Bill C

Hi, well some chain outfits did. But I think it was far more common to stick with 70 mm film, but shoot in what they called a split-70 format. This is where the frame is rotated sideways on the film. This way you could have the same film width, 70 mm, for either a large, fancy-schmancy negative, or the much smaller split-70 neg. Most of this sort of work was processed on cine processors, where you want it to be set up for a specific film width. If someone wanted an even smaller neg they could have gone to 35 mm film (and the appropriate cine machine setup). But those days are long-gone now.

At one time I was pretty intimately involved with cameras from both (mainly) Photocontrol and Beattie Coleman from around 1970 on, but never saw one of these. So I'm guessing it's from the earlier 1960s. I'd agree it's likely intended for school photos. I say this cuz there's no obvious parralax correction mechanism, suggesting a limited working distance. Fwiw it's a pretty crude camera. Later Camerz cameras included the Camerz "Classic" which was a serious workhorse for any kind of portrait studio work, head shots to family groups. That was a twin lens camera with a parallax correction cam driving the viewing lens, PhotoControl's own shutter, and a numbering device to expose the ID from a sitting card onto the film. Photocontrol also manufactured Nord printers which, combined with the specialized portrait cameras, formed part of a "manufacturing system" for portraits. There was no other camera system, made in significant quantities, that could compete with that sort of gear in high volume situations. Digital cameras brought about the end of these. As I recall Photocontrol had been working with Kodak on a digital version of the camera somewhere around the year 2000, but things just didn't come through fast enough for Photocontrol to survive.

Hmmmm... I've never gone on a serious online search for that sort of thing. But the link that I gave earlier - actually a slightly different starting point - seems to have a variety of Rodenstock spec sheets. I'll just link a few of the 50mm lenses separately. Rodenstock Apo-Rodagon-N 50mm f2.8 Rodenstock Rogonar- S 1:2,8/ 50 mm https://www.linhofstudio.com/catalogue/dbdocs/Rodenstock_Rodagon_Only_Series_a659.pdf So these include Rogonar-S, the standard Rodagon, and the Apo-Rodagon-N. Just a brief look at the MTF curves, wide open, specifically looking at the 40 lp/mm set, the Apo lens seems clearly superior to the others, holding a flat 60% MTF almost to the corners of a 35mm negative. The standard Rodagon started out closer to 50%, falling off to less than 40% near the long ends of the frame, and the Rogonar-S (4-elements) looks relatively miserable, mostly under 40% and dipping to 30% at a certain distance off-center. Now, I don't know, in practical terms, how visible this really is on a print (the spec sheets were looking at a 10X magnification). But to put it in perspective 40 lp/mm at the negative would be 1/10 that on the print, meaning about 4 lp/mm on the print. This puts each line pair width spanning roughly the same distance as the thickness of a business card. I've never seriously tried pitting enlarging lenses against each other but my instinct is that you won't be very far off on this.

I don't know if they're still made but I bought one about 20 years back for a special project, as a relay lens. Expensive, yes, but not out of line with other such lenses at the time. No complaints, but I really don't know how one would quantify its performance. Without having a very high resolution plate on at least one side. THIS is the question I was asking you before, when I THOUGHT that you were quoting measured resolution in a 1:1 configuration. Regarding the exaggerated claims, perhaps you will clue me in on this.

Ok, I appreciate how you did it (and I sort of recall seeing your prior post). I have to throw out a lot of the details of what I said, cuz, I had mistakenly got the idea that the OP was looking for a lens to make 1:1 copy photos of 35mm. [update; I see that the OP had a companion post asking about the 1:1 copy situation. I thought that's what I'm responding to. Not so, my mistake. ] Ok, when I asked I was under the mistaken impression that you were specifically talking about a 1:1 situation, and that you had somehow determined 200 lppmm in the macro situation. THIS is the situation where I could not see an obvious way to measure resolution. But again, wrong situation, Sorry, my mistake. I'm in the wrong thread. Two similar threads, I sorta crossed them up. Ps I see that I even put my lens rec, the Apo-Rodagon D, here, in the wrong thread. Gotta be more careful.

