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Old 05-11-2007, 07:26 PM
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sydney_vt (David)
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35mm Slide Film

Does anyone use slide film for their astrophotography? I am having lots of trouble finding anywhere that is able to transfer my images to cd. For example I took a bunch of images of the lunar eclipse and looking at them through a slide projector they look great, lots of detail and perfect exposure. But then when I get them put onto cd they look burnt put with no clarity what so ever. I have tried visiongraphics and a place called trannys, both in sydney but it seems they are stumped with my lunar images. Is it a case of there equipment not being able to cope with the image content? Or is there a trick to it they may not know about? Is there a business that specialises in developing 35mm slide film astrophotography??

As you can see in this picture the moon looks overexposed and the picture itself looks very very poor quality. Although the slide looks perfect when viewed through a projector.

Dave
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Old 05-11-2007, 07:43 PM
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Dave, when you take film into a photographic place for developing it is most important that you explain that it is astronomical, most places don't have a clue of what to do with it.

I think you would find it very hard these days to find a specialist place that understands your needs in this area.

That is why I always used to develop my own.


Leon
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Old 05-11-2007, 07:52 PM
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sydney_vt (David)
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unfortunately in both instances it was know exactly what the images were of and still I got back not so good. Without taking up too much of your time can you breifly explain whats involved in developing the film myself? Do you mean buying a 35mm film scanner? or is it more then that?

Dave
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Old 05-11-2007, 08:12 PM
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Dave, when i mentioned about developing the film myself, i actually took the image on my desired film/slide, and used the chemicals in a controlled enviornment, (dark room,) to go through the whole process.

This way, depending on the Film, one could develop for longer, or shorter times to get the results they wanted.

Once that was established, I went on to printing the negatives to the desired effect i wanted, it was quite an involved process.

The whole process, has to do with temp of the chemicals, and the time the film was in the chemicals, which can be changed when one gets more experienced.

The local photo shop dose not do this, and each film is just put through the machine, and automatically processed and printed.

When i was doing certain films, i would use fresh chemicals each time, they also don't do this, but change it every now and then when a certain number of films have been put through the machine.

Although i don't do this any more, it was quite an experience.

Hope this helps.

Leon
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Old 05-11-2007, 08:45 PM
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Cheers, thanks for the info.

Dave
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Old 05-11-2007, 08:53 PM
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Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)
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Originally Posted by sydney_vt View Post
unfortunately in both instances it was know exactly what the images were of and still I got back not so good. Without taking up too much of your time can you breifly explain whats involved in developing the film myself? Do you mean buying a 35mm film scanner? or is it more then that?

Dave
Dave - I know of the guys at Trannys by reputation, and I'm surprised at your results. One thing you need to do is sit there with them and refine the scanning process for your particular batch of film. Don't just scan and accept the default results. They're professionals, so insist on getting what you want. These guys definitely know what they're doing as they've serviced the very expensive side of the glamour advertising trade for a long, long time. Their drum scanners are top of the line (DaiNippon Screen, etc) and these devices' scanning ability way exceeds the grain of your film. They can tweak the scanning procedure to soften the contrast and then post-process it to your satisfaction. Maybe they were under the assumption that you, yourself, might be going to perform your own post processing and just didn't go through it because of that?

Can you put a link up to the original scan for us to look at rather than your small thumbnail? How large did they scan the image file to? As i said before, they should get a scan of over a gigabyte if you want it. Maybe they just thought you wanted web-quality scans like most people would.
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Old 05-11-2007, 09:15 PM
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I have had 2-3mb jpg files and 18-20mb tiff files. The ones I got back today were less then a meg in size,jpg. But this was after I explained what the slides were of and that I wanted them at least 20mb tiff files. Problem is i didnt pick them up so i only found out once I got home. Ill be back there in the morning. I only have the pictures on my pc. Can i link to my pc? or i can email them to you? After speaking woth trannys today they told me that they do not process slide film anymore and pointed me in the direction of a few other places. "The Lab", was one of them

Dave

thanks for the help
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Old 05-11-2007, 09:42 PM
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Dave, when i mentioned about developing the film myself, i actually took the image on my desired film/slide, and used the chemicals in a controlled enviornment, (dark room,) to go through the whole process.....
Leon, the big challenge is to get from positive or negative transparencies to digital images. Without quality scanners and a way to get the scanning done in a dust free environment, it is a real challenge. I've not been successful at all with home office type scanners.

