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Regarding Contax N digital and Leica digital back

I am saddened too that Finney has been kicked out of the list. I am not sure that Austin himself would wish this to be the case?

I don't know what transpired in the past, but I think in this case, Finney may have sounded like putting beliefs across as facts because he was explaining things he believed he knew well to a good friend of his (Sheu) who was very much willing to listen, so he (Finney) was probably more liberal and less careful with how he sounded as he tried to explain.. and make statements which he may be less likely to state as assertively if he is aware of a larger audience listening instead of just a close personal friend.

So, let's take Finney's original statements or claims in that 'personal conversation to Sheu' light. His subsequent remarks were not humbly made as well, true, but I am afraid Austin himself did not sound very diplomatic right off from the beginning, but was on the dismissive side.

So I guess that's where tempers begin to fray. It's understandable, and regretable. Just hope everyone can try to see from both different sides and cool down.

Sheu was just trying to share in the beginning, what he learned from his friend, with others here. I do appreciate his kind intentions very much.
 
Dear Shu-Hsien,

Just a quick note that it must be at the moment, to say that I really enjoyed what you wrote eloquently here. Both about Finney and what you found he could contribute, and about the long Chinese history with its turns not entirely different in form from others, but of so many very individual qualities and developments and flavours.

What you've written about Finney will specifically help me answer Marc and I think Lynn better, as I would like to and will.

You discuss Lao-Tse and the turns towards centralization and later Confucianism - I didn't understand before how conscious this history has been of the role when it has been successful and also not, of diversity, and this is good to know. I do remember also the wayward edges of some Daoists - going too far towards what had been mystical understanding for practical life, and probably that also had something to do with reactions provoked.

Daoism made me think again of Finney and what I found of his impressionistic approach, in reading his notes again before sleeping last night. As it's pretty clear he know, that always gets under the skin of persons who tend to prefer what feel to them more concrete methods - and yet it and other things like it are equal part of the same creating with objective things that we learn.

You reminded me then to remember the role of Chuang-Tse, always enjoyable by very many. He was the story teller in approach, and managed to connect many understandings with their world - a profound talent and accomplishment.

Best to you, Shu-Hsien, and we will all get something from this I think. Even Finney, I am tempted to guess ;).. And you show a fineness of regard for your friend.

Regards, Clive S.
 
There is a touch of melancholy to Sheu's last post even though he tried to remind himself this is just a forum. Hey, Sheu, don't be sad. Go out, p&er yourself, buy the Contax TVS Digital, and have fun, ya? Haha!
 
Hi Marc,

Please excuse my slightly harsh response before. I will admit, I thought you were pursuing the "science takes away from art" argument, which I have little time for. To give the best answer I can to a fair question... All this deep tech has to be followed through, sifted, considered and verified. After that, it might be possible to come up with some workable best practices that will advance our actual image-making capabilities.

It's great when someone else has done all the hard work, and all you have to do is pick up the right books, apply yourself a little and enjoy the results. That's what is so rewarding about traditional B&W print making. In the digital domain we are a long way from reaching that point.

When I first bought a film scanner over three years ago I firmly expected (poor naive fool that I was) to get files that would represent neg images every bit as well as a good wet print. I was led to expect this by various apparent authorities on the Internet and in the specialist press. In the event I was bitterly disappointed. What followed was a journey into the fields of colour theory, human vision, film characteristics and engineering mathematics (I found myself dipping back into my A-level and undergrad maths texts) in an effort to understand the issues that were preventing me from obtaining satisfactory scans. It's taken me a long time and a lot of thought and reading to make meaningful connections between the effects that arise in my scanned images and the technical causes behind those effects. I'm still a long way from a complete understanding, and often feel that now I simply know what I _don't_ know to a fuller extent than when I started. I guess that's why I value any insider info that Austin and Finney might provide, even if the jousting made it hard to be sure how reliable some of that info was.

