dave_powell2

Hey thanks Tim!

Sincerely,

Dave

Sounds like the best poossible plan....good luck! (And scan some samples of the images after your mod, of possible!)

Sincerely,

Dave

Just had more thoughts, Marco. A lot of pros love the Olympus XA. The company's Stylus Epic is also a superb (and at $80, very reasonable) little shooter, but I think it's autofocus, as opposeed to rangefinder.

Sincerely,

Dave

And you'll need to get used to carrying a tripod around...without "modding" the camera for IR, there's no way around that!

Dave

Interesting thread, Lauren!

The photos with the white marks and the curve look amazingly like an accidental double exposure...of a curved wall, dam, or something similar. I had more than my share of these until I decided to always use the same protocol when shooting medium format: wind just before shooting, shoot... and then don't wind again until just before taking the next photo. This keeps me from forgetting where I am on the film, and also maximizes film flatness, since the film doesn't sit (and relax) for an extended period before each shot.

Sincerely,

Dave

To add to an earlier thought about camera-back LCDs being useless for macro work, this is generally true. However, if a camera can play the images it has talken on a TV, it may also be able to play a live view on a TV before an image is taken!

I used to do a lot of this with even the cheapest digital cameras, when I captured super-close shots of device buttons for user manuals that I was writing. (I also took many of these shots through an auxiliary close-up filter that was taped in front of the main camera lens.)

This is, of course, a kind of "studio setting" that was mentioned earlier. So it wouldn't work too well for mushroom shots out in the woods.

Sincerely,

Dave

And though I love both of his books to death, I also found that some of the lens comments (especially about the various lenses that went on old folders) are quite subjective. For example, he hates the Vaskar and says that the Novar is OK, but I've seen some wonderful images from both on photo.net.

Dave

Just an add to what Robert said! Reloading 126 cartridges with 35mm film is not easy to pull off! The film fits, of course, but the bigger problem is with the holes along the film edge. 126 cameras space their exposures using widely-speparated holes, using about one hole for every 8 (I believe) that are along the 35mm strip's edges. I never did find an easy way to get around that. Robert, did you successfully solve that problem!

More to the question, though...I did once find some K batteries on eBay, from a fellow in Australia who inserts button batteries in the K housing!

Sincerely,

Dave

Hi Jan,

You may want to see my recent post at:

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00JxV2

I just purchased an Epson Perfection 4990, which is a flatbed with a special lid and inserts for scanning 35mm, 120/220, 4x5, and up to 8x10 transparencies. Of course, it's not a film scanner, but it does remarkably well for only $450! And the following are two B/W's that I scannned from 120 Bessa II negs (at 300 dpi). Please forgive if they are softin any way...I really had to crank up their JPEG compression to get this file smaller than photo.net's 100k maximum!

Hope this is of some help!

Sincerely,

Dave<div></div>

Thanks John!

This may not work very well, but as a technical addition, the following images show a somewhat reduced scan of the print, followed by a 500-pixel-wide piece of the 4800-dpi flatbed scan of the negative. (This scan would actually print at more than 14x20 inches in size, at 300 dpi.)

The piece from the film scan is admittedly a bit soft. Some of this is from the scanner, some is from the fact that I shot the image on a rainy day in Florence (with a hand-held Rollei 35 and 200 ASA film), and part is from the fact that I really had to crank up the JPEG compression, to get this 500-pixel-wide image below photo.net's 100k size limit. Ah well...

Maybe someone out there has both a 4990 and a dedicated film scanner, and can post 500-pixel comparisons of both approaches using one of their negatives!?

Sincerely,

Dave<div></div>

Hi Marco,

Two others that have produced great travel images for me, are the Rollei 35 (with Tessar lens) and the Leica CLE (with the Summicron 40). They are also very compact, but the Rollei is much smaller and lighter.

Sincerely,

Dave

Hi Niall,

I can't answer your first question, since I haven't encountered that look. But some digital prints will run when wet. It all depends on how "permanent" the paper and inks are that were used.

For example, I can't let water touch the prints that I produce on my old Epson printer, because its inks are neither permanent nor archival. But a friend with a more recent Epson printer produces prints that won't run...just like the ones that your local film processors provide. You can always print out a small sample, and see what happens!

I've actually seen an exhibit of ink-jet prints that were deliberately distressed...including sprayed with water, with water dropped onto them, scoured with a Brillo pad, and even output with the printer in an oven! (The latter actually produced a very surprising result...the B/W print looked normal until the oven was turned on, half-way through the image. At that point, all of the tones inverted!)

Sincerely,

Dave

Yes, all of the modern 120 spools that I've seen are plastic, and trim very easily!

Dave

And, as Bueh implied, any camera that you use for 220 must have its own frame-stop mechanism (like the RolleiFlex Automat or the Kodak Monitor 620 (which can use 120 and 220 with their spool flanges trimmed). That's because you can't use the film-number reading window without fogging paperless film!

Sincerely,

Dave

Hi Robi!

I just bought a 4990, and noticed that when I slid the end of the neg strip under the tab at the end of the 35mm carrier's track, it significantly flattened out the curl!

Dave

Hi GR,

I also do the same thing even in Photoshop Elements, by shooting two tripod-mounted shots (exposed for the interior and exterior lighting and white balance), and then merging them using layers. Do all of my real-estate photography this way (especially when shooting interiors on very sunny days)

Sincerely,

Dave

Very, very nice indeed.....

