like a dog with two tails

[robc]

Just got my new scanner so just had to post my first effort here...

first impressions? I need a new PC to process files this big and I could have printed it in the darkroom in a fraction of the time. Hmmm but I am learning.

[Walt Calahan]

Beautiful photograph Rob!

[Robert Skeoch]

That's a nice photo.
-Rob

[Brian Ellis]

"I could have printed it in the darkroom in a fraction of the time. Hmmm but I am learning."

I don't think this is unusual even after you've learned more. I usually spend more time making a print digitally than I used to in the darkroom. I think the ready availability of so many options combined with the ease of trying them (and undoing them if they don't work) tends to make you work more with the print and also makes you unwilling to accept anything less than perfection ("perfection" in this sense meaning to get the print exactly as you want it, rather than 95% as you want it). And your first effort certainly is a very nice photograph.

[John Flavell]

Very nice photograph. What kind of scanner would that be?

[John_4185]

Rocks don't rock anymore.

[robc]

thanks all for comments.

The scanner is an epson F3200.

The finished image tells a different story from what you get from the scanner. The shadows were really underexposed and extremely thin on the neg so I had to do two scans, the second one with sliders shoved right up the levels to extract the faint detail from the neg. Then overlay with "soft light" and much further PS work playing around with levels, curves, brightness and contrast to get to where its currently at. There was NO sharpening done. Any apparent sharpness is due to local contrast controlled in PS.

I have added the two scans to the page.

[John_4185]

Rob, I have an epson 3200 and find it adequate for modest, say 4x prints, max. Sampling at 1600ppi or greater is futile. But 4x for 4x5 is good. When the rest of the world has 40" 120ppi monitors we can upgrade. The negatives will outlast the emerging technology.

BTW - a local studio was all analog. They sold out to a fellow who converted it to all digital. He went bottom-up fast because his part-time professional workflow and expectations couldn't possiby handle the existing clientel demands (and little things like Doing Right in the Camera in the First Place). Now that nice little $200k annual net has been distributed among half a dozen all-digital photographers who can't keep up, either. It is an interesting study.

[robc]

I have actually printed this neg and the results are not disimilar to what I've done from the scan. The main difference being that getting any detail from the deep shadow on the left was beyond me in the darkroom. Maybe if I had put more time into it I could have extracted that detail, but it would have been difficult without using masks which I don't get along with(not enough practice).

jj thats an F3200 not a Perfection 3200. i.e. it is a film scanner not a flatbed although some of the internals are reportedly the same as the perfection 3200(probably the sensor).

Any flatbed scanner is hardware limited by its sensor. If it has 3200 sensors per inch of width, then scanning at a lower resolution means one of two things. 1. either the software throws away scan lines(your valuable resolution) or 2. the software interpolates, usually by using bicubic downsampling which introduces artifacts to the result(not usually visible). Vuescan throws away lines. I don't know what Silverfast does. I was using silverfast scanned at 3200dpi. I would always do the down sample in PS because in PS I have the option to undo or alter intermediate results. If you let the scan software do it then you get what it gives you. Also I found Vuescan to be very slow and memory intensive on my old PC since it creates a full size file in memory before downsizing it which takes even more memory. Also I like the Silverfast densitometer, curves and levels controls. Vuescan does nothing I can't achieve in PS just as quickly. The worst thing about Silverfast is that darn airplane with its spinning prop.

[Ken Lee]

Now that you have it in PS, you can do all kinds of subtle things to enhance it if you like, such as dodging or burning tiny edges or veins in the rocks, selective contrast control, etc. Only problem is the longevity of the inkjet print, but that's the flip side.