A post-processing dilemma (a.k.a. nightmare)

[deldridg]

Hi all - I wonder if anyone can sympathise and offer advice (or a shoulder to cry on...)!

Having just scanned and processed 6 rolls of B&W (shot with a Pentax 645) for a friend's upcoming exhibition, I've put a burst of energy into improving my digitising post-processing workflow (as you do when it's for someone else's work). They've come out better than I expected and the final results are an improvement on what I've done in the past.

Now when I look over my old scans, I'm not loving them so much any more, especially the early ones ugghhh. What was I thinking??? :bang:

This poses an obvious dilemma and being a bit of a perfectionist, it's becoming clear that I'm going to have to do a whole lot of rework. No doubt will need to be a bit selective but it's likely to be a lot of late nights while the family is sleeping.

On the bright side, it's a lovely way to re-acquaint oneself with one's past images but it's also very daunting, with many thousands of likely contenders, many of which I'll just have to rescan and start again!

What's to say this won't happen again when I discover some wonderful new approach??!!! I hope I'm not the only one who's faced this...

Cheers,
Dave
PS. I'm actually a little bit excited about it if not a bit nightmarish... 😀

 

[Bill Clark]

You're normal. I sometimes see the same as you but I examine my work to see how I can do better the next time. I usually don't re-work but move on and learn from what photographs I made.

 

[jarski]

perhaps shots you especially like and are proud off, why not re-work them with new skills?

 

[deldridg]

You're normal. I sometimes see the same as you but I examine my work to see how I can do better the next time. I usually don't re-work but move on and learn from what photographs I made.

Nice to know I'm not alone Bill! Part of the positive side of this dynamic is the potential to unearth some long forgotten gems of old holidays, when the kids were young etc.

It's a continual and life-long learning curve isn't it?! This time around it's been a big enough step-change to warrant a revisit of some of my older work. There's just so damned much of it! 🙂

Cheers,
David

 

[deldridg]

perhaps shots you especially like and are proud off, why not re-work them with new skills?

Indeed that's the only approach available. Simply not viable to rescan and re-process hundreds upon hundreds of rolls at 10-15 mins just to scan each image!!

So as you say, it's time to fire up the light-table, open a bottle of red and begin the selection process! Actually doesn't sound too bad does it??!!

Cheers,
Dave

 

[Bill Clark]

Yes, photography is a life long learning curve. This forum has been helpful for me. I hope I help other members like you David.

Have a wonderful weekend.

 

[peterm1]

I no longer use film so do not scan. But I have had similar experiences as I learned new post processing techniques and found that my old efforts now were sometimes poor by comparison. And hence required rework. In fact in the early days as I experimented with methods for post processing it was sometimes not too unusual for me to rework some shots 4, 5 or more times as I experimented with them. This was particularly the case when some shots had problems like excessive tonal range that produced blown highlights and too dark shadows which then required extensive masking etc in the image. Part of learning I am afraid. It is also for this reason that I mostly started to shoot in RAW format and even where I did not do so would always keep the original jpg file from the camera and save any processed ones by a new name. That way I can always come back and redo an image if needed. When I was scanning film I also found something similar. Usually I would find that the scanned file had lats of flaws (like dust specks) which needed a huge amount of work to fix. I would fix those problems and again keep the resulting edited image as a kind of backup file for possible future reworks. Of course that does not help if the scanning itself is problematic.

 

[Pioneer]

I'm not sure your dilemma will ever end whether it is scanned film or digital capture. I have 6mp digital photos that print far better with update post processing and printing software.

Of course this doesn't even begin to consider the changes in your personal style and increase in your knowledge.

If you read up on some of the great photographers of the past you will find that they themselves found that their earlier work no longer ranked very high in their minds.

Photography is a continual process just as any other craft is. The more we learn and the better our equipment becomes, the more our work changes, or it should anyway.

 

[deldridg]

Thanks Dan and Peter. If we could easily become experts with no room for improvement we wouldn't be here would we?! I took my first shot about 40 years ago and there are times I feel like I'm a rank beginner. (Love your tag Dan - very appropriate).

Reminds me of a woodworking story - when a woodworker's grandson asked how he could learn to make dovetails like his grandfather, the reply was considered - "Well sonny, work hard at it for 20 years and then you can call yourself a beginner." 🙂

Part of the reason for wanting to do some rescanning (without going into painful detail, irrelevant to this forum), is that it's only relatively recently I've started using ColorPerfect, bypassing any film conversion profiles in the scanner with, I think far superior results all in all. ColorPerfect's requirement is for 48 bit (read "HUGE") HDR linear gamma scans, skirting any adjustment algorithms in the scanning software (SilverFast or VueScan in my case) - I make these in TIFF and store them away.

While ColorPerfect is very comprehensive and deep, albeit with a very German i/face (said with respect and affection), I make simple use of it to convert my scanned negs and do any post-processing in Capture One, again highly comprehensive but I use it very simply. Philosophically I am not interested in modifying my shots too much ("you should've just taken it like that in the first place" - ever heard that before??), just fairly basic tonal adjustments and some judicious sharpening. Almost no local adjustments.

I think a good start to digitising is to have an archive of the best quality raw scans you can, given limitations. So this with the new recipe thanks to ColorPerfect will be the starting point. Then it's more red wine and time to post-edit in C1. WHOO-HOOO!

Sorry - got a bit carried away there. Truth is this stuff is great fun, don't you think?? 😀

Cheers,
Dave

 

[Godfrey]

I only very very rarely go backwards in time and rework photos I've already "finished". I'm quite confident now in the quality of the machinery I use to scan, and in my ability to get all the data off that film, so the problem of re-scanning never arises.

G

 

[John Bragg]

I have been scanning for about 3 years or so but have a much older archive of negatives produced for wet printing over the last 30 years or more. Even so my early attempts at scanning left much to be desired, but my recent work has improved tremendously ! I only shoot mono and have adopted a similar approach with my workflow to traditional darkroom work, in that I develop the film to suit the scanner characteristics, (as I had to with my enlarger) and dont just accept box speed and standard development as correct for me. By making the best possible negative I reduce the ammount of post processing to a bare minimum and it works for me. The hard work is already done at the developing stage and that negative is an archival master copy. Just applying a traditional solutuon to a modern problem.

 

[Mudman]

Generally I only rescan if I get a request for a photograph. I've had a few photos from 2008 or before lately that have appeared in books and or large prints. I didn't own a good scanner at the time, and the files were sub-par for anything other than web use. The clients were very pleased once they saw the detail in the new files.