edgar_njari

Consumer labs are giving a bad name to negative film.

 

And as for your style of shooting...The idea is to overexpose a bit, not underexpose when you use print film, and then print it down to normal. Underexposure will get you grain, less saturation, poor shadows. As for overexposing, you can go up to 2 stops and still get good images. It is a good idea to overexpose by a half a stop or one stop to get less grain and punchier colors.

I was just asking this out of curriosuty. I mean, if I were

in the ad photo bussines i wouldn't be asking these questions, now would I...

This is not my field of photography, but I was interested and currious, that's all

I didn't know, i thought it was a different emulsion that gives the look

What really tricked me is that there are a lot of these images that look like snapshots, you know casual..

Someone is running over the beach and into the camera and these sort of things, i guess they are not casual, but prepared

and made to look casual.

 

Ok, i think I get it now

 

but there is one more question. How do photographers make that shiny look on the skin and clothes, you know like everything is made out of shiny metal, even skin. I have seen this effect on motion pictures film too (some TV adsm i think it was Woolite)

Well, I haven't been in photography for such a long time, i started in the 90's and I don't have any old photographs to compare.

So you think that this is only an optical light effect rather than the actuall look of the paper emulsion?

It is very difficult for me to judge the look because the only examples I have seen so far are professional fashion images that look very different on their own without a special paper..

 

I am interested in seeing what does it do to normal images, so if you have anything scanned it would be nice to see it..

Has anyone used this paper here?

 

In what way does it change the look of images? Does anyone have

any flatbed-scans of images that were printed on this paper to

show me?

 

thank you

Thank you guys for the answers..

let me be a bit more clear...

 

I usually get images that I like reagrding the light and composition, this is not the problem. What I find unreachable is the tone of these

images, their "look", it is like they are using a whole different emulsions or something, but I know that they are not because I have seen some of these "magical" images done with the films I use.

 

Here is an example..

 

Let's say I want to shoot a person so that the sun is behind him

and I want to get everything to look golden and all. The composition is right, the exposure is right, the details and the colors and everything is what I had i mind, but it is still not like an image from a fashion catalogue, it doesn't have that special touch, special look..

 

It is sort of like a difference between film and digital. Film has that special look that is difficult to describe. And it's not about lighting or composition. The same way is with these pro images.

Their images have a glow, an magical organic look.

 

The more I read your posts the more i feel as if the retouching is at hand here.

 

Can anyone tell me what do they do digitally in postproduction to change the looks, are there any common tricks?

Hi everyone,

 

I am often amazed how good those photos in product catalogues look.

They often have a lot in common in style.

for example, electronic manufacturers like Sony use this style in

their catalogues, and allso car manufacturers it too..

 

I am talking about those big creamy, surreal images..At first i

thought (whille i was still using consumer films) that this is how

professional films look like, but now i realise that the difference

is subtle and that it is all in the style. Then I thought that it is

the lighting (sure sometimes it is), but what about those creamy

long shots of cars in sunsets. These images look nothing like

those you normally get when shooting in the same time of day from the

same angles etc.

 

All my images tend to look "down to earth" and realistic, but

those look so different, like paintings.

 

Can aynone in short explain me what is the sicret. By now i know it

is not in the choice of film and processing. Is it in the

postproduction or something?

I have been printing my negs in a lab that used d-lab.

The scanning is very bad for my taste, too much contrast,a lot

of noise and the image looses its deph and richness..

At that time I was printing some stuff digitally and some optically

in that same lab. The optical machine was MSC200. The optical prints were smooth, rich etc etc. made on the same paper in the same lab.

The problem is in the D-lab's scanner.

Nice to see someone from the neighbourhood Jovan. (I am from Croatia)

I think it is not polite to speak in local languages on a public forum because everyone has a right to understand what a person is saying so I speak in english.

I was thinking about normal 35mm lenses, not some special lenses or macro lenses..

Just plain old professional 35mm primes.

