[OrangeKx]

Over the past few months I've been scanning my fathers color slides using my Epson V500 - I'm up to 428 pictures as of this post, with a few hundred more to go (at least). As I sift through the hundreds of now digital pictures I’ve come to believe my dad's hobby of photography can be a lesson to most hobbyist photographers. I can thank my dad for starting me on the road of photography and of shooting Pentax (his first SLR was the ME Super, as was mine). My dad is still around, but with age he doesn’t get out with the camera as much, even though he could. As much fun as he had shooting pictures, and as nice as some of his pictures are, I don’t think he made as much effort to make continuous improvements as I do. I think he worked up to a desired skill level and settled there. I also think he wanted to do better because he did take chances and always went for a shot even if it meant wasting a frame.

Here are the problem areas I see in his slides:

Out of focus or not sharp. Most of the deleted pictures suffer from this problem. There were a few shots that would’ve been very nice but for the lack of sharpness. He’s always had a tripod as part of his gear, but we all get a little lazy not taking it… or sometimes we can’t.

Not using Exposure Compensation. (See the picture with the train) While I can’t know for a fact, it seems pretty clear that my dad failed to take advantage of exposure compensation in most, if not all, of his light/shadow pictures. There are more than a few lost “keepers” to the sky dictating what happened in the shadows. This is an area I have been working on the past year. I have been seeing more “keepers” because I don’t have a dark blob of a shadowed wall, or a foreground that’s dark with a perfect sky.

Not using the Rule of Thirds. OK, I’m not saying we should live and die by the Rule of Thirds, but there are many instances when it would’ve made for a more structured, balance, and interesting picture. Many times my dad would come into a subject a little tight and the result is just uninteresting. Oddly enough he didn’t cut the horizon in the middle all that much, but rather often left too little sky or too little foreground.

Not Changing The View. My dad took a lot of pictures outdoors. I don’t see any evidence where he would grab a knee or get down level or below the subject. Even a tight shot of a flower is from the same Human eye view angle, just lower and closer. The lesson here: get high, get low, get level, whatever makes the shot more interesting.

My dad has many books on photography and I know he read them, but I don’t know that he continually applied the techniques to the results he was getting and making the tweaks to get better results. I think he had a great time shooting landscapes and tourist areas and wasn’t always going for the artsy shot. There are times when he was going for the artsy shot and he did get them. It’s too bad some of those shots were lost to the above problems.

We have a great advantage to be working in a digital realm where we can see the good and bad immediately. It’s common to be home and on the computer within hours of snapping your pics. With your fresh images in Lightroom you get a good look at what you did right/wrong while it’s still fresh in your mind what you were going for at the time the shutter was triggered. I don’t see evidence that my dad opened the envelops from the Developers and critiqued his own work too much. The most evidence I give for this is focus and exposure compensation.

My dad’s slides now reside in my Lightroom 4 files. Like our digital pictures, his slides have benefitted from a slider bar and some LR4 Presets. One excellent example of this is the snow scene. I didn’t spend much time on it, but turning it into a B&W pic made all the difference. We get to be better quicker thanks to software. We can shoot in the morning and by noon know what the heck went wrong and hopefully not do it as much in the future. I see posts where people ask a bunch of questions and follow-up questions about this and that when those questions could be answered by taking a few test pictures and seeing the results. Then make some adjustments and do it again. This is how I overcame my lazy habit of not using exposure compensation. Now that I’ve done enough bracketing and test shots I’m starting to look at a scene and know if and how much compensation needs to be dialed in before I hit the shutter.

To wrap this up, I would say to get out there (have fun) and shoot. Make mistakes and keep shooting. My dad never stopped taking pictures and he did improve over the years; I gotta give him that. He has many fine results and a lot of captured memories. I just see so much of the same mistakes he could’ve worked past. Critique your results against info from your bookshelf or from free web content. Learn the operations of your camera and how to use the menus. Get better by studying your area of interest, be it landscape, macro, whatever. Shoot pictures and learn from the wins and losses. Getting better doesn’t have to get in the way of the fun. Getting better means you get to use your camera more - because the learning is in the process of capturing the next picture.