If you ascribe to the rule of thumb that the resolving power of a system is related to the individual components such that the inverse of the system resolution is equal to the sum of the inverses of each component, then several things become clear. 1) if film resolution is the limiting component then it is desirable to have the lens resolution be much higher than the film. Several times higher, if possible. And 2) the weak link of a chain analogy isn't very good. If a chain followed the imaging rule of thumb then a chain with two equal-strength links would only be half as strong as either one of the links. I could see this. Using a lens for 1:1 macro generally means that the lens is extended by one focal length past its infinity-focus position. So the f/3.5 setting effectively functions as though it were f/7. Another rule of thumb is that all lenses are diffraction limited to roughly 1800/f-number lines per mm. Since 1800/7 = 260 lines per mm I can see a high-quality lens achieving 200 lines per mm when used in a macro situation. Now, on the film you referred to, where you achieved 100 lines per mm, this suggests that the film, alone, is capable of 200 lines per mm. (This is because 1/100 = 1/200 + 1/200, where both the film and lens are individually capable of 200 lines per mm.) So if the OP wanted to get significantly beyond the ~100 lines per mm that you achieved on your film, there seem to be two options: either a significantly "better" film, or a significantly better lens. Because of diffraction it would be necessary to have a "faster" lens aperture. An f/2.8 lens would seem to be limited to producing around 125 lines per mm on this film. Anyway, the apparent conclusion is that the OP should really go for the best lens he can manage. I'm curious as to how you determined 200 lppmm from your lens. I don't see any obvious way to do it short of having an extremely high-resolution material on one side of the lens. Or perhaps use a microscope on one side to examine an aerial image introduced on the other side?

I agree with you, Harry. I'd be more gentle about it if a forum member had devised the lighting, but in all seriousness I see this as lighting designed by an amateur. For some reason this style seems to be oft used for head shots of school children, where it's not too bad, young skin and all. But for older people... if you've ever seen a photo of an older person where it looks like they have the mouth of a marionette it probably used this style lighting (but probably smallish lights); you can get deeper shadows that neither light can reach into. The straightforward way to deal with this is to bring the fill light in close to the camera. I'd personally want to raise the main higher, enough to put some shadow down under their chin. This will help hide wrinkles. Again, with young skin these are not really issues, but I'm presuming that you are shooting adults. I know that you have done this sort of work before, so you know how to deal with reflections in glasses. For others... moving the fill close to camera means that it is preferable for a person wearing glasses to face more towards the main light side, where a higher-up light minimizes the reflection problem. But this is fine because that's the area you'll be working from - between the camera and the main (I'm presuming you're using a camera stand). Another reason to have the fill closer to the camera is so it can "reach" into the depths of group shot. Otherwise the main way to prevent crossed shadows inside is to keep everyone in a straight line. Anyway, those are my views on the situation. But if these are customer requirements, well... you gotta do it how the boss wants.

Rodenstock made a lens specifically for 1:1 reproduction, where "typical applications are transparency duplication,...etc." in this specific application I think that you would be very hard pressed to exceed the optical quality. See the Apo-Rodagon-D 75 mm f/4 lens. There's a pdf spec sheet available at this site: Rodenstock Apo Rodagon D 75mm f4 ( 1x) Note the graph showing near zero distortion at exactly 1x mag, whereas at 0.8x or 1.25x it is climbing slightly (~ 0.2 % at full image height, 6x6 cm).

You're welcome. Best of luck with it. If you end up hauling it a lot consider something like a Pelican case for it. O-ring seal to keep out dust, and cut-out foam to soak up shocks.

Great! You ought to be in good shape. Fwiw, aside from scaring the other units into continuing to work, the spare is equally useful for troubleshooting a unit that suddenly stops working. Without a spare tube that means you'd have to remove the apparently delicate flash tube from a working unit, etc., and possibly risking breakage of said tube, which could potentially disable a second flash unit. Now, if you have a good mechanical "touch," or "sense," or whatever you might call it, the risk is pretty small, but a lot of people seem to have never developed such skills. Anyway, best of luck with your new gear.

Good move. Regarding DNP, some years ago they bought out Sony's dye sub business in the US, so will likely continue to be a player. The only thing I'd worry about with the model you picked is the limited media size. (It's limited by the width of the print head, 4.5 inches per their website.) If your intention is to make money with the printer it may be hard to charge much for a 4x6" print (or whatever size a 4.5" wide unit gives). So might consider stepping up to something that has options to print on 5" wide paper, allowing 5x7" prints, as well as 4" paper, for 4x6" prints. (I don't know that DNP actually has such a model, but it seems likely.) Just some food for thought. One last comment... dye sub printers use a full-width thermal head that has to be periodically cleaned, meaning that it has to be reachable with a Q-tip or the like. If someone ever puts a little nick in it, perhaps from a ring, the printhead, the most expensive part of the machine, will have to be replaced in a factory service center. I'm sure the user manual will emphasize this, but it's something you might wanna know up front. Best of luck with your selection.

Hi, yeah, I'm just the opposite, they're all "worn out," but never broken. The difference, probably, is in the construction of the flash tubes. The stuff I would consider "pro-level" has the flash tube mounted on its own ceramic base, with a substantial glass shield around it. So the user never handles the actual flash tube itself, but rather the plug-in module containing the flash tube. So there is no risk of the user accidentally touching the trigger wire (and potentially receiving a shock), nor of accidentally breaking a delicate leg, etc. We used to replace hundreds of flash tubes per year, and there were almost never any visible indications of failure. Thus the test method of... swap in another flash tube.

