philipp_wetzler

<p>Mauro,</p>

<p>if all you are doing is using the standard settings (or even playing around with settings like ICE, as Les suggests), then how can it be that so many other people are unhappy with their results? Wasn't the main point of this thread that doing the scan <em>just right</em> is what makes the huge difference that may convince people that film is that much better than digital? What about all the people (like me) who try scanning their film using expensive (but common) equipment like the Nikon LS-5000 / LS-9000 and get poor results, thus concluding that digital is better? Wasn't your point that that's because they don't do the scanning right?</p>

<p>I see two possibilities:<br>

1) There is something that you do that people who are inexperienced at scanning film don't do, thus explaining that your results are better than many other people's. Or<br>

2) Only exceptionally captured and developed film photos can be scanned to really compete with the millions of average DSLR photos people take all the time.</p>

<p>If you're really telling me that what I (and all the other people who are unhappy with their scans) got with that Coolscan 5000 is as good as it gets for scanning film 99% of the time, then there's really no comparison to digital, which at least gives consistently high (though maybe not exceptional) quality results. But I don't think that's what you mean to say at all. Explain?</p>

<p>Philipp</p>

<p>Mauro,</p>

<p>I'm one of those people who kept hearing how 35mm film is much better still than the current selection of DSLRs but never really bought it -- because in all the scanned photos I saw, no matter the detail that's technically there, because of large amounts of grain and lack of sharpness the <em>perceived amount of detail</em> on film was always much lower (even though film grain has its own aesthetic appeal, but that's a different story). I kept this opinion even after spending some time trying to get good results out of a Nikon LS-5000. Even with 16x multisampling, and at different resolutions, the result couldn't really compare to what I got from my simple D40x.</p>

<p>Well, you've convinced me. Some of the scanned images people posted (for example your TMAX 400 and Ektar 100 scans above) are truly impressive, even at large magnifications. Now my question is: what do I need in order to get results like that?<br>

Let's not talk about what camera and film to use, that's been much discussed elsewhere. The big question is the scanner. You (and other participants of this thread) have established that having film scanned at a photo lab is not really an option. From my own experience I can say that it's not enough to just buy an expensive film scanner (like a Nikon LS-5000), either. This is also underlined by the many, many people who keep disputing the claim that film can compete against digital, because they've tried scanning film using expensive equipment and didn't get good results.</p>

<p>So, starting with nothing (and keeping to 35mm for now), what scanning equipment would you personally recommend to get for results like the ones you posted? Maybe the equipment isn't everything. Taking classes, maybe? Lots of practice? (How much?) What else would help?<br>

And finally, having all that equipment, how much work would you say is involved in getting one very high quality scan of one 35mm photo? How long does it actually take you, for the whole process?</p>

<p>I'm not trying to be sarcastic at all -- I know everything will take longer with film, and that expensive equipment is required, but I also know (and have been convinced by this thread) that it may well be worth it. But in order to decide <em>if</em> it's worth it for someone, let's talk about what it takes to get those convincing results.</p>

<p>Philipp</p>

Yakim, I don't get your point with your most recent picture of the sun -- it looks just like the other one, only it's not a

sunset so it's more blue-ish, less orange-ish. It's still all shades of the same color. If you could show us two raw photos

of the SAME sunset at the SAME time taken with the SAME white balance, and one of them has different colors than

the other, that would be meaningful. This isn't.

Seriously, stop trying to find faults with your camera and the pictures it takes. You're pushing yourself into seeing

problems that don't exist. All the photos you've shown here look exactly the way I'd expect them to look. You keep

acting like somehow the camera didn't take the picture right when, in fact, all it did was record what was there.

Once you stop trying to find fault with the results your camera gives you you can start trying to actually understand the

relationship between what you THINK you see, what is actually there, and what your camera records (at its various

settings). And it involves taking lots of pictures out there, playing with WB settings on the camera and on the computer

and comparing the results, and believing that your camera works the way it was designed to work.