(P.S. – Thanks Dad for turning me on to photography and Pentax.)

(Nice shot of the dome in the Utah State Capital)

Attached Images

       

[Rimfiredude]

It was certainly more difficult shooting slides. The exposure had to be almost dead on. The lighting, color temperature played a huge role also. A shot you thought was fantastic, turned out it could have been better. So off you go, driving those 50 miles or so to redo it. We have so many advantages with digital and still blow the shot every no and then.

[TER-OR]

Pretty cool, and informative. I'm sure many of the pictures will be good for memory's sake if nothing else. I have a LOT of negatives I want to digitize myself, I'd like to do it with the camera. Maybe a project for the winter.

[gofour3]

I’m assuming your dad is over 50.

So for someone that age to only have 800 to 1,000 slides, indicates he did not shoot very much. Most folks that were into photography would have shot 10 times that amount, or more.

Remembering that shooting film is harder that digital, especially slide film, your dad’s work is pretty good for the amount he shot. Practice makes perfect, so if he shot more his skill level would have gone way up.

Your lucky to have these slides to scan, most people just have family prints for memories.

Enjoy scanning the rest and post some results in this tread if you like

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/26-mini-challenges-games-photo-stories/23...1990-a-36.html

Thanks, Phil.

[OrangeKx]

gofour3 - you raise a good question in that I'm not sure how many slides he does have. He shot prints and slides but eventually shot almost all slides. My dad is around 75 (I can never remember people's ages), I'm guessing around 1,000 slides and I don't know the number of prints. He used to take his camera everywhere when he know he'd be out in the wild. I find the scanning slow going at times because I get caught up in the memories from all those old pictures.

[micromacro]

Remembering that shooting film is harder that digital, especially slide film...

Why slide film is harder than just film?

[DBGrip]

How's the scanning process with the v500? I had bought my dad a slide and negative scanner a decade ago, to digitze basement boxes full of slides and negatives over a decade ago. It was too complicated and he never did it. I have a v500 and have thought about trying to take over for him. I believe some of my early work is mixed in . Your story resonated with my own experience, including the reaching a plateau he was quite happy with. I had to learn with the Honeywell Pentax full manual, and a weather beaten Sekonic dial meter, before I could use the new ME Super .

[Jacquot]

You should also look at what you can respect in his photographs. If you see that well, you will also learn from how he saw, and about him. You can work with images digitally and perhaps make them better technically, too. While you make good points, I think it would be useful to try to broaden the critique.

[gofour3]

Why slide film is harder than just film?

Transparencies have less of an exposure latitude than colour and b&w negatives, so your exposure needs to be more accurate.


Phil.

[micromacro]

Transparencies have less of an exposure latitude than colour and b&w negatives, so your exposure needs to be more accurate.Phil.

Interesting. I had not known that back to time when I used to shoot slides. Too many years ago. Hm... it would be interesting to judge own slides now looking differently at them.

[OrangeKx]

You should also look at what you can respect in his photographs. If you see that well, you will also learn from how he saw, and about him. You can work with images digitally and perhaps make them better technically, too. While you make good points, I think it would be useful to try to broaden the critique.

I certainly have learned from looking at his work. I tried to keep the original post short so it meant leaving out points I would've liked to include, one of them being I see good stuff in there that helps my eye and inspires me to get out and shoot more. My dad was a rather fearless photographer. He shot a lot of film and I don't think he let cost of processing slow him down. While he went for the artsy shots he also captured to tourist shots - and those are the ones with the memories of the people and places. Sometimes I get too caught up in the "good shot" that I forgo the "get the shot".

