Gregm61
Well-known
Simply put, beautiful quality..
https://adrianbacon.com/
I sent a couple of rolls of TMax 400 for a test run that I exposed through my Leica M4, using a set of lenses consisting of the 18mm f3.8 Super Elmar, 35mm f1.4 Summilux FLE, 90mm f2 APO Summicron and 135f3.4 APO Telyt.
I'll just say this up front, if we all had the same film processing and scanning talent as someone like Erik Van Straten (gorgeous stuff) labs like this would never be necessary. Unfortunately....NOT, in my case.
Adrian processed the files and sent me a zip file of the resulting 72 DNG files last night. Oh, to not having had to process and scan those myself, LOL...
Actually I had already gone to bed so I downloaded them this morning into my M4 file folder where I had previously loaded (poorly) scanned images with a Plustek scanner. I eyeballed them all, but only had time to run three through Adobe Camera raw and loaded to my Smugmug web page this morning.
The raw file quality is quite excellent. I typically shoot with a Monochrome M246 or one of two color bodies, an MP240 and/or M262. I am sending Adrian two rolls of Kodak Ektar 100 I ran through an M6 last weekend to see how those work.
For the most part my exposure technique was simply using the Sunny 16 rule and adding time as I felt it was needed for subjects with more or less shadow detail. For one or two images I used an incident reading with a hand-held Sekonic meter.
The DNG files are HUGE, and it was amazing how well I was able to open up shadow detail and images shot with contrasty skies the detail was retained so well. All I had to do was pull back on the Highlights/white exposure sliders in the exposure tab, or dial back the highlights in the tone curve adjustment. The resulting JPEG's I loaded to my Smugmug page are 28-29 MB each.
Keep in mind, the images below are "quick and dirty" processing in ACR. I still have plenty of work to do in determining optimal sharpening and other slider settings that will effect everything from contrast to amount of grain, etc.
Here is the one image I captured with the 18mm f3.8 Super Elmar, against the light. No color filter used, yet I was able to get all the detail I could have wanted in the sky on this shot, which would have been very tricky to do with the M246. This was a straight "Sunny 16" exposure. I may have added a tad additional exposure for shadow detail.
90mm f2 APO Summicron..
and with the 35mm f1.4 Summilux FLE..
One aspect of shooting this images one cannot discount is how different it is compared to shooting digitally, unless one is using something like the MD262 with no back LCD. No chimping and checking exposure, re-shooting to "get it right" in the moment. I simply walked, saw what I wanted to shoot, shot, and walked on. It was quite nice, and when I got home I didn't immediately run to the computer to download raw files to see how everything worked. The process from the time I mailed the film off to when I loaded the images to my computer took about a week, and that was with the Labor Day holiday in the mix.
I'll load some more images here tonight after processing the rest of the two rolls. These three images are the first three files on the page shown at the link below, if you want to view or download the full 11,873 x 7,935 (!) jpeg files.
An aside to all this, any suggestions on a good EXIF data manipulation tool I could use to add the camera/lens detail to that data?
Greg
https://gmchappell.smugmug.com/Other/Leica-M4/i-W2v5Gtz
https://adrianbacon.com/
I sent a couple of rolls of TMax 400 for a test run that I exposed through my Leica M4, using a set of lenses consisting of the 18mm f3.8 Super Elmar, 35mm f1.4 Summilux FLE, 90mm f2 APO Summicron and 135f3.4 APO Telyt.
I'll just say this up front, if we all had the same film processing and scanning talent as someone like Erik Van Straten (gorgeous stuff) labs like this would never be necessary. Unfortunately....NOT, in my case.
Adrian processed the files and sent me a zip file of the resulting 72 DNG files last night. Oh, to not having had to process and scan those myself, LOL...
Actually I had already gone to bed so I downloaded them this morning into my M4 file folder where I had previously loaded (poorly) scanned images with a Plustek scanner. I eyeballed them all, but only had time to run three through Adobe Camera raw and loaded to my Smugmug web page this morning.
The raw file quality is quite excellent. I typically shoot with a Monochrome M246 or one of two color bodies, an MP240 and/or M262. I am sending Adrian two rolls of Kodak Ektar 100 I ran through an M6 last weekend to see how those work.
For the most part my exposure technique was simply using the Sunny 16 rule and adding time as I felt it was needed for subjects with more or less shadow detail. For one or two images I used an incident reading with a hand-held Sekonic meter.
The DNG files are HUGE, and it was amazing how well I was able to open up shadow detail and images shot with contrasty skies the detail was retained so well. All I had to do was pull back on the Highlights/white exposure sliders in the exposure tab, or dial back the highlights in the tone curve adjustment. The resulting JPEG's I loaded to my Smugmug page are 28-29 MB each.
Keep in mind, the images below are "quick and dirty" processing in ACR. I still have plenty of work to do in determining optimal sharpening and other slider settings that will effect everything from contrast to amount of grain, etc.
Here is the one image I captured with the 18mm f3.8 Super Elmar, against the light. No color filter used, yet I was able to get all the detail I could have wanted in the sky on this shot, which would have been very tricky to do with the M246. This was a straight "Sunny 16" exposure. I may have added a tad additional exposure for shadow detail.
90mm f2 APO Summicron..
and with the 35mm f1.4 Summilux FLE..
One aspect of shooting this images one cannot discount is how different it is compared to shooting digitally, unless one is using something like the MD262 with no back LCD. No chimping and checking exposure, re-shooting to "get it right" in the moment. I simply walked, saw what I wanted to shoot, shot, and walked on. It was quite nice, and when I got home I didn't immediately run to the computer to download raw files to see how everything worked. The process from the time I mailed the film off to when I loaded the images to my computer took about a week, and that was with the Labor Day holiday in the mix.
I'll load some more images here tonight after processing the rest of the two rolls. These three images are the first three files on the page shown at the link below, if you want to view or download the full 11,873 x 7,935 (!) jpeg files.
An aside to all this, any suggestions on a good EXIF data manipulation tool I could use to add the camera/lens detail to that data?
Greg
https://gmchappell.smugmug.com/Other/Leica-M4/i-W2v5Gtz
