bernard_lazareff

<p>Around a mountain lake with an Olympus 35RC. Adox Silvermax; D-76 1+1 12'.</p><div></div>

<blockquote> <p>I understand that they indicate correct exposure for middle-gray, but if this is true then why arent the white objects appearing white as they should when middle-gray is correctly exposed</p> </blockquote> <p>Because your light meter does not "know" that ~80% of the picture is "supposed" to be white. Irt has no way to know; you must do the thinking. Or, meter in incident mode and that problem will go away. </p>

<p>Thank you! Interesting reading as usual.</p>

<p>How do you compensate/avoid the parallax between viewing and taking lens, Do you have something like the Mamiya Paramender?<br> Congrats for your nice pictures; makes me want to try my paramender, now tat I've repaired it. </p>

<p>Another one... same film.</p><div></div>

<p>Olympus 35RC. Silvermax. D-76 1+1 12'15" @ 20°C. Taken ~6 weeks ago, still winter then.</p><div></div>

<blockquote> <p>silver rich film</p> </blockquote> <p>What % objective fact, and what % marketing hype? </p>

<p>Nowhere in your OP do you express that te Leica would be a better camera for you, or that it would need less frequent maintenance. Your line of "reasoning" seems to be :<br> Better to buy $1000 camera and spend $250 every 5 years on CLA than buy (or keep) $500 camera and spend same amount on maintenance. </p>

<p>+1 on Peter Carter's advice. Only <em><strong>IF</strong></em> the negatives are very valuable. Other methods (selenium toner, sepia toner) are hardly effective, at least in my case for Neopan 400. </p> <blockquote> <p>If necessary, clear orange color with a pinch (1/4 tsp) sodium sulfite or potassium metabisulfite in tray of water.</p> </blockquote> <ol> <li>This comes after bleach + wash (and a short re-wash after won't harm)</li> <li>In my case, this sulfite bath was the final key to satisfying results (highlight separation) for really valuable negatives (taken in Chile, reside in France)</li> </ol> <p>Sulfite is also used to convert Cr+6 (orange) to Cr+3 (greeen) for safe disposal. Don't remember stoechiometric proportions, but 2 for 1 (mass) should be safe.</p>

<blockquote> <p>now a paranoid question... what os the best way to clean a scanner?</p> </blockquote> <p>One thing for sure: apply liquid very sparingly. Or you risk some liquid seeping onto the refelctive calibration target, behind the inge side of the glass. Don't ask...</p>

<p>If spurious lines are aligned with short side of V700: could be time-varying external light leak<br> If spurious lines are aligned with long side of V700: could be an issue with the on-the-fly calibration; check and clean the glass near the hinge of the V700; the scanner uses that area for calibration at the beginning of each scan. <br> And... +1 on the question of Paul Cooklin: Is it on the film itself or just the digital scans?</p>

<p>I then scanned the image as a <em>color</em> negative. None of the R,G,B layers is free from the posterization artefacts. The color scan reveals an interesting histogram (vuescan display). In each of the R,G,B layers the histogram shows "spikes", i.e. discrete values at which an excess number of pixels are bunched; just what is needed to produce posterization. When converting to b/w, each of these spikes is spread by the dispersion of values in the two other colors, but nevertheless a posterization effect remains apparent to the eye.<br> So at long last, the <em><strong>question</strong></em>(s):<br> - Has anybody noticed something similar?<br> - Does that mean my V700 is toast (something wrong in the ADC?)<br> Thank you for looking and reading.</p> <div></div>

<p>Histogram of crop image as displayed in Picture Window Pro. Main "peak" corresponds to lighter tones the prevail towards the top right corner; the "shoulder" to the left of the main peak corresponds to the darker gray tones prevalent near the bottom left corner. A third, darker gray appears in a small area in the BLC.</p><div></div>

<p>100% crop of 1600dpi scan</p><div></div>

<p>Using V700 for quick-look scans of 35mm B/W. Faster than a "real" (wet) contact sheet. I notice in some frames, in light tones, something like posterization: where one expects a smooth tone transition on the snow hummocks, there seems to be a discrete change in value: posterization. Using vuescan.<br> I tried 1600/3200dpi with/without vuescan's "multiple exposure" option, all four combinations saved as b/w jpeg quality 92. Also tried 1600dpi 16-bit b/w tif; Same thing. Image below is from this latter (fifth) scan, converted to jpg for Pnet display (both tif and jpeg siplay identical on my screen). <br> To conserve bandwidth:<br> - it's not the infamous grain aliasing: posterization is also present on 3200dpi scans, where the shortcomings of the V700's optics provide an effective anti-alias filter. <br> - its not just the 8bits of the jpg format (required for Pnet display) since (you need to trust me) the 16-bit tif also shows the posterization.</p> <div></div>

<p>Flare is real strong. Did you check if the lens has any internal haze?</p>

<blockquote> <p>mainly for the exceptional lenses</p> </blockquote> <p>Pride of ownership? Or can you see the difference versus (Pentax, Mamiya, Hasselblad... pick any) <em><strong>in a blind test</strong></em>? <br> One thing for sure: RB/RZ is heavy, and I bet its gets heavier as you walk. </p>

