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Re: [OM] IMG: Faviana and Reymundo

Subject: Re: [OM] IMG: Faviana and Reymundo
From: "Piers Hemy" <piers@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 17:05:27 +0100
Both of your images are delightful, Tina, and in terms of colour, your
second image (Emigio) looks perfectly great, an obvious Kodachrome.  But the
first (Faviana - which I only saw in your LR-tweaked version), at first
sight looked completely unlike Kodachrome. In hindsight, Chris Barker's
description is apt - like a tinted monochrome print. And unlike Chris, I
have scanned many Kodachromes (not thousands, but in the low hundreds, using
the same SF-210 on the 4000ED).

My suspicion is that the key lies in "48 bit HDR scan from two exposures",
and specifically in how you are balancing the two exposures given what must
have been a very high-contrast scene, because the overall impression is
reminiscent of an over-cooked HDR image. In support of that, the
Moosification has improved things somewhat, by compensating for the
relatively less exposure in the shadows. If you still have the 48 bit HDR
scan from two exposures, could you reprocess them?

But forgive me for presuming to comment on the work of a master (mistress?).
Please keep 'em coming!

Piers

-----Original Message-----
From: Tina Manley [mailto:images@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: 14 June 2012 14:17
To: Olympus Camera Discussion
Subject: Re: [OM] IMG: Faviana and Reymundo

Thanks, Ken.

I tried Vuescan many, many years ago and could never get a decent scan.
 Maybe it's time to try it again?  How steep is the learning curve?  With
Silverfast, what you get is a 48 bit HDR scan from two exposures.  This
gives you a raw file, very dark, which has to be converted in PS or Camera
Raw or Silverfast's own conversion program.  Maybe I'm messing up with the
conversion or the post-processing.  Here is another Kodachrome scan:

http://www.pbase.com/tinamanley/image/142780231

Do you see the same problems there?

I have already scanned 5000 slides but I have 500,000 to go and don't want
to scan them all but once!!

Tina

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 9:56 PM, Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Tina,
>
> I'm struggling understanding what is going on with your Kodachrome 64 
> scans. I'm suspecting that we have a combination of issues you are 
> fighting and not realizing that you are fighting. In the Faviana and 
> Remundo photo, we have several issues, but they seem to be universal 
> to some of the other K64 shots too. Here's the observations behind my 
> stating this:
>
> 1. Kodachrome is an extremely fine-grained film. It is perfectly 
> capable of a double-truck spread without being much more than a touch 
> sandy. Sometimes, we'd see an interaction between the half-tone 
> screens and the grain, but we didn't get the globular mess that we saw 
> with Ektachrome.
>
> 2. The colors tend to have good tonal separation in Kodachrome 64.
> What I'm seeing is specifically the oranges getting blocked up.
>
> 3. The blues are definitely off. If the boy's hair is blue in the 
> slide then I suspect the film suffered from heat or x-ray damage.
> Meanwhile, the blues desaturated elsewhere. This is evident in the 
> greens which turned olive. (I'm usually used to greens turning bluish 
> gray in Kodachrome). Yet, what I think is a wood stump behind the boy 
> is gray. (Traditional Kodachrome rendering of wood, whereas 
> Fujichromes will turn wood into some shade of tan).
>
> 4. The slide does have a slight look that it's been projected and 
> suffered a little bit of damage from that.
>
> I supect that your scan came pretty close to the visual examination of 
> the slide when viewed over a NON-color-balanced, full-spectrum viewing 
> table. Unfortunately, if the lightsource behind your viewing table is 
> not full-spectrum, you're going to suffer from misinterpreting the 
> color rendering in the slide. For some reason, from my own experience, 
> Kodachrome is easier to misread than other films. Not in overall 
> tonality, but in how some colors are rendered.
>
> The color profile for the scan is off. It may match a color target or 
> even other slides, but this one may have other issues which have 
> caused the profile to be incorrect.
>
> The scan has the look that it was underexposed during the scan process 
> and everything was boosted through the profile or level management.
> You mention that you use Silverfast. I'm not very familiar with that 
> program, but usually use Vuescan for my scans. A side benefit of 
> Vuescan is that Vuescan's IR cleaning algorithm now works on 
> Kodachrome! Anyway, this looks like we're pulling up the exposure of 
> the scan in the computer instead of increasing the exposure time 
> during the scan. Unlike Ektachromes and Fujichromes, which pull up ok, 
> Kodachrome scans more like a B&W film and doesn't handle shadow 
> lifting. If fact, it is almost like trying to work with a digital 
> camera image that has been pulled up 2-3 stops.
>
> Judging from the grain pattern and other artifacts, I'm guessing that 
> you are using a 4000dpi Nikon scanner. Mine is a V-ED. The Nikon 
> scanners tend to find grain where there is no grain. It's big on grain 
> aliasing. One way around this is to overscan (multi-pass). This will 
> reduce the scanner's ultimate resolution, but much of that loss can be 
> recovered with care.
>
> Which leads me to the next point. I'm seeing some artifacts in the 
> bokeh of the Faviana and Reymundo photo which is a characteristic of 
> the 35/1.4, but is exaggerated by USM sharpening. Earlier, I was 
> mentioning an overscan and multi-pass sharpening method I use on some 
> of my slides. The big problem with the Nikon scanner in single-pass is 
> that we have a slight resolution loss thanks to the scanner's optics, 
> yet we also have the grain aliasing. It seems pretty natural to throw 
> a 2 or 3-pixel USM on the scanned image. What that does with some of 
> the tight bokeh traits of that particular lens is that it makes the 
> bokeh harsh and unnatural. Instead of a nice penumbra, the 
> transitional fade pattern will develop steps.
>
> I'm not sure what advice I'd pass on yet. Most of your images in your 
> pbase account have the smoothness I'd expect to see from a K64 slide 
> (especially in the railroad gallery), but these Guatamala slides just 
> aren't quite there. If I were to recommend trying something I'd say to 
> scan "The SC40-2" (Image 964s) again (to achieve identical results of 
> the original scan) and apply those same exact settings to the "Faviana 
> and Reymundo" slide and see what happens.
>
> My point in all this is that this particular slide in question did not 
> digitize in a manner that I would ever expect to see from K64. What I 
> did is idenitfy a different image which did digitize in an expected 
> manner and am recommending that you attempt a baseline adjustment with 
> that as a starting point for this slide. It might also turn out off, 
> but at least it would be worth a try as part of the problem 
> identification. I do notice that other images seem to suffer from 
> blues in the shadows, so we might definitely have a profile problem.
>
> Ken
>
> --
> Ken Norton
> ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.zone-10.com
> --
> _________________________________________________________________
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>
>
>


--
Tina Manley, ASMP
www.tinamanley.com
--
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