wide). if you want anything bigger than that you have to move into another class of scanner and it is going to be very expensive. or shoot medium format. frankly pushing 35mm film past 8x10 is going a bit beyond the intentions of the format. that's why when you'd go to a portrait studio or for school photos even, they would use a medium format camera like a hasselblad or something.

so basically the V500 is fine for everything I'm doing. there is a V500 group on flickr if you want to see more examples of what people are able to do with it: http://www.flickr.com/groups/580313@N21/

the one thing that really sucks about it is the cheesy film holders they give you. if your film is at all cupped it can be an extreme PITA to get a good scan. there are a bunch of things people do to deal with this though. I can tell you some things I've figured out if you're interested or you can read some of the threads in the above group. one thing you should know though is, just get it out of your head right now that scanning film is a quick painless process and everything will be a lot less frustrating going into it. you have to think of it as similar to the darkroom process. you are going to have to spend time on individual images if you want them to come out the best. often just trying to get the dust off the negative is going to take a couple tries. and you''ll never get all the dust off. just get the major stuff off and then either use the touch up brush in photoshop or just leave it for a more rustic look.
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Mages
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Post by Mages »

okay, now parte deux:

As far as the drug store scanners trying to fix the exposure, this is another topic that took me a long time to figure out and one that is WIDELY misunderstood. You may have noticed me talking about it earlier in this thread when I first got this scanner. Anyway, you will often hear film photographers saying they are anti-touch up, don't use any photoshop, just take the photo straight from the scanner with no editing, or any number of similar statements. This is complete 100% bullshit. Color film always needs color correction because of the orange mask in the negative. This creates a bluish tint when you invert the colors for a positive image. There is no universal process for removing the orange mask because every brand and make of film has a slightly different hue. When making a darkroom print there are filters that are supposed to correspond to certain masks but even then you'll probably need to tweak it with other filters.

Basically with film scanning you are picking up at the darkroom step of the analog process and going digital. In the darkroom you are tweaking the photograph to be properly displayed in an analog format. To properly display the photograph in a digital format (an image file on the computer) you have to carry out this process digitally. The scanner has some automatic settings that invert the image and roughly adjust the the color balance to remove the orange mask. But the scanner has no idea what sort of film with what sort of orange mask you have put in the scanner it just tries to balance the colors according to some algorithm some programmer came up with. So the photographers that claim some sort of "no editing" philosophy aren't doing "no editing" at all, they're just letting the computer edit the image in some broad probably incorrect way. Photographers that claim this philosophy often have photos rife with color correction problems, that they think is all "totally vintage" when really they just let their scanner software have it's way with their photos, messing everything up.

TL;DR version: There is no such thing as "no editing" when it comes to displaying an analog photo in a digital format.

So given that, what are the things that the scanner software (including drug store or photo lab scanner software) edits?
  • it inverts the image
  • it corrects for the orange mask
  • it does some sort of further color levels adjustment
  • it applies a dust removal filter
Basically, what I do is let the scanner software carry out the first two steps and then if necessary (which it almost always is), carry out the last two steps myself in photoshop. And yeah, the epson software does have some sort of exposure adjustment in the orange mask correction step. It works similar to the light meter in the camera, it tries to push the image to 50% grey. But if the exposure was how you wanted it when you took the picture, you probably don't want that. This is really easy to fix in 'Levels' in photoshop.
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Mages
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Post by Mages »

this picture for example is something that would be way messed up if I let the scanner software have it's way.

Image

it's obviously a very dark picture so if you pushed it to 50% grey it comes out all wrong. sometimes that does give it a kind of cool faded effect though. I've noticed that there are a good amount of film photographers that like their photos to have a more faded look and not be completely high contrast. In the following picture I didn't take the blacks all the way black I left it a little bit how the scanner had it for a more faded look.


Image

so you can see there really is no such thing as "no editing". it's all a very subjective process. I try to keep to the spirit of as little editing as possible but there's really no reason why you couldn't just edit it however you want. the same things are going to apply to scanned film photos as to digital photos as for what is too much editing that looks cheesy and that sort of thing.
Dillon
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Post by Dillon »

Read all of that, very helpful, thanks! Sounds like it would be better for me to just keep getting them developed and scanned at the drug store labs. What kind of camera and film was that taken with? Those pictures look much, much sharper and much less grainy than what I've gotten back from Walgreens.

Here's an (admittedly poor) example of what I mean.

How the lab scanned it:

Image

It has sort of a greenish tint to it, and just looks, I don't know, dull? Adjusted for temperature and contrast:

Image

By all means still not a great picture, but a lot closer to what I'd expect to see.
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Mages
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Post by Mages »

the first is a Miranda EE with the standard Miranda 50mm prime lens, not an incredibly sharp lens in all honesty, but cool in it's own way. the second is taken with a Nikon FE with a Nikon Series E 50mm prime lens, which is a decent lens, it's one of the cheapest Nikon F system lenses. they are both fujifilm superia 800 or 400.

I think your picture is sharp, it's a shallow depth of field but the food is in focus. how big are the images you get from the drug store?
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Mages
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Post by Mages »

I just did auto levels and then adjusted gamma and exposure and got this.

