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A few holiday snaps from the island of Krk
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:49 pm    Post subject: A few holiday snaps from the island of Krk Reply with quote

This year I only took a film camera (Minolta X-700) and three lenses (28/2.8, 50/1.4 and 100/2.5) on holiday. I shot 4 rolls of film (Ektar 100 and DM Paradies 200), only managed to digitize the first one so far. A few snaps shot in and around the city of Krk, Croatia on the island with the same name:

1.
0055_X700_08 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

2.
0055_X700_14 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

3.
0055_X700_17 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

4.
0055_X700_18 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

5.
0055_X700_20 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

6.
0055_X700_21 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

7.
0055_X700_27 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

8.
0055_X700_28 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

9.
0055_X700_32 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

10.
0055_X700_34 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

Seems I've developed a taste for the vertical orientation. Rolling Eyes


PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Like 1 small Nice pictures.

Also from Krk:



Sorry, but I couln't resist as you mentioned the taste for vertical orientation. I have really many of those vertical pictures from Krk as there are such tiny streets which give you a certain perspective only when shooting vertical.... Wink


PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 5:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks, that's a typical sight in these old coastal towns. It's like you can't do anything but vertical in those extremely narrow streets.


PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 7:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great photos Miran, I do like them a lot, especially #1, #5, #9, #10 and your daughter's lovely portrait.
Colours on your photos are just superb and I know it's partly due to the Ektar 100 being great negative, but I also know that your scanning skills are on display here. Could you describe your scanning workflow?

Actually for my last vacation I did the similar thing - only film camera Olympus OM-2SP, three lenses Vivitar Series 1 24-48, Vivitar Series 1 28-90 and Tamron SP 60-300 and a bunch of rolls. I ended up with 10 exposed rolls but because of writing my master's thesis I don't have time to PP them (although I did scanned them).
I was going out in the mountains either with 24-48 + 60-300 or only 28-90 and I really enjoy shooting my vacations only on film.


PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 9:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

For me personally it feels much better to shoot only film, but getting the photos digitized is just so time consuming it's almost not worth it. I'm not satisfied with my workflow, it's way too slow. And the results are not exactly where I want them to be anyway. Colours are almost never that great and it takes too many steps to get to a point that is only just good enough. It's a constant struggle with curves and white balance and so on. This was my third roll of Ektar, the first two were disapointing, this one was much better but still not perfect. I'm experimenting with different methods, currently this is my workflow:

1. Place negative on light table with a blue filter (this helps to neutralize orange mask later).
2. Shoot the negative with a macro setup (NEX-6 and an 80mm lens with some extension tubes, shot at around f/8 ).
3. Convert raw file using RawTherapee with a fairly neutral profile to 16 bit tiff.
4. Invert using negfix8 with -cs option.
5. The negfix8 output is not perfect, so process the tiff again with RawTherapee.
6. Massage the colour curves in gimp some more and also spot heal dust&scratches and other anomalies.

I could probably elminate step 5 and maybe also 4, but it's step 6 that takes most of my time, on average 5 to 10 minutes for each frame. Sad


PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 9:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

miran wrote:
For me personally it feels much better to shoot only film, but getting the photos digitized is just so time consuming it's almost not worth it.


Miran, your workflow doesn't sound really motivating.

Luckily I have some film scanners as well. However, for comfort reasons I also prefer to shoot digital. Wink

BUT I am really and seriously planning to shoot some film again as I have at least prepared my scanners now to work again on my rather newly installed Windows 10.
Although it's more convenient with scanners, the dust problem is rather annoying. It's nearly impossible to get a 100% dust free scan, though there are some infrared algorithms (ICE) available. So in any case some PP is required for optimum results. On the other hand when I look on high resolutions scans from a Fuji Velvia 50 Film and compare that to digital I must really state that the film still beats digital. Especially from the middle format cameras but I still believe also from 135 film in combination with an excellent lens compared to 24MP/FF digital. The resolution is simply much higher. That's naturally not the case in your workflow where you shoot the film with a digital camera.

Maybe you should consider a scanner as well if you plan to use film more seriously. The higher quality makes the difference.


PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 9:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I do have a scanner and it's not any better/faster. Colours are still a pain to process and never seem to be right. The only difference is the curves controls in software like RawTherapee or Gimp are much nicer than in the typical scanner software. I get better results with my method.

