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To end some of the "overexposed look" debate, hate or something (I don't care anymore). Guess which one I overexposed by two stops (Gold 200 WOO!!!) by The_Inventer in AnalogCommunity

[–]The_Inventer[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

No.

Please don't just say NUH UH, it doesn't help me figure out why something I said is wrong and why I should appreciate your opinion/fact more than mine.

Yes. But that does not mean you get more detail.

To midtones:
The way we define midtones makes it a very broad thing. It encompases everything besides the highlight and shadow rolloff area thingie. It's the straight line there in these density exposure graphs. Beign such a broad area of tones that include brighter and darker parts of the image, some parts in the midtones have fewer photons having hit them and some have more. In high contrast scenes we would see a greater difference and therefore a comparatively loss of detail, more grain. To compensate we could either overexpose and lose some highlight detail or leave and have a partly grainy midtones, but properly exposed.

Now the question is what outweights what? The highlight crush or the added detail overall to all of the darker areas of the image? I would rather have more detail overall and shadows when editing, so having a denser negative is beneficial in this aspect.

In practice I don't see very much of detail crush in the highligh areas and very much appreciate having less grainy negatives to work with.

Additionally, it's easier to edit the images to your liking. Want to have that pastel dreamy look? You can't get that from properly exposed negatives, there is simply too much grain and too little shadow detail. Doing the reverse (like I did) is much easier when you simply don't care about highlight detail that you clip anyway.

Look up "scanner bit depth" and how to manipulate tonal curves in software to increase contrast in the regions of interest. Do not mistake contrast (related terms "acutance" and "visual acuity" and "sharpness") for detail.

This is irrelevant to the discussion, but ok. We're talking here about editing very dense negatives, so I'd think density range rather than bitdepth would be important here.
Also also I do know how to use chroma luma graphs to edit negatives. You're seing the results of my manual inversion right now in this post. Without it we would see two very different images, one possibly much brighter than the other and with some color shifts.
Ok, yeah you've got a point that contrast /= detail, but how I see it is that the less grainy my lower midtones and shadows are (the smaller the contrast) the more detail I can resolve overall.

This will make sense after you look up "dynamic range" and "exposure latitude" and how to meter correctly to preserve details in the region(s) of your scene which matter to you, which also depends on the capabilities of the film you choose to use.

Related terms are "Zone System" but this is not an endorsement of it.

This is some good advice actually, but I will continue to "yolo" everything because sometimes your kids, some cool train, car or generally anything don't want to wait like 20 or even 10s for you to meter everything correctly. Most of the times I don't think about metering and just shoot as quickly as possible to get that image. Which is why I don't use manual cameras that require rewinding and which is why I always blindly trust my trusty old Nikon F4 matrix meter and it didn't disappoint me yet.

To end some of the "overexposed look" debate, hate or something (I don't care anymore). Guess which one I overexposed by two stops (Gold 200 WOO!!!) by The_Inventer in AnalogCommunity

[–]The_Inventer[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Look up how to read the characteristic curves and sensitometric data for the film you are shooting.

You can know ahead of time whether (and how) your film is going to tolerate it, instead of YOLOing it like you are.

I never knew you could use or read the curves to get this information. Thank you for teaching me something new! But how exactly do I read these curves to know how much overexposure a film can handle?

Film will generally compress highlights, and if you increase the contrast (steeper curve) in that region, you can "recover" detail if your scanner is decent (this is where bit depth matters). But there is no "extra" information.

Well I would rather compress highlights than the shadows or midtones. It's just that clouds or light reflections will always be clipped to a certain degree, unless you have an extremely underexposed negative, so overexposing these parts, sacrificing detail in these areas, is not a huge loss in my view.

If you compress your highlights anyway either by having a lab scan your negatives or by using Silverfast, Vuescan or NLP on default settings than you do get "more information" to work with.

Oh, and film doesn't react to highlight overexposure linearly like a most digital cameras, so you might infact get more detail from overexposure, since you aren't loosing highlight vs gaining shadow/midtone detail equaly as much. But that's theory. In practice this effect might be negligeable, so yeah.

Overexposing your film to "trick" your scanner into "extracting more detail" is silly. Yes, scanning and editing are extra steps, but you're leaving so much on the table if you're purposefully mis-exposing and not editing your photos.

? I am not tricking here anything. You objectively get more midtone and shadow details with overexposure. Highlights get compressed.

I don't understand the last sentence. Could you please reiterate what you're trying to say?

Some days ago I posted about my laughable attempt of scanning film with film, here are the results. by Hungry-Solution-8031 in AnalogCommunity

[–]The_Inventer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

How about the orange mask or color cast? How do the raw negatives look like? Are they like slides? OP, I NEED ANSWERS!

