under the lampost

Trying to determine how tone affects reactions to this pair of pics, this one being partially desaturated. Shot at an EI of 800 with a shutter speed of 1/1000, stopped down to f/16 and the zoom set to a bit over 50mm. The sun is off to the left of the pic so a lens hood was used to avoid flare. TIA to everyone who contributes critiques, comments, compare and contrast, and/or scores.

Of the 'cloud' batch this is the one I like best: the tone is balanced and it's better to have a vertical composition for a lamppost.

 

I think you have issues with your scanner: I should know as my own scans are awful. I can see there is some grain, probably due to the 400ISO film, but the scanning leaves it unsharp. 5/5

Leo, Thanks for the kind words. Seems the consensus is the desat pic is better to most. This pic is already grainy on the proof, EI was 800 at f/16 and a shutter speed of 1/1000. There are thin whispy clouds that create the image seen but they're more smoothly rendered on the print. I tried scanning at high res for the first time with these, 576dpi, but I'm pretty sure I didn't catch the default for the unsharp mask being a 6 pixel radius. I just upgraded GraphicConverter from v4.4.1 to v5.6.1 Classic so I missed a few things. The lower left hand corner had something on the surface of the photo itself and when I tried to clean it off, it ruined the proof. So I'm going to go have the two pics reprinted as-is, no correction and rescan. This time at 144dpi like I've always done and see how much of a difference it makes. But I imagine the EI of 800 is the culprit as I've only seen this with these photos. Thanks very much for the feedback, it's helpful. The scanner is the Canon FB63U so it's the first gen, with power from the USB port. These pics came at the end of an ASA test of two rolls and apparently I shot them on the 37th and 38th frame to finish off the roll. And promptly forgot all about them.

You're welcome Pete. Unfortunately I cannot be of much better help in the matter of scanning resolution or unsharp-mask settings. My command of such is generally limited to cranking the sharpness control in an old version of ACDSee up to '57'...