zoltan_arva_toth

Thanks everyone for your contribution.

Thanks Mike - it's [mostly] the building I was unsure of too. I think I originally composed it into the frame as a counterpoint to the mountain. However the way I cropped it looks almost random and the whole thing is just too brightly lit - as you say, it's more of a distraction than a useful element of the composition.

Title says it all, really. I took this photograph almost 10 years ago, on a trip to Italy. Ricoh TLS 401, Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar 50mm f:1.8, Kodak ColorPlus 200.

 

I cannot, for the life of me, decide if this pic is any more than a holiday snap. It sure takes me down memory lane. But does it look any good to you guys?

 

Thank you all for your valuable feedback!

I have an image that I have cropped in two different ways and cannot, for the life of me, decide which one works better. The tonal reduction to almost pure black and white is intentional. It's just the cropping / framing / composition I can't make up my mind on.

 

Version 1:

 

Version 2:

Thank you both - I will tape the edges of the door and try a different lab.

I have a Pentacon Six, and I must say when everything "clicks" - pun not intended -, it produces fantastic results in tandem with its Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f/2.8 MC standard lens, like these:

 

 

However, some frames are affected by what seems to be light leaks. Exhibit A (cropped to 645):

And here's the full frame, with the problem intentionally exaggerated so that it's easier to see:

Do you think this is a light leak? Or is it a development/lab issue? As I've said, this is something that affects some frames and not others - but there always seem to be 2-3-4 affected frames per roll.

Morning at the Railway Station

 

Pentacon Six + Biometar 80mm f/2.8

Kodak Ektar 100

Cropped to portrait orientation and corrected for a (slight) perspective distortion.

<p>Some folks swear by the following workflow: scan colour negatives as 16-bit/channel linear TIFFs with VueScan --> open them in Photoshop --> use the ColorPerfect plugin from CF Systems to get perfect colours. Of course you need Photoshop for this, and you also have to buy the plugin. Version 2.21 is recommended for Photoshop CC.</p>

<p>These scans are plain horrible - try another scanning service. (Of course this doesn't mean everything's fine with the film itself - look at the negative and see if it looks "thin." But really, the artifacts in these scans are truly unnatural.)</p>

<p>For reference, this is what a half-decent scan of ISO 400/27° film (Kodak Portra 400) looks like when downsampled to 1600 pixels wide:<br /> <a href="

<p>Now that you posted an image of the film itself, it's clear that the frames are indeed blank/unexposed rather than overexposed. Could be a faulty shutter/aperture mechanism, or an issue with film winding.</p>

<p>The 9000F is a flatbed scanner so you cannot expect miracles from it.<br /> This is one of my better Kodak Portra 400 scans, made with a Plustek OpticFilm 8100 - which is a dedicated film scanner, although not a high-end one by any means (for one thing, it lacks adjustable focus):<br /> <a href="

<p>Might be overexposure. On a truly sunny day, an ISO 400/27° film needs to be exposed at 1/500 or maybe 1/250 sec at f/16, and an even faster shutter speed is needed for shooting at wider apertures. Your shutter speed was 1/60 which is way too slow for any aperture setting available on the lens you used. You likely gave the film too much exposure to light. (Note: overexposed slides are blank (thin/ washed out) and overexposed negatives are dense.</p>

<p>John,<br>

well, it's unheated <em>and</em> uncooled - and while winters can be freezing cold, summers are usually hot.</p>

<p>Thanks Bill!</p>

<p>We have just found three rolls of Fortepan 50 (expired in 1992) and one roll of Neopan 400 (also expired).<br>

To say the films were <em>not</em> properly stored is an understatement - we found them in an unheated outbuilding.<br>

The Fortepans are in their original, unopened boxes but the Neopan cartridge is not.<br>

I'd like to expose these rolls and have them developed, but have a question: what speed should these films be rated at? The box speed of the Fortepans is ISO 50/18° - shall I rate them at EI 25/15° or EI 12/12°? The Neopan is of course an ISO 400/27° film - should I rate it at ISO 200/24° or ISO 100/21°?<br>

Needless to say, I'm not planning to use these films for anything particularly important, but would still welcome your input.</p>

<p>So it is not very user-friendly and possibly bug-ridden too, but the million-dollar question is... how's the image quality?<br>

Specifically, real-life resolution?<br>

Could you possibly share a few 100% crops from a sharp slide scanned at full res?</p>

<p>Using a refurbished minilab scanner might well be a good idea if you can get it to work on your OS.<br /> This photo, shot on 35mm Ektar 100, was scanned with a Kodak 660 film scanner to an almost 10-megapixel digital image:<br /> <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8GdZAMmQrazZjZvSTJVT0ZrSm8/view">https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8GdZAMmQrazZjZvSTJVT0ZrSm8/view</a><br /> Click the download button above the photo to download the full-res version.</p>

<p>This just in: a hybrid 300Ws studio strobe / system flash boasting full support for Canon's E-TTL exposure control system. It even has a hotshoe-foot! (For radio trigger receivers of course.)<br>

http://www.photographyblog.com/news/yongnuo_yn300w/</p>

<p>I have just finished a roll, and still have the canister on hand, which is clearly marked as "CA 135."<br>

The film needs to be developed and scanned.<br>

Watch this space as I promise to upload a few scans (but it won't be before the end of this week, sorry).</p>

<p>This was taken in Budapest, Hungary, a few years ago:</p><div></div>

<p>In a nutshell, the high-end Coolscans had better optics - with higher resolving power, better contrast and less chromatic aberration -, adjustable focus, motorised film transport, higher dMax and an infrared channel. For these reasons, they were in an entirely different price league than the OpticFilm 8100. Now that they are essentially no longer available new, their prices have skyrocketed in the used market. If you can justify the cost and get your computer to work with them - note that NikonScan does not support modern operating systems so unless you use Windows XP or something similar, you will need to buy third-party software to run a Coolscan scanner -, they are the better option. However, if you can only spend a few hundred on a scanner (which is the reality for most people), and only need to scan 35mm film, the OpticFilm 8100 is not a bad choice at all. If you can cough up a little more, the OpticFilm 7600i or 8200i will give you infrared scanning, which helps the scanning application - the bundled SilverFast by LaserSoft or the separately sold Vuescan by Hamrick Software - identify and clone out dust and scratches on C41 and E-6 films, similarly to Nikon's ICE. However, if you want excellent optics with adjustable focus, you will have to dig a lot deeper into your pocket as no current entry-level or midrange desktop film scanner I'm aware of has them, unfortunately.</p>

<p>If anyone's interested, we've got a new review of the Plustek OpticFilm 8100 film scanner at<br /><a href="http://www.photographyblog.com//reviews/plustek_opticfilm_8100_review">http://www.photographyblog.com//reviews/plustek_opticfilm_8100_review</a></p>

<p>Danubius Fountain, Budapest (detail). Taken on Kodak Portra 160 film.</p><div></div>

<p>I would not worry too much about this - but yes, this scan seems a tad coarser than it should be. Could be underexposure or a scanning issue. For reference, let me show one of my own scans of Kodak Portra 400, which was done on a consumer-grade desktop film scanner. I think it's a bit cleaner, though the shadows are obviously grainy/noisy (again, it's <em>not</em> a top-notch scan). Because of its dimensions - which are similar to your 'Original' image on Flickr - it won't display inline, so you will need to click on the link.</p><div></div>