edgar_njari

I think you may be seeing something else here that you don't like, not color saturation. Saturation is just a push of a button with digital cameras, as long as it doesn't bring out noise.

You can saturate any color you like, or all together. It's no big deal.

In my opinion, no scanner in the world gives perfect results just by pushing the button. For me a good scanner is that which captures a flat scan with as much information as it can, which can later be shaped into anything you like by adjusting the curves and saturation.

In fact, more serious scanning solutions will probably output less-interesting looking scans out of the box, than most cheap solutions which try to make everything look "impressive" out of the box, by appealing to the tastes of an average consumer (usually sharpening everything to the point of insanity, crushing the blacks etc.)

 

Features in scanning software that put out "adjusted" scans without any user input, are actually aimed at the least-involved kind of consumers.

Same as minilab machines.

 

You can't compare films with scans done by someone else, or some other machine which didn't consider what you are actually trying to do.

If you have two films one flatter, other more contrasty, they are both going to end up similar in such tests, because the scanning software in a minilab machine, or any software without consideration for specific filmstocks, will assume that all films should look the same, and will adjust contrast accordingly. Or anything else, saturation, color balance, anything.

 

The only way to compare is to scan yourself, carefully using the same setting for both scans, or making an optical print on the same paper.

But even then, all you can get is a relative difference, because you are not seeing the actual look , because there is no such thing for negative film. What you are seeing is a combination of film and paper, or film and scanner characteristics, and all you can ever find out is in which direction does the difference between these films go.

Hi

 

I'd like to buy a flatbed medium format scanner. But I've been out of

circulation for some time, so I'm not sure what are the current options.

Are there finally any half-decent film flatbed scanners out there (in terms of

optics)?

Last time I bought such a device was when Canon 4200F was a brand new model, and

It was really bad in terms of resolution for 35mm film.

But I guess, even if the optics are the same, it would be so bad in MF. Though I

am kind of hoping that if I bought a 8600F or 8800F perhaps it would be slightly

better than 4200F in terms of optical resolution. I'm not impressed with the

4800dpi number, because I know that the actual resolution can't be much better

than, say, 2400dpi or worse. But if it was at least decent 2400 in reality, I'd

be satisfied for medium format.

I don't know that much about other manufacturers, but perhaps some of the new

Epson models are better than current Canon models.

 

Anyway, what would be the best current choice for flatbed MF scanning.

Is there anything performing remotely as sharp as, at least a dedicated 2400dpi

film scanner.

You are starting with some misconceptions

 

1.An analog line pair is not the same thing as a pixel pair.

two neighbor pixels DO NOT have the resolving power of one line pair.

(try sampling diagonal lines)

 

2. two "pixels" on the CCD , DO NOT equal two image pixels.

I'm sure you are formiliar with bayer pattern

 

3. If they say a film resolves 135 lp/mm, you will never ged that resolving power on your slide, because of the lens.

Even if your lens can resolve 1000 lp/mm , the resolution of your image will still be lower than the lowest resolving power in the chain (lower than 135)

 

So if you had film with 135 lp/mm maximum, and a lens with 400 lp/mm maximum , your image could only have maximum 100 lp/mm (usually less in reality)

 

if you wanted to get 135 lp/mm out of a film that can capture 135lp/mm, your lens would have to have infinite resolving power, which of course is not possible.

Craig, great point

 

When in a junk-store, you can only expect to buy junk

 

It wouldn't even be such a big problem if it weren't for terrible image processing that is applied to these scans by the scanning software, that only an idiot would willingly apply to an image if they were working on their images in photoshop.

You have a job in the SAME month? Well then it's not really expired, is it? Nothing happens to film close to that date, what happens to it is in the following months or years depending on how it is stored.

It's like food. You can eat it on the expiration day, and probably for the next month depending on the product, but the manufacturer doesn't want to guarantee it if they aren't sure.

Also, these minilabs tend to blow up the contrast out of proportions, rendering the scan useless, because you can't reverse it without seeing steps in gradations. They make every negative scan look like a bad slide dupe

Last year I saved a copy of some crop someone posted here, but I can't remember

who posted it. So if anyone recognizes their image, let me know, I'd like to ask

a question.

 

All I remember is that this is a crop from a Reala image:

 

http://free-os.t-com.hr/redmist/crop11.jpg

Use dodge/burn on the skin, that's how it is done.

But it doesn't work well if there is no make-up in the first place and the lighting isn't right

The reason why digital and film folks can't find a common language is because most people who love digital see quality in "correct" images with natural color reproduction, high sharpness and resolution. In other words realistic images. All things which can be gained by shooting film too with some skill, but that's not the whole point of shooting film.

The more perfect film gets, the less reason there is to use it (because there's always digital for perfect images)

 

Why do some people still record, or rerecord to analog tapes and back to digital, because they distort, and leave character to the sound.

 

Same way film leaves a character to the image, it distorts it in an attractive (to some) way.