Dave

Hi Chuk,

I too once thought of inserting the black sheet that originally protected the pack, but could not find a way to do so while the pack was in the camera.

And when you remove the pack, you will definitely ruin its top frame (unless you remove it in complete darkness). With care, it is possible to reinsert the original black sheet, but this is very hard to pull off in the dark. And if you remove the pack in full light, the top frame will be ruined and may be considered to be your darkslide.

So the only way I see of avoiding waste, is to remove the pack in complete darkness, and immediately reinsert the black sheet that was originally expelled from the pack. But this will take practice in the dark! (Unless you get that sheet back in, the top image will be ejected and lost anyway, when you reinsert the pack.)

Sincerely,

Dave

Hi Everyone,

My old UMAX scanner died last week, giving me an "upgrade opportunity." Based

on several past photo.net threads, I bought an Epson Perfection 4990 at Hunt's

in Melrose, MA, and couldn't be more pleased!

I was actually torn between buying a flatbed or a film scanner. But I wanted

the ability to scan 120 negs from a Bessa 2. And a film scanner that could

handle both 35mm and 120 was way over my budget. This post is for any other

folks out there who are facing the same decision, but who are not familiar

with the 4990.

Its lid is a separate light unit, which works in about the same way as a film

scanner's. You can either slide a document insert into the lid, and block its

light, or when scanning transparencies, you can remove the doc insert, to let

the light shine through the film. The scanner comes with several plastic

frames that fit on top of the base unit, and that can hold either four 6-frame

35mm strips, three 4-frame 120 strips (I believe), four 4x5 transparencies (I

think), or that leave an entire 8x10 area open for large-format scans.

I scanned four of my Bessa B/W negs at 300 dpi, and they came out very nicely

(though even with the scannner set to scan a B/W/ neg, the resulting file was

in color, and slightly sepia-toned). Not a biggie.

And last night, I tried scanning a single 35mm color neg at 4800 dpi (the unit

can also go from 4800 to 12,800 dpi using interpolation). And in seconds, it

output a file big enough to print at around 12 x 16 inches at 300 dpi. Even at

that, when I zoomed drastically into the image, I didn't see any signs that

the film grain had been exhausted. There seemed to be still more room for a

more-detailed scan. Also, there did not seem to be any problem with color-neg

color masking. The default scanner settings produced true-to-life colors,

across almost the full range of histogram values.

In addition, when I compared the scanned image to the 5x7 print that my pro-

shop had output for me, the scan showed details that were not visible in the

(atmittedly small) print. The photo was an existing-light look-up shot of a

statue in Florence. And in the lab print, the marble looked uniformly white.

But in my scan, I could see veins of other colors running throughout the

marble, and could read the text carved into the top of the statue's pedestal

(which wasn't even visible in the lab print).

With 35mm, the issue of film flatness is always of concern. And I noticed that

if I just placed the strip of negatives in the middle of the frame's track,

the curve persisted. But if I slid the end of the strip under the tab at the

end of the track, the curve went away.

The only thing that was a bit tough to figure out was how to make the Preview

scans show the entirety of the 120 negatives. In its default setting, the

software showed (and captured) only a 35mm-sized strip through the center of

each neg. But changing the display mode from Thumbnail to Normal fixed that.

I also appreciate the way the scanner's software integrated with both

Photoshop Elements and full Photoshop. From either, I can just go to File >

Import, point to the scanner, and wait a very short time for the image to

appear in the Photoshop window. I did notice, though, that I then had to close

the scanner-software window, before I could edit the image in Photoshop.

But as a bottom line, I join the other people who have recommended the 4990 as

a flatbed that can also handle film quite well.

Sincerely,

Dave

Peta, we need one of your patented jumping shots (or an update)!

Very Sincerely,

Dave

Hi Jiorji,

For many more ideas, haunt eBay's Cameras&Photo > Film Cameras section (especially its Other Film Cameras subsection.

Enjoy the hunt!

Sincerely,

Dave

And sometimes, you might even luck-out a bit! My wife and I are looking into buying a retirement condo, and we receive automatic email listings from realtors. One came in of interest, but the sign in the external thumbnail shot was tiny and unreadable. I wanted to research the place a bit, and the listing gave me no info.

So I opened the miniscule file in Photoshop CS2, set it to 32-bit mode (for maximum enlarged quality), and step-upscaled it. And at around a 2x4-inch print size (at @300dpi), I could actually read the place's name in the sign... which allowed me to look it up on the web.

I would never want to print the result, but there was apparently just ENOUGH data in the thumbnail, that the sign in the upscaled version was readable.

Sincerely,

Dave

Hi Leland,

I've heard good things about photoworks.com, and have used mypublisher.com to print house-image books that realtors give as gifts to special clients. But photoworks seems to offer more flexible layouts, so I'll try them soon as well.

Both sites offer optional leather covers, though photoworks seems to offer more options for fabric-covered hardbounds. And the image reproduction (at least from mypublisher) seemed to be quite faithful on my projects.

You can also test both sites fairly inexpensively, since their 20-page 7x5-inch paperbacks cost around $10 each.

Good luck with your researches!

Sincerely,

Dave

And in some situations where I merged two images that were very different in size, I added noise to one (or removed noise form the other), so that the combo had the same level of overall "grain" throughout.

Sincerely,

Dave