DPR Forum

Welcome to the Friendly Aisles!
DPRF is a photography forum with people from all over the world freely sharing their knowledge and love of photography. Everybody is welcome, from beginners to the experienced professional. Whether it is Medium Format, fullframe, APS-C, MFT or smaller formats. Digital or film. DPRF is a forum for everybody and for every format.
Enjoy this modern, easy to use software. Look also at our Reviews & Gallery!

Zeiss 21mm madness at Ffordes

When you look at the rocks for ex&le there are lots of noises. Here is a direct crop from the 220MB file, so that you can see the noise clearly.

459535.jpg



Yes, I have use things like ICE4 and GEM, but it is still irritating to get it. It is difficult to get rid of. If I use motion blurr I can remove it but the natural look of the river will be ruined.

Do you have the same artefacts in medium format scanning ?


The other thing I also wonder is how is the result of 35mm scanning compared to IDsII. Say if you scan from 5400 you get a tiff file with more than 350 million pixels. How is this image compared to IDsII if you shoot with RAW ?
 
I have Nikon 4000ED and Minolta 5400. Minolta clearly outperforms Nikon, it's extremely sharp (too sharp actually - it reveals every single grain, but SilverFast has GANE filter which returns the grain back to the level of Nikon - I use 30-5 settings out there and it's not getting smooth).
Joseph, I started to write this and got e-mail with the recent picture from you. Hm... I never saw such troubles on my scans. What film is that? I use Velvia 100 and it looks pretty good (especially after GANE trick I described above). I'll need to get home and to make some crops from recent scans - let's compare them with this one.
And what software do you use? Minolta native software just sucks, I never was able to set it correctly. May be this is the problem?
 
OK, here is the recent scan made by the Minolta 5400. Grain? What grain?
His name is Ivan, the picture is taken by RTS III & CZ 85/1.4 @f4
459541.jpg

And this is the 100% crop:
459542.jpg

Joseph, I'd recommend you to try SilverFast - they have free trial on their site.
 
The film I am using is Kodak 200 High Definition (HD). Camera was S2b with 28 2.8 at f8. I am scanning with the software which comes with the scanner. I thought this is the only software one can use for scanning. The same photo was enlarged in the conventional chemical way. The conventional image has, of course, a natural look. The river is grainy but not as grainy as the scanned s&le. The graininess of the scanned s&le has multiple colours.

This kind of artefacts is not seen often. You will not see it in your photo because there is no large area with darkness, I mean about 1 1/2 to 2 stops below normal exposure. The graininess of the film can be made worse by scanning with 5400.

I suppose if I shot the pic with medium format, there would not be area with artefact as bad as that. Photos from medium format looks much less grainy, so even after scanning, you would not get artefact as bad as that.
 
DJ, while you can print odd sizes on an Inkjet, few if any standard mat and frame sizes conform to them ... forcing you to print to conform or pay for custom mats and framing, which isn't an option when preparing a show due to the expense.

Same for the work I do destined for wedding albums. The mat and book sizes are set up for 5X7, 8X10 and squares. Recent addition of a 7 X 10 option insert mat has helped ... but still a vast majority of clients want 8X10s when ordering album prints or reprints and display prints like 11X14 or 16X20.

Same for Commercial work ... the standard is the 8.5X11 page format with squares as the second most used format.

Joseph, scanning is an art that requires practice just like darkroom work did. There are different techniques for different negative qualities.

The Imacon scanners are the industry standard for table top scanners, but are a lot more expensive. The Imacon 646 is around $10,000. USD. In return the 646 produces virtual drum scan flatness with a higher ppi and a true single pass scan D-Max of 4.6 ( some scan makers claim a 4.0 D-Max, but don't reveal that figure is a multi-pass scan number). Imacons come with Flexcolor software which is the same as that used for the big Imacon MF digital backs ... so it is very sophisticated compared to lesser scanners.

I currently use a Minolta 5400 for 35mm, and a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi PRO for Medium Format work. I also use a Epson 4870 flat bed for scanning 35mm and MF contact sheets and to scan some MF films not destined for big enlargements.

There are other options for scanning software like VueScan & SilverFast ($190. USD for DiMAGE 5400)

http://www.nextag.com/LaserSoft-Imaging-SilverFast-Ai--zz59585165zB2z2--COMPARE-PRICES-html

But optical prints from films still produce superior looking prints mostly because of the harsher light source in a scanner compared to a diffused light source in a optical enlarger.
There is a bunch of Minolta Multi Scan users that alter the light source in that scanner to produce much more pleasing scans with less pronounced grain edge. The recent Imacon Commercial level scanner ($20,000 ), has finally introduced a diffused light source.

The other thing you can do with your 5400 is do multi-pass scans, they take longer but produce superior results. Multi-pass is an option you can select when using the software that came with the 5400. There are other techniques like double scanning ... once for the
hightlight areas and once for the shadow areas ... then merging in PhotoShop using layers and masking to produce much better tonal range that is there in the neg.

Finally, what you see on a computer screen is harsher than what you will see in a print because a screen is projected light compared to reflected light of a print.
 
Marc, I'm so glad I don't have to make somebody else happy with my images
happy.gif
. You can get an 11x17 in a 16x20 frame nicely, but that's about it. Hopefully this will start changing.
 
FYI

I have moved the last postings to this Sony corner:

http://www.contaxinfo.com/cgi-bin/discus/board-auth.cgi?file=/439450/459544.html

Please make all sure that you enabled e-mail notification for the new section we opened recently in your user profile. Otherwise you will not be informed about new postings!

To check your profile, just click at the buttom of an e-mail on the link and login. Or do this online in the navigation bar.
 
Well, I have a question.

I went to the second hand shop, they were offering me a Hassy 500 camera together with 2 lenses, one T* and one non T*.

The shopkeeper said the non T* old Zeiss lens has more contrast than the new T* lenses.

After my uses of so many T* lenses, I have a gut feeling. Yes, the T* does reduces flare. on the other hand, it does reduce contrast as well.

Zeiss lenses have in general less contrast than Leica lenses, I believe T* coating could be the culprit.

Could anyone verify the statment from the shopkeeper for me ?
 
That I don't buy. All else being equal, reducing flare will increase contrast, as flare is a major inducer of low contrast in an image. Good coatings should promote increased contrast, or else someone isn't doing their homework, and Zeiss is one of those that do their homework right. Of course if you cheap out on the glass ...

There are several other factors that can contribute to reduced or increased contrast, such as overall lens design, tube baffling and such.
 
Back
Top