(Somewhere in my cupboard is my Paterson developing tank. I used it for B&W and always wanted to move onto E6 processing, but never had the time or volume of films.)
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Old 15-11-2007, 12:12 PM
Benny L (Ben)
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Without quality scanners and a way to get the scanning done in a dust free environment, it is a real challenge. I've not been successful at all with home office type scanners.

(Somewhere in my cupboard is my Paterson developing tank. I used it for B&W and always wanted to move onto E6 processing, but never had the time or volume of films.)
home scanners are the skidmark on the back of quality scanning underpants..

see if you can find someone with a drum scanner, uber high quality.. worth the extra expense.

also with E6 processing you need to keep the temp around 37.8 celcius otherwise you get colour shift. you can get e6 kits from agfa & tetenal for around $30 mark from memory.
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Old 15-11-2007, 12:39 PM
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Benny, thanks for this advice. However, you are further convincing me that there is a DSLR in my future! Eric

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Originally Posted by Benny L View Post
home scanners are the skidmark on the back of quality scanning underpants..

see if you can find someone with a drum scanner, uber high quality.. worth the extra expense.

also with E6 processing you need to keep the temp around 37.8 celcius otherwise you get colour shift. you can get e6 kits from agfa & tetenal for around $30 mark from memory.
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Old 16-11-2007, 10:23 AM
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Benny, thanks for this advice. However, you are further convincing me that there is a DSLR in my future! Eric
Well I disagree with Benny.

1. there is no need to process your own own E6, that is a pain in the bum and labs do it cheaply.

2. You can buy a 2nd hand coolscan for very little money which will take great scans.

3. If you have a local lab with a Fuji Frontier, and get chatting with them, you can get them to do HiRez scans for you for nothing. Obviously avoid chemist machines run by 16 year olds.

Finally, if you have a really good slide, just get it printed! If you get a custom print done, they will also give you the corrected scan from a Imacon with the print! All the base work is done, and you get a nice print too!

The reality is, you will only do a few STUNNING shots a year, and when you do, its worth the money the $15 to get a Imacon scan.

Think how much a decent one-shot CCD camera costs... and the resolutions are still very low (looks great on the web, but won't enlarge as well), and suffer lots of noise.

Daniel.
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Old 16-11-2007, 10:50 AM
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I am a user of 400D but I tend to agree with Daniel...
The really good thing about digital is you do not have to wait for lab to process your shots, you have them NOW..
But the resolution of 30Mpixels (which is easily achieved with film, plus the film sensitivity to red - including Ha - so no need for expensive mods)... all those facts support the idea that film is still not dead, far from it.
Have a look at this link, there are a lot of people out there doing film astrophotography:
http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthrea...t/0/Board/Film

As far as scanners are concerned, I have Plustek7200 and it is pretty good (the practical resolution is ~3600pi, not 7200 as claimed, but, hey, it was ~$200!!). There are some issues but, if the shot is REALLY good, it pays off to go to the lab and ask for proper HiRes scanning.
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Old 16-11-2007, 03:30 PM
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I just bought a Nikon Coolscan 50ED film/slide scanner the other day - $1300... It's 4000 dpi - the equivalent of 21 megapixels - and 14 bit colour. It takes about 30 - 240 seconds per slide, depending on options chosen.

So far I've just tried out a few slides and negs and have ended up with 60 MB TIFFS.

So far the results have been terrific. The only issue is that with about 2000 slides and another 3000 negs at a minute each, that's about 80 hours of continuous scanning and 300 TB of files....

I haven't actually tried any astro type stuff yet but I will and see what they come out like and report back sometime.

Susan

and sorry about the stupid
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Old 16-11-2007, 04:00 PM
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I agree about the use of film. It