 

Sometimes a badly processed roll of film is a work of art, sometimes it's junk, sometimes fading or underexposure can bring an interesting twist to a frame, sometimes it's a mistake

 

It seems to me some people are trying a little too much to be photographers, making sure everything is just perfect.

Sometimes this difference is very obvious, and sometimes not so much, depending on the lighting and subject. But yes, 80% of the times I can usually tell which is a digital and which is a film image.

 

That's why you still have a choice what to shoot. But be carefull what words you use when describing the difference, because you might start another war.

 

Let's just say, both have their own look and leave it at that.

 

Which do you prefer will be possible to tell from the equipment and materials you are using yourself.

 

I myself prefer the look of film for any artistic images, but

when you just want to photographs something to document it, I'd prefer digital.

 

Of course, "art" is a relative thing, so I wouldn't say film is more artistic, let's just say its more "dreamy", more like a dream or memory, more distanced from objective reality.

 

Digital is too accurate and realistic for my taste.

overexpose the face by any means, either in photoshop (by blowing it out) or with light, and then bring the white level down.

It can also be done by simply brightening the image then using curves tool to compress highlights by "bending" the top end of the curve down in a kind of a logarithmic manner.

It is possible that your Yashica had a 3-element lens, which is about the same quality as Seagull 3-element, this one is the 4-element lens which is much sharper around the middle apertures than the 3-element.

 

Just to clear things, It was never my intention in this thread to promote ALL seagulls. This is the top model, and I think it's the only Seagull worth buying.

I didn't say they weren't sharpened. But I used a scanning service, and they had a USM pass already done to it.

You think it's too much? I can try and resize them again using a softer bicubic filter.

The shutter problem is usually attributed to the Segull's traditional 1/300 shutter which was in there for generations. And half of these experiences (not saying anything about the other half) come from changing shutter speed after cocking the shutter.

But It could be that the 1/500s Japanese shutter is just as problematic, I really don't know, because I haven't had any input about it from other users, and I didn't have bad experiences myself, at least not yet. Which shutter do you have?

 

 

But regardless, this thread was really about the lens, which some people have spread nasty rumors about.

 

One of the myths is that these lenses have really bad vignette effect even at f8-f11.

As the picture shows, it's not true. At least I don't see it

Seagull cameras often are mentioned in discussions about entry-level MF

equipment, and usually people say that the quality is horrible. And there is

always someone new coming asking about them or reading in archives, so I though

to make a little contribution.

I'm not here to debunk the horrible-quality theories, because it's subjective, I

just wanted to post a few examples so people can decide for themselves.

 

I did a little stupid test set, thrown in a bunch of objects that I had around

that might demonstrate sharpness, vignette and color reproduction of Seagull

lenses.

 

Here is a frame of E100G shot at F8 and scanned at 4800dpi on a Minolta Dimage

pro 4800, downsized to 400dpi.

 

http://free-os.t-com.hr/redmist/E100G.jpg

 

Sorry if the color balance and saturation are off, I tried to match the slide,

but lost objectivity after staring at it too much while adjusting, happens all

the time.

 

and here are two crops at 2400 dpi.

 

http://free-os.t-com.hr/redmist/crop1.jpg

 

http://free-os.t-com.hr/redmist/crop2.jpg

 

My opinion: It isn't Zeiss, but it isn't that bad, and it's still better than

using 35mm.

 

Forgot to mention, the lens is a 4-element Seagull (Tessar clone) on a Seagull

109, and film is E100G.

 

thanks for reading

I have to agree with the toilet theory

 

First, if you transfer a digital file to slide, you have to pay for the film and processing one way or another (price of service includes it), so you are already not saving any money by shooting digital.

Which is one less reason to use digital in this process at all.

 

Then of course, by printing a digital imago onto a slide, you are neither getting a perfect digital image nor a perfect slide, you loose quality on both fields. In other words, you'd both get better results if you just printed from your digital file, or just shot a slide in camera.

Again, one less reason to use digital, or to do it all anyway.

 

I hope you realize that what you would be doing is photographic your digital picture onto film, so why not just photograph the source image onto film, it ends on film anyway.

 

And finally, if you want to do all of this, why on earth are you shooting digital in the first place?

 

If it's just for having a little LCD on the back to see what you are doing, well if you have to rely on such things, you are probably not confortable with the basic ways of operating a film camera, and every digital camera works on same principles.

If you want to be the master of your DSLR, you better know the principles of exposure by heart. And if you know them, handling a film camera is like eating ice-cream, specially with neg-film

Frank, different yes, but not "completely different".

Enough similar to be corrected in photoshop with a couple of basic tweaks.

Kier

 

The photo you are refering to is indeed contrast masking.

If you flaten the range with curves, you are only going to end up with a flat image, not this.

This is not a global image change, and can't be done as such.

 

Contrast masking changes the local transition between tones.

Though that is actually its side-effect, and not the main reason people usually use it. They usually use it to retrieve shadow detail. But it also does this, what you can see in that image, that "cartoon" look.

 

There are other ways to do it, like manually "painting" over the photo, or using dodge and burn.