I completely understand if you'd prefer to be out there taking shots and using established processes that you know will give you the results you want. For me, I have a particular set of goals that today I can't stick out my hand and grab, so I'm having to go through all this research and experimentation. I'm stuck with it because of my own choice, because I want the creative control and the ability to do short runs of identical prints that PhotoShop gives me, without making images that betray themselves as obviously digital due to artifacts. This is a very real and practical photographic goal that springs from my own photographic ethos. So, what to you is a load of irrelevant smoke-blowing, to me is a rich seam of technical knowledge that might help me make progress. Does that make sense?

Best regards,

-= mike =-
 
Hi Clive,

I don't want to run the 3200 down completely, it isn't actually a bad scanner, especially when you consider the price and flexibility. However, there were two reasons why I decided to give mine back to Jessops:

1. The optics are not sharp enough to match the resolution of the sensor. Compared to my 2700ppi Nikon scanner, the Epson looked far softer. It doesn't resolve grain structure clearly, which might be an advantage sometimes but on other occasions when I want a classic grain pattern from a medium or high-speed B&W neg film, the scanner just couldn't deliver. In his Photo-i review, Vincent Oliver argued that the detail was there, you just need to use sufficient USM to reveal it. There might be some mileage in this, but in the end if you apply USM to scans that are sharper in the first place, you end up with even sharper final results.

2. The exposure control appears to be set exclusively by the scanner firmware. There are no exposure controls in the Epson Scan software. In fact, I've a strong suspicion that it uses fixed levels of exposure and gain for the CCD. When I used VueScan to generate raw files at various exposure settings (VueScan does offer an exposure slider) the files showed the same appearance and histogram shape regardless of the setting -- right from one end of the range to the other. A number of frames that were not particularly "hard cases" showed really terrible tonality and colour balance, and it proved impossible to mend this even after extensive tweaking in PS. Oddly, there seemed to be little predictability to this; some frames just upset the scanner while others that were apparently similar scanned fine. In all cases, however, looking at the histograms of the raw files revealed what a mess the scanner was making out of the exposure. In many cases all the values were crammed into well under a quarter of the available range.

In the end this scanner was nowhere near meeting my quality target for film scanning, even in medium format. I was very sorry to discover this, because now I have no way to print my MF shots at home. I'm not going to buy a Minolta Multi Pro at this stage, because it seems likely that it will be replaced with a better unit sometime soon. I certainly can't justify one of the better Imacons, so I'm just sitting on my hands for now and shooting 35mm.

HTH

-= mike =-
 
While we wax philosophical, Lao Tse's Tao Te Ching was the first Eastern Philosophy that really touched me, and I perceived one of its greatest messages as being the following: the person who can do the greatest deeds is barely noticed. I find this extremely appropriate in the practice of photography, for most often in order to capture the best moments you want to remain as invisible as possible, for as soon as you're noticed the moment is ruined.

And while I do love techno-babble, being a techno-geek at heart, I also agree with Marc that there needs to be a practical aspect to the discussion. Now I do believe the basic discussion of CMOS vs. CCD is practical in choosing a D-cam, but perhaps some of the more esoteric design aspects were better left for another discussion, although it's easy for discussions of this type to meander (been in a technical meeting lately?
happy.gif
).

Hey, whatever, you gotta LOVE this forum! Thank you, Dirk!

DJ
Contemplating strapping on his backpack with his ND tethered to his new Tablet PC ...
 
Howard,

About film scanners, here is my capsule opinion of the Canon FS4000US:

http://www.contaxinfo.com/discus/board-auth.cgi?lm=1053071307&file=/656/36627.html#POST8754

To recap, 4000 dpi will give you grain-level detail. The Canon is down to US$700, so the new Minolta needs to score with convenience (roll feed), or true Dmax (not the 4.8 numeric BS). I shoot SLR and DSLR: for high-volume situations where results are casual, digital saves a LOT of time.
 
Mike,

Thanks much for the detail on this - useful to appreciate. I've just looked around in my 500 or so scans of the history pictures so far. I can't compare I think to the focus of attention you're taking, especially without the film scanner for comparison. You're right by the way - although I had read Koren and friends debating 3200 vs. the 2450, the information that most swung choice was the photo-i.co.uk article where the Epson 3200 compared quite favorably to a 2700 lpi Nikon film scanner. Page 13 of it, I think.

