April 2012 Portraits

[Luke79]

Thank you guys for your help , i will correct that, i have to practice morein ps

True, I really like the light, pose and depth of field. The hot spot in the nose bothered me from the start. Really easy to soften it by the way (PS).

[Myxine]

Myxine: in Vuescan, set it in Advanced mode and press ctrl-2 to get the contrast-adjustment histogram. Drag the whitepoint slider so that it just nearly touches the highlights; likewise with the black point slider and shadows. That will get you a good start and at least avoid the no-highlights problem in your posted portrait. You can also drag the Brightness slider downwards to get more highlight-contrast at the cost of
lower midtones; it's a similar effect to printing a bit darker.

Note that if you have a lot of dynamic range in the scene, you will need to clip some of it off or the print will be flat: negs hold much more range than prints.

Hey Polyglot,
Thanks for the heads up on vuescan. What's weird is that i used the adjustement histogram and even though mine works quite clumsily, the black and white points were set. I'm telling you: something wrong happens..
Someone suggested somewhere that one could/should use the color neg to scan the B&W negs too, i don't know. Definitely i can't shoot the picture again, she's back in Spain

Luke79: may i suggest something in PS: use the clone tool set to lightness. You select a skin tone that you like close to the hotspot as a reference and then correct the hotspot. Usually, it looks very natural and it's easy to do

[Ramiro Elena]

Luke79, what Myxine said. You could also use the healing brush tool which basically does the same as the clone tool in a duplicate layer. This way you can adjust the layer opacity and still have a little of that hot spot to define shape.



75% layer opacity.



100% layer opacity.

[Luke79]

thank you very much guys for your help, i will try that and practice, really nice !!!

[jcoldslabs]

Twin self-portraits taken this afternoon with a Kodak 2D 8x10, a 15" f/4 B&L Petzval and expired Kodak Low Contrast Aerial Duplicating Film (SO-277) at EI 1.5. The film is cut from a 400 foot roll that is 6.6" wide. I left the ragged cut ends and taped corners visible in the scans.

These were shot with the patented WIFE™ shutter. The WIFE™ shutter is akin to the Galli™ shutter in that it utilizes a 5x7 dark slide as the shutter blade, but the similarity ends there. These are two different images (I got up to replace the dark slide and turn the film holder around between shots) and the WIFE™ shutter was surprisingly consistent with both exposures of around 1/2 sec. each.

Not sure what I was going for here, but it was fun to mess around before I had to mow the grass which I did immediately afterward.



Jonathan

[RPippin]

Where do you get one of those WIFE shutters. Mine can't stand to go out shooting with me and would rather have root canal than help out. Would this be similar to a GIRLFRIEND shutter?

[numnutz]

Would this be similar to a GIRLFRIEND shutter?...

It is a well known issue with a wife shutter that it may go bananas when in proximity to a Girlfriend shutter, thus requiring both to need a very expensive CLA usually involving jewelry...

nn

[Michael E]

Where do you get one of those WIFE shutters. Mine can't stand to go out shooting with me and would rather have root canal than help out. Would this be similar to a GIRLFRIEND shutter?

GIRLFRIEND shutters tend to work best in a short period of time after acquisition. By the time you get a WIFE shutter, it might be useless for photographic purposes. If you however have a working and reliable WIFE shutter, make sure to hold on to it.

I second the question: How do I find a WIFE shutter?

Michael

[jessicadittmer]

I have a "HUBBY" shutter sometimes....but I prefer to be BEHIND the camera...much less scary for those that may view the image later LOL

[Scott Walker]

Where do you get one of those WIFE shutters. Mine can't stand to go out shooting with me and would rather have root canal than help out.

Mine is the exact opposite, I can't seem to shake her
She'll even break trail when we are snowshoeing because she carries a bit of food and a dozen 8x10 holders so her pack is much lighter than mine.