Out and about again rescanned

[PeterW]

Hi Gang,
Mickey wrote:

That "camera shake" might have been an earthquake. I notice that the buildings in the first picture are neither square nor plumb.

The rescan with its increased contrast is better.

LOL Mickey. I agree about the better scan. My scanner was set where it was when I scanned some awkward negs last week. I set it back to default and scanned the pix again. So here's the modified posting:

Well, we've had some nice weather this week so I loaded the Canon T70 with Agfacolor XRG 200 and went out to take some pictures ... the first this year!! And you know what? On a couple of the frames I got camera shake for the first time in years . I must be getting old ... or sadly out of practice . Anyway, here's a selection. All taken with a Canon 35-70 macro zoom.

Several pictures taken in the village of Charing not far from me:








Taken against the light at the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway.


Hope you like the better scans. Comments always welcome.

Peter W.

[John Parry]

It makes so much difference Peter,

I'm doing something wrong with my scans. Don't have anything other than the basic package that came with my all-in-one, but everything I do here seems to look digitised. Going to get P/S on this machine next week, and see how that does.

I like the first and the last two, for the simple reason that it's nice to get away from cars occasionally. Next to last is my favourite - two arches in one, and lots of great detail in the rest of the shot. Last one is a bit of a triumph - brilliant balancing act. Well done for pulling it off. I have a number of shots where I tried something similar and didn't get it right.

Regards - John

[PeterW]

Thanks for the kind comments, John. I too find it nice to get away from cars in a village scene but it's getting more and more difficult these days.

The picture of the RHD Light Railway engine is one of the best exposed against the light shots I've taken with TTL metering. But give credit to the Canon T70's metering system rather than me. With most cameras I would have gone close to the engine with a hand-held meter to get a reading, but with the T70 I used the partial (almost spot) metering mode, zoomed in on the engine valve gear and took the first pressure to set and hold the exposure. Then I zoomed back again to get the whole picture and pressed the button. The more I use the T70 the more versatile I'm finding it.

For scanning, I'm using a fairly cheap Epson Perfection 1670 flatbed, but it's got good software by ABBYY in Ireland. What resolution do you use to scan? By looking digitised do you mean a semi bas-relief effect? I get this sometimes if I try scanning as a JPEG at too low a resolution. JPEG is a 'lossy' format, and anything you do with the picture after scanning reduces the quality.

If it's any help I scan 35mm at 800 dpi (sometimes 1200 where there's a lot of fine detail), and scan as a TIF, which is a 'lossless' format. It gives a big file, quite a few megabites, but you can manipulate the picture in PS without losing quality.

After any cropping and taking out any blemishes in PS I do a 'save as' to use for posting, then reduce the pixels per inch to 100 or 120 and set the width anything up to 750 pixels depending on the shot. I use 100 or 120 pixels per inch even though a computer screen is only 72 dpi as I've found there's a slight loss of quality after putting the picture in Photobucket and then calling it up in the posting. Lastly I 'save as' again as a JPEG. This usually brings the picture well under 100KB without getting a bas-relief effect or 'jaggies' on sharp contrast changes.

Peter