Zeiss 21mm madness at Ffordes

[fotografz]

Scan the neg multiple times and crop after you merge. I wouldn't think HDR could misalign an edge to edge file.

Multiple scans aren't necessary once you get the software down pat. You can do multiple layers from the same scan. Just process each one differently.

 

[wang]

Wish to see some flamingos ?

Opinions welcomed. No matter technical or artistic.

tech. info. S2b Contax 200 f2 mutar II becomes 400 f4 taken at f8 1/125s Kodak Gold 100 mirror lock scan Imacon 646 at 6300dpi 16bit tiff save for web

 

[deshojo]

Whilst the picture itself is lovely (the reflections in particular work very well), it appears to be very high contrast on my monitor. The blacks are solid and the highlights appear burned out.

If the original neg has all the shadow and highlight details you should be able to capture them with the scanner. Have you tried the vertical sliders to reduce contrast as Marc suggested?

I always find it best to aim for a relatively flat image (low contrast) when scanning, and to check the histogram to make sure it does not go off at either end. You then ensure that you capture all the detail from the original, and can increase contrast to your liking in PS afterwards.

 

[wang]

Here is one with more details of the water. Improving the details in the water involved increasing the brightness or the shadow depth in the Flexcolor software. I tried to reduce the brightness of the flamingos but did not get good results. Perhaps next time I will shoot with less exposure.

 

[wang]

Can you tell if this one comes from Contax C-Y 21 2.8 or Hasselblad SWC ? If not, have a guess. I will come back with the answer later.

 

[wang]

After loading the first one, It doesn't look good. So I changed it to this one, but same question, Hasselblad or 21 Distagon ?

 

[fotografz]

Joseph, blown highlights and blocked shadow detail suggest that it is 35mm film because medium format provides a much greater tonal scale ...

or it's a bad scan.

Besides the internet is a difficult medium to evaluate quality because everything has to be compressed down to a tiny jpeg.

Joseph, that scanner can provide both highlight and shadow detail even with difficult negs.

Below is a shot taken at noon in NYC last week. Direct overhead sun created a very difficult range of values from bright white to deep shadows. The Imacon resolved both problems very well ... this is straight from the scanner and only compressed for viewing here...

 

[fotografz]

BTW, there is a brand new version of Flexcolor now available (as of yesterday). It's version 4.6b3.

Here is another difficult lighting situation that the Imacon did well on. My backlit colleague working in the NYC photo studio we were shooting in ... this is a 50% crop ...

 

[deshojo]

Joseph,

The first of those scans is much better IMO. It has far more tonal range and has held the highlights/shadows better. The second is too high in contrast again, as Marc says the shadows are blocked and the highlights burned out.

I wonder if your monitor may need recalibrating to increase the contrast you see. Definitely the first building shot, and the second flamingo shot are better, though both may be overexposed on the original, as the highlights are gone.

If you want to get more 'punch' in an image without pushing the histogram off the edges, try using the unsharp mask setting in PS(filter/sharpen/unsharp mask)and set amount 12-20% and radius to about 50. This should add some mid-tone contrast and may give the look you are seeking.

Which lens? My bet is cropped Hassy, as I don't see the familiar Distagon corner stretch.

 

[wang]

Marc is right. The two door+steps shots were from 21 mm distagon.

The colour print of this photo do have a high dynamic range, so good that it gives people a medium format feel. It is a pity that I cannot reproduce this effect in the web. When the Hasselblad representatives saw this photo, they had the same feeling.

This photo was crop only at the top, so the lower two corners represent the true Distagon corners. I suppose the corners do not contain enough details to give you the familiar corner stretch.