jozevolf

A few years ago a friend asked me to photograph his wedding. I told

him that I am just a photography hobbyist and simply can not guarantee

professional or even acceptable results. He didn't care much about my

warning so I did it. The results weren't bad but they were also not on

a level to be proud of (that was my opinion).

 

I guess the couple liked the photos quite a lot because a few months

ago I was asked to be a photographer at the same friends brothers

weddings which took place in the same month. <a

href="http://www.concertography.com/gallery/poroka_kg">This is the

extended version of album of the second brothers wedding</a> and I

would like to get some constructive critique to improve the quality of

wedding coverage because I am still far from results to be proud of

and I was asked to cover another friends wedding at the end of this month.

Vote for Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX Macro. Great lens, opticaly and mechanicaly.

A few weeks ago I was at Sigma's Slovenian distributor. I tried the SD-9 DSLR and there was the Sigma mount version of the lens put on it. It was also very stiff. Obviously there is something on the mechanical design of this lens. I didn't like it.

 

A year or two ago I owned Sigma 28-135 mm zoom. That one seemed great mechanically. It was much smoother than currently my only zoom lens, Canon EF 28-105 USM. Sadly it was pretty poor optically.

 

It is very weird that Sigma's zooming/focusing ring feeling differs so much between their lens models. It simply doesn't matter if it is an EX. I find my Sigma 105 EX Macro to have one of the finest manual focusing ring I have ever used but the 24-70 2.8 is very hard to use.

Remove and reattach the lens. Once my friend's eos 1d started acting strangley and it was just a loose contact on the lens terminal.

Fuji Press 800, Fuji NPH 400, Fuji Superia Reala 100. All rated at least 1/3 of a stop less.

From my experience, 1-(large)step downsampled images are usualy worse than those that were downsampled using a few (smaller) steps. They seem not as sharp and there are pronounced jaggies on diagonal lines.

Actualy this is not a question but a solution. I've been very

frustrated with this scanner for a long time. It was mainly because I

could never get accurate colors, specialy with the supplied software.

I am talking about scanning slides.

 

I've been experimenting with Vuescan for a long time and I was quite

sattisfied with colors after I've borrowed an IT8 calibration target

and created a custom icc profile for my scanner. I set Vuescan not to

balance colors and scans were pretty accurate. Well there were some

ugly color shifts on some (mainly dark) slides but it was probably a

bug in Vuescan.

 

Thinking that colors were alright I ran into another problem with

this scanner. I know that banding was an issue with DSE2, but it was

noticeable (at least in my case) after I've modified levels out of

usable range, so it didn't seem like a big issue to me. But one day,

when scanning negative, I've noticed 1 pixel wide magenta line at

about 50 pixels from top of the scan. There were also some other

similar lines visible but none of them was quite so obvious as this

one (see one of my previous posts). When scanning slide, the color of

this line was green but location was the same.

 

First, I blamed Vuescan, so I switched back to Minolta software

because I could not see any banding problem on scans made with it.

Well, colors were all weird (magenta cast), so I started

experimenting with color accuracy of Minolta software again. I saw a

tip on scanhancer.com, to disable color matching in Minolta software

so I gave it a try. Hmmmm... Results were much better but still not

quite the best. After a few more combinations I have made my first

PERFECT SCAN of slide. The magic combination is: no color matching in

minolta software, 16-bit ouput, manual focus on contrasty part of

image, 16X multisample (optional, less noise in shaddows), when

opening in photoshop, assign ScanElite2(posi) color profile to image

and after that convert it to working profile. Result is 100%

accurate.

 

Well, in my case, the thin line became visible again, so it's 100%

hardware issue. I've already returned the unit for repair (I really

hope it's just dust on CCD).

 

The formula works fine for slides but for negatives, the best

sollution is Vuescan, IT8 calibrated, locked exposure and film base

color on prescan of empty frame and manual color balance on neutral

gray part of scanned image with properly adjusted brightness.

 

I hope I've helped to some of Scan Elite 2 users and I would really

like to get some feedback. I will post some examples as soon as I get

my unit returned.

This PrintScreen should tell more than thousand words:

<br><br>

<img src="http://www.honda-si.net/images/jgv/ps_dotted_lines.gif">

<img src="http://www.honda-si.net/images/jgv/dseii_problem.jpg">

<br><br>

This image is a crop of 2820 dpi scan of negative (superia reala)

using Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II hardware and Vuescan software. The

problem is the thin (1 px) magenta line at about 40 pixels from top

of the scan. I haven't noticed the problem with other scanning

software (dimage scan utility and silverfast for minolta). Is anyone

else having the same problem? Any suggestions?

<br><br>

BTW: Why am I not using the other software?

<br><br>

Dimage scan utility - ugly unsharp scans, colors far from real,

shadow and highlight detail clipped

<br><br>

Silverfast for Minolta - minolta version is availble just recently,

price, vuescan has better colors when calibrated and masterred

Photoshop 7 has this feature. In the top right corner of the main program window you have the option to browse folders using the thumbnails. When in that window, you have to select all the files you would like to rename, right click them and choose "batch rename". Then you edit your renaming rules and that should be it.

 

I hope I was accurate enough, because I'm writing this from my memory and I don't have any Photoshop near me right now.

Very angry hot chilli pepper!

Eden redkih slovencev na photo.net... Si kaj gledal Sigmo EF-500 Super? Prijatelj jo je kupil pred kaksnim letom in je zadovoljen. Je E-TTL kompatibilna, ima pa se mnogo drugih funkcij, ki jih sam body ne podpira (sinhronizacija na drugo zaveso, flash kompenzacija...) Lahko jo uporabis tudi v slave nacinu in jo sprozis s flashom na kameri. Sigmo dobis v BTC hali D (Emporium klet) v trgovini Eurovision.

 

Excuse me folks for writing in Slovenian language.

Sigma 28-135 on Elan7... No problems! AF focus works well and auto-zoom head of 380EX also does it's job on zooming.

I am going to learn how to develop BW film. I have chosen Neopan 400

as my learning film and now I also need to buy some chemicals. Which

developer and fixer should I get for learning? Any other suggestions?

Anyone else having problems mounting their elan7 with BP300 to

trpod? I simply can't get it mounted straight because the bottom of

battery pack is not totaly flat like camera's bottom. I tried

improvising by stuffing a paper between bp300 and tripod mount

adapter but it makes me mad everytime I am doing it.

I would like to buy a circular polarizing filter and UV filter

(mechanical protection) for my new Sigma 28-135 lens. I already have

UV filter from Sigma to protect my old cheap Canon zoom lens and I

simply can't complain about it. Would circular polarizer from Sigma

also be a good choice?