[rollei_list] Re: Scanner advice needed, please

  • From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 16:02:52 -0700


----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Williams" <dwilli10@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2006 12:52 PM
Subject: [rollei_list] Re: Scanner advice needed, please


I was sure you and Slobodan would be one among the responders.

I wanted to say something very similar but just couldn't think of a
way of expressing it.

With respect to PhotoShop, I am a complete failure at defining an
area to mask, I suppose because I use a track ball. I would guess
that a mouse with a large range of physical travel would help.

Thanks,

DAW



Don Williams
La Jolla, CA

First of all, I am no expert with Photoshop. People who are experts make a very good living off of it. There are ways of getting the program to draw lines around things but it is something like chromakey where there must be a definite separation of brightness or color. I can sometimes make it work.
A mouse may help although a pen table is better. I hate trackballs. I have a very good friend who is a computer expert and loves them, I find them clumsy. To me the movements of a mouse with relation to the screen are completely intuitive.

I have been enthralled with Hollywood portrait technique, both still and motion picture, since I was a kid. The use of both soft focus and selective focus is fascinating. Some photographers, Hurrel is a well known example, made pictures which look very sharp but on close examination one can see where detail has been suppressed. Hurrel was supposed to have used mostly retouching to achieve his effects but I don't know if this is true or only myth.
Lighting has an important effect on soft focus effects. One must have fairly sharp, bright, highlights to get the effect of a "pearly" highlight. If done right brighter areas have a sort of glow without actually looking blurred.
There were lenses designed in the teens and twenties intended to reduce the amount of retouching necessary. To my eye they tend to be too soft, the sort of effect I like can be had with lenses like the Dagor which has enough residual spherical to give this effect when wide open or near it. Sometimes very soft focus can be interesting as in some of Edward Steichen's early work which has a dream like quality which I find intriguing. Probably this is partly due to the printing methods he used but the originals must have been diffused in some way.
The Rollei soft focus attachments are interesting. They are optical glass with rings of some other material, perhaps a different glass bonded to them. The effect is probably a combination of some spherical aberration and some diffusion. Diffusers of this sort can be made so that the effect changes very little with f/stop.
All sorts of things can be used as diffusers, both on the camera and on the enlarger. One can spend hours experimenting. Probably every Hollywood cinematographer had some secret diffusion technique or lens. Have a look at any of the Greta Garbo films on Turner Classic Movies. Many of the silents and all of her sound movies were photographed by William Daniels, one of the great masters. He was also assigned to photograph Norma Shearer, the boss's wife, so he must have been good. Note especially the closeups where the style of portrait lighting and use of soft focus and diffusion is appearent.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

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