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Got my first roll of film back today
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:43 pm    Post subject: Got my first roll of film back today Reply with quote
I am sure this is going to make the experienced people here smile and think "noob!". Hey, I enjoy sharing this with someone. Smile

Some time back I picked up an Olympus OM40 and recently shot my very first roll of film in it: Kodak ColorPlus 200 ISO. This was mostly a test role to check if the light seals are OK, shutter speeds are correct etc. And to get some experience myself. Such as remembering that there is no image stabilization, I have to do that myself (minimum shutter speed = 1 / focal length). Or that the camera doesn't go beyond 1/1000 (my normal camera goes to 1/8000 mechanical shutter, so I rarely have any worries shooting wide open in bright sunlight). This OM40 blinks the 1000 mark so I do have to pay attention to that and stop down appropriately. Fortunately not too many over exposed pictures.

When I saw the pictures today I was happily surprised. Nothing was out of focus (I always use manual focus lenses anyway). Going from focus peaking to split picture micro prism (is that what it's called?) wasn't too difficult. Light seals on the camera appear to be good since the pictures don't show any light leaks. Shutter seems fine, no unexpectedly over or under exposed or half exposed pictures. So my OM40 is now "fully operational".

I also received the scans from the negatives today. Their machine scans the negatives and then prints the scans and/or saves the files to disk. Taking a close look at the scans (*.jpg).... I was never someone to hammer away at sensor resolution, but after seeing the scans I am now pretty much convinced that a sensor in the single digit MP size can beat these scans. So, separate from any aesthetic considerations I might want to avoid taking pictures of very detailed scenes with a lot going on and in stead go for larger subjects.

Regards, C.


PostPosted: Sat Jun 08, 2024 7:20 pm    Post subject: Re: Got my first roll of film back today Reply with quote
connloyalist wrote:
Their machine scans the negatives and then prints the scans and/or saves the files to disk. Taking a close look at the scans (*.jpg).... I was never someone to hammer away at sensor resolution, but after seeing the scans I am now pretty much convinced that a sensor in the single digit MP size can beat these scans. So, separate from any aesthetic considerations I might want to avoid taking pictures of very detailed scenes with a lot going on and in stead go for larger subjects.


They are unlikely to deliver the best scans possible. High quality scans are time-consuming and expensive to do, which will involve drum scanning and photomultiplier tubes.

Having said that, I used to get decent results from my NIKON Coolscan 9000, which is a single line CCD moving tray scanner.

But a high volume developer/scanner/printer machine they are probably using won't get up to those standards. You are at the mercy of those machines' capabilities, calibration, and standard settings; you have no idea how well their scanner corrects for the colour and density of the film base or whether it uses autoexposure / auto white balance etc. Back in my (negative) film shooting days I had to ask the lab explicitly NOT to do exposure correction on the prints as they totally messed up my exposure bracketing. Half the time they could not (or would not) honour that request, depending on which lab I used.

Ultimately I switched to shooting slide film to avoid those head-aches; the better quality labs at least had a pretty good consistency for E6 development, and no print could ever mach the impact and colour vibrancy of a slide on a light table, not even Cibachromes or dye-sub prints.


PostPosted: Sat Jun 08, 2024 7:32 pm    Post subject: Re: Got my first roll of film back today Reply with quote
RokkorDoctor wrote:

Ultimately I switched to shooting slide film to avoid those head-aches; the better quality labs at least had a pretty good consistency for E6 development, and no print could ever mach the impact and colour vibrancy of a slide on a light table, not even Cibachromes or dye-sub prints.


Can you please explain to me (or point me to a resource) what the difference is between negatives for prints and slide film? When you develop slide film, do you not get negatives but "positives", namely the slide? My mother used to shoot slides before I was born and I have a box full of her Kodak slides from the 1950's. Don't know the type of film exactly or the camera she used but some of those look pretty good.

Can any please the develops film also develop slide film, or are those really two separate things?

Aside: I am assuming that with film photography the quality is all in the film and the lenses and not in the body of the camera.

Regards, C.


PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2024 4:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Different film types?

B&W and C41 film becomes negatives when developed.
E6 film becomes positive -- your mom's slides are in fact the developed film itself, cut and mounted.

Slide positives have a narrower range of proper exposure than negative films.


PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2024 5:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Scan quality can vary greatly, depending especially on where it was done.
The results from scans done at places like drug store and department chains can be pretty dismal indeed.
I've found better results from labs that are part of photo shops.
Custom work done this way is a lot easier than it sounds, especially if you are willing to work with the lab.
Images are viewed on a high resolution screen, and the customer helps with color and contrast adjustments- it's all actually pretty quickly done. Custom digital prints made from negative scans can actually be pretty good with the proper user in-put.
Leaving those decisions to be made by a somewhat busy computer certainly pales in comparison.
Someone mentioned the expense of custom work- it does cost a bit, but what doesn't? Adjusted for inflation, costs are quite similar to what I became accustomed to paying for during the film era.

-D.S.


PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2024 6:03 am    Post subject: Re: Got my first roll of film back today Reply with quote
connloyalist wrote:

Aside: I am assuming that with film photography the quality is all in the film and the lenses and not in the body of the camera.

Regards, C.


Assuming that the camera is well made enough to hold the film relatively flat at the image plane, yes. Some aspects of film are not all that different- lower film speeds usually result in higher quality images- which probably results in a bit of disappointment for some that are accustomed to getting away with the image stabilization thing in digital.

-D.S.


PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2024 6:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
There is also DIY film developing

Negatives & slides can be DIY "scanned" using 1:1 macro -- only drum scans may be better...


PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2024 8:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
visualopsins wrote:
There is also DIY film developing

Negatives & slides can be DIY "scanned" using 1:1 macro -- only drum scans may be better...


There is an idea... I have a (Nikon) attachment that screws on to the filter ring of a lens to digitize slides. But it also has an attachment for strips of negatives. I will have to try that.

Regards, C.


PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2024 9:19 am    Post subject: Re: Got my first roll of film back today Reply with quote
connloyalist wrote:
Can you please explain to me (or point me to a resource) what the difference is between negatives for prints and slide film? When you develop slide film, do you not get negatives but "positives", namely the slide? My mother used to shoot slides before I was born and I have a box full of her Kodak slides from the 1950's. Don't know the type of film exactly or the camera she used but some of those look pretty good.

Can any please the develops film also develop slide film, or are those really two separate things?

Aside: I am assuming that with film photography the quality is all in the film and the lenses and not in the body of the camera.

Regards, C.


Slides are in effect positives, not negatives. Different film construction & chemistry. Colour negative film also has an orange film base, which needs to be compensated for when scanning.

Like visualopsins said, slide film has a narrower margin for proper exposure compared to negative film. The density curve for slide film and negative film are reversed, which means that for proper negative exposure you measure for the shadows (to avoid "saturation" of the film), whereas for slide film you expose for the highlights (again, to avoid "saturation" of the film). The shapes of the density curves for slide vs negative film are different, and negative film is generally more suited to create photographic paper prints from whilst maintaining good shadow and highlight detail. Nevertheless, slide film contains a surprising amount of detail hidden in the dark areas and with modern scanning equipment (and even old generation drum/photomultiplier scanners) a lot of detail can be pulled from the shadows.

Thus generally speaking negative film with paper photo prints was what the general public used, whereas slide film was more (though not exclusively) the preserve of professionals, using the scanning & offset printing route.

Incidentally, the way we now need to balance exposure for digital cameras is more similar to shooting with slide film, to avoid blowing out the highlights. But the way slide film saturates vs how a digital sensor saturates are quite different. Digital sensor channels clip hard whereas slide film saturates more gradually. This means digital cameras are more prone to bad-looking colour shifts near saturation (bright blue sky especially) as one colour channel clips hard before the other two do.

Re. your last question: some bodies are better than others at holding the film flat. The depth between the pressure plate guides and film guides is generally of the order of 0.20mm, in order to allow for an approximately 0.12mm to 0.15mm thick film base with some play. This means film position has some 0.05mm to 0.08mm margin of uncertainty, and with a 0.03mm circle of confusion criterion for 35mm film, then shooting at f/# stops near f/1 you can see how insuring image sharpness across the entire frame can become an issue.


PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2024 3:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Some links here

https://forum.mflenses.com/digitizing-options-t20425.html
https://forum.mflenses.com/scanning-negatives-vs-dslr-imaging-t55753.html
https://forum.mflenses.com/scan-film-negatives-with-a-dslr-t49862.html

There are many more links here
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=scanning+negative+site%3Amflenses.com
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