Which macro for negative and diapositive digitalisation?

[ForenSeil]

Hello there,
I'm usually digitalizing my dias with an Minolta MD 100mm F4 @ F8.
But now I digitalizied the first time B/W negatives and have very heavy problems with flares/low contrast there. With colored dias there are also problems but they never disturbed me before, as there are only occuring when something very light was the dia, and on B/W I have partially much more bright area. I'm also not very happy with colors of this lens bye the way. Only the sharpness is pretty good.

I tried to use a Helios 44-2 on a belows before, but the flare problem is much heavier there.

Here's an example for low contrast/fog caused by bright areas:


And here


And after PP (a lot of details is lost, because the picture has to be darkened)



Which macro ist better for this purpose? Or is there a good combination with a non-macro lens and a belows?

Thx

[exaklaus]

I get very pleasing results using an Olympus bellows + slide copier with Olympus 80mm macro. In my Sigma days, I used a Novoflex bellows with slide copier and the sunk mount Zeiss Tessar for bellows.
Klaus

[ForenSeil]

[exaklaus]

I used the macro Tessar from Zeiss Jena. Was made with Exakta bayonet (existed in M42, too). No own focussing, sunk mount, means you can get infinity with it on the bellows. A pretty good and sharp lens. Of course it is coated.
Klaus

[ForenSeil]

A tessar like this one: http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/2668320 ?
Very interesting lens, never saw something like this! Had it stronger magnification than 1:1?
Looks also like a high price sadly I also can't afford that much.

My maximum limit is somewhere around 200€, depends on how useful the lens is for other purposes.

What about Rodanon 50mm F2.8 lenses or similar for enlarger in retro position on a bellows? They are very cheap. Does it work with them, or do they have a too strong magnification?

[exaklaus]

No, this one ("stole" that picture from Captain Jack's Exakta Website):

Klaus

[cooltouch]

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by 'dia.' But it looks to me like you have duplicated black and white negatives, then reversed them only to see that they are very soft in contrast and rather dull looking.

This is fairly normal in my experience. Recently I duplicated a bunch of black and white negatives my father shot while he was in Korea during the Korean War. Some of his negatives, when reversed, were very washed-out looking, a lot like yours. For example:



Pretty awful, huh? But look what just a bit of "Curves" adjustment in post processing can do:



And that's all I did -- was just a bit of Curves adjustment. I could have tweaked the image a bit more and made it look even better, but the point here is to show just how powerful the Curves function can be to bring washed out negatives back to life.

Actually I like very much the way your leaves turned out. They have a very dramatic look about them now.

As for which macro is better -- I'd say shoot with what you got. You're doing fine.

[ForenSeil]

Sorry, a "Dia" is the German word for a slide.
I thought it's also the english word, because I knew the english word "diascope".

Do you mean the curve function in adobe lightroom?

[David]

If you have Photoshop or Photoscape, there's a function called Curves. In Photoshop, it's under the Adjustments heading (CS4.)

The curves allows you to alter the amount of RGB, and each color individually within an image. Here's a tutproal:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/photoshop-curves.htm

This explains how it works very well. Curves are, in my mind, Photoshop's most powerful and effective tool for converting a digital image into how we remember it -- improved colors, contrast, and realism.

[visualopsins]

[symphonic]