Photography/Videography Discussion

  • Thread starter nobuffalo
  • 199 comments
  • 19,813 views
Thanks for the help guys. I've placed the order and will get to blind myself repeatedly taking self portraits for practice this Wednesday!
 
I don't know if anyone has experience with the printing side of things but which produces a better result with 35mm film....

Old school enlarging then printing from a negative.

or

Scanning the negative then printing out the digital image.

I want to enlarge some old negatives for framing, the benefit of them going to a computer first is that I could remove the date stamp. I'm not sure if photo developers even do anything manual anymore, do they digitally scan all film negatives for printing anyway?
 
I don't know if anyone has experience with the printing side of things but which produces a better result with 35mm film....

Old school enlarging then printing from a negative.

or

Scanning the negative then printing out the digital image.

I want to enlarge some old negatives for framing, the benefit of them going to a computer first is that I could remove the date stamp. I'm not sure if photo developers even do anything manual anymore, do they digitally scan all film negatives for printing anyway?
Unless you're printing really, really large, getting a good scan will probably work out better. The largest print I've made from 35mm was scanned and printed at 13 x 19 inches and it looked great.
 
Unless you're printing really, really large, getting a good scan will probably work out better. The largest print I've made from 35mm was scanned and printed at 13 x 19 inches and it looked great.

I'm not sure what kind of quality your average high street (drug store style) photo place can scan negatives. I heard that most use home grade type scanners :indiff:. Also most won't scan one image here and there, only strips.

Unfortunately my scanner doesn't have that feature and because I only want to do a handful I wouldn't really want to buy new hardware. If old school enlarging in a dark room is all but dead I guess I would have to take them somewhere which does a reasonably good digital job.
 
I'm not sure what kind of quality your average high street (drug store style) photo place can scan negatives. I heard that most use home grade type scanners :indiff:. Also most won't scan one image here and there, only strips.

Unfortunately my scanner doesn't have that feature and because I only want to do a handful I wouldn't really want to buy new hardware. If old school enlarging in a dark room is all but dead I guess I would have to take them somewhere which does a reasonably good digital job.
I just used a flatbed scanner with negative holder. The difference is that I had time to sit around while scanning at a really high resolution, which most shops probably won't do. There's a reason photo stores charge quite a lot for "high-res" scans.
 
Unfortunately my scanner doesn't have that feature and because I only want to do a handful I wouldn't really want to buy new hardware. If old school enlarging in a dark room is all but dead I guess I would have to take them somewhere which does a reasonably good digital job.
Or digitise with a DSLR, tripod and lightsource. 👍
https://petapixel.com/2012/12/23/wh...our-film-using-a-camera-instead-of-a-scanner/

https://petapixel.com/2012/05/18/how-to-scan-film-negatives-with-a-dslr/
 
If I only owned a DSLR! :lol:

I know lots of cheap film "scanners" like ones sold on Amazon use the same method of actually taking a picture of the negative but they obviously use garbage phone sized cameras.
 
Can we please stop calling interchangeable lens cameras (ILCs) dSLRs?

@Robin - sensor size isn't the end all be all of image quality, really just depends on the file resolution, optics, and what kind of processing is done for the jpeg output. Though I'd just do what @Turtle suggested and get a negative holder for your flatbed scanner.
 
@Robin - sensor size isn't the end all be all of image quality, really just depends on the file resolution, optics, and what kind of processing is done for the jpeg output. Though I'd just do what @Turtle suggested and get a negative holder for your flatbed scanner.

Even with a negative holder my scanner can't do them because you need a lid mounted light source. Most modern scanners have an EL panel and turn off the main bed lamp. Even if I did some DIY job I can't turn off the main lamp.
 
Does anyone here use 18% Grey cards?

I got a set today along with the Black & White, I'm looking forward to trying them out later next week.

I'm interested to hear what others do to correct WB.
 
Does anyone here use 18% Grey cards?

I got a set today along with the Black & White, I'm looking forward to trying them out later next week.

I'm interested to hear what others do to correct WB.

