On Fri, 18 May 2001 10:22:38 -0400 (EDT) Lynn Allen (lalle@email.com)
wrote:
> I'm starting to think, "Hey, this
> filmscanning stuff might just catch on!"
Yes. I recently did some shots, informal contre-jour portraits of a guy
during an interview. He was indoors, back to the window, sunny day
outside. I shot on Fuji200 colour neg. I scanned to 16 bit in
Vuescan using a Polaroid 4000, did the usual levels and saturation
and colour correction adjustments for the foreground (midtones and
shadows) and saved it. This was fine except all the bright stuff was
either blown or headed that way. I reverted to the original, masked off
all but the bright bits and went through the same only adjusting the
levels etc to get them right. A quick cut and paste to a new layer over
the first, and the result was just astonishing.
Every single part of the insane tonal range was captured and represented
as it looked to the eye in the original scene. This would have been murder
to attempt to print in the darkroom, and likely impossible without
unsharp masks, but was trivially easy in PS. Machine printing would have
thrown much of the range away. And the real comparison is anyway with the
colour tranny I would have had to use a few years back, which would have
lost most of it, or compelled high-power fill in flash with a brolly.
This is exactly why I got into scanning, to expand the range of
possibilities. Filmscanners and software are now powerful enough tools to
easily surpass what conventional darkrooms can achieve in most respects.
There remain problem areas, especially colour correction, and more
resolution would conquer aliasing. But most of the hassle now is after
scanning - inept or self-interested repro houses bent on sabotage, clients
who believe a scan by their repro house is the same thing (I use scanning
as part of the photographic realisation, an interpretive tool not just
straight reproduction), and my total frustration with Epsons (which I
don't want to talk about here:). And of course, hardest of the lot, taking
a decent photo in the first place;)
Regards
Tony Sleep
- Online portfolio & exhibit; + film scanner
info & comparisons
