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Re: [OM] How to Capture subtle colors

Subject: Re: [OM] How to Capture subtle colors
From: dreammoose <dreammoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 00:28:18 -0700
I've thought all along that a big part of the problem is the combo of automated printing and scanning a 4x6 print. Now I have some evidence to offer Check out <http://home.attbi.com/0.000000E+00dreammoose/wsb/html/view.cgi-photo.html--SiteID-322698.html> . Side by side are 2 crops of the same shot. The original was shot 5/1/02 with an OM-4(T) and Tamron SP 60-300mm lens, set at 300mm/f5.6 and either 1/60 or 1/125 with the lens resting on the car window (engine off!!) to steady it.

The left one is a 600dpi flatbed scan of a 4x6in. print from Kodak Royal processing. The right one is a 2720dpi scan with a Can*n FS2710. This gives roughly the same image resolution without any resampling. The area shown is about 300f the width and 260f the height of the full frame, or about 80f the area.

As I expected, the film scanner image is much sharper. I've said before that print emulsions are just not designed to hold high resolutions, but I was a little surprised at how big the difference is.

What I was especially looking for was the effect on contrast and color differentation, and I really found it. I selected a shot with rich and complex variations in color and contrast. As you can see, virtually all the subtle color variations in the film scan are lost in the print scan. It's not just sharpness, a great deal of color info is gone. Most of the subtle graduation in contrast is lost too.

What does this mean for web images? Enough of the detail in the film scan is lost in downsampling and JPEG conversion, so that there may not be much apparent difference in sharpness between equal sized small web images from the 2 sources, although I suspect that at TOPE size and above there will be an apparent difference. On the other hand, the image derived from the film scan should retain noticeably better color and contrast detail/graduation. Although I can't say for sure what the separate contributions of the printing process and the flatbed scanning process are, it is clear on the print that a lot of color/contrast detail is already missing.

Maybe the next step is to make a lower resolution direct scan of the whole print and do a careful multi step downsize sharpening on the film scan to TOPE sizes for another comparison. But not tonight.

Moose

PS to Andew Beals: This is an extreme example of what a really long lens (1,000-1,100mm) would find on Yosemite's walls, a mysterious face in the rock. Looks like maybe a glacier broke his nose?

bsandyman@xxxxxxx wrote:

I have been taking pictures of this bright yellow flower
now for months. I have been disatisfied so far partly
because the thing that draws my attention to these things
is the very slightly orange portion of the petal. I have
so far failed to capture this aspect of the flower. Here
are some pictures to show what I mean.

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder.tcl?folder_id=236230



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