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conrad_hoffman

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conrad_hoffman last won the day on March 23 2010

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  1. Fear not, I do restoration quite often. Not as good as some, but learning all the time. Maybe you can tell me how to improve a bit. My usual workflow is to shoot the negs with my Z6 on a light table. I shoot the emulsion side, then flip the shot in Affinity Photo. I then slide the curves to the opposite corners to convert to positive, followed by bending the curve to get the tonal quality right. That's where I know I could do better. Even with my own good black and white negs, I like the tonal quality from a scanned darkroom print better than the tonal quality from a scanned and "bent" negative. In theory (I think) it has to be possible to tweak the curve to get to the same place, but I know I'm missing something.
  2. Close, but these are 6 1/2 x 4 1/2. Never seen the stuff, but if it's like 120, could the paper be 4 3/4 and the film narrower than the edges of the paper?
  3. Thanks! That link was very good. I'm a bit less worried as these are not in air-tight storage and they're in a place that doesn't get too warm. Looking through them last night I found quite a few that are worth scanning. I'm a bit baffled by the format of many. Roll film, but huge! About 4 1/2 inches wide by 6 inches. It doesn't match any of the antique formats I've found at several sites. Obviously cut from a roll. Any guesses?
  4. I have a bunch of my wife's father's and grandfather's negs and prints. They date from the 1920s to 1940 or so, maybe some later. Most are nitrate base. A lot are big roll film, 115 mm wide, cut into singles. They seem to be the oldest. Others are small sheet film. One roll of Panatomic. Not X, just Panatomic, on nitrate base from the edge label. Unfortunately, a huge number of these are overexposed, underexposed or just plain blurry. Never have one or two people shot so much film and improved so little. Anyway, I'm starting to worry about the hazards of nitrate film. Just how dangerous is it to have these in a small wooden cabinet in the house? I don't want to dispose of them, though I could probably get rid of half due to technical problems. They seem to be in good shape, no real breakdown, though there's a slight smell. Quantity is about one large shoebox full. Copy and discard? Keep an eye on them? Run for the hills?
  5. Oil and grease will only slow it down, plus the migration problem. It's either gunked up or something's slightly bent. Perfectly clean and dry it should move as fast as it's capable of moving. If distant from shutter/aperture blades, I'd use a trace of Superlube oil to keep wear down.
  6. Big fan of Qimage here, but you might or might not really need it. It's strong points are complex image layouts and, if you use Canon or Epson printers, very good control over setup. Qimage makes it almost impossible to have your printer driver set up wrong. It also has some editing and RAW capability, but I don't use those most of the time. The editing is non-destructive if you use it. The user interface has a learning curve, but there are videos to help with all the stuff it can do, which is a lot. Support is second to none because you're dealing directly with the author on his site.
  7. Sometimes you can cut things off with no problem. As an example, your brain knows the shape of the helmet above and completes the curve. This is used often with bodies of water and other things. The boots bother me a bit, but not a lot.
  8. I set my interval to "never" because my OCD ensures that it will get done more often than necessary no matter what. Still trying to grasp some things- If I profile a monitor to a smaller gamut than the monitor is capable of, does that profile insure that no colors outside the specified gamut will be displayed? Similarly, if the monitor is close to sRGB but doesn't quite match, is "native" a better choice than "sRGB"?
  9. After some experimentation, the best results seem to be hardware calibration using the Viewsonic software. There's some info on this software on the X-Rite site, so I assume they developed it together, at least to some extent. The trick was to set the color space to native, rather than sRGB. Native and sRGB are nearly the same for this monitor. That allowed a whitepoint of 6500K and everything looks correct in terms of grey scale range and the colors of standard test images. I don't think it's visually any different than doing a software calibration entirely in the icc file, but (I think) a hardware calibration will make things look correct even in non-color-managed application like the Window desktop.
