Digital versus Film!

[bwillis]

i recently drug out a bunch of 35MM negs and sent them off to scan cafe. most wer taking 94-95-96. the prints of these pix were nothing special. drugstore film, don't even remember camera but think canon slr. sent them off to scancafe.com.

recently got the 2 dvd's back and have been plugging them into lightroom. YOU CANNOT BELIEVE THE COLOR AND HOW AWESOME THE PIX ARE.

now the original prints were nothing special. in fact, i put the camera down for several yrs because i could never get decent pix. at the time, i really did not know much about photogr (and may still not) but i really didn't know much then

the interesting thing is how little processing these pix need in lightroom, about 1/5th as much as my digitals taken w a nikon d70, good lens, lot of studying on general technique, etc. its also interesting that when there is an adjustment, its usually something very subtle, just a tweak of exposure or some cropping. nothing like complete white balance overhauls as with my digitals.

can't wait to get some of my voightlander shots all scanned in and able to see on a nice laptop screen versus a crummy 4x5 print?

 

[Ronald M]

They did the tweeking for you.

My scans and digi require the same work. No difference. Just different work .

In the end, Leica film looks better than Nikon D200 even if I put Leica glass on the Nikon. There is a missing third dimension to digi usually. I have seen it, but it is rare.

 

[RayPA]

my drugstore scans-to-CD always look great. they're lower res, over sharpened, over saturated, require little processing, and are perfect for LCD screens and LCD picture frames. 🙂 Get them printed again. 😉 BTW, I scan my own now.


.

 

[landsknechte]

They did the tweeking for you.

My scans and digi require the same work. No difference. Just different work .

In the end, Leica film looks better than Nikon D200 even if I put Leica glass on the Nikon. There is a missing third dimension to digi usually. I have seen it, but it is rare.

How did you get Leica glass onto a Nikon SLR?? I thought that the flange distance of all the Leica formats would preclude mounting them on an F-mount Nikon.

(Not meaning to be confrontational, I'm genuinely curious as I shoot mostly LTM and Nikon digital.)

 

[rxmd]

How did you get Leica glass onto a Nikon SLR?? I thought that the flange distance of all the Leica formats would preclude mounting them on an F-mount Nikon.

Leica R has a lens register of 47 mm, Nikon F 46.5 mm, theoretically it would work. The problem is the throat of the Leica bayonet, which is too big to fit a Nikon mount. That's why for example there are no adapters from Leica R to Pentax K, which would comfortably fit registration-wise, but not diameter-wise.

There were some adapters which were thicker and had corrective optics inside to get infinity focus; with these it's no wonder that image quality is unconvincing, it would have little to do with digital and all with the adapter.

Otherwise I second RayPA's notion about minilab scans. If you look at the histogram for those it's no wonder that they look all colourful. It's like canned pop music that is run through a compressor. Afterwards it sounds better on a car radio, but that's it. Good scans are surprisingly difficult to get.

Philipp

 

[bwillis]

those scans were done by scan cafe who i think sends them to india. very high resolution.

curious ? tho - once in lightroom, white balance is first development control. on some, but not all and not even most, you can click auto white bal and the photo will improve. kind of confusing as what does white bal have to do with a scanned negative anyway????

 

[mascarenhas]

Think of the negative as your sensor and then white balance will make sense, and looks like your scanner isn't doing a very good job at it. 🙂 Or it's probably balancing everything as daylight for your specific film.