I was afraid of coming off as too negative about my dad's work, and I hope I didn't. He bought a brand new ME Super in 1980 (or so) and I bought my ME Super first thing out of Boot Camp in San Diego at the Navy Exchange in late 1981. Man, without the very act of my dad having a camera I may not have bought mine, and I would've missed out on the great memories I captured while in Portugal, Scotland, London and the east coast from '82-'87.

I have been working a few of the pictures in LR4, but mostly I'm in the capture mode now. As I work with the pics I can see what he was going for in the staging of the picture. It's great when he nails it and when it falls short it's sometimes easy to make a few changes to make something out of a shot, not much different from what I've done with the K-x.

I appreciate the post and I definitely see where you're going with it. Thanks for reading and posting.

---------- Post added 12-20-14 at 09:26 PM ----------

How's the scanning process with the v500? I had bought my dad a slide and negative scanner a decade ago, to digitze basement boxes full of slides and negatives over a decade ago. It was too complicated and he never did it. I have a v500 and have thought about trying to take over for him. I believe some of my early work is mixed in . Your story resonated with my own experience, including the reaching a plateau he was quite happy with. I had to learn with the Honeywell Pentax full manual, and a weather beaten Sekonic dial meter, before I could use the new ME Super .

Scanning slides is very easy with the Epson Perfection V500 Photo. The holder for film/slides works very well for slides and good enough for film. Of course slides go quick because they just drop in to the holder and I can pic them out with the corner of a 3x5 card. I've scanned a lot of film negs (mostly B&W) and when the film is flat it's much easier. I've struggled to find the best settings. Just today I discovered a way to improve the images at the Preview stage. I also found out how easy it is to clean the glass on the inside. I had some haze and it's only 4 screws to lift the glass off. I find I get best results with my slides by having a Rocket Blower and LensPen brush to get the dust of the slides. These are old carousels and while they are in boxes, they have collected dust. I brush and blow off both sides of every slide.

I bought the Epson based on rating, price and that Espon always had a good reputation as working well with Mac computers. I don't think the "working well with Macs" thing is as true as I thought it was. I can't get the buttons on the scanner to do their assigned task. I suppose they work with Windows, but I don't know.

Here's my take on a big scanning project: you'll do it if you want to. It's time consuming and can't be rushed. I try and do a little consistently over time. It's like the saying goes - "how do you eat and elephant?", answer: one bite at a time. My dad's slides are no different that anyone else's photos, there are keepers and trash. The bummer is you have to scan the trash to find out it's trash, so there is no shortcut. I also think the trick is to keep it as simple as possible. I have a "Slides" folder in LR4 for my dad's work. I don't break it up at this point, I just need to capture it right now. The reward is when I share some pics with him like I did with the snow picture I converted to B&W and emailed to him. My folks were here earlier in the year and I showed them the slides I had scanned so far. I was taking my dads slide carousels without him knowing it, so he had no idea I was doing this. They were reliving the moments as they went through the pictures. I don't think they even cared about the quality, they were just happy to see the pics again.

[yucatanPentax]

They were reliving the moments as they went through the pictures. I don't think they even cared about the quality, they were just happy to see the pics again.

I'd just like to add, perhaps as a bit of uninvited advice (sorry), don't be too quick to "trash" the "trash."

As time goes on, even those out-of-focus, too much sky, too much foreground, shots may prove to be irreplaceable treasures. You get an insight into your dad's thinking 20, 30, 40 years later. Maybe there is "too much sky" because to him at that moment, it was just so, so gorgeous. Maybe the smell of fresh-cut grass reminded him of a long distant farm life and there's too much foreground as a result. He may have made technically "lesser" photos, but that doesn't mean there's nothing of value to find, especially for loved ones.

At this point, you're lucky to have both your parents around. You may find memories and perceptions shift dramatically when they are not around to talk with, share memories with, and delve into their thoughts.

I know this is supposed to be about photo technique, but looking at anyone's decades-old photos tells a lot about the moment and the person's frame of mind. Sometimes, it's nice to think about those things in addition to technical excellence.

