Ektar film, Praktica and Vuescan

[Rick_van_Nooij]

<p>Last month I tested another lens on my Praktica MTL-50. I got it for free for Chrismas from a fellow Dutchie photographer. The lens is a Super-Takumar 55mm f/2. I had just received my 10 rolls of Ektar 100 to try.<br>

The weather took a turn for the worst the previous 2 weeks and so I shot a lot of snow scenes.<br>

I'm still trying to figure out the right settings scan the negatives in Vuescan. I'm not totally pleased with all of them, but it sure beats the old drivers ;) 2400dpi scans, levels adjusted and smart-sharpened in Photoshop.</p>

<p>Disused sluice in the summer dike along the Meuse River, it leads to a fishing pond<br>

<img src="http://www.flibweb.nl/flibweb/cpg143/albums/userpics/10001/practica01.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="426" /></p>

<p>Pumping Station<br>

<img src="http://www.flibweb.nl/flibweb/cpg143/albums/userpics/10001/practica02.jpg" alt="" width="426" height="640" /></p>

<p>The small harbor, you might recognize from the Medalist Photos I posted a few weeks ago<br>

<img src="http://www.flibweb.nl/flibweb/cpg143/albums/userpics/10001/practica03.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="426" /></p>

<p>After a few days of frost and snow, the pond behind my parents' garden.<br>

<img src="http://www.flibweb.nl/flibweb/cpg143/albums/userpics/10001/sneeuw4.jpg" alt="" width="426" height="640" /></p>

<p>My "Bat mobile", on the company parking lot<br>

<img src="http://www.flibweb.nl/flibweb/cpg143/albums/userpics/10001/sneeuw5.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="426" /></p>

<p>I really should clean up my garage<br>

<img src="http://www.flibweb.nl/flibweb/cpg143/albums/userpics/10001/sneeuw7.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="426" /></p>

<p>And finally some more snow<br>

<img src="http://www.flibweb.nl/flibweb/cpg143/albums/userpics/10001/sneeuw9.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="426" /></p>

<p>As you can see by the different levels saturation and blue sheen, I've not been able to come up with a winning group of settings. I'd love to hear from SG Adams and how he got his wonderful results with this film.</p>

<p>The Takumar is not a bad lens, and I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth. But it can't beat my industar-61 in terms of sharpness. And the automatic-close down on the aperture took some getting used to. It will get some more use in the near future.</p>

<p>Now, it's back to waiting for Santa to deliver that Argus A and Argus C-44 to my house....</p>

<p>Enjoy your holidays,<br>

Rick</p>

[subbarayan_prasanna]

<p>Nice pictures; as you said, the lens does seem a little softer than the Soviet and DDR lenses. Possibly, it is just your sample. Overall seems to be good. Perhaps it is also the lighting. Thanks for posting. Regards, sp.</p>

[john_shriver]

<p>Snow often photographs bluer than it looks in person -- it's just reflecting the blue sky. I suspect you'd get the same results with a very "honest" slide film like Kodak E100G.<br>

Part of the challenge of color photography is that it bypasses a lot of mental processing, like our inbuilt "automatic white balance."</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>Very nice indeed.<br>

I don't find a touch of "softness" here to be a real disadvantage, although Takumars are not generally "soft" lenses. As SP says, this may be a sample problem.</p>

<p>Our bad weather here has been solid, heavy rain for days, and I haven't cared to test the weather sealing on either my film or digital cameras. I hope I can get out today -- I'm way behind in both camera testing and film testing.</p>

<p>So many cameras, so little time....</p>

[User_502260]

<p>This has been brought up in other forums but as far as I know the 55/2 Takumar/SMCT/SMC/SMC Pentax were all the same as their f/1.8 counterparts. The f number is marked differently but they are otherwise the same. I have the 55/2 SMCT and SMC Pentax and find them to be just as good as the fine 55/1.8 SMCT and SMC Pentax lenses. I find that Ektar 100 is about 80 in good light and 64 in lower light. This can call for using slower shutter speeds and of a tripod is not used someone might think the lens isn't quite sharp. My favorite of the M42 standard Pentax lenses is the 55/1.8 SMC. Any underesposure with Ektar 100 will show flat color and a less sharp look. </p>

[rustys pics]

<p>I really like the garage shot. I got a similar Super Takumar 55mm 1.8 lens just recently. Only tried it out digitally with a EOS 20D, but it looked ultra sharp. Hope to sling it on my Praktica Super TL soon for shots with Ektachrome, or even Kodachrome. As JDM said. we've had nothing but buckets of rain nearly every week.<br>

I will say that many of these shots seem to be at or near infinity focus. Seems to me that many lenses are NOT very sharp at infinity...could diffraction play a role here?</p>

[User_502260]

<p>I don't know why diffraction would be more of a problem at infinity. What sometimes happens is that the mirror in an SLR is out of adjustment and that can throw infinity focus off. Haze can also make distant subjects look less sharp.</p>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>Nice pics <strong>Rick</strong> , and it's very difficult to assess the quality of a lens from a scan, IMHO. There's just too many intermediate factors in the process. Your lens appears a tad soft, but I'd be very loathe to judge it from the scans.</p>

