First medium format slides

[PaulC]

My slides (and other stuff) came back from Peak Imaging in Britain and I was really blown away by the way they look. I was slightly less blown away by the loss of detail in the scanning (my scanning, not Peak Imaging's) but it doesn't show at this size, anyway, but the colours seem to lose their vibrance.

I learned some lessons: Velvia doesn't like being mistaken for Fuji 400H and getting two stops of over-exposure. The results from some of the old folders are really staggering. The vignetting from the hood on the Flek 50/4 really becomes intolerable. My Moskva 5 leaks light far too often, possibly from the red windows but I'm not sure. The Ensign Commando continues to surprise.

This is from the very basic folding Bessa from the 1930s






Here's one from the Moskva 5 that managed to escape without getting leaked on:



And this one is from the main machine, the Pentacon Six:

[DigiChromeEd]

Lovely shots - The colours in No.1 are amazing!

[visualopsins]

Very impressive! Both the photography and the results from the folders. You and especially Attila are tempting me nearly beyond my control by showing what these cameras can do! If my eyes didn't wander to my 6x7 kit by now I'd most likely have a rampant case of FBA -- folder buying addiction! But 6x7 doesn't have the character. Oops, I'd better stop here.

[Attila]

Buy a shutter speed tester from Florin

http://forum.mflenses.com/shutter-tester-for-shutter-speed-up-to-1-1000th-14-99-t28474.html

Essential for old folders prepare an excel sheets with results and it will be easy make perfectly exposed slides.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmI1YOvKt90RdGhyTmtwMjc2Z2g5dlR5eHdVVmNQQ3c&hl=en&authkey=CN-o4asO

You can see my sheets on above link , I made perfectly exposed slides even if none of the speed was okay. Without this I lost many frames like list time with Pearl III , because I was in hurry and didn't measured speeds in advance.

Light source is easy just use your desk lamp , don't need any laser light , bright led and other bullshit. It works , perfectly.

I like really first picture, pretty awesome!

[PaulC]

Thanks for the advice Attila. I was deliberately underexposing the second one to get the feeling of the evening.

Here's another from a 6x9 folder - really, the scanning is very disappointing, I can see the boatman's ear quite clearly through a magnifier (well, a 50mm lens, actually) but on the scan his whole face is nothing but a blur. I suppose that is really all that is to be expected from a $200 scanner.

I think this was probably from the Beirax but I'm not sure, it was shot quite a while ago.

[Attila]

Did you ironed strips before scan with books ? It is help a lot to me.

[peterqd]

Paul, I'm confused. Are these scans by Peak or did you do them yourself? I've never had any scans done by them but I'd be very disappointed with them if they sent you scans like this.

The reason I ask is that the scan resolution is only 72, which keeps the file size down but loses a lot of detail, and I'm pretty sure that's what's happened here. Scanning at 1200 is about the minimum resolution to see fine detail (2400 or even 4800 is common) and then you can reduce the image size to keep the filesize workable.

[PaulC]

[PaulC]

I've switched off "Digital Ice" and tried again, that seems to have improved the resolution considerably - I've got the man's ear back in the 13MP version of this. It will now print OK at up to about 18x12 inches

The scanner is also adding various odd colour casts, particularly magenta and some yellow, which I am trying to correct manually and seems to want to underexpose. Here is the latest attempt:

[cooltouch]

Well, at "web" resolution, they really look nice. I have an older Epson 3170 and a somewhat newer 4990, both of which do a fine job I think with medium format. I don't bother scanning at anything higher than 2400 ppi since neither of those scanners' true resolution is much more than in the 1800-2000 ppi range anyway (despite vaunted 3200 and 4800 ppi claims, respectively). Same is the case with your V500.

You might try getting some optically flat glass and taping your slides to the glass to improve res somewhat. See the description of how to do this from the "other" manual focus site here:

http://forum.manualfocus.org/viewtopic.php?id=16980

Very picturesque locale as well, which sure helps with the images.

[Esox lucius]

Very nice shots of Rethymno and Chania!

If you are looking for optimal scanning results wiht correct film profiles I recommend you pay a visit to this website - http://www.targets.coloraid.de/

[PaulC]

Ah! Thanks Vilhelm, I was just coming to the conclusion that the scanner simply isn't seeing the same thing that I am. With quite a lot of selective adjustments I've managed to get this (from the Beirax, I think, on Velvia) which is very close to what I see on the slide - but a lot of work to get there.



