jas_pope

<p>Thanks Ken, I'll ask, much appreciated</p>

<p>There's currently a 35mm summicron on ebay http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/LEICA-SUMMICRON-1-2-35-LENS_W0QQitemZ130360173294QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_CamerasPhoto_CameraAccessories_CameraLensesFilters_JN?hash=item1e5a1262ee but I'm not sure which version it is - ideally I'm going for the 4th version. I've asked the seller, but they don't know where to find the serial number (isn't it usually on the front of the lens?)<br>

Can anyone with an expert eye tell me which one it is?<br>

Thanks, James</p>

<p>Thanks for all the responses and positive feedback, seems flare is not always undesirable and I have another creative element to play with. <br>

Cheers, James</p>

<p>Hi Marc, thanks for the quick response, I wasn't using a filter on this occasion</p>

<p>This shot was taken into a low sun at 17mm f8 1/160 ISO 400. I have read a lot of good reports on this forum of the 17-40L handling flare very well, but this seems to have beaten it.<br /> Could this be a bad copy of the lens, is it more likely that I just caught the light at a really unfair angle or could it be an exposure issue? If it's either of the last two, I'd really appreciate any advice on how to avoid this when shooting into the sun or other strong lights.<br /> Thanks, James</p><div></div>

<p>Robert Lee, thanks very much!</p>

<p>Great thread, I hear the digital argument as scanning takes aaaaages, but for an amateur like me there's something magical about pressing the shutter, waiting a few days to get the result back and seeing those iridescent colours through my (makeshift 50mm manual lens) loupe.</p>

<p>Here's a Velvia 50 contribution, taken in January 2006 on a very chilly Roman morning. I was in the city on a university photo society trip. Being students, we weren't really aware of lighting up times and my guesstimate left us shivering in the dark on the riverbank for an hour before this happened. The hot italian coffee and panini was a very welcome warmer after we'd shot a few frames.</p>

<p>I'm not an experienced scanner - using a Minolta Scan Elite 5400 and manufacturer software, I scanned this 16 bit without any adjustments. I've lost some shadow detail in the trees to the left, trying to recover it mutes the orangey pinky sky. If anyone has suggestions, I'd really appreciate it.</p>

<p>Some wonderful talent here, been enjoying your portfolios - has inspired me to get mine sorted. Keep up the good (digital or film) work.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

Thanks for all your help, will investigate. One thing I didn't mention in my first post is that I'm "moderately severely" colour blind. Mainly red-green, but since there's red and green in everything that's not pure blue, I struggle across the spectrum. While I can see the difference between a punchy transparency and a lacklustre digital file, I'm wary of fiddling with colours post-scan in PS because I'm always in mind of the time I produced portraits of people with pink and green faces (the day I realised I'd never go pro!)

 

I am told that VueScan has preset profiles for some of the popular films, has anyone any experience of these? Do they reproduce accurate colours without too much post-processing? Or should I just accept the disablilty and stick to B&W?!

I have been using the Mintolta Scan Elite 5400 to scan colour and B&W negative film and I'm very happy with the

results, but have been less than impressed with the images from Velvia (50 and 100). I know it's impossible to

get exactly what you see through the loupe in print or on-screen, but the colours are nowhere near. Yellows are

bland and blues look like they've been through several hot washes and it kinda defeats the object of using

highly-saturated film in the first place.

 

I have been using the proprietary software from Minolta and have considered VueScan, would this make a noticable

difference or are there tricks with slide film that I'm missing?

 

Any advice on this would be really appreciated.

Hi Marshall, thanks for the link. I'm relatively new to photography and I had been shooting film then scanning for a while, but recently bought a 5D. Until I read your post, I was seriously considering selling the digital because I prefered the results from film.

 

With digital I loved the speed from which I could go from a shoot to a finished print and the ability to change ISO without having to rewind, mark the number of shots then reload. However, I didn't love the flat, lifeless, brutally clean images that resulted.

 

Now, having downloaded Alienskin's plugin, I can get everything. Cheers!