 

I can see now that f/8 is not usually a "sweetspot" , so i guess

that those lenses that perform best at larger apertures are capable

of more resolution than that..

 

What would be your opinion on what is the maximum resolution

that today's best 35mm primes in the range of some 20mm to 80mm

can achieve (not on film, just aerial resolution!!)

From what I have seen, most people agree that most lenses perform

best at f/8 or f/5.6

 

If the maximum theorethical resolution at these apertures is about

270 lp/mm (for 5.6), does this mean that every lense (that has a

sweetspot around f/5.6 or f/8) can't resolve more than 270lp/mm no

matter how expensive it is?

The strange thing is that the motor does pick up the film and rewinds it to the right, and stops as it has found the space for the first frame, everything seems normal from a mechanical point of view.

 

Yet the screens shows a blinking zero. I have tried every position of the pit of the film (on the mark, a bit left to the mark, a bit right to the mark, everything) and I still have the problem.

 

I think I may have gotton a defective camera.

The carniser is properly positioned. I pull the film out of the carniser to reach the red marker. And as for flatness. Well film can't be flat unless you hold it with fingers, so how am I supose to get it flat and close the door at the same time?

Hi, I just bought a dynax 5, and I seem to be having problems with

loading it..

 

I put the film in, and close the door, and no matter how short or

long do I place the film inside, the couter says 0 and starts

blinking..

 

What am I doing wrong?

Hi

 

Can anyone direct me to a good on-line posting of a maximum

resolution test for nikon lenses (anything exept zooms and telephoto)

for a given aperture?

 

thank you

She looks like she needs a bath in the BW image :-)

 

By the way, what film were you using for the original? And what scanner did you use for the original scan?

I'd just like to add that scanning at lower resolutions will usually produce more noise ("grain") than higher resolution.

It is just that CCD's are not friends with grain particles smaller than the size of one sensor. If your reach films resolution and if you have enough resolution to draw the grain texture with few pixels per grain cluster, there will be less noise. Small grain particles

"confuse" the sensors.

 

It goes against human intuition actually. You would suspect that

larger resolutions will produce more grain in the image because

the sensor can show grain (sensor is small enough), and that

at lower resolutions you would not have grain because the particles are smaller than the sensors. Wrong. Some of the grainiest images

i have seen came from 2000dpi scans.

Most of the "film grain" that people that people complained about ever since scanners became popular was just scanner noise.

Sara. If the bright parts are on the images are blown out even when you are it at 160 then the problem is probably in the scanning system.

Well, i wouldn't call it a problem, it is just that some labs "like" a lot of contrast. Underexposing is not the solution.

With some labs i had that problem even with low contrast films.

 

If you can't find a lab that doesn't give too much contrast, then order the scans to be burned onto a CD-R and then correct the images yourself before you send them back for printing.

(if there is too much contrast you should set the tone curve to resamble inverted S curve) That will lower the contrast and give you natural images (you would be suprized how much it improves an image sometimes)

Just don't over-do it because the computer can not give you back the subtle gradations you've lost with a blown up contrast, itstead it may end up looking like an 256 color image)

I just bought a 5-pack of portra 400VC and noticed that it

says "develop before 06/2004"

 

What kind of problems would i face with a film stock with processing

deadline crossed?

 

I don't need any color consistency or anything, but will the overall

qualitty of image be lower? (and in what way?)

 

p.s. I think my use of this film will strech for about 3 months from

now

This is two stops overexposure. Usually you overexpose up to one stop to get the extra density for color saturation and finer grain. This is one extra stop, you should get good results without pulling.

This is what latitude is here for.

The trick is to print it down 2 stops.

 

If it was a slide film then it wouldn't be so easy.

And as for printing, Motion picture film recorders are capable of even 8k resolution (Celco) and are very good qualitty.

In MP bussines you won't find anything less than high-end because

nobody would have any use for it (for both scanners and printers) And it is not printed onto 70mm film, but onto 35mm film

(kodak 5242 intermediate II. negative film)

 

If it is done at 4k the results are very similar to the original (under microscope)