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Re: [OM] How many pixels in a 35mm film image - Pop Photo weighsin

Subject: Re: [OM] How many pixels in a 35mm film image - Pop Photo weighsin
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 20:42:24 -0800
C.H.Ling wrote:

Even with 2700dpi scanner I can see the grain different at 1:1 (100%)
on monitor. With 4000dpi it is even more, for example the 160NC and
Kodak Gold 100 is quite grainy when scanned.
Certainly I can see the grain at 1000n the monitor, but that doesn't mean much to me. On my monitor, that's equivalent to a 20x30" print. I don't believe I've printed that large, even accounting for cropping. Even at that size, I don't find the grain a problem. On the right side of this image <http://home.attbi.com/0.000000E+00dreammoose/wsb/html/view.cgi-photo.html--SiteID-322698.html> is a 1000iece of a scan of a Kodak Gold 400 negative. Even at this magnification, grain is only noticable in the sky and I don't find it objectionable. Assuming you do find the grain objectionable, it's just a matter of different standards/needs.

Fuji superia 100 is
better and Fuji Reala may be the smoothest 100 film but it has warn
color balance when scanned. I have tried many many different films. I
have Vuescan for three years, it can balance the color to day light
but it cannot render the actual scene, example magic hour shoot will
be failed in auto color correction.
No, daylight balance doesn't work for many images. It only works for, you guessed it, images shot in the middle of the day with the sun out! I never use it. Neutral balance is what you want, it makes no adjustments to color other than reversing the channels and subtracting the mask color. In Neutral, you can even set the neutral tone, if necessary. I don't because I make final adjustments in Photoshop, but a real accuracy hound could put a gray card in the first frame of any series, balance neutral to that, lock the settings and scan the other images from the same series with very high accuracy. All this is explained in the Viewscan help file under the 'Adjusting Color Balance ', 'Batch Scanning ' and 'Advanced Workflow Suggestions' headings.

The more creative your work the
more easy you get a wrong color with such auto correction. I don't see
how good the film type in Vuescan work, you can try to use the same
frame of negative and select different film type, I can only see very
little different.

Of course there is very little difference, most of the masks are quite similar. I thought you were takling about subtle color balance problems.

What do you mean by "accurate"? With slide film, one can compare the
scanned image to the slide itself to determine the 'accuracy' of the
scan, but that is simply redefining the source for comparison from the
original scene to the slide. It is theoretically possible for a scan of
a neg to be a more accurate representation of the color of the original
scene than a scan of a slide of the same scene that is true to the
slide, but not to the scene photographed. Considering that light in the
'real ' world is never the same from one moment to the next, this kind
of stuff could only be meaningfully studied in a highly controlled lab
setting. Since I'm interested in a photograph that recreates the image I
have in my mind, I'll skip the lab and go out and smell and photograph
the flowers.

As I said in my last post, scanning is not cut and dried, but quite
variable across hardware, software and user.

Moose


The word "accurate" is relative, slide is very inaccurate when compared to DC.

Agreed. Although I still occasionally make color adjustments to DC images to match my idea of what the subject looked like to me - or perhaps should have looked like ;-)

But for film comparison, there is no discussion, see why  almost all 
professional (except news, portrait and wedding) use
slide you will know, especially for product shoots.
I've used a lot of slide film. I shot it almost exclusively for many years. Wonderful stuff. People who like it should use it. It has clear advantages for many uses over negative. I'm just arguing that it isn't inherently any more color accurate than negative film. I believe there are at least 3 reasons, other than inherent color accuracy, that many professionals use slide film.

1. Personal, institutional and industry habit and reproduction equipment requirements. 2. They and their clients like to look at the film images directly when evaluating them - for composition, sharpness, etc. in addition to color accuracy. Loupes, light tables and projectors don't work with negs and cheap, automated prints are very poor measures of what is actually on the film. 3. Storage, retrieval and handling are easier with slides. You can just pick up the sheet holder and see which is which at a glance. For someone using digital darkroom and storage, either either original form is equal.

I also don't find neg film granier, but I don't wish to argue that, as I don't have the interest to make careful comparisons. It is interesting that slides are reversal film that is first developed as a negative, then chemically reversed. How can that make the grain smaller? Aren't the original clumps formed in the negative processing? Just curiosity, not an arguement, 'cause I don't know enough about it.

And by the way, I consider that extra latitude to be a major advantage, but that's just for me.

Moose



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