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Talk about Deja vu! Man, I just thought I was on photo.net. Yeah, I definitely agree that induced/increased grains can be awesome.

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If you like contrast, try Fuji Velvia. Chromes look so nice on a light table with a descent lope. What can I say, I'm also a sucker for contrast!

Kevin, is that an 8 megapixel image?

Eric, I like your photos very much.

Stuart, please take a look at this, and critique it for me. I took this photo and turned everything but the flower into black and white and used that version as wallpaper on my computer. The one I linked to here is the untouched photo.

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Eh? Why do all that? Auto Color fixes everything in one go, if you've got Version 7 or later. Go into Levels, then hit Options. Change the radio button to 'Find Dark and Light Colors', and select 'Snap Neutral Midtones'. Then, in the Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights swatches, click on each on in sucession and change the RGB values to [respectively], RGB=20, RGB=128, and RGB=240. (in other words, set all RBG values for shadows for 20, all RGB values for midtones to 128, all RGB values for highlights to 240) Finally, select Save As Defaults. Auto Color is now much, much better.

Also, for sharpening, make sure you're only sharpening in the Luminosity channel, as this reduces any halo effects you may get. Easiest way to do this is apply your Unsharp Mask, then immediately afterward, go into Edit, and 'Fade Unsharp Mask'. Select 100%, and change the drop down menu to Luminosity.

I like these so much, I've made them into actions. One just does Auto Color and Luminosity Sharpen, another does the above and then reduces them to 640x480 (for web shots on eBay, e-mailing, and the like), another does all of those and rotates it 90 degrees clockwise, for pictures taken sideways... I've also got ones that will upsize in 10% increments and do some light sharpening, or just upsize.

Sidenote on that, if you ever find a picture that's not big enough for you, don't just jump up in one shot. For an unknown reason, upsizing in 10% increments is insanely better quality. I made it into an action as well; F11 now makes the picture 10% bigger, with Bicubic Smoother. I've actually doubled a picture once (did it 10 times) and you could have printed it just fine.


go_vtec, yeah, I'd love to try some Velvia, but I don't have a film scanner, or even a light table and loupe. If I did, believe me, I'd be shooting all slides. So much easier to store. I'm trying to convince my parents we need to get one for the Britain trip, as I really want to be shooting Velvia over there. Those lush, green landscapes... Muhaha. As for chrome in Velvia, never tried it. I've only shot chrome on wheels before, in B&W. There was a show semitruck at our county fair that had massive wheels that were polished to within an inch of their life. It's very nice, with a nice highlight where the sun caught it. I might post it if I get around to scanning it. Scanner's on another computer, though, so it's a bugger to do...

(-:Stephonovich

Pauly -- I think the photo is good. What I would consider doing is cropping it a little tighter (there is a lot of unused space to the left, below and above. Otherwise I think it is a nice macro shot. The only other things I can think of are that the focus might be a little better if it were more on the very center of the flower. It appears to be a little bit towards the back petals. Finally, a photo like this can benefit from the warmer light at dusk or dawn -- it adds a little orange and color to the light, which is a little bit blue in the photo. Flowers are very cooperative subjects, so it pays to come back at different times of day or different days in order to get the best direction and color of light.

Stephonovich: That is so complicated! I usually just mess around with variations... As for scanners, the Konica-Minolta Scan Dual IV is about 300 dollars and it is really good. It is 3200 dpi and scans both slides and negatives. I have the earlier model, which is 2800 dpi, which is what I use to scan everything. It does a really great job.

As per Velvia, the saturation is unbelieveable. I heard the reason that they made it that way was because magazine photographers wanted a film that would preserve the colors that come out in glossy mags, which usually lose some punch as compared to the light box. This is a shot that was taken with Velvia pushed to 100:

Whoa.

Amazing shot -- I'll have to persuade my dad to pick up some Velvia next time we're at the photo store.

(we have a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED, 4800dpi of firewire-powered goodness. Any of you guys without a film scanner that don't want to buy one, send me your negatives and I'll scan 'em [you pay $4 for return shipping])

Well, I decided to scan in those pictures after all. They were taken at our County Fair's Bush Pullers Tractor Pull in '03, both with my Canon Rebel 2000. I'm pretty sure they were all shot with my Tamron 75-300/4.5-5.6 lens. Film used was
Kodak TMAX 100 and
Kodak TMAX 3200. I'm sure you can figure out for yourself which is which

I'm including two versions of each image. The first in each pair is untouched other than dust removal, and in a few cases, cropped slightly. The second I let loose on. Curves, Shadows/Highlights, the works. No special effects were ever used, only things to enhance the image. Oh, and sorry for all you 56Kers... I feel your pain, I had to upload all of these with 56K. Took me about 10 minutes. They're each about 100K, I think, and I tried to make them as close to 1024x768 as I could. Anyway, enjoy.


http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...llOriginal.jpg

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...lTouchedUp.jpg

I took this before he made his run. It's an Allison V-12 engine; yes, the same one used in WWII aircraft. (correct me if I'm wrong; I think it was WWII) They conservatively estimate these at around 1000HP. Insanity.

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...meOriginal.jpg

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...eTouchedUp.jpg

This is a shot of the Kenworth logo on the side of a Show Semi-Truck. The flame and lettering was chrome, and the bottom part sort of silverish-gray. It didn't show up quite sa well as I wanted, but the re-touched one gets a bit closer.

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...elOriginal.jpg

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...lTouchedUp.jpg

This is one of the front wheels of the afore-mentioned Semi. Very lovely chrome. Likely would have looked better in colour, but hey, this isn't too bad either. I like the darker look of the re-touched one, myself.