Image

I adjusted it until the grain and noise was minimized in the dark areas. if you are seeing that it means the software is pushing the exposure too much. film doesn't have especially good latitude in the lowlights, it's really good in the highlights though (the reverse is true for digital). so when the software pushes the exposure it just pulls up a bunch grain and noise from the dark areas because nothing is really there.
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Post by BearBoy »

Question for you photography experts.

I would like to convert a load of old films to digital. I know I could scan in the prints but I have never been particularly happy with the results and it would take an absolute age to scan them all (I also think some prints may have gone walkabout over the years).

So, I am assuming that I would get better results by getting a professional photo processing place to scan the negatives? Has anyone got any experience of getting this done? Any places to recommend? Rough idea of prices?

I am in the UK so pricing/recommendations are probably a question for the UKers but would welcome anyone’s opinion on the idea as a whole.

The films are a mixture of 35mm negatives and APS cartridges. I think I might also have some very old 126 negatives somewhere as well but am less bothered about those.
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argylelewis
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Post by argylelewis »

I don't know if anyone cares or not as this thread seems to go through stages of lots of use and then no updates for ages.

Wondered if anyone wanted to give out their instagram handle things for following one another (if you have one) mine is instagram.com/argylelewis

so yeah would love to follow some of you guys if you have an instagram so post away. Cheers
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DanHeron
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Post by DanHeron »

Spent the last couple of days in Bristol. Never been before. Fantastic city.
Annoyingly I didn't have my camera with me, just used my phone. Also the weather turned out better than expected which was good, although made me wish I had brought my camera even more. Darn.

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These are taken from Brandon Hill park. Great views of the City.
I think the first and second were from the top of Cabot Tower and the third one was taken lower down, from the path way you can in the second pic where the benches and people are.

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Night and day shots of Clifton suspension bridge.
Dillon
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Post by Dillon »

I haven't done any photography in a while, but I wanted to post that I think I'm selling all of my manual focus Canon gear. Only because I want to switch to something that will adapt to the modern EOS bodies (Nikon or Olympus preferably), so trades would be considered as well. Anyone interested? Here's what I have:

Bodies:

Canon T70

In great shape overall, no dents or anything. Shutter is accurate and the winder works great. Light seal in good condition. Would come with 50mm f/1.8 OR 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5, your choice.

Canon AE-1 Program (Black)

RARE black body. Some brassing around the edges, but in good condition otherwise. Recently lubed, new light seal. Comes with Canon Power Winder A and 50mm f/1.8 OR 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5, your choice.

Other Lenses:

New FD 70-210 f/4
New FD 135mm f/3.5
FD 24mm f/2.8
FD 28mm f/2.8
Access 28mm f/2.8
Soligor 80-210 f/3.5
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Reece
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Post by Reece »

A bunch of trees near me have been covered in silk by caterpillars, it's kinda eerie.
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YuriK
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Post by YuriK »

Reece wrote:A bunch of trees near me have been covered in silk by caterpillars, it's kinda eerie.
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Wow, thats really cool
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gusman2x
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Post by gusman2x »

A project I did last weekend:

ImageJuxtapose My Love #1 by gusman2x, on Flickr

ImageJuxtapose My Love #2 by gusman2x, on Flickr

ImageJuxtapose My Love #3 by gusman2x, on Flickr

ImageJuxtapose My Love #4 by gusman2x, on Flickr

ImageJuxtapose My Love #5 by gusman2x, on Flickr
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DanHeron
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Post by DanHeron »

Went out of the city for a few hours. Took a few photos.

New Mills:
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Mellor Cross - Pretty cool location for a music video:
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Mo Law-ka
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Post by Mo Law-ka »

That cross hill would be great for a black metal video. Cool photos!
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Dillon
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Post by Dillon »

So last weekend I shot my first roll of film in a year or so. And for the first time, the drug store lab completely botched the scans. I would take it back there, but I don't trust them with my negatives. And, come to find out, many of the drug store labs are now doing mail-off services, rather than the one-hour in-house lab.

Since the negatives turned out mostly OK, I've been looking into "scanning" negatives with a DSLR and a macro (or other close focusing) lens. I would like to have better quality scans of my old negatives, anyway. Has anyone here tried that before? Some good articles I've found:

http://www.diyphotography.net/scanning- ... th-a-dslr/

http://petapixel.com/2012/12/24/how-to- ... acro-lens/

http://www.johnamon.com/2010/08/how-to- ... lr-camera/

http://nonphotography.com/blog/creative ... -then-diy/

I think I'm going to try both the shoe box & flash approach, and the tube-in-front-of-monitor approach. One of these articles also suggests that, rather than filling the frame with the entire negative, it's better to take 4-6 partial frames at a closer distance. That sounds like a lot of work but might be worth trying if I don't get good results from a full-frame shot.
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Post by Freethenoise »

Brisbane gets pretty when it rains:

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NickS
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Post by NickS »

Wish I were there..
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DanHeron
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Post by DanHeron »

Out of the city for a few days. In North Wales where my Dad lives.

Notice the kayakers breaking through and leaving tracks in the ice, thought that was pretty cool:

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