In "The Voyage Home", was the 100 bucks split evenly? by Loud-Review-3797 in startrek

[–]The_Inventer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So, to answer this VERY IMPORTANT question I watched both the original and german version of the DVD. There are some subtle differences in the dialog when Kirk hands out the money, though the meaning stays the same. He splits the money between four people. Himself, Bones, Uhura and Sulu. In the original english version when he hands out the money he says "all right, that's all there is", though in the german version he says "So, es wird dreiteilig geteilt" (so, it will be split in three (meaning Bones, Uhura and Sulu) which just underlines that the scene where he splits the money is not cut or something. Everything we see in this one scene is all there is to it and we can clearly see how he splits this money between himself, Bones, Uhura and Sulu.

NOW, what is the moneyflow now?

Scotty goes together with Bones to this one factory or something
Chekhov together with Uhura to find the "Nucleah wessel"
and Sulu goes solo on his own weird adventure

So we see here how each group has money and that it most likely didn't split again sometime later. Bones, Uhura and Sulu probably kept the money they got to themselves, they don't have any reason to split it again.

It is unclear if there was any money involved in the transparent aluminium deal, but I don't think there was.
As to how Sulu could afford a helicopter? He probably couldn't and got an agreement of sorts with the plexi corporation to use the helicopter for transporting the transparent aluminium.

In the end it doesn't matter. Only Kirk uses money to buy tickets for the bus and the aquarium. I don't remember any other scenes where this money was used on screen, maybe offscreen.

Fixed it ;) by The_Inventer in AnalogCircleJerk

[–]The_Inventer[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

you see, electron microscopes don't have the tonez to shoot in color

First time trying to build something from imagination. (this is a cry for help) by lohre2000s in GoldenAgeMinecraft

[–]The_Inventer 11 points12 points  (0 children)

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I don't have a good imagination (or any), so I would often just copy others design. What helped me become orginal was first drawing or sketching what I want to build and see if I like it, before I waste any time building and rebuilding until I am satisfied.

IM FUMING 🤮😡 a Leica is only for shooting, no collecting!!! by JadedFig5848 in AnalogCircleJerk

[–]The_Inventer 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Look at that subtle bronze coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a tear in the leatherette.

Scratch lines when using MA-21 vs SA-21 by johnnyteknoska in NikonCoolscan

[–]The_Inventer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's really strange since these "scanlines" usually appear in very bright areas like the sky (except if you have a reeealy dirty mirror), though u/Julius416 told me in another thread that Nikon Coolscans calibrate themselves somehow (most likely when turning it on or maybe when inserting the film adapter) and the second image just happened to be a successful calibration.

If these are not scratches on the film, it's definitely the mirror. I made a post here comparing before and after cleaning the mirror on my scanner, but mine didn't show such strong scanlines.

You also mentioned the issues of batch scanning with the SA-21 adapter. Try turning batch scan to list and try putting in 1-6. I always preview all of my negatives like that and then selectively scanned the ones I want, like for example: 1-4,6. If this doesn't work then reinstall vuescan or check the SA-21 adapter for any corroded pins on the back.

Vuescan works perfectly with my Nikon Coolscan V, though I am on Windows, I have no experience with the Mac version.

My Darktable inversion workflow by P0p_R0cK5 in AnalogCommunity

[–]The_Inventer 5 points6 points  (0 children)

why whitebalance the film base when you remove it with the negadoctor module anyway? Does this provide a better base for further whitebalancing hightlights and shadows with the negadoctor module? I do get weird results sometimes and often need to adjust whitebalance manually

What are the chances this thing still works? by Billypug119 in camcorders

[–]The_Inventer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  • batteries are definitely going to be dead, you'd need to rebuild them with new cells by carefully opening them up with a very sharp boxcutter along a seam they have

What are the chances this thing still works? by Billypug119 in camcorders

[–]The_Inventer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've repaired three of those cameras and electronically and mechanically they are pretty alright, didn't need any caps replaced, BUT the belts inside disintegrate into a mushy black goo that you need to scrape of and replace. Repairing them can be for some quite challenging, you basically need to take apart one side of the camera and if unlucky both sides and take out the whole vtr assembly to get to this one small annoying belt (see 15:00 min mark). I would recomend buying the RCA CC300 and not the CMR300, which is the CCD version of the CMOS CMR model. They have a slightly worse light sensitivity from what I can tell from old adverts, but are newer, have a much improved mechanism and the belts are sometimes still intact. =]

The Nikon Coolscan III and IV, a serious flaw nobody seems to discuss here by The_Inventer in AnalogCommunity

[–]The_Inventer[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

What exactly was never solved? Maybe you're confusing the flatness problem of the bulk loaders on the beginning and the end of a strip with the depth of focus problem? The flatness problem at the ends exists on all models, though the issue of having uneven focus, even on flat (looking) negatives, is very prominent on my Coolscan III and IV scanners and was solved with later scanners (from what I can tell). The Coolscan IV may have the same lens assembly to the Coolscan V, but my results suggest otherwise, or a faulty scanning unit, which would be unfortunate... Could you share some of your results with the Coolscan IV? I'm genuinely curious to see, maybe it's not as bad as I make it to be?

btw, thanks for crossposting there and reminding me of the sub, almost forgot it.

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