I'm really not happy with the colour rendition on any of my other scans. It's so frustrating to want to show what a nice job the cameras, film and Peak Imaging did only to have it screwed up by the scanner. So, now I have to learn how to do scanner colour profiles - is there no end to the computer technical stuff?

(The software here also isn't very kind to photos unless you click on them.to get the big version. It would be nice if that could be improved).

[rbelyell]

hey paul

i really love your shots; the pentacon is great isnt it? plus i really like 6x6 for most situations, except landscapes....

i share your frustration at not getting what you want from the digitized version of the slides. my first slides were taken around the grand canyon etc and my wife and i were absolutely stunned by the results, but a little disapointed transferring.

[PaulC]

Click on the last one and in the large version you will see something close to the appearance of the slide but I had to do a lot of massaging, including selectively changing the exposure in the shadow area, to get there and darkening the sky and bright areas - so the scanner was somehow rendering shadows darker than it should and light areas washed-out.

I love my Pentacon Sixes too [got two of them one came more or less free with a lens and is now in tip-top working condition] but only one of these pictures is from the P6, the others are from folders. I'll put up some more P6 stuff later.

[themoleman342]

I have to say that I found my v700 does much much better with color-negative film. I've given up on slide film for now. The better color density just doesn't outweigh what I seem to lose in sharpness.

[mo]

Paul for what it's worth I like what you have done,the images come across in beautiful colors, the buildings and the reflected light in the first few....and the last one....I do struggle to say in it in technical terms other than I do like what I see.....An image is an image for the viewer.

[cooltouch]

[PaulC]

I don't know. First it seems to resize to fit the browser window and then with some of them if you click on it again it goes to a larger size - that's in Firefox. Last night I thought they just got bigger regardless.

[peterqd]

1 The forum software reduces the size of large images down to the approved limits. This seems to soften the image slightly too. If you click on the image you are linked to the original full size one, which opens in a separate window and is not softened.

2 When you open an image in Firefox, it does basically the same thing - it reduces large images to fit on the screen, but the cursor becomes a little magnifying glass with the + symbol. Clicking again displays the full size.

[rbelyell]

peter my experience is that all my images appear on this site as soft, lacking contrast and unsaturated. really, the photos almost bear no resemblence to those i upload. clicking on them helps all of the above a great deal and gets it much closer to the upload quality. i really dont understand the necessity for that at all and it has never been adequately explained why we just cant upload what we have and see the same thing.

[cooltouch]

Okay this raises a question for me and I apologize for hijacking the thread, but perhaps this will help address this matter of image degradation. Usually, I upload my images to my website and then show a link to them here. Only rarely do I upload my images to the forum. So I thought I'd do both. The image is a 100% crop of a very sharp photo -- taken with a 55mm f/3.5 Micro Nikkor and my Canon XS. It has more noise than I like but oh well. First is the image uploaded to this site, and second is the image linked from my website.





Interestingly, if anything, the image I upload seems to show more detail than the image I link. Also the uploaded image is "clickable" whereas the linked image is not.

One of the cool features of Windows 7 is I can quickly flip back and forth between the image shown in the message window and the clicked-on image. When cycling back and forth between the two, with my browser (latest version of Mozilla's Seamonkey aka Netscape), I can detect no significant difference.

[peterqd]

[PaulC]

I can't see a difference, either. But that could mean that your website is doing the same thing to them as this one does. Have you tried comparing against your original?

One factor that may affect the results is that the image has what I would consider to be very severe compression artifacts. I guess that means that transitions between pixels are sharper than in a less compressed image which may have an influence on the website software's ability to copy it.

Another thing may be that if the image is bigger than the standard size, the compression system could be damaging it as it shrinks it to fit. In that case, same size images would display OK, larger (or smaller) images might not.

[Attila]

Most website use GD module to resize pictures, what is not the best but we can live with it due difference is little really. Resize a picture on your local computer and upload here and compare them. Naturally if a picture is weak contrast and detail less difference is more visible than if a picture is processed well or made with top lenses and upload after. Almost all picture need some contrast color adjustment before upload especially if they are made with small digital sensor like 4/3 or m4/3 and shoot captured infinity distance. If you shoot in jpg , camera built in software do it for you if you shoot in raw you need to do by your self in post processing. I know only one software module what is provide better image quality under resizing called image magick what is not available on this server. So this kind of discussion kind of use less, if you not like result what server side software made. Resize your picture to less than 1024 px by your self and upload it or modify weak images to stronger one and upload them after.

[cooltouch]