Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/02/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Thanks to everyone who took the time to look at the Laos and Vietnam images. Feedback from as accomplished a group as the LUG is very instructive. I especially appreciate when people list favorites. Some of the favorites have surprised me. Anyway, the feedback was a big help in whittling down the images to show at the ASMP portfolio night coming up in a couple of weeks. Since some have asked offline...These images were all shot on the new Fuji Velvia 100, mostly with Leica M6s. I think 3 or 4 were done with a Canon EOS1n. They were scanned with a Nikon LS-4000. I'm becoming a believer in shooting color transparency film, even if the final goal is a black and white print. You can apply b&w filters after the fact, and adjust the RBG levels with the channel mixer before turning the image into monochrome. From there, I made them into quadtones, using Ken Lee's bronze profile for Photoshop. You can get it here: http://www.kenleegallery.com/bronze.htm I have also been playing around with making quadtones from digital captures taken with the digital cameras. Oddly enough, I'm finding that these seem to require a lot more manipulation than the film scans to get the tonality right. I am especially having problems in getting smooth tonal gradations. Take the photo of this Berber fellow, for instance, captured in RAW format with a Canon 1Ds at ISO 200 at full 11mp resolution: http://www.spectare.com/gallery/saw/20cw0927.jpg If you look at the dunes in the left area of this photo, there are lots of gentle tonal gradations. I had a really hard time getting these to appear smooth, without a kind of "stepped" look. I tried all sorts of things - lowering saturation and contrast during raw conversion, etc. I'm sure there's a way, but this photo proved very challenging and took as much time to adjust as all the Laos/Vietnam film scans combined. Any tips from the LUG's digital experts? - --Jim - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html