I have a grey card... haven't used it in years though. Might for some product types shots but I generally just have white or black in the frame and use that as the basis for white balance. For all my other stuff... kind of just eyeball it and check the RGB values at a few points if it is bit tricky.

Honestly, I'm more concerned with mood and tones than accurately balancing the colors.
 
Not sure where to put this, so I'll just put it here.

https://amyshorephotography.com/2017/05/04/the-giant-how-to-of-car-photography/

I follow this photographer and she asked for questions for a Q&A. A couple of my questions got answered. There's a lot of good stuff about how to become a professional photographer. It's a really good read if anyone's interested.


Ahh, Amy Shore. I am huge fan of her work and I actually communicated with her a few months ago. It goes without saying that I'm definitely going to give this a read when I get a chance (not right now while straying and doing things other than work).
 
I was asked to shoot a kickboxing night for my friend's brother, based on one image I got of him last time around taken on my phone.

As a landscape hobbyist and antique photographer I certainly don't have access to the right kit to do sports photography justice, but I attempted it anyway out of kindness. I had to crank my 5Dii to ISO 6400 and at times it began to smell of smoke as I rattled off action frames, but to its credit it didn't bug out on me, so that's something.

What I enjoyed most was getting more subtle, non fighting moments, since there was a couple of event photographers there anyway. Plus, I had a 70-200 so the distance and telephoto got me much different angles to ringside. I'm really happy with the results, for sure.

 
Something I've always struggled with has been getting accurate colors. Accurate colors and proper exposure, really. I've had a ColorChecker passport but only used it to get a base white balance setting in camera. I finally decided to put a little effort into this color accuracy issue and it is a very simple process. Photograph color checker in the same lighting as my subject. Convert raw file to DNG. Import it into the ColorChecker Camera Calibration software and create a camera profile. Import camera profile into Lightroom CC and apply to photo. Done. Really digging the results and I think I can continue to use this process to make my photos more true to life and prevent me from wanting to apply some fancy filter.

First image is straight from the camera with white balance set in camera using the 18% grey side of the ColorChecker passport.

Second image is after creating and applying the new camera profile using a photo of the ColorChecker passport, the side that has all the colors. I also used this image to reset the white balance, using one of the smaller neutral grey squares.
This is the video I used to learn the process.

DSC03709-3.jpg
DSC03709-4.jpg
 
Last edited:
Curious to what folks would recommend for a camera rain cover? Been borrowing my friend's Amazon JJC camera rain cover, but of course I feel the need to get my own. Been to a few events with predicted rain and would of course like to protect my gear. I would say a length of about 15" or so would work with the possibility of using a monopod/tripod. I hate the numerous off-brand...brands listed on sites like eBay or Amazon, but looking to spend $20 or so. The name brand ones I looked up at the local photography stores are about $70 or more.
 
Curious to what folks would recommend for a camera rain cover? Been borrowing my friend's Amazon JJC camera rain cover, but of course I feel the need to get my own. Been to a few events with predicted rain and would of course like to protect my gear. I would say a length of about 15" or so would work with the possibility of using a monopod/tripod. I hate the numerous off-brand...brands listed on sites like eBay or Amazon, but looking to spend $20 or so. The name brand ones I looked up at the local photography stores are about $70 or more.
I've used a number of what would be sub $20 covers over the last decade and I've come to the following conclusion; If the camera isn't going to need to be adjusted, and is tripod mounted of largely static, they're all fine. If you need to adjust the camera, or move it around a lot, they're all mostly as rubbish as each other.

I was at Goodwood FOS at the weekend and got absolutely drenched, and despite having my latest camera cover on, I've now got moisture ingress into the LED Screen.

Untitled-1.jpg


It didn't help that I was literally shifting from a 24mm pancake lens to my 200-400 push/pull, and having to frequently change the ISO, and cycle through the preview images every few seconds to see if I was getting it right.

Some of the photos came out alright though.

IMG_8152g.JPG



My next camera cover will be a DIY crafted effort, that I can design to my needs and make on the cheap.
 
I think my dream camera has finally become real:



Now it just needs to be the size of my phone. :lol:
 
Back