Regarding resolution I think that's not really true, at least for most films. If needed I could digitize at a higher magnification and use stitching software to make "scans" with much more megapixels than any digital sensor (and have done so in the past as an experiment) but in my experience 135 negatives simply don't have more than about 6 megapixels or so worth of resolution. At higher magnifications you're just getting bigger clumps of grain, that's all. I'm talking about colour and black&white negative film, might be different for slides, I don't know.


PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 10:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well...your workflow doesn't sound to be fun Smile.

If I could suggest is one piece of software - Color Perfect plugin, which does wonderful job in converting negatives. I've tried a lot of different methods, negafix included, but nothing gave me such good results like Color Perfect.

My scanning process:
1. Scan to RAW 48bit files with VueScan (with IR dust removal).
2. Applying Color Perfect plugin in Photoshop
3. Applying High pass filter sharpening
4. Applying curves in Photoshop with auto feature (with selected Enhance per channel contrast and Snap neutral midtones) , which corrects any color shifts that sometimes slip past color perfect
5. Applying batch adjustement in Lightroom (mainly contrast curve, some highlight save and clarity a bit, some colour noise removal and sharpness set at 5-10)
6. Making final, small adjustment on every photo separately (usually no more than a bit of exposure and white balance correction).
7. Export to final TIFF or JPG

The most time consuming is scanning process (2 mins per frame with IR dust removal), but you could do something else in the meantime. Applying all the negative to positive conversion steps doesn't take me more than 30-45 mins on old and sluggish computer.
I don't really care if there are a bits of dust left over, so I don't do manual dust removal. Although my negatives are pretty clean and not scratched when going back from the lab. During scanning I wore cotton gloves and use air blower to minimise possibility of dusting or scratching film.

I've tried digitising film with DSLR but it was painful for me to get negatives parallel to the sensor and not to move anything when switching the frames. Results were pretty good although I think even my relatively cheap film scanner - Plustek 7600i is doing better job than my C600d with 50mm lens on extension tubes. I'm sure that if one would use better camera with proper macro lens the results are going to be better but I don't have those and there's still need of setting the whole thing up and keeping parallel to get good captures.
You've wrote that you have scanner but if its flatbed scanner then it's probably hopeless for 35mm film scanning. Dedicated film scanner is a must as you're much better with DSLR than flatbed.

Of course digital is more convenient but still you have to sit and develop all that RAW files and for me I still prefer shooting on film most of the time.
I'm not sure however if colour negative could resolve more than 10-12MPix. But seriously I don't care and I love the grain Wink.


PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 12:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK, may be different with color negative film. I am using Velvia instead which is most probably the highest resolution slide film on earth and there is barely any visible grain.

For my Minolta "Dimage" scanner 5400 (for 135 film) I am also using VueScan as there is no more driver/software for W10 available. With the Epson V600 (for bigger formats) I am still not sure which program is better.

For me film shooting makes sense for my middle format cameras and also to use lenses on FF which I can't use on digital FF like e.g. my CV 12mm/F5.6 lens on my Bessa R2 instead of the digital Ricoh in APS-C.

I am also thinking of reactivation of my film development equipment which lies around unused since ages. Especially for B&W for middle format this would ease the process and reduce the cost dramatically. I think it's somewhere in the basement.... Wink

Finally, since I used film for ages it's still more familiar to me than digital. Maybe this plays also a certain role. Though, I learned how to play around in the "digital darkroom" as well recently. In my first digital years I just shot JPG's straight from the camera similar to the film times. RAW shooting and optimizing afterwards is certainly the better method.

However, since I am already retired I have (at least theoretically) time enough for such things. Wink


PostPosted: Sat Oct 31, 2015 8:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nice photos, looks like a beautiful place.


PostPosted: Sat Oct 31, 2015 9:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whoo Turtle Congrats


PostPosted: Sun Nov 01, 2015 6:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you. Smile A few more:

11.
0056_X700_07 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

12.
0056_X700_13 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

13.
0056_X700_16 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

14.
0056_X700_28 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

15.
0056_X700_30 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

16.
0056_X700_33 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

17.
0056_X700_36 by Miran Amon, on Flickr

These are mostly from the next island, Rab.