  10. So I bought myself a Calibrite Display Plus HL for Christmas, figuring it was time to calibrate. Quickly learning things, but also have some questions. I'm aiming for 100 nits as 120 is too bright for my room and preferences. Aiming for D65 whitepoint. So I have three ways to do things: 1) Viewsonic Colorbration software to do hardware calibration. This works well but results in a white point a bit off from specified. Not sure why but I get 6370 when I specify D65. Other software gets much closer, within a few points. IMO, that's enough to notice. (My monitor is a VP2468 that's at least 5 years old. I have a newer 2768 at work that's higher res and seems to cover more of the sRGB gamut, 99% instead of 91-95. The newer one calibrates dead on.) 2) Open source Displaycal to do software calibration. Haven't used this much but it seems more thorough. Can't do hardware though. (needed to load 32 bit version of Argyll, not the 64-bit, or it won't work!) This hasn't been updated since 2019, but Argyll has, so it probably doesn't matter. 3) Calibrite Profiler to do software calibration. This works well and I suspect it has the best interface to the HL, but it can't do hardware. Need to experiment to decide which way is best. Everything I've read says go with hardware cal, but I don't like the whitepoint. I think Profiler and Displaycal can give similar, if not identical, results. I see strong and weak points in all the choices! Also need to settle on something and not go crazy with this! Can anybody offer any education on the best choices?
  11. I usually use a little Nanlite 5C and the white silicone diffuser with good results, but a window or incandescent works fine. Regardless of what I use, I do a custom white balance. Something I've wondered about is (AFAIK) slide projectors use halogen bulbs, so slides are projected at 3000K. I don't know if that's relevant to copying them. I use the same rig for 35mm black and white film. The Z6 is very good, but a Z7 would probably be a better choice for this sort of work. I've got pretty good machine tools and had the aluminum extrusion sitting around, but a perfectly servicable one could be made from any hardwood or even a 2x4! I printed a 2x2 target card with a 24x36 square and cross hairs so I could center the frame. I run a bit less than 1:1 so there's room for the lens to focus.
  12. I love my bellows and ES-2. I usually use an enlarging lens as the copy lens, about 80 mm I think. These days I wanted to use the ES-2 with my Z6 and 105 MC macro lens, as it's probably one of the best lenses for the purpose. No easy way to do it, so I built a support to hold things. Works like a champ! (I use a black paper tube between the lens and holder.)
  13. I've never owned a Rollei but stood next to one once. I've always loved TLRs and shot many yearbook photos back in high school with a Yashica 124. IMO, the 124 is a far better looking camera than the later 124-G. The lenses left little to be desired and the images would blow away any 35mm. I've had a couple Mamiya C series and still have a 330C with a few lenses. IMHO, the chrome shutter lenses aren't that great, but the later black ones are. One big problem with the Mamiyas is they made the lenses out of some kind of fungus candy. It's a huge issue and you rarely find an old one without damage, often severe. Less of an issue with the later ones, but always do a penlight test. I love the flexibility of the Mamiya TLRs but also consider them as having more in common with machine tools like a lathe or mill, then a small precision instrument! They're quirky. A big thing with TLRs is your eyesight. Back in HS I had no problem focusing in dim light or shooting sports. FWIW, the local news photographer shot sports with a Rollei. Today, after cataract surgery, my eyesight is excellent, but to use a TLR successfully I need either my computer glasses or the right strength bifocal. It's way harder than I remember from HS, though most things are! Ideally, have any TLR checked on an autocollimator to be sure the focus on the film agrees with the focus on the screen. Putting a ground glass at the film plane is only a rough check and may not be adequate at wide open aperture. What I really wanted back in the day was a Minolta Autocord CdS III, but it just wasn't in the budget. The Minolta lenses are really excellent.
  14. I loved my 9900 and when the print head went bad it made more sense to just get a PRO-100. Very happy with it and I'm sure the 200 is as good or better. That said, I spend quite a lot on ink because I only print a couple shots at a sitting. It's probably way more efficient to print a dozen at a sitting because the printer would do less cleaning and fiddling about.
  15. If a museum has collections of old photos, say from the 1930s, and they offer files and prints, but insist they have copyrights and want to control usage, how valid is that? In most cases I suspect the photos were donated and the museum paid nothing, nor did they make any arrangements with the estate of the long gone photographers. Does anybody know how this works?
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