Here's hoping a list member can help me out.... my son prepared a large
mural sketch of dinosaurs for his aunt to use in her kindergarten/first
grade class. The mural is about 6' x 25', black ink on white paper, with
the beasts shaded in various textures, again with black ink. I wanted to
have a photo record for him (who knows if it will survive the little
ones!), so we set up to take a sequence frames which would be merged in
Photoshop Elements. Because turnaround was a little tight, I opted to use
Kodak's Black & White + Chromogenic film (ASA 400), so that I could get the
film machine processed at a local 0ne hour lab. I used my OM-4T, 85mm f/2
and T32 on a tripod, positioned so that the long axis of the film was
vertical and spaced so that the frame spanned the height of the mural. We
then scrolled the mural past fixed frame marks on a wall, moving it about a
half 'frame' width per exposure. In an attempt to bias the exposure such
that the paper background came out mostly white (instead of 18 0ray), I
dialed in a +2 stop exposure offset. We went through the sequence twice,
and off I went to the local processor.
The results were not unexpected - the prints came back a fair
representation of 18 0ray, thanks to the labs autoprinter. The good news
was that they were quite uniform in shading, and lining up the segments to
make a full panorama was pretty easy. I scanned the prints into my computer
using a B&W setting on my TWAIN driver, and was able to build a fairly
decent composite image (though I had to go to a tool other than PhotoShop
Elements to do a really good job).
Not being inclined to leave well enough alone, I decided to take a crack at
scanning the negatives. I have a cheap PrimeFilm 1800U, but I've upgraded
to the SilverFast driver with NegaFix, which happens to recognize this
particular film. It seemed to scan OK, but I still had almost no dynamic
range, according to the histogram function.... and it seemed to insist on
going for "18 0ray"! If I played with various histogram adjustment tools I
could improve things a little, but all in all I wasn't too satisfied.
After all of this, the question is, "How should I have taken these photos?"
Should I have used true B&W film? Should I have taken the film to a custom
lab to hand print? I had thought at one point of shooting on color slide
film... would that have worked better? I couldn't just crank up the
contrast, because of the range of shadings in the mural (not a pure line
drawing). Any suggestions will be appreciated, in the context of the
pursuit of knowledge.... the mural is off to the classroom tomorrow, and
the son hops on a plane to New Jersey as well, so I'm not likely to
re-photograph this time around!
Thanx!
Curt
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