Sandy



BTW, I published an article in a recent number of View Camera magazine (July/August 2008) on the use of two bath development for negatives that are meant to be scanned and never printed in the darkroom. It suggests a fairly simple technique for field exposure and development that eliminates most of the record keeping of Zone and BTZS type methods.

Sandy King

I'll grab a copy of the VC magazine to have a peek (seem like a good reason to get it anyhow).

thanks for sharing your findings on contrast ranges. I'm interested in understanding the requirements of smooth tonal graduations in my images. So I'd thought that if I have a fuller representation of the scene in my negative then I'd have less issues with quantisation error on scans.

Perhaps my interest is in scenes with greater brightness ranges than that of the "koala" in my article test. I suspect that the part of the world you live in and where you photograph has some effects on this, as when I'm working in more equitroial regions (Australia and India) I've found that this makes the film "work harder". This is a complex subject and as I write too many issues are swimming around in my head.

I'll have to work at this later (when I can focus) so perhaps we can have this conversation on another thread :-)

Regarding E6, here's a trade secret from an old pro... try Fuji RTP or Kodak 64T (tungsten balanced E6 films). For daylight color balance shoot them through an 85B filter at 50 ASA. You will get about a stop more latitude than any daylight E6 film, and fewer of the strong color casts which are typical of Velvia in outdoor conditions

ok .. shall do ... have you tried Provia RDP-III? If your comparing to Velvia I think you'll find similar characteristics in that

I guess that's a slightly negative review then ;-)

I'm a very busy guy these days, but always want to pick up a little more info here and there. To be clear - I really didn't spend any real time analyzing what you said, and have no positive or negative comments to make about it...

Lenny

I want to be clear on the issue of negative contrast. My comments are based on my own experience and are not meant to suggest that anyone else is wrong. And primarily my recommendations are for people who will be scanning with lower end and middle of the road scanners, not the high end drum scanners used by Bruce and Lenny. I strongly believe that folks who work with consumer flatbeds are better off developing to a relatively low CI of .50-.55, which would be the equivalent in Zone speak of about N-1.

I am, however, intrigued by Lenny's belief that he can get better results with a drum scanner with negatives of relatively high contrast. This seems contrary to some of the basic principles of photographic exposure and development but Lenny is considered to be one of the better digital printers in the US so if it works for him there may be something to it. Then again, perhaps his drum scanner is just able to compensate for the problems inherent in high contrast negatives.

Unfortunately there are some things that can not be proven without a lot of comparison study so the only way to know for sure would be to do a careful study, taking two negatives of the same scene and developing them to different CI, one to about .50-55, the other to .75-85, and then having experts scan the two and make prints. My guess is that if did this with 35mm or MF film you would see some advantage in the print made from the low CI negative, but in LF of 4X5 or over it probably would not make much difference at all, assuming you have a scanner capable of capturing the high densities.

Sandy








Sandy

I'll grab a copy of the VC magazine to have a peek (seem like a good reason to get it anyhow).

thanks for sharing your findings on contrast ranges. I'm interested in understanding the requirements of smooth tonal graduations in my images. So I'd thought that if I have a fuller representation of the scene in my negative then I'd have less issues with quantisation error on scans.

I am, however, intrigued by Lenny's belief that he can get better results with a drum scanner with negatives of relatively high contrast. This seems contrary to some of the basic principles of photographic exposure and development but Lenny is considered to be one of the better digital printers in the US so if it works for him there may be something to it. Then again, perhaps his drum scanner is just able to compensate for the problems inherent in high contrast negatives.
Sandy

Someone has just sent me a neg to scan, using the same film and & dev that I use to develop mine, that is a lower contrast (silver looking) neg. I can do a fairly good comparison of this in the next couple of days.

If you like, we can pass back some criteria, things to look at etc. - and within some reason get an answer... or at least some answer for the type of scanner I am using...

Lenny

Lenny,

I think this would be a better comparison if we were looking at a comparison the same scene, exposed twice, and then developed to different CI. Next time you are out in the field photographing you could just expose two negatives of the same scene, all else the same. Then back in the lab develop them to different CI. Then scan the two and make the best print possible.

Sandy






Someone has just sent me a neg to scan, using the same film and & dev that I use to develop mine, that is a lower contrast (silver looking) neg. I can do a fairly good comparison of this in the next couple of days.

If you like, we can pass back some criteria, things to look at etc. - and within some reason get an answer... or at least some answer for the type of scanner I am using...

Lenny

Hi


Lenny,
I think this would be a better comparison if we were looking at a comparison the same scene, exposed twice, and then developed to different CI

I did this with what I consider to be a hight brightness range scene some time last year. I took 4 sheets developed N and N+1 in D-76 neat and 1:1

Happy to publish my histograms overviews and histograms on my blog if that would be interesting to anyone.

Perhaps in future I could repeat with 6 sheets (doing - N + development)

My scanner is my densitometer and I've determined its 'depth' by using a stouffer wedge and documented that here (http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com/2008/03/using-epson-flatbed-scanners-for.html).