Originally posted by goddo31 Fair point about the prism and the film haha! I'm still working on improving my scanning and film to digital PP technique - and along with developing and everything else I guess. I'll have a play with some more aggressive curves on my next roll or two of FP4+, will see what happens.
My advice is to scan as a positive image in full bit-depth and then do everything manually from there. Have a look at which one of the color channels (R, G & B) that is sharpest, because with a fairly simple scanner (V700 for example), the blue one will be sharper than the others. This is because the shortest wavelength will be affected less by diffraction in the scanner optics than the red and green channels. If the difference is worth considering, scrap the other channels and use only the blue (or any other that seems sharpest). If they are equally sharp, use all three for lowest scanner noise.
Then comes the hard work, because the image will look like crap. Very low contrast and a histogram that isn't anywhere close to filling 0-255 values (pure black to pure white).
The most important part with the curve is to make it steep
where in the tonality you want locally high contrast. Because it doesn't have to be in the middle, as with a simple S-curve you often use for digital images.
I'll post an example next time I'm in the process.
Quote: Nice, that looks like the same version of the 55/4 that I have
I don't have a proper external meter either, usually I meter with a digital camera or sunny-16.
It seems to be a nice lens, but I haven't developed the two rolls I shot since yesterday yet, so I don't know about the performance. I'm pretty sure it's good enough. I must say that I really like the angle of view of 55 mm on 6x7!
Originally posted by Nesster I would agree - although it is 'easier' to do in photoshop than in the wet darkroom, we should remember in the digital domain we are usually presenting 'prints' rather than 'film' and thus we ought to pay some attention to post processing for the look we want.
Exactly! The PP of a scanned negative is corresponding to making a print in the darkroom, which means choosing paper, developing the paper and stuff like that must be done on the computer if you want the best results.
Originally posted by tuco A good way to have/justify the 90mm and the 105mm is to get the Takumar 90mm LS if you can find it. It is not as compact as the regular 90mm but it gives you some things you may want from time-to-time.
One is, of course, the leaf shutter for flash shots. Another is that you can do a pure, vibration-free, leaf shutter shot with it in the 1/60-1/500 speed range by locking the camera's shutter open in that special mode between 1/1000 and X (on 6x7 and 67's at least). And finally for those that have the 6x7 or 67 body version, you can do double or more exposures in pure LS mode.
I keep my 90mm LS around just for those features even though I have the 105 and 75mm too.
I never use flash, so that doesn't matter to me. The main reason to keep the 90 for me, is the "perfect" angle of view.
Is it the 75/4.5 or 75/2.8 you have? I'd like to see some pictures with the latter.