<p>Exceptional. Thank you Louis.</p>

<p>Last fall I bought a 80mm Componon with no aperture clicks. Was missing that little ball (lost in a previous repair?). I replaced it with the ball from a ball point pen, largish size. File the housing, clean in solvent, epoxy in place. Now serving actively on my enlarger. </p>

<p>Keep it at least to test your fixer (film or paper).</p>

<p>Ellis, re-read the OP's last sentence. He wants the same <em>vertical</em> fov as 85mm with a FF 24x36 "<em>but just more stuff left to right</em>". Which should be close to 135mm, give or take a few.<br> Ray, seems that 105mm is closer to your goal than 180mm. </p>

<blockquote> <p>When scanning 6 x 6 negatives, what is the max dpi I should be scanning? At what point does it become pointless? I do not care about storage space, but I would like to capture as much detail as possible.</p> </blockquote> <ul> <li>6400 is over the top</li> <li>Focusing adjustment is important. Can't give you specific instructions, as I use a V700 with BetterScanning negative carier. Quick-and-dirty: repeat scans of the same area with various height adjustments, saving as jpeg 90% quality; largest file tells you best focus. From your sample image at 6400dpi(!) your focus should not be too far off.</li> <li>Even more important: USM. I'm not talking about creating artificial sharpness out of a poor image; rather restoring spatial frequencies where the scanner MTF started to drop, but still carries information. Start at 1 pixel radius, 100% amplitude, adjust amplitude for best perceived sharpness. If you see fringes around contours, you went too far, back off.</li> </ul> <p>Feedback would be nice</p> <p> </p>

<p>Indeed, <em><strong>Color/ColorBalance/</strong><strong>Manual</strong></em> only locks the <em>colors</em>. The black and white points are still auto-adjusted according to what is indside the crop box.<br> What you want is the <em><strong>LockImageColor</strong></em> tick box, on the <em><strong>Input</strong></em> tab. That will totally freeze the parameters. Quoting vuescan user manual:</p> <ul> <li>This option is only displayed if you first set the <a href="http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc28.htm#inputlockexposure">Input | Lock exposure</a> option and the <a href="http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc28.htm#inputlockfilmbasecolor">Input | Lock film base color</a> option.</li> <li>This option is displayed when using the Advanced Workflow Procedure in this User's Guide.</li> </ul> <p>An easier way would be to scan the full image and crop later...</p>

<p>I don't know what you'll make of all the advice given, but: think twice before commiting to a RB67 as a hand-held camera...<br> I second the suggestions to start, using a fraction of your budget ceiling, with a decent TLR (Yashica Mat 124) or maybe one of the Fuji rangefinders (670 or 645), instead of spilling your budget in one expensive mistake. </p>

<p>At least this generated some traffic on Classic Cameras... ;-)<br> I give below a few comments on the responses, that fall broadly in two categories:<br> A) (extreme example) : [David Bebbington] "<em>This seller is totally crazy and impossibly arrogant</em>" (more than what I wrote myself)<br> B) [Mike Dixon] "<em>This "totally crazy and impossibly arrogant" seller has 100% positive feedback for a couple hundred transactions. He seems to do a much better job of satisfying customers than responding to complaints (from non-buyers) about his listings. I notice that there isn't actually a question in the first message to the seller. Perhaps he was annoyed by a second message demanding a quick response to an unasked question during a busy holiday period</em>."<br> This raises two points.<br> <em>unasked question.</em> Anyone having attended meetings, seminars, etc, know that there is no hard distinction between a <em>remark</em> and a <em>question</em>. A remark concerns a point in the delivered message that seems ambiguous or contradictory, and implicitly carries the <em>question</em>: "can you please explain, comment, clarify?"<br> <em>from non-buyers.</em>You happen to be in a store seeing a clerk about to sell to an unsuspecting customer with not much dsiposable income, a product/service that you <em>know </em>to be total lemon/scam. Just walk on, because you don't intend to buy yourself?<br> --------------<br> "<em>people who get all fired up</em>" [brian S.] "<em>Bernard, its time for a cold shower</em>" [Dan Fromm] I thought my OP was as factual as can be.<br> "<em>Given that half the messages are in Italian, also do consider that there are cultural differences in play</em>" [Wouter Willemse]. Whether in Italian <em>straordinario obiettivo</em> or in English <em>legendary lens</em> the meaning is pretty well the same and leaves little room for an excuse based on cultural differences. And the seller seems to have some familarity with colloquial English when the legendary lens suddenly becomes sh***y.<br> "I<em> do buy from seller who inaccurately described the item he/she is selling provided I know what item it is and the price is right. Sometimes it's less expensive that way</em>." [beBu Lamar] Agree. Sometimes "I don't know if this camera works" is just a sincere expression of the seller. Double-speak (Yashinon/kor) and arrogance is something else.<br> "<em>by sending them a note on an error in the listing. Mostly, I get a thank you back</em>." [JDM von Weinberg] Also my experience. Generally.</p>