Hi, it's pretty common to get darkening inside the tubes at the end. There's really not much you can look for, visually, to indicate a tube going bad. My experience, with a large chain outfit, was primarily with pro-level gear from Norman, Photogenic, etc., from prior to the digital camera age (lots of flash power was common back then). We would commonly get on the order of 150,000 to 250,000 high-power flashes out of a tube. When they failed they would often get intermittent, but might just stop firing. The standard test method was just to have the studio swap in a spare flash tube. I would expect for modern gear, being fired at much lower output settings, to have very long flash tube life spans. But if you are shooting professionally it's always worth having spares/backup gear. I would strongly recommend, if you're doing anything like portrait work, to buy only what they call "UV-coated" tubes. The non-coated tubes put out enough UV light to make things with "brighteners," such as white dress shirts, fluoresce, which gives them a slight bluish tinge. Which does not happen with UV-coated tubes. Best of luck with the new gear.

Hi, no, I haven't used that model. I've had a lot of background experience with pro-level dye sub printers, in general, though. Here's the general breakdown. They can make very high-quality color images, provided that they have a high-quality ICC profile. They DO need a specific media, made just for that printer (media consists of paper and ribbon). I would suggest to plan your purchase with the intention of paying it off within a relatively short time, meaning just a few years, just in case. When it gets to where the manufacturer doesn't support it anymore, media-wise, it's just a paperweight. So it's something you want to buy as a piece of production equipment for your business, that's essentially pumping out profit. FWIW there are essentially no surface options aside from glossy. Some makers have a "matte" surface available, but it doesn't really have a texture - it's made by "dithering" the overcoat layer. I've seen some that looked really good, but I'd personally avoid using because of potential long-term image stability issues. Because of these issues it may sound like a bad idea. But if you plan to do on-site event printing there is nothing else to compete. Pro dye subs print fast, and the prints are completely finished, ready to hand out, when they come out the end. No waiting to finish drying, etc. No worries about ink drying in a print head, or anything like that. Just keep the printer in a case until your next event, haul it there, and start printing. FWIW I've only used them indoors, under office-like conditions, so I have no idea about tolerance for higher temperature or humidity, etc. One other point is to protect them from dust. If you get any dust particles on the paper they'll show up on the print (the dust gets between the ribbon and the paper, blocking the dye at that point). Let me know if any other general questions.

Actually, if you could get to 95%+ color accurate (whatever that actually means) the color would almost certainly be gallery quality. (There are formal ways to measure accuracy of color, but you would have to specifically define exactly what a 95% accuracy would mean, so I'm just making up the numbers) I think you would likely be perfectly satisfied with the color if you were to set a custom white balance by photographing a white card per the following, by Rodeo_joe: To get the exposure close, take some test shots of the white card and view the histogram (on back of camera). If you can get the spike on the histogram to be about 95% of the way to the right (pixel value about 240 or so, roughly) you'll probably be thrilled to death with how the jpegs look. Assuming that you have a good set of jpeg parameters set in the camera (meaning close to "neutral" or "natural" color, etc.) there will be almost no benefit to using RAW images. I'm saying this on the presumption that the (mostly frontal) lighting is indeed from LEDs. (If it's either CFL or other energy-efficient fluorescent, forget about good quality color.) FWIW I spent a lot of my work life dealing with studio lighting and color issues in labs, so I'm not really guessing about this. Actually I AM guessing a bit about Nikon color - my experience is mainly in two other brands; I'm just presuming that Nikon color rendering is not much different. Best of luck.

David, you might consider trying to gel your flash, depending on what the color temp (actually "correlated," CCT) of your LEDs is. Lacking any gels made for the purpose, and fairly "warm" LEDs (meaning something like 3 or 4 thousand K) you might not be too far off with a piece of clear (orangish) color negative film. If the effect is too strong, try covering only half the flash, etc. If you can come up with something close, no more worries about the specific ambient/flash balance at anymoment. (But outdoor daylight spilling in from windows will still be an issue.) Best of luck.

