hi Moose
My responses in between...
On 02/07/07, Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> I have a family album, the early part of which is full of pics of my
> brothers and me that are contact prints from 6x9 and 6x6 negatives. I
> also have some 6x6 contact prints from the Brownie Hawkeye I had as a
> kid. I have done some work scanning these and some even older prints. I
> also have had the benefit of my mother's care in preserving some things.
> The contact prints in the early part of the album have the negs
> carefully stored behind them.
That's where I am at a disadvantage because I have no negs to work from.
Although I have not yet started any serious work scanning them for my
> brothers and our children and grandchildren, I have done some testing
> and come to some preliminary conclusions.
>
> - The films of the time were slow, as were the lenses.
Yes. If my memory serves me well, I think it was Kodak film rated well below
ISO100. As for the lens, how good could it possibly be considering it was
only a Brownie??? f4.5?
There is a fair
> amount of motion blur, such that many shots that look pretty good at
> contact print size just don't have much more to reveal at larger size.
Well, it's a photo of my granddad's old house, which is already completely
pulled down. That was the house that my dad grew up in and since it was the
only photo he he has now, he liked me to do something with it...kinda like
blow it up or something...but....from a 6x6cm photo? Because it's a still,
there was no motion blur, so I'm spared here but at that kind of size, I
have serious doubts what I could truly do. I do plan to do a basic scan of
it and post it up for you guys to give me more comments on....should I do
that?
- The 75 mm Kodak Anastigmat on the 6x9 folder my father had when I was
> born and for a few years afterward, together with whatever limitations
> the camera had with film flatness and holding the lens square, together
> with guesstimate distance settings, conspired to limit the detail in
> most of those old pics.
If you think the 6x9 is already limited, I hate to think what a Brownie 6x6
would do...
There are some pretty good ones, but by later
> standards, there are a lot of flaws. There are a lot of blurry pics of
> me as a baby and toddler. The number of pics per child went down as
> there came to be more of us, but the quality went up. :-)
>
> - Much as I liked my little Brownie, the single speed shutter and
> primitive lens meant that there is nothing really to see beyond what is
> there in the 6x6 contact prints.
That's what I feared.
- With the arrival of a Kodak twin lens reflex, with a better taking
> lens and true reflex focusing, and most likely, faster films, there is
> suddenly more detail to be found in the negatives than in the contact
> prints. Up until then, the resolving power of the print emulsion is
> capable of retaining pretty much the detail available in the negative,
> with perhaps a few exceptions. With the new camera and whatever
> improvements in film had occurred, this is no longer the case, a scan of
> the negative has more detail than a scan of the print.
>
> - In my experience, Chuck is right, even a quite modest flatbed is
> capable of capturing all the detail and tonal range that these old
> contact prints hold. That is NOT to say that suitable scanner software
> settings and post processing can't vastly improve the visible detail and
> overall appearance of some such old images. LCE and Curves can sometimes
> work what appears to be magic in revealing detail not apparent on print
> or original scan. Other times - well, sometimes there just isn't much
> there.
I don't think there's really much there but I'll let you be the judge when I
can put it up for you to see.
My guess is that an old 6x6 contact print from a Brownie may simply not
> have much to reveal.
>
> Unless you can get a hold of the special software used by TV forensics
> techs. You know, the stuff that can enhance the image from one frame of
> a videotape that has been recorded over a couple of thousand times,
> taken through a $32 camera with a $3 fixed focus lens in the shade of a
> column in a dimly lit parking garage and enhance and enlarge it until
> the reflected image a a parking stub reflected in the rear view mirror
> can be read.
Need to check in on Peter Graves* for that.....
(* that guy from Mission Impossible....)
What a properly functioning and operated scanner can't find at 600 dpi,
> isn't going to be there for a camera either.
Thanks Moose.
K.
Moose
>
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