Martin Walters wrote:
>To my surprise this time, I found that all such photos (the "best" one
>can be seen at:
>http://ca.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/mwalters@xxxxxxxxxx/album?.dir=/6754&.src=ph
>) had blown-out highlights. The entertainers were dressed in white
>blouses/shirts, which obviously didn't help.
>
>
First, I agree with Chuck. Looking at your sample, I can't believe the
highlights are actually blown out on the film. Color neg film has very
large latitude, esp. on the over side.
Buying develop and scan, I have had some rather good scans, a couple
with weird colors, some with very excessive contrast and consequent loss
of highlight and shadow detail, some ok ones.... In no cse was the film
at fault, it was all in the scanning.
And that's all from the same shop and same equipment! Imagine the
possible variations across different shops!
Here's a detail from a shot of our cat. The commercial scan is not one
of the worst. I didn't make any special efforts with my scan, just
scanned the roll 'cause the scans from the shop weren't up to what I
wanted <http://moosemystic.net/Gallery/tech/ScanComp.htm>.
You will see that all the detail that just smushed into two white blobs
is indeed there on the film. Then look at the shadows. There is also
better tonal definition and detail in the shadows. There is even better
tone/detail in the top of the grass shoot on the left, which isn't at
the extreme of brightness.
By the way, the scanner that made this sample is for sale now that I
have its big brother, the 4000 dpi version. A reasonably priced way to
get back what is in your film.
I know this sounds like commercial, non-pro scanning is crap. In all
fairness, while that is true, the results are generally not much worse
than automated prints. One of the real joys of being able to do my own
scanning is discovering that many of my old photos that didn't look
anything like I envisioned when taking them are indeed what I wanted on
the film, but were betrayed by poor/indifferent printing. Many shots
that were just quickly passed over when flipping through the prints are
now wonderful.
Needless to say, I just get my neg film developed and cut into strips of
six for feeding into the scanner now.
>So, the questions I have are:
>
>a) how should I meter such scenes to preserve the highlights? and
>
>
If staying at the mercy of cheap scanning, I'd just meter from the
brighter parts or set EV down about a stop. Anything more sophisticated
is just overkill.
Moose
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