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...reOriginal.jpg

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...eTouchedUp.jpg

This is a highly modified John Deere. By the looks of it's location, I'd say it was just shutting down from a run. I snapped it just before he shut off the water injectors, hence, the rich black smoke. Again, I like the darker look of the re-touched one.

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...reOriginal.jpg

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...eTouchedUp.jpg

This is another highly modified Deere, except this one's just taking off, hence the wheelie. They usually hold them for about 20 feet or so. Or rather, they don't get them down for 20 feet or so. Wheelies are bad, as they reduce traction and cause you to cut the power to get them back down. In any case, I love the massive amount of smoke this put out. Looks like a tornado touching down into the exhaust.

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...V8Original.jpg

http://www.stephonovich-online.com/e...8TouchedUp.jpg

This is a V8 powered puller. Pretty much a generic frame with an alcohol burning V8 crammed on the front. This is nothing; the big ones run 5 V8s linked together. These are the loudest of them all, I'd say at least 120dB. It reaches into the 'Painful' category. I ought to bring ear plugs, I suppose. Usually I just cover my ears. In any case, not much difference between the original and re-touched ones here, just a tad more contrast.

Well, hope you all enjoyed that. BTW, sorry they aren't in-line; Head-Fi complained there were too many IMG tags. Odd, considering I'm hosting them myself, so it wouldn't be a strain on the server. Ah well.

Oh, and stuartr, actually, it's not that complicated once you learn the basics. Photoshop is actually very intuitive once you figure out what menus contain what and layers and whatnot.

EDIT: Oh yes, scanner used was a crappy Visoneer 6200, at 600dpi. Software used was Photoshop CS.


(-:Stephonovich

I've been taking a few more photos...

The first round is a series of infrared photographs I took with the simple technique of buying a $4 acrylic filter off eBay and holding it in front of the lens. Unfortunately, the Nikon 990 has a built-in IR cut filter, so I had to use exposure times of around 4-8 seconds...

http://www.drsue.net/gallery/infrared

Suart, thanx. The light the day I took that was pretty bad. Overcast grey day. I generally get these pictures when we stop the train for a while, sometimes I never get back to the same spot.

Stephonovich, cool shots of tractor pulls.

The only place I have to host photos is here. Well, that is except for imagestation, which is getting difficult to link to again.

The second round of photos is here:
http://www.drsue.net/gallery/nature2

As usual, they're all "raw" -- no editing or enhancement. Color junkies will want to check out pages 2 and 3...

What do you guys think? Any suggestions?

I like infrared stuff, hope to get a filter for the digicam soon. No IR cut filter on ours That looks almost like a really, really deep red filter on those though, not quite infrared. Perhaps it's the camera, but usually infrared is like extreme shadows and highlights.

Rest of your stuff is awesome, though. I especially liked the ones on the 3rd page with the purple flower against green grass. I love purple and green mixed.

Mr. PD, those train pictures are awesome, as are the landscapes. Beautiful mountains you've got.

(-:Stephonovich

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It's a pretty good IR cut filter in that camera... but if you look at the plants, it's definitely IR you're seeing.

For example, in this picture: http://www.drsue.net/gallery/infrared/aag
The cover on the pool is blue with a silvered underside, it's normally quite opaque. Also, the trees behind the pool are green, so they should show up black on a red filter...

Yeah, the plants were a pretty good white.

As for the reason for the IR cut filters, it likely arose out of the controversy about cameras with night vision mode being able to see through clothes. For some odd reason, being able to see through clothes and the like didn't go over too well with most people. Odd, I know

(-:Stephonovich

I doubt it. As far as I know, the reason for the IR cut filters is that IR will skew the colors on the CCD, so Nikon (and many other manufacturers) use them to get better color accuracy.

The concern about the "x-ray" effect resulted in Sony modifying the Nightshot mode on their camcorders to lock the exposure at maximum, making filming impossible in daylight and especially the bright daylight that people usually wear the very thin clothes that the IR mode could see through.

A $4 IR filter off eBay, however, makes daylight IR videography possible... My "for the heck of it" tests on various pieces of clothing out of my dresser reveal that fairly little clothing is actually IR-transparent, though interestingly enough the vast majority of "black" pants appear white on the IR-only display.

In DSCN4153 the rule of thirds would have helped draw you to the spider and its movemnet a little better. It's a little stagnant where it is, but not horribly so like if it was centered 100%.

DSCN4215 is one I simply lvoed. I don't know why, but I think the constrasting colors and wavy horizon line of the hill make it work really well. Try some crops that lower or raise the horizon line a bit and see what you think. Sometimes by enphasizing the forground or background the photo can change a bit. Try it and see what you think.

In DSCN4257 the curb blows it for me. I wonder if it could be eliminated to cut down on competition with the hydrant?

DSCN4182 is a great shot with a simply perfect lead-in with the photographer's body and arm, leading you to what he's taking a shot of. Very well done!

I don' know why, but DSCN4145 and DSCN4146 seem off to me. Maybe it's too stark and there's nothing going on; or maybe it's the angle taken of the flower itself, but either way it isn't working for me. Maybe it's the shrivelled up flower too?


Keep up the good work Eric. Digital camera make practice extremely cheap, and taking more and more shots make for better photographers.

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Kevin, is that an 8 megapixel image?

14.3 megapixels. Jpeg's are trimmed to 12mp.

Completely unretouched in any way. Taken in my back yard.

Even on a really fast computer with lots and lots of memory
adobe really chokes on these massive images.