Home

Please support mflenses.com if you need any graphic related work order it from us, click on above banner to order!
SearchSearch MemberlistMemberlist RegisterRegister ProfileProfile Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages Log inLog in

S-K Radionar 4.5/105, Duotone Experiments
Post new topic   Reply to topic
Home   Manual Focus Lenses
View previous topic :: View next topic  


PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 5:27 pm    Post subject: S-K Radionar 4.5/105, Duotone Experiments Reply with quote
During the last few weeks I've experimented quite a lot with LightZone, which has in practice become my main, even sole photo finishing tool - from RAW to the final JPEG/TIFF. I've prepared a number of templates which I use almost like different kinds of film - only afterwards, the advantage of shooting RAW. I select a template, drop it on a RAW file and in a few moments see the result, which can be tweaked ad lib by adjusting the tools included in the template or by adding new ones to the stack. This makes experimenting very easy, especially as the results can be saved in a format which includes the tool settings, which can be checked and/or adjusted afterwards - in this case the program always starts from the original, showing and applying the saved settings, everything is nondestructive, even cropping! External programs see only the resulting JPEG or TIFF.

I like the colors of the Radionar photos, but I've started experimenting with BW, sepia and lately also with duotoning, which at the moment feels the most promising alternative. (Duotoning, see e.g. http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/duotone.shtml.) I've uploaded an extensive selection to http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/radionar_dt.html . This selection also gives a good idea of the behavior of the Radionar without the added distraction of color.

Veijo


PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 5:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Lovely results. I especially like the photograph of the street lamps - what a gorgeous bokeh!

On my monitor I notice a lack of pure blacks or anwyay (since you probably didn't use black at all) of very dark tones. I don't know if this is your intentional choice or if it depends on different calibration of our two monitors.


PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
Lovely results. I especially like the photograph of the street lamps - what a gorgeous bokeh!

On my monitor I notice a lack of pure blacks or anwyay (since you probably didn't use black at all) of very dark tones. I don't know if this is your intentional choice or if it depends on different calibration of our two monitors.


The shadow tone is dark blue, and I left the black point rather high, partly because I didn't want very blue results, partly to retain a lowish contrast and partly also because there weren't very deep blacks on the subject scenes.

Veijo


PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Still I would underline Orio's remark about the deep blacks.
They should be in there, otherwise it seems like missing contrast.

So much for criticism...

These shots are just great! Really amazing and with charming character!

Carsten


PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
LucisPictor wrote:
Still I would underline Orio's remark about the deep blacks.
They should be in there, otherwise it seems like missing contrast.
So much for criticism...


Well, in fact, more than a criticism (these are artistic choices, so they are personal), mine was a doubt about the calibration of monitors. Since usually duotones are calibrated to use all the dynamic range (and therefore wirh dark shadows), I was afraid that the darkest shadows were there and my monitor could not see them, or in other words, that my monitor could be miscalibrated. Although I take care to calibrate it regularly, this is a matter where I am not expert so I may also do it wrongly.


PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
LucisPictor wrote:
Still I would underline Orio's remark about the deep blacks.
They should be in there, otherwise it seems like missing contrast.
So much for criticism...


Well, in fact, more than a criticism (these are artistic choices, so they are personal), mine was a doubt about the calibration of monitors. Since usually duotones are calibrated to use all the dynamic range (and therefore wirh dark shadows), I was afraid that the darkest shadows were there and my monitor could not see them, or in other words, that my monitor could be miscalibrated. Although I take care to calibrate it regularly, this is a matter where I am not expert so I may also do it wrongly.


Well, my home monitor is slightly too dark due to its age so I'm likely to produce slightly too light pictures. I usually check them at work with a brighter monitor. However, in this case some of the choices were artistic and dependent on my mood. The mood of the photos will change, more or less, with the change of contrast. As it was easy to do with LightZone, I prepared parallel versions of the photos, with darker blacks and a steeper contrast, and uploaded them to http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/radionar_dt2.html.

As a contrast to the duotone photos, here are two of them in color:





Veijo


PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
LucisPictor wrote:
Still I would underline Orio's remark about the deep blacks.
They should be in there, otherwise it seems like missing contrast.

So much for criticism...


Well, in some cases the original contrast was quite low, in some others I tried to match the low contrast of old sepia photos, and some were misjudgments due to my monitor.

Quote:
These shots are just great! Really amazing and with charming character!


Thanks Smile

Veijo


PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Veijo, the contrast of the Radionar is really very very low. If I open your scrad8116 image (colour version) in photoshop, in the histogram I see a big peak in the mid-low range, and then a steep slope to the left, and a gentler slope to the right, but all the rest of the histogram shows very low values.
The interesting thing to observe is, all tones are there (except for the darkest ones), only they are not boosted. So this confirms the empirical impression of the lens as a lens that can record almost everything, but keeps it in low contrast, and a proper image editing can "rescue" all the tones and produce a vibrant image.

As strange as it may seem, this lens design has a great advantage with digital cameras!! Digital cameras have a problem in their limited dynamic range, and in fact, this lens acts as a dynamic range compressor. So if you consider your RAW processing software as the dynamic range expansor, you can obtain a picture that is much more balanced and full over the whole spectrum compared to a modern-day, contrasty lens, that will either burn the highlight or miss/underexpose the shadows.


PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 2:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
Veijo, the contrast of the Radionar is really very very low. If I open your scrad8116 image (colour version) in photoshop, in the histogram I see a big peak in the mid-low range, and then a steep slope to the left, and a gentler slope to the right, but all the rest of the histogram shows very low values.
The interesting thing to observe is, all tones are there (except for the darkest ones), only they are not boosted. So this confirms the empirical impression of the lens as a lens that can record almost everything, but keeps it in low contrast, and a proper image editing can "rescue" all the tones and produce a vibrant image.

As strange as it may seem, this lens design has a great advantage with digital cameras!! Digital cameras have a problem in their limited dynamic range, and in fact, this lens acts as a dynamic range compressor. So if you consider your RAW processing software as the dynamic range expansor, you can obtain a picture that is much more balanced and full over the whole spectrum compared to a modern-day, contrasty lens, that will either burn the highlight or miss/underexpose the shadows.


I'm afraid things aren't quite that rosy. The lens isn't really compressing the dynamic range. The steep slope on the left is due to lens flare, due to which there cannot be any very dark areas. It is possible to compensate for the average flare during PP, and local contrast enhancement can remove a lot of the rest, but a certain amount of (semi?)random flare will always remain. However, at least in some cases the residual flare might hide the uglier digital noise and also otherwise make the total response more pleasant in that hard to define way we observe.

Veijo
Post new topic   Reply to topic
Home   Manual Focus Lenses
Page 1 of 1