Tony Rowlett

Karim, that site is awesome, I have seen that thread before. The pictures are really cool. Thanks.

 

Ellis, thanks. I think that nailed it for me. I have always been mostly happy with my results, it's just that sometimes I wonder if I'm missing some little process improvement.

I find this to be completely fascinating.

 

http://www.shorpy.com/node/18186

 

Read the comments from the bottom up (first to last, in other words).

For the web, I have been exporting my Monochrom pictures to the sRGB space, but I have always noticed that the

output on the web seems darker/muddy as compared with the image as it appears in Lightroom, so I have been in the

habit of trying to lighten the image in LR beforehand. So I just now discovered the ProPhoto RGB space to export

to in LR and tried that. On my flickr, it appears to look mostly identical to how it appears in Lightroom, yet

the advice out there still seems to support the sRGB for web display. But these are monochromatic images, so that

must be an important factor. Any thoughts here?

 

[Additionally: I have always had a mental block on color spaces, profiling, printing, all that..... please excuse

my idiocy.]

Pretty impressive. I'd be interested to see a few more pictures in different lighting scenarios, like a living room at night or a few color reduced-light street shots. I never went far with my M8 because I didn't like the software that I had at the time. (By the time I went to Lightroom, I was using my D700 and others.)

Bill, she's just as cantankerous as ever! :-0 but doing very well. She's happy that I've taken a break from buying Leica gear. I have been using nothing by my ol'monochrom "Henri" and the 50 Elmar (Collapsible) lately (beautiful combination), and I told her 'THAT'S IT!'

OT: Bill, I have to admit, I have never understood that image, "the informer." The lady, she seems too happy; as if she were looking upon a surprise birthday cake.

I like Banks of Marne, mostly because it brings the taste of good food and wine to my mouth. But, as with most folks, there are so many good ones to choose from.

Very nice work. Speaking of wide lenses, I've been using the Voigt. 15/mm ASPH on a full-frame digital and I'm having so much fun with it it's hard to go back to a more standard lens.

I love my Monochrom; can't really explain it, but the process of targeting line, form, shadow, and light with the realization that you won't be capturing any color (of course, you really are, you just won't "see" the colors), has been a really fun and rewarding experience. Not one of the several thousand pics I've made with it even hint that they should've been in color. It's as educational as it is rewarding. It is like playing a cello and not missing the harmonica.

This is why I like B&W ! :-)

Reminds me of the great Alfred Eisenstaedt (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Eisenstaedt). Great personality shows on the video. Nice find.

Congrats on your camera. I'm envious! The thing for me is that I want to use my R lenses.

 

Interestingly, I really dig pictures of peoples' offices, darkrooms, camera bags, etc. It's an odd thing!

Very nice. Second the one of the little boy in the tub! I'm in a whole new world with my MM. Just love it. It can be

quirky, but it's still the coolest camera I've ever had.

Pretty neat, Blake! And very interesting work indeed.

<center><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7365/9061101538_5310867d1a_c.jpg"><p>Rural China, 2013</center>

Ray, and everyone, the issue here is when Ray said, "...scanned film" in comparing to RAW> TIFF.... Ray, when you scanned that film, you lost the traditional process and entered into the digital world. Once digitized, all bets are off; you can make ANYTHING digital as black as black can be. There is some limitation of digital printing, i.e. pigmented ink jets. How black are they, and can they be as black as a traditional B&W fiber print made the old fashioned way? I don't know!

With reference to printing digital picture onto traditional fiber-based paper, I am considering trying <a href="http://www.digitalsilverimaging.com/printing">Digital Silver Imaging</a>. Anyone have any experience with them?

The use of the term "bad" was inappropriate on my part; I didn't really mean to imply that the very structure that MAKES the image on film is bad; I think I meant more along the lines that for a detail-capturing device, grain can eventually get in the way. But, practically, it is only if you want to enlarge a great deal which I do not much.

 

One thing about the Monochrom that I am enjoying is my ability to crop pieces and parts of an image with greater ease and with less noise. Mr. Simpson makes reference to this ability in his article.

Have you seen the three-part review of the Monochrom by Gregory Simpson? Nicely done. He loves film, so did a pretty good job of comparing the two: http://www.ultrasomething.com/photography/2012/12/a-fetishists-guide-to-the-monochrom-part1/

Yes, Benjamin, thanks.

 

Also, when are we going to stop criticizing technology as it improves? It's like complaining about the impurity of a Porsche's ability to go 150 miles per hour when in the old days a Model T would go 25 and that's if you could keep it on the road with its lousy steering. The Model T, see, has much more character than the Porsche.

 

Film grain was essentially bad, wasn't it? Wasn't there a whole industry surrounding the notion that if you exposed correctly, developed it using the correct developer, temperature, time, and agitation methods, then you could _reduce_ apparent grain? Didn't film grain adversely affect the extent an image could be cropped and enlarged? I get that film grain adds character to photographs, and I even like that.

 

Now, if you mix a Leica Monochrom with Lightroom (and possibly DFine), you can end up with virtually grainless pictures. I think that's actually really cool.

"It's really silly to run around w/ blinders on. Film excels at some things, digital excels at other things, but it's foolish to mix the strengths up w/ the weaknesses. But hey, people invest a ton of money in something, it biases their reality. "

 

I'm trying to figure out what this says. Who has those blinders, Steve?

Don't always have to have a realistic look! Just playing.... (Lightroom 5)

<center>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17427648-lg.jpg"></center>

Why are there so many styles and shapes of "hammers" in the tool section of a typical hardware store?

I found a two-part interview of Mr. Sixx on the Leica Blog which I found really interesting and which I'm glad I read:

<br>

<a href="http://blog.leica-camera.com/photographers/interviews/nikki-sixx-one-step-up-from-the-abyss-part-1/">Part I</a><br>

<a href="http://blog.leica-camera.com/photographers/interviews/nikki-sixx-one-step-up-from-the-abyss-part-2/">Part II</a>

Great comments, all. Some good food for thought.