More than likely Jochen is right on the money. Here's what I'd do. Get out your camera manual and look up "custom white balance." (I don't know Nikons; they might use a different term) With this you set it by photographing a white card (or white paper, or a neutral gray card) under the same lighting condition as the subject. So the camera sees what is the error in the white card, and the camera changes its individual R, G, and B settings to be correct. This special white balance setting is now stored in the camera, and you can call it up the same way as the other white balance settings. Note: as a confirmation that you did it correctly I would suggest, after setting this custom white balance, to take a test shot of the white card and view the color histogram of the image ( check the camera manual if you don't know how to do this). The histogram will ideally show a sharp spike for each color, and they should all be on top of each other (if one of the spikes is offset from the others then the WB was not properly set). After doing thus you'll probably get pretty decent skin color under that specific light source. Warning - after the shooting session immediately reset your camera WB back to auto. Otherwise you'll likely botch up color the next time you use the camera. Jochen is again right about LEDs being different. Fundamentally current "white" LEDs work in a similar manner. They have a fundamental "blue" component and a fundamental green-and-red component. These two components can be individually determined, so for a "daylight" balance (high color temperature) they make the blue component strong. Or for a "tungsten" balance (low color temperature) the blue component is weak. The whole point of this is that you might need different WB settings for different lights in the house. So double check them if you plan to shoot in different places. FWIW the current "white" LEDs are missing light energy between the bluish spike and the rest of the colors. So while you can get pretty acceptable skin color from them you won't be able to have top-notch skin tone reproduction. (Yeah, i know that everybody and his brother on the internet says they get great skin tones, so try asking them if they ever did high-quality side by side testing, LED vs flash/daylight, with hand-balanced color prints, viewed under proper, full-spectrum lighting, such as daylight). A second thing that I would consider doing is to use a low-power pop-up flash on the camera (I'm guessing that your camera has one). But... I'd use a colored gel to match the flash color to the ambient light. This adds to the complexity of the setup, but IF you've got 1) the time, and 2) an assortment of gels, this could be worthwhile. Without using a gel on the flash you'd likely get different color in the shadows, so probably not a good idea. Best of luck. Ps, to match a gelled flash to ambient light, you would set a custom WB for ambient. Then shoot tests, under flash, using that same WB,of the same white card. View the color histogram for each test shot to see what color error predominates. Try different colored gels to see what helps. Close is probably good enough, as long as the fill flash is fairly weak - say around -2 stops on the flash compensation setting. Ps, if I didn't have the time to set up the jpegs carefully then I'd make sure to also shoot RAW along with them.

Gotta say I don't really see "photojournalism" here, more like a 4-hour drive turned into a 10-day trip with vacation photos taken along the way. Now, for a camera or vacation blog, it's fine. Fwiw I also looked at his website where he has a bit more writing. It sounds to me like he followed some tourist tracks and maybe sees that as a substitute for "regular life." And is, perhaps, trying to make it fit into a preconceived narrative. Some pretty photos, though. Here's a brief clip from his bio, just so people can get an idea of who he is:

I thought it was pretty well understood by now, although this is not my strong point. I'm curious as to how current your literature was... I mean, is it in the past 10, or 20 years, or something on that order?

I spent about all of my adult work life in photography, with the majority in lab work and "beyond," whatever you might take that to mean. We used to do extensive testing of color films and papers (it was a very large outfit and I was a QC guy for a lot of years). Sharpies were our standard way to label test prints. After a lot of years the Sharpies would sorta "bleed" within the paper. As I recall they came out with a photograde Sharpie which we used a little. Completely different ink, which I know because you could see it through an infrared scope (the regular Sharpie is "blank" to an IR scope). I would PRESUME that the photograde ink doesn't bleed, but I dunno for sure (it just wasn't our "thing" to study this aspect; we weren't gonna be writing on customer prints). I'd personally be looking at Henry Wilhelm's 1990s book (free download from his website) for any recommendations. Aside from that, if I was gonna be inclined to listen to someone's personal recommendations on some certain ink/pen, I'd be asking them how they held up after ten or fifteen years.

So I'm curious as to how you get the image, as viewed by eye? Photographed on film? Or a "higher grade" digital? Or is it synthetic? I oughta try that test myself. It'd also be interesting to see the results from a Foveon sensor camera; I'd probably be willing to bet that they don't have any trouble with spectral yellow.

Thanks Barry. Re: understanding, I've almost completely lost my sense of what "regular" people or photographers follow, lingo-wise. In person I would always be asking, do you know what it means when I say such-and-such, then adjust the level of explanations up and down accordingly. In a forum like this, though, it's hard to judge. So you should always feel free to ask if want a different level explanation. People have done that sort of thing for me forever, so I'm glad to carry it on. The whole thing of color reproduction, to me, is especially interesting. (I see "accurate" color reproduction as being the case where you have an original thing which you photograph, then make a print, and then compare the two side by side to see if they look the same.) What we're doing in photography is to take a real world object, with a continuous spectral makeup, then try to mimic it with a limited set of dyes, or whatever. It all relies on humans having three color sensing functions (aka, red, green, blue) then essentially tricking those responses so as to produce the same "appearance."

I don't recall making an "accusation," reference, please. You DID ask, "Non-starter or worth pursuing?" then "Thoughts, please?" So I responded, "Non-starter." Then proceeded to give some of my thoughts. But rather than hash it out here, why not just hop back to that thread? I have an alert set on it...

Sorry, I was thinking it was here. But it was a different thread... Looks like my link won't hop over there, but it was your thread called "Colour checker app?"