Superia X-tra 400 4th layer good or bad?

[ampguy]

Thanks Roland

Thanks Roland

Great info. I'll have to check out the negative and remember to expose the Superia properly, which I think may be a third or half step more or so than I've been giving it.

It looks like it was underexposed and then digitally lightened up, Ted. This
is exactly the type of Superia grain you get with an underexposed negative and/or
cheap scanner and digital post processing. If you check the negative,
I bet it will have no visible grain.

All the best for the new year to you, too ! Hope we can have a beer soon.

Roland.

 

[dmr]

is it possible there was water or some temporary liquid on your lens when you took these?

I'm very very sure it was very dry in both cases. In this particular photo, there is snow in the scene, but otherwise it was a clear night and I'm in the habit of always capping the lens when I'm not actually shooting. The others I took that night (some in my gallery, Night Scene album, such as "Positively 10th. Street" and "Rent") didn't show anything like this.

This particular one was very interesting to analyze, although it was a total disaster as a photo I would want to show off. Here's a version of it that I posted on "another network" a while back and got some very interesting comments.

The levels are adjusted to reveal 5 distinct aberrations here.

1. This is the hardest to see in the original. It's a circle, with the edge on the very brightest light in the scene. Nobody could identify what actually caused this one.

2. The "Rainbow In The Dark!" (Yes, I'm a Dio fan!) If you look closely it does show yellow and red on the outer edge and blue and violet on the inner edge. One guy speculated that this is an image of the joining of 2 of the lens elements with the Canada Balsam, and that causes the rainbow effect due to the difference in refraction of the different colors as they pass through the normally clear cement. I have no clue as to if this is really the case or not.

3, 4, 5. These are three very distinct "UFOs", all with different axes if you look very closely. IIRC, the axis of 3 points to the same light source as the edge of 1, but I can't find the version of this where all axes were extended to the sources. They have told me (the ubiquitous "they") that this is very typical of the internal reflections in multi-element lenses.

Anyway, it was a very interesting photo to analyze.

 

[ampguy]

The UFO theory

The UFO theory

makes the most sense, that thing in the upper left looks like an engine valve or champagne glass going through a complex mathematical function in a bubble. Do you live in NV? Near Area 51??

I don't know about the Canadian Balsam, wouldn't it be more of a common thing being seen??

I'm very very sure it was very dry in both cases. In this particular photo, there is snow in the scene, but otherwise it was a clear night and I'm in the habit of always capping the lens when I'm not actually shooting. The others I took that night (some in my gallery, Night Scene album, such as "Positively 10th. Street" and "Rent") didn't show anything like this.

This particular one was very interesting to analyze, although it was a total disaster as a photo I would want to show off. Here's a version of it that I posted on "another network" a while back and got some very interesting comments.

The levels are adjusted to reveal 5 distinct aberrations here.

1. This is the hardest to see in the original. It's a circle, with the edge on the very brightest light in the scene. Nobody could identify what actually caused this one.

2. The "Rainbow In The Dark!" (Yes, I'm a Dio fan!) If you look closely it does show yellow and red on the outer edge and blue and violet on the inner edge. One guy speculated that this is an image of the joining of 2 of the lens elements with the Canada Balsam, and that causes the rainbow effect due to the difference in refraction of the different colors as they pass through the normally clear cement. I have no clue as to if this is really the case or not.

3, 4, 5. These are three very distinct "UFOs", all with different axes if you look very closely. IIRC, the axis of 3 points to the same light source as the edge of 1, but I can't find the version of this where all axes were extended to the sources. They have told me (the ubiquitous "they") that this is very typical of the internal reflections in multi-element lenses.

Anyway, it was a very interesting photo to analyze.

 

[dmr]

Do you live in NV? Near Area 51??

Uh, no, but I do visit semi-frequently for both business and pleasure. I do have a photo somewhere of me standing by the "Black Mailbox" which is actually white now.

I don't know about the Canadian Balsam, wouldn't it be more of a common thing being seen??

I really don't know. I can try to find the original post on that. My guess is that #2 is indeed made by some kind of discontinuity, but I don't know if it's between two lens elements, the edge of a lens element, or something else in the mix.

I do know that Canada Balsam is kind of like a gooey thick turpentine stuff which is optically inert and used to cement lenses, prisms, things like that. I learned about it when repairing the GIII a few years ago, but I didn't have to personally deal with it.

Here's the Wiki article on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_balsam