<p>I recently shot an out-of-date Fuji Superia 400 through an old Pentax S3 with the Super Tak 55/2, just as a rough test. I haven't scanned a 35mm neg for ages, since I usually work from scans from a Fuji Frontier, but just for fun I hauled out a rather boring neg and fired up my elderly Epson Perfection 2450. Heres's the result, using Epson software, acquired in Photoshop at 800 dpi. It's slightly better than the Frontier, but not much, and not bad for a general purpose scanner.</p>

<p>This particular lens is very sharp, and I've not come across a poor Takumar. The quality seems pretty uniform in my experience, and I agree with<strong> Jeff</strong> , in that I've read in several forums that the 1.8's and the 2's are the same lens.</p><div></div>

[subbarayan_prasanna]

<p>I tend to agree with Rick Drawbridge. The sharpness as displayed may have more to do with your scan and post processing. I tried tweaking your pictures in Picassa. They seem to have more potential sharpness than what is displayed in your post. Perhaps you did some color correction also in your post-processing. That could alter the sharpness especially if you reduce the yellow range. Photoshop can be tricky at times! Regards, sp. </p>

[sg_adams]

<p>All your images look pretty good on my monitor except the last one. That one looks a little under contrasted and needs a little punch but it is still seems plenty sharp. I don't think I have ever got a good scan with 35mm on my flat bed. My most beautiful slides are made to look like crap. Very soft looking and not easy to work with pre and post scan. As far as getting Ektar to look good with Vuescan, the samples I posted and commented on were 120 roll Film first of all. Part of it was the scan software handled the Ektar better to begin with, and then I would try setting Black and white points under the Color pull down window, and then start just tweeking things using the manual settings. Sometimes it works out and sometimes not so good. I am forever starting over and trying different things or giving up but never quitting. One thing with Vuescan is you can do higher resolution prescans so you have a better idea what your adjustment levels are doing. I do have a tendency to add red, then green and adjust blue to taste, and that's the order they are in, but I go up and down and lighten, darken, and sharpen last which adds contrast that is sometimes a big help, and other times unwanted. One thing is for sure, it consumes a lot of time. </p>

[Rick_van_Nooij]

<p>Thanks for all the input guys.<br>

The mirror could be slightly out of alignment, as I took a pretty nasty tumble onto some cobbles sometime in November and the camera landed on one of the strap lugs that twisted backwards and cracked the top cover. (I had to dismantle it to get the film out that was in it at the time, after that the camera appeared to work fine). One of these days I'll run a test roll to it to check the focus.</p>

<p>Second, I might be slightly out of alignment, I haven't had much practice with SLRs (eventhough I own a Minolta Dynax, this Praktica, an Exacta and a KW Pilot-6).</p>

<p>SP, I only played around with the levels in post-processing, I did not change the color balance. I'll will keep it in mind though.</p>

<p>The lack of contrast in the last image is what I had in my first few attempts using the VueScan defaults for 3rd generation Ektar film. Generic Color Film settings gave better results.<br>

I've been fiddling a lot with locking the film base color, with B/W points and manual white balance. Its a little tedious going through all these settings for each scan over and over again if the negatives on the strip haven't been shot in the same light conditions.As you said. It consumes a lot of time.<br>

Ah well, just a matter of getting into the workflow I guess.</p>

<p> </p>

[mendel_leisk]

<blockquote>

<p>Generic Color Film settings gave better results</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I'd agree. What about other Color Tab settings, did you stick with White Balance? And what White Point setting?</p>

[Rick_van_Nooij]

<p>After locking the film base color I set the white points as wide as allowed by Vuescan. I'd normally stick with "White Balance" for the color balance settings, but I've tried the manual option a few times with this roll of film.</p>

<p>I know all this talk about scanning negatives goes beyond the scope of classic camera forums, so I hope the moderators forgive me ;)</p>

[janne_moren]

I've found that Vuescan is great at the scanning part, but not so much for the postprocessing. I tend to get the best results just locking film base color and image color - no setting black or white point, no color balance tweaking, except that I set the brightness gamma setting (1.3 - 1.6 is fine there; you get blocked shadows at the default 1.0 setting) and just scan the whole roll like that. Save in 16 bit, then use a separate app (I use UFRaw) to do all brightness, color and contrast work.

[sg_adams]

<p>If I can't get things the way they should be using white ballance and basic manual adjustments, I'll go for a high resolution prescan and start working it. All I need to do is get things close enough so I only have to make minor adjustment in post scan PS editing. Occasionally I get some pretty nice results with a 35mm flatbed scan, but it's like maybe 1 out of 5 that I can get good enough to post. Not so with medium format and large with a flatbed. I get about 90% good results of the things I want to post up for folks to see. Big difference. 9 out of 10 vs 1 out of 5. And I have to work extra hard on the 35mm stuff usually. I think this is mostly I still don't have things figured out, but I hear it constantly that a flat bed is lame for 35mm. </p>

[ralf_j.]

<p>Great results on Ektar Rick. The images look fine to me. Thanks for posting.</p>

[mendel_leisk]

<blockquote>

<p>I've found that Vuescan is great at the scanning part, but not so much for the postprocessing.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>My approach is to just save the Vuescan Raw file at first, so not locked into any Color Tab settings at time of scan. And as several others have mention, I follow the Advanced Workflow method, locking film base color.</p>

<p>BTW, while you imtimate you are struggling to achieve these results, needing different settings image by image, your results look very good for color balance.</p>