What I seem to see myself in 3200 scans is that grain is very prominent and much a resolution dominating factor in Leica Tri-X shots - which look that they'd make good 10x15 prints - but quite possibly not in the caliber you're shooting for, especially when I read about these contests. I appreciate that resolving the grain itself can be part of the aesthetics in ways of looking at certain pictures, have made some myself that way upon a time though again no doubt not at the level you're tracking, and can't know if what scans here can achieve is what you want.

On the other hand, to what you said about possible softness, perhaps I more than you am in favour with the idea that the sensor should allow final decision on sharpening to the algorithms in the Photoshop pass. Given of course that dynamic range is properly accounted as below, and assured that this would be better if I used full 16-bit Photoshop. I haven't experimented with the USM control on the Epson software to see if it can do as well, but it is always adjustable.

On finer-grained color films one can also resolve grain, but again I'm not sure vs. what you want, and resolution limit is evidently elsewhere - camera lens, overall focusing, shake, oldness of slides, etc. - and/or scanner.

I feel free to think unless could test otherwise that with more modern films and setup, one could go farther than this scanner can - why people are ready to pay on most fit technology for work there.

I'm not sure how to get at what you seem to have felt about exposure controls. The Epson Scan Twain software has three levels of control mode - full automated 'home', 'office', and 'professional'. In the professional mode, it will still automate prescan including multiple image identification, and then turn over to let one adjust it seems everything that's useful - and do that on a per-image basis within a multiply identified scan. This auto-selecting is easily fine-adjustable afterwards of course, and works on most kinds of material given inter-item contrast - it is particularly good at auto-preparing from the included holders that handle for ex&le 2 six-image 35mm strips at a time, or 4 slides, or one or two images as appropriate from large format films.

There are settable grey correction (white balance), histograms, and tone curves on color channels, with presets and named saved preference lists on all. There is arbitrary segment-by-segment constructability if you like for curves. There are fully automated histogram and tone correction buttons also if you want the machine to try its shot, as well as usual contrast/brightness/saturation/hue etc. for simpler adjustments. Resolution or better, delivered document line resolution with automated resolution setting is there too.

I know I've used all of these at various levels of need to assure that the scan itself will be good from some pretty challenged materials, including with mixed items on the scan bed, and of course it can make a huge difference. Constructed curves really saved one particularly valued family memory with a difficult situation. S&ling briefly through my results, including some of the odd ones, the scans all appear to have nicely filled out histograms.

What I'm wondering is if it might have been possible to miss this richness - the documentation is pretty minimal, if I find the on-disk doc here on my laptop lists all the features if approached with persistence ;). I think their idea was to layer things very thoroughly, usual reasons.

I remember just exploring, finding checkbox choices etc. to turn on the available dialogs, so some is also hidden until dug into this way. It seems to me that discovering the ability to adjust individual scans so completely from multiple items identified on the bed was also something you had to realize was there, working forward from the box-selected previews.

And then VueScan may not hook up to what the Epson software is able to manipulate internally, as I am sure your results are conclusive there.

Anyway, for the level of detail and interest I know can exist with persons in this forum, the best is surely as you've done, to try one out for purpose before committing, if this kind of scanner looks interesting.

I liked that I could get results that seem at least to the degree of own needs for information which seems contained on these slides, along with handling all the odd sizes of sheet and roll film that more than a century can deliver - plus all the reflective materials, photos and other things, that I have.

That's personal, as it should be - and great that we can find items to fit so well for varying needs.

The rest of the money vs. having a film scanner in tandem, I place away toward camera/s ;)

Thanks again, for your insights on what else might be available and needed past this scanner. It could be too that I still misunderstand what you were getting at with the control issues, so be sure to let know if anything there.

Regards, Clive
 
Rico, recovering from trying to write the lengthy trade back to Mike, you remind here very well about further areas best film scanners go past anything the Epson flatbed can deliver. I am sure density/dynamic range can be very much better, besides the resolution. Digital ICE also, etc.. Tools for uses...

;) and regards, Clive
 
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