megalithicmatt

No longer able to edit my previous post to add this in, but got two of the LaserGraphic films back from the lab today - all vertical orientation photos were automatically rotated to horizontal.

Sadly closed photoshop before remembering to note down the method. Think the curves and shadows / highlights were adjusted first, then cropped the image. Converted to B/W using an infrared pre-set filter with a few adjustments.

This page (see link) may be of use. The UC has a few minor operational upgrades.

Thank you! Will look into these tomorrow.

Hi, I use a BetterLight Super 8K scanning back on a Cambo Repro in the lab I work for. There's a problem with the USB control box (intermediate stage between the back and the PC). Our maintenance / IT people have looked over it and say it's not letting power go through to the scanner, though the problem does seem to be intermittent - once it's on, it's on. It's just getting it switched on that's the problem... I read that Mike Collette of BetterLight passed away last year which is a great shame, he was very helpful sorting out a separate problem a couple of years ago. His website still has lots of useful information on it. My first reaction would have been to contact the company to ask if they have replacement parts for sale but as that is not an option, does anyone here know if someone else has taken over servicing for these systems? I read that Rencay in Germany have an upgrades service from BL systems to their own backs which may end up being a way to go if the current problems get worse. Thanks, Matthew

Crop - greyscale - then various cycles of equalising, inverting, replacing light areas for dark and dark for light and curve adjustments.

This one's a bit rushed, think the procedure was as follows: Auto contrast then equalise, added an inverted yellow layer (at 55% visibility?) Selected the foreground then erased it (can't remember the strength). Merged the layers and equalised again. The selection was a bit rough so went back and blurred the contact and cloned over some jagged parts.

Applied a telephoto lens correction filter to a copy of the image to get the spherical effect then overlaid it on the original. Cropped down, reduced exposure and removed saturation from the background and cloned out a wire. Boosted exposure and applied curves to the main area.

Abstract - cropped down, adjusted levels and saturation, copied to a new layer and selectively erased horizontal bands at different transparency levels. Rotated a new layer copy, split it in half and shifted it to the LHS, made a new copy and flipped it 180 degrees and moved it to the RHS, merged down and then sheared the image to the left and rotated the final image 90 degrees and cropped again. I think, anyway.

The photo department of my university has recently started offering a service (using a LaserGraphics machine, I think?) to put digital images onto 35mm film - for darkroom prints. I've had three test films made this way but still have to get them developed - very old family photograph scans onto Tmax, ordinary digital camera pictures onto ColorPlus and various non-standard heavily post-processed digital images and film scans onto CT Precisa for possible cross-process. The first two films would be used in the darkroom and the third is purely for my own curiosity as some of the film images were originally cross-processed and now I would in effect be doing that again. It will also be interesting to see what changes there are to the textures of all the pictures. I had to supply the films and a memory stick with clearly labelled folders each containing the 36 images needed for whichever film. What I forgot to do was rotate any of the portrait orientation pictures back to landscape - I am uncertain if this was done automatically by the machine's software, or if the developed film will show them squashed or truncated.