Photographer's Corner - equipment

[Chuckanut]

Interesting article by Thom Hogan concerning more pixels and if that is what we really need to get better photographs. One quote:

Thus, here’s my tip for the day: instead of going for 24mp over the 16mp you’ve got, or wishing for more than the 24mp you can get today, think about the lens out front first. You can impact your DX results far more by judicious lens choice than you can buying megapixels now.

Will the Pixel Madness Ever End? | byThom | Thom Hogan

 

[Mr. Paul]

That is well written and well thought out. I disagree with some of it but in general I agree with the premise of the article. The shortcomings I see in many photographs would not be improved one iota with more pixels.

 

[Chuckanut]

I have to agree with Hogan for the most part. My Olympus m4/3 has 'only' 16mp, but with the very fine and fast lenses in the system, I get amazingly sharp and detailed photos. If, things are not right it is usually because the photographer has erred.

 

[audreyh1]

Equipment - well software. Why I love Lightroom5

Here are some before and after shots showing the capabilities of Lightroom5 and Lightroom 4.

These were both taken by my husband with his iPhone5 in HDR mode - both under challenging conditions - interiors with light coming through windows and lots of reflected light. I then processed them in Lightroom 5.

The main new Lightroom5 feature is the automatic perspective correction/straightening which works amazing well much of the time. These two photos both used the automatic feature. You can also do it manually if you don't like the result

Other features I use heavily which are also in LR4 are:

• Lens profile corrections - corrects for lens distortion, vignetting (can be a biggie), and chromatic aberration.
• White balance corrections as necessary.
• Tonal adjustment has great algorithms for bringing out shadows, highlights plus clarity and vibrance.
• Noise reduction and sharpening, of course.

Each photo - before, then after:

 

[Ronstar]

Here are some before and after shots showing the capabilities of Lightroom5 and Lightroom 4.

These were both taken by my husband with his iPhone5 in HDR mode - both under challenging conditions - interiors with light coming through windows and lots of reflected light. I then processed them in Lightroom 5.

The main new Lightroom5 feature is the automatic perspective correction/straightening which works amazing well much of the time. These two photos both used the automatic feature. You can also do it manually if you don't like the result

Other features I use heavily which are also in LR4 are:

• Lens profile corrections - corrects for lens distortion, vignetting (can be a biggie), and chromatic aberration.
• White balance corrections as necessary.
• Tonal adjustment has great algorithms for bringing out shadows, highlights plus clarity and vibrance.
• Noise reduction and sharpening, of course.

Each photo - before, then after:

Thanks for posting. I'm a Lightroom newbie and didn't know that iPhone images could be edited in lightroom. I've only used it on my raw dslr shots. I'll give it a try on some iphotos

 

[audreyh1]

Thanks for posting. I'm a Lightroom newbie and didn't know that iPhone images could be edited in lightroom. I've only used it on my raw dslr shots. I'll give it a try on some iphotos

Oh it edits jpegs just the same.

And it even recognizes that it's an iPhone5 and does some lens correction.

 

[Ronstar]

Yep I now see it does jpegs just like raws. Haven't messed with lens corrections yet, but its good to know that it recognizes the iPhone. I found an old scanned in photo of DW (more than 50 yrs old) that had a bunch of spots, etc. I fixed it up a little in Lightroom. I may have to spend the winter cleaning up the old scanned photos

 

[donheff]

Wow, nice Audrey. I have Photoshop CS5 using DD's teachers's discount. But Lightroom might be a better option for me. Does it have the same shadow/highlight adjustment as Photoshop?

 

[audreyh1]

Wow, nice Audrey. I have Photoshop CS5 using DD's teachers's discount. But Lightroom might be a better option for me. Does it have the same shadow/highlight adjustment as Photoshop?

They basically use the same Camera Raw engine. LR5 is a much better user interface to it IMO.

So yes - same adjustments.

LR 5 was $60 off on Cyber Monday - one day only, unfortunately. It's still a lot cheaper than Photoshop.

I only go into Photoshop for mostly esoteric layer work other than the Panorama Merge and HDR Merge features both of which can be launched seamlessly from Lightroom.

 

[M Paquette]

Film scanning?