"But seriously, the whole point of my incapability to understand is that in each and every other shot (tens of thousands just

with digi: 1D and 40D), what I saw is what exactly what I got in the picture. What was so different in these particular shots?"

The difference is that you're beginning to pay more attention to the results you're getting from your photography. Light hasn't

changed, your camera hasn't changed -- you have: You're getting more discerning, and your ability to see is improving. Accept

it, don't tell yourself it isn't real or that your camera is lying to you, and instead get out there and take pictures! Find different

kinds of light and try different WB settings and just play with them and see what you get.

"Can you please comment on the original picture?"

You mean the sunset picture? Without having seen the actual sunset you photographed I can only speculate. I have in

the past frequently seen sunsets where the whole part of the sky around the sun takes on various shades of the same

golden color, just like in this picture.

Now you can say "no, I know what I saw, and the sky didn't look like that". But these are the two alternatives:

1) You made the simple, very common and very human mistake of thinking you saw one thing when in fact it was

another

or

2) the sensor in your camera, suddenly and arbitrarily on only this picture, recorded light in a fundamentally different way,

resulting in a different but still plausible picture; also, this happens only with _your_ camera.

Given what I've seen, alternative 1) is vastly more likely, and so I'll go with that. Think about it: Your eyes see the whole

rest of the sky, and it is blue; so your brain perceives it as blue, even in the small area where it's not. Your eyes see

white clouds everywhere, and your brain knows that clouds are supposed to be white, so it sees white clouds. In the end

you see a variety of colors where physically there's only shades of the same color. Our vision is easily tricked into

seeing what we expect, rather than what's actually there; only with practice we can learn to sometimes compensate for that,

at least to some degree.

Proof of concept: Adjusted the exposure by 1.25 stops and turned the color temperature WAAAY up. This is as close as it

gets without doing localized adjustments in Photoshop. But it doesn't look natural, because you wouldn't get such warm

light without any shadows; nature's diffuse light isn't generally warm.<div></div>

Yakim, you said

"Pete is convinced that this is a WB issue, which I find much more reasonable, but then comes the question: If it is

indeed so, why can't I bring the original colours back. After all, RAW files are supposed to enable you just that."

You have to understand that in your sun-lit picture, parts of the picture are in direct sunlight (i.e. warm light) while parts

are in the shade (i.e. cold light). In the other picture, everything is in the shade (cold light). By changing the overall white

balance, there's no way you can make one of them look like the other -- if you make the shade picture warmer, it will be

warm all over, including the parts that are cold in the sunlit picture.

Scene lighting is a very complex issue, you almost always have a mix of different color temperatures and tints. AWB will

give you a rough starting point, and manual calibration can get you closer to getting consistent results, but most of the

time there's just no way to fix differences in lighting in the camera or on the computer, which is why it's very important to

get the lighting right in the first place, by waiting for the right moment or by adding your own light / shade. And in order to

do that you have to understand the light first.

It's hard to believe that you've never noticed the effects of changing light in 18 years of shooting, unless most of that

was with negative film (photo labs will try to adjust white balance for you when they make prints).

Yakim,

direct sunlight, especially in the morning and evening but also during the day, is warm (yellow / orange). When the sun is

covered by something (like a cloud, or when you're in the shade) most of the light that illuminates your scene comes from

the sky, which is neutral (when it's cloudy) or cold (blue-ish, when the sky is blue).

The brain and the eyes are very good at compensating for this effect, which is why, unless we train ourselves to see it,

we don't much notice that the light is more yellow or more blue. But the sensor in your camera sees the difference very

clearly, and on the computer screen so do you.

AWB tries to compensate for this effect, but it is very conservative about it, so a picture taken in cold light will generally

still look somewhat cold, while a picture taken in warm light will generally still look warm. I don't shoot Canon, but I've

noticed that with my camera, setting the white balance manually will give much more consistent results. I'd suggest you

play with the various manual WB settings on your camera and get a feeling for what they do; alternatively you could get

in the habit of checking & adjusting WB after the fact on the computer.