The train engine... I've been in that situation before. You're traveling somewhere and you want to get a photo of something, but there are all these danged people around. Maybe your dad could have gotten a better lighted shot from the other side, but also, maybe that side was crawling with throngs of people blocking any view of the engine. So he goes to the other side, as I've done too often, and got a shot of the engine. Technically, the light isn't perfect, the time of day isn't perfect, but you can see the engine.

"Perfect" shots often take a lot of time that traveling / tourist people don't often have. You have to shoot what you can, when you can. I've got a list of maybe 100 places I'd like to be at the perfect moment of sunrise or sunset (or just before or after), but I have to work and make a living too. One of these days... One of these days....

[cats_five]

I've scanned my slides (50 boxes mostly of 35-exposure films) with a Nikon scanner with a batch slide feeder attachment, and not binned any of them for the reasons mentioned above - they represent memories, even the photographic duds. Scanning the prints is taking a lot longer as I have to do it strip by strip.


What I think makes getting excellent results with digital photography easier is firstly that it's so cheap to take loads of photos and try different viewpoints and so on out, and we can use the histogram on the back of the camera to get the best exposure we can.


Otherwise I use my K5II like I used my ME Super - I set it to Av when I got it and have rarely used it on anything else.

[Rondec]

I think shooting film and slides in particular was really hard. I can't say that I really understood shooting till I got a digital camera. I had read books, but it didn't really make sense to me till I could actually see the Exif of my shots and see what worked and what didn't. It just is tough to remember exactly what lens you used, aperture, etc in a specific situation if you didn't develop things for a few weeks.

[gaweidert]

I think shooting film and slides in particular was really hard. I can't say that I really understood shooting till I got a digital camera. I had read books, but it didn't really make sense to me till I could actually see the Exif of my shots and see what worked and what didn't. It just is tough to remember exactly what lens you used, aperture, etc in a specific situation if you didn't develop things for a few weeks.

Transparency film does have really tight exposure latitude. There was a reason the Moose Peterson wrote a book on getting exposure correct. My favorite cameras for shooting transparencies are ones with a spot meter. I would meter what I wanted correctly exposed and work from there. Plus you had to remember one other thing about light meters. They want to make everything match the 18% reflective grey card. So they would overexpose very dark areas and underexpose extremely white areas. Hence grey snow. Pentax was the first manufacturer to develop an exposure algorithm to deal with this. But you had to know this when you used the camera.

When taking photographs outdoors, I always tried to carry an 18% grey card with me. You metered the card and worked from there. If I did not have one I looked for a naturally occurring one. A road surface or even a pair of grey pants that looked close enough. A lot of rocks are close to 18% grey too.

While transparency film do have much tighter exposure latitude they make up for it by being able to cover a much wider brightness range than print films. Maybe 100x of print films. You may get a density of 2.0 for black on a photograph. On a transparency it could be 4.0 or higher, That is a 100:1 verses 10,000;1 tonal range. Your eye can see a tonal range of about 1,000,000 to 1. The trick in photography is to make the image match what your eye saw.

Ansel Adams had what every photographer really wants for Christmas. An eidetic memory. He never forgot anything. (Think Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory). This allowed him to not only coax whatever he wanted out of a negative, but to exactly repeat it. My uncle was a friend of his but sadly I never got to meet him when he was in town.

A friend of mine is currently digitizing his whole family's collection of photographs, slides and negatives. Literally thousand and thousands of them. He is using an old tethered Canon Rebel with a 60mm macro lens mounted on a copy stand. I think it has a 6 megapixel sensor. He dumps them into Lightroom, does a few quick color corrections and then saves them. He has even developed correction setups for various brands of color negative films. He can easily do one hundred per hour this way. I have seen him do it. The photographs that need retouching get it at this time too. In some cases it is only a few seconds for each photograph. He even made his own custom print, film and transparency holders. He uses a small light box for his slides and negatives.

I think that some of the older Pentax DSLR's supported tethering. If so it would be a great way to retask the camera.