Anyone here shoot on film and scan it in for digital processing and printing? I'm interested in getting a film scanner of some sort, primarily for 35mm, but possibly (if the costs aren't too high) for 120 and 4x5 film.

This would let me use all my funky old gear, without having to set up the huge and even funkier old enlarger and build a wet process lab (which DW might just possibly not care for...). Film I can process with a changing bag and a sink. 11x14 prints, not so much...

I'm looking for something I can afford easily, so wet mount drum scanners are Right Out. I expect I'd mostly be shooting with the Ilford black and white films. I like the tones, and as I recall, the film lay nice and flat compared to Tri-X.

 

[Walt34]

I have a Cannon CanoScan 9000F which came with an abbreviated version of Silverfast software. I like it. It also has trays for mounted 35mm slides (four at a time) 35mm film negatives, and one larger size film negative, I forgot what size.

The reviews I read about it were accurate, it's a good scanner but if you have thousands of slides/negatives it would get tedious.

I don't shoot film anymore but I have several hundred slides that my father took in the '40's - '60's. My avatar photo was shot by me ~1976 and is from a slide.

 

[Walt34]

Yep I now see it does jpegs just like raws. Haven't messed with lens corrections yet, but its good to know that it recognizes the iPhone. I found an old scanned in photo of DW (more than 50 yrs old) that had a bunch of spots, etc. I fixed it up a little in Lightroom. I may have to spend the winter cleaning up the old scanned photos

The color correction for photos like that (red shift in the photo of your DW) are easy to do with either the right scanner software or later in Lightroom, Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. This is one of me and my HS prom date in 1968 that needed color correction. I used my jacket to establish a white point.

 

[Ronstar]

The color correction for photos like that (red shift in the photo of your DW) are easy to do with either the right scanner software or later in Lightroom, Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. This is one of me and my HS prom date in 1968 that needed color correction. I used my jacket to establish a white point.

Thanks for posting this. Good job on the color correction. I assumed that people were doing color correction on their scanned photos, but I haven't tried it. I'm just using the scan software that came with my scanner and I haven't looked into it to see how it adjusts colors. I have played with Lightroom's color adjustments, but in the case of DW's photo, I can't seem to get the redness out of the background without changing the color of the dress. I'll have to dig into this - I have a Lightroom book that explains it.

 

[ERD50]

Thanks for posting this. Good job on the color correction. I assumed that people were doing color correction on their scanned photos, but I haven't tried it. I'm just using the scan software that came with my scanner and I haven't looked into it to see how it adjusts colors. I have played with Lightroom's color adjustments, but in the case of DW's photo, I can't seem to get the redness out of the background without changing the color of the dress. I'll have to dig into this - I have a Lightroom book that explains it.

A friend of mine bought a Nikon film scanner which he is very happy with. He said they have a process that can sample a blank are of the film, and it uses info from that to determine the aging and color shift of the film, and provide the proper corrections (it has a data base of all the film types). This was a few years back, I assume they've got even better since then.

-ERD50

 

[audreyh1]

The color correction for photos like that (red shift in the photo of your DW) are easy to do with either the right scanner software or later in Lightroom, Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. This is one of me and my HS prom date in 1968 that needed color correction. I used my jacket to establish a white point.

Walt - I'm not convinced your jacket was in fact white. Looks more like cream to me as otherwise your skin tones and other things have a pretty blue cast. This is using auto white balance in LR5, along with a few other tweaks for contrast and vignetting.

Please excuse my presumption, but I knew it needed at least a little work on the contrast/clarity. Nice picture!

 

[meierlde]

Anyone here shoot on film and scan it in for digital processing and printing? I'm interested in getting a film scanner of some sort, primarily for 35mm, but possibly (if the costs aren't too high) for 120 and 4x5 film.

.

I have an epson 4490 and have scanned in over 9000 slides (mine my fathers and grandfathers). One question is how many slides you have, the epson v.500 perfection does 4 slides at a time, so it does take a while for about 4x the price you can go with the epson v.700 which does 12 slides at a time.
All the Kodachrome and Etkachrome from as far back as the 1960s looked good but purchased slides from 1962 on eastman color film had gotton red I had to make them black and white.

