[LRflex] Re: Shots from the archive
- From: Richard Ward <ilovaussiesheps@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: leicareflex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2010 09:10:09 -0800 (PST)
Hello Walter,
Very nice images you've shared from the 'Archive'. Unless I was seriously
mistaken, a pretty fair share of them were film scans [thus dust not lie, does
it?] - maybe all of them, but it can be hard to fish out comparing good digital
shots from good scans of low grain film. I have the sense you have a very broad
spread of photographic interests stylistically speaking. That Cricket shot was
fantastic! 9.5 out of 10 Definitely! [half point off for the focus plane just
missing the batsman's location!]
Your comments on NOT mucking around inside the 'image' produced by the scan
with photoshop filtering and manipulations makes a LOT of sense to me. I hadn't
really made the 'leap' before that I had been trying to fix in photoshop the
poor scans I was feeding it instead of finding a fix for the scanning process.
When one has become accustomed to the digital workflow of shooting with a dSLR,
it's pretty hard not to reach for the 'digital fix' for problems - it's
essentially unconscious bias.
I see an incredible analogy to the analogue printing process here. ie: shoot
film - process film - print film. The scanner is acting as the enlarger here
and the file it gives is much like a 'print'. When we pulled a bad print out of
the 'soup' in the analogue days we didn't take that print off and attempt to
physically fix it, we went back to the film, the enlarger, and the soups, to
find fixes for contrasts, soft details, misplaced tonalities, and such. If a
scanner hasn't rendered the film grains clearly the USM Filter in Photoshop
can't fix that without tradeoffs. I see that the cumulative tradeoffs of
Photoshop fixes for this or that aspect of a poor scan makes one end up chasing
unicorns. The fix for the first thing changes the second thing and the fix for
that changes the first thing and a third thing.
Get a Good Scan with well rendered grain and a usable range of tones then apply
an aesthetic hand in postprocess rather than a corrective one and all is
sunshine and happiness.
Chase a Bad Scan and the sunshine and happiness will either come from reducing
one's expectations to match what you're getting or by lassoing a mythical beast
(The Unicorn!).
Walter, would you care to share some thoughts on your scanning processes or
equipments? Offlist would be fine.
Anyway, Great images you've shared, nice moments in time. They could easily
have come out of my own 'catalogue', except for that 'Austraila Post' logo of
course! :-)
Richard in Michigan
Yet another Sunshine and Light filled Winters Day! like 4th in a row! Whee.
________________________________
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
- Harry S Truman
________________________________
________________________________
From: Walter Kramer <walter.kramer@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [LRflex] Shots from the archive
The list seems quiet so here are some outstanding shots from the archive.
There was a subject Richard brought up about 'An observation on film,'
that many scans on the web of film were flat looking. It might be a
case of over processing. Once the frame is scanned and digitised there
is always the temptation to process further and I think one needs to be
quite careful about this. Eg., sharpening an analog scan does not
usually enhance the overall image and may adversely effect the tone esp B&W.
Unrelated to the above:
>>> Clipped by Richard :-) <<<
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