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Some shots with my Ikonta A (6 x 4.5)
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 7:24 am    Post subject: Some shots with my Ikonta A (6 x 4.5) Reply with quote
Last Saturday I made a short trip to Tallinn and took the Ikonta with me, loaded with Fuji Neopan Acros 100. Using the Sunny Sixteen rule, I got rather nice pics - of course technically no match to even a 350D but usable and with a slightly different atmosphere and texture. Scanned at 2400 dpi the images are about 20 Mp, a little bit noisy and soft, but the best ones could probably be printed at 12" x 16". Here are some samples, just quick scans with some dust, down-sampled and slightly sharpened for display:







A crop from the above photo with slight de-noising and sharpening, i.e. at 20 Mp:







Some people were quite amused when I took the camera out of my shirt breast pocket, opened it, advanced the film, took a shot, folded the camera and put it back into my pocket - nonchalantly as if it were the most natural thing to do Smile

Veijo


PostPosted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 7:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nice capture, and yes, the faces of today's people faced to old technology are often a show in themselves. Laughing

My father used to have a Super Ikonta. It was a great camera, but more than that, it was a real jewel of craftmanship. I used it also, it was real fun.


PostPosted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 1:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Very nice. It does have a very distinct capture,I like the B/W and sort of soft view of life. Cool


PostPosted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 2:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Yeah! That's fantastic!
I also think it is so much fun to shoot with my old medium format cams...


PostPosted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 5:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
I played some more with a couple of the scans. Originally, I hadn't sharpened the scans at all at the full resolution and decided to give it a try. Here is a crop from a sharpened full 20 Mp resolution photo:



Not too bad, IMO, even the grain and/or noise is quite reasonable, and there aren't yet any excessive sharpening artifacts. Downsampling the photo to about 7 Mp (i.e. making the smaller dimension correspond to that of the 350D) gives a crop like this:



The full 7 Mp image is available at http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/ikonta_a_files/t6_h350.jpg and the full 20 Mp photo at http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/ikonta_a_files/t6-1.jpg

Here is a crop from another photo at 7 Mp


The full 7 Mp image is available at http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/ikonta_a_files/t10_h350.jpg

On the basis of these test shots I'd think that 12" x 16" prints would probably be quite satisfactory or even very good considering the source - a really pocket-size 645.

Veijo


PostPosted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 6:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
hi Veijo,
I have seen the big images, the quality seems good for an old camera.

the problem I have to face whenever I scan a film is to choose what to go for, noise reduction or sharpening. Because the two things don't seem to go together well.

If you denoise first, and sharpen after, you get horrible artifacts from sharpening due to the fact that denoise has "remodeled" the micro detail.

If you sharpen first, then denoise, the two things seem to sort of balancing each other, with the consequence that your final result is not really sharper or cleaner than the original, but surely you lost a lot of detail in the process.

After several tests, I have decided that I privilege the noise reduction over sharpening. I have found that after denoise, you can act on the contrast of the image, and if you moderately increase it (something that after scanning is sort of necessary anyway), when you print the image and look from a distance, it can actually give you the impression of having been sharpened, while it was not (because it wasn't just the edges to be affected, but the whole surface.

One thing that I think would be interesting, is, to compare a print made from a scan of the negative (after the required processing steps), with a print of the same size made directly from the negative.


PostPosted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
hi Veijo,
I have seen the big images, the quality seems good for an old camera.


Well, it's a 645 with minimal film flatness problems and a Tessar lens at f/11.

Quote:
the problem I have to face whenever I scan a film is to choose what to go for, noise reduction or sharpening. Because the two things don't seem to go together well.

If you denoise first, and sharpen after, you get horrible artifacts from sharpening due to the fact that denoise has "remodeled" the micro detail.

If you sharpen first, then denoise, the two things seem to sort of balancing each other, with the consequence that your final result is not really sharper or cleaner than the original, but surely you lost a lot of detail in the process.

After several tests, I have decided that I privilege the noise reduction over sharpening. I have found that after denoise, you can act on the contrast of the image, and if you moderately increase it (something that after scanning is sort of necessary anyway), when you print the image and look from a distance, it can actually give you the impression of having been sharpened, while it was not (because it wasn't just the edges to be affected, but the whole surface.


Here I haven't applied any noise reduction at all. I tried various alternatives, but came to the conclusion that the noise/grain probably is quite negligible at all reasonable print sizes and otherwise just shows the origin. After all, the noise here is quite minimal considering the enlargement factor - especially compared with the really grainy films some people prefer to use. Besides, it would be quite futile to even try to make these photos as clean as dSLR photos are.

Some weeks ago I used the same type of film in my Contax 139, took the film to my customary lab for development and also asked them to scan the negs at their so-called proCD quality (6 Mp) as it was quite cheap. The result was very noisy trash compared to these my scans with an Epson 4990 flatbed scanner. This is another excuse for me to skip noise reduction.

Veijo


PostPosted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 12:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
What do you use for noise reduction? I usually use noise ninja and it seems to sharpen the image a bit apart from greatly reducing noise. After that I normally skip any further sharpening.


PostPosted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 12:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I am very careful when sharpening scanned film!
It is almost not necessary, I think.
And the grain, I like to call it "grain" rather then "noise", is OK for me, since it is characteristic for this particular film.
I only sharpen at the very end, when I prepare the photo for its purpose (web, print etc.) and then very, very slightly.


PostPosted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
naplam wrote:
What do you use for noise reduction? I usually use noise ninja and it seems to sharpen the image a bit apart from greatly reducing noise.


It does in fact sharpen the image if you accept the default values. I prefer to turn the sharpening off however.
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