 

[donheff]

OK, lets keep playing with Walt's photo. Using the curtains as a neutral gray gets a nice effect:

 

[photoguy]

Anyone here shoot on film and scan it in for digital processing and printing? I'm interested in getting a film scanner of some sort, primarily for 35mm, but possibly (if the costs aren't too high) for 120 and 4x5 film.

How large a scan do you want?

If you go with a flatbed you'll be able to do 120 and 4x5 but the actual resolution will be much lower then a dedicated 35mm scanner. On my Canoscan 9000f flatbed I was getting something like 1200dpi (whereas the spec sheet lists 4800dpi) using a test target.

On my minolta dimage I actually got the rated resolution (5400 dpi or even a little more).

I'm looking for something I can afford easily, so wet mount drum scanners are Right Out. I expect I'd mostly be shooting with the Ilford black and white films. I like the tones, and as I recall, the film lay nice and flat compared to Tri-X.

Another option may be to setup a copy stand on a lightbox and take high res pictures with a DSLR.

 

[photoguy]

I have an epson 4490 and have scanned in over 9000 slides (mine my fathers and grandfathers).

Wow. You're the man (or woman).

 

[M Paquette]

How large a scan do you want?

If you go with a flatbed you'll be able to do 120 and 4x5 but the actual resolution will be much lower then a dedicated 35mm scanner. On my Canoscan 9000f flatbed I was getting something like 1200dpi (whereas the spec sheet lists 4800dpi) using a test target.

On my minolta dimage I actually got the rated resolution (5400 dpi or even a little more).

I have an older CanoScan, the 8400F, with a dead backlight. I have trouble imagining how it gets those amazing resolutions from a CCD with lower resolution (even if you pretend that each R, G, and B element is a pixel, and convolve the cr*p out of the signal). Your 1200 DPI result sounds pretty reasonable for that particular sensor.

I'll take a look and the Minolta Dimage scanners. Some of the Nikon ones looked as pricey as a used Hell drum scanner.

 

[FIREd]

Anyone here shoot on film and scan it in for digital processing and printing? I'm interested in getting a film scanner of some sort, primarily for 35mm, but possibly (if the costs aren't too high) for 120 and 4x5 film.

This would let me use all my funky old gear, without having to set up the huge and even funkier old enlarger and build a wet process lab (which DW might just possibly not care for...). Film I can process with a changing bag and a sink. 11x14 prints, not so much...

I'm looking for something I can afford easily, so wet mount drum scanners are Right Out. I expect I'd mostly be shooting with the Ilford black and white films. I like the tones, and as I recall, the film lay nice and flat compared to Tri-X.

I use the Canon CanoScan 8800F. I have scanned 35mm slides and negatives as well as some 120 film and have been pretty pleased with the results. The 35mm scans were very good using the provided tray. But the 120 negatives required some homemade rigging to get sharp results.

 

[explanade]

There is a scanning service, name escapes me at the moment.

They send slides and prints to India and it takes a couple of weeks.

 

[Walt34]

Walt - I'm not convinced your jacket was in fact white. Looks more like cream to me as otherwise your skin tones and other things have a pretty blue cast. This is using auto white balance in LR5, along with a few other tweaks for contrast and vignetting.

Please excuse my presumption, but I knew it needed at least a little work on the contrast/clarity. Nice picture!

No offense taken.

I knew it wasn't quite right but didn't take the time to play with it. You're quite right about the blue cast, but then it made the jacket too orange. I'm sure it was white, but it has been a while.

It might be better to go into Photoshop with it and correct each color channel separately.

 

[audreyh1]

OK, lets keep playing with Walt's photo. Using the curtains as a neutral gray gets a nice effect:

Nice! Yes, it certainly looks as if the curtains might be neutral gray. But there are all sorts of random color shifts/artifacts in the photo that make me think of aging film or print plus there were probably lighting issues in the room . I figure the best you can do is try to get the skin tones and hair looking about right.

 

[audreyh1]

Lightroom has a cool WB feature, in that you take your WB tool and scroll it over in areas you think are neutral, and the top left image gives you a preview of what your color correction will look like. That way you can hunt for your "best" white or gray area in the image.

Love LR's non-destructive editing