If you look at high-end fashion ads with this effect, the best ones are usually achieved with a skilled painter/retoucher, who can almost repaint the entire image, the quick and easy way is to use contrast masking to the extreme, but them you get halos around edges, as you can even see to some extend in this image.

Not tho say his techique is "cheap" or anything, but some people do amazing stuff with a brush, which I find greater value in.

 

Anyway, about contrast masking.

 

To illustrate, unsharp mask is a variant of contrast masking.

In this case the same thing is done, only on a much larger scale, much larger radius.

The edges in this photo are more pronaunced, and surfaces are more separated, just like in paintings.

You can think of it as unsharp mask with a really big pixel radius.

 

It can be done either in the darkroom with conventional tools or in photoshop.

In photoshop, you copy the layer, and paste the duplicate on top, invert the new layer (negative), and blur it (experiment with different levels of blur). Then combine the two layers (either by using some merging modes, or simple transperency) and then go from there.

 

In this case, this is a photo shot un hard light, either hard studio light or sunlight, and this effect was done to it.

 

And the more obvious thing, is to reduce saturation and make the colors appear as there, but that's easy, you know that probably.

As long as you can scan film, it really doesn't matter. Even the most hardcore digital-fans would not have anything against a good grainless scan from film (LF and MF). The trouble comes when you try to compete with 35mm film against digital around people who don't accept grain.

And Bob is 100% right.

Some people Jawn at cheesy colorful Nature shots of flowers or kids with dogs, and feel almost physical pleasure while watching stuff like this, while others see it as

wierd and unconventional, or a technical mistake, and feel the same pleasure watching Nature calendars and photos cheerful kids and dogs.

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

My favorite photographer is Gregory Crewdson. Some people stare at his photos for hours and feed upon the painterly colors and darkness underneath, while others

stare at them and call them psychotic, and the pictures boring snapshots.

Many styles I see..

 

Some are plain pictures with messed contrast and color, some use contrast masking, some us lighting tools, what exactly are you looking for? Describe in more detail, and show us an exact example.

 

for example:

http://www.kallegustafsson.com/portfolio/fashion/fa_20.jpg

 

This is the typical look of contrast masking. but it can't be dome with that alone.

 

It started with some harder light, which already does half of the look which is achieved with contrast masking if you have lighting skills.

 

The whole point of such strong contrast masking is to get these jumpy transitions between light and dark which look a lot like brush strokes, and at the same time flatten the range, giving the whole image a somewhat painted look (flat color surfaces, extreamly high local contrast between different areas, like shadows, highlights etc.)

 

Sometimes people get that look while trying to retrieve shadow detail from bad slide scans. Which can be quite funny, because some don't even get what they have done.

 

And of course the obvious desaturation and messing with the color balance and crossover, which is pretty much besides the point.

There is one:

If you forgot to bring your DSLR, then that's a good reason to shoot 35mm.

 

really, it's a question of aesthetics, only you can answer it for yourself.

 

Do you ask on forums what to wear too?

Fav. neg film Portra 160NC (great contrast and tonal look, but I like to add a bit of color to it in photoshop)

 

Fav. pos film, old Ektachrome 64. Amazing old-fashioned look, though harder to expose right, works ok if you can light the subject and control every shadow. A bit out of focus and it looks like a painting.

Rich

 

If you have a bad experience with a newer Seagull, good for you, tell it to the world, I was just saying that most people who talk trash about Seagulls never had them or had really old ones.

 

 

Not every seagull is the same.

 

109 (yes I payed 270 for it, plus shipping and taxes) has a completely different shutter of Japanese make (1/500), which is NOT the same shutter as the 1/300 Chinese one that everyone seems to bash so much, which has had the reputation of braking.

So unless you have a brand new 109, we can't really compare shutter experiences.

 

I'm saying that, there is a rather big difference between the cheapest 3-part lens Chinese shutter, $50 Seagull made 20 years ago, and

a $270 4-element Japanese shutter made in the last few years with many features and great image quality.

 

So as a Seagull owner, I hate it when people put them all in the same basket.

 

It's like a Skoda, it will never be a reputable car no matter how vastly different it got in the last 10 years.

 

And even after a few people come and explain the issues at hand again and again, some guy comes in who never touched a Seagull and says on top of that all, oh yea, they are crap, buy this or that instead. Most people that had a new 109 didn't complain at all, and don't participate in such threads but are out shooting (exept me obviously).

 

And that is going to happen again here, or in another new thread.

Someone will come and say: yea, all Seagulls have a REALLY bad 3-element lens and fall appart after a few months.

 

That's what I'm being defensive about Rich.

 

And as for old-vs.-new

well most people I've listened to before I bought it said the old ones fell apart after a few months, the new ones fall appart after a few years (or not at all if you handle them with care).

 

That being said. A seagull is not a robust camera, and you can't expect to abuse it and fall down a canyon with it.

So one should expect to use it as if they are handling a precious HAssy (but for all the different reasons obviously), but that's okay with me.

 

Mine has already lived past most "deadlines" set by reviewers of photo.net without a single glitch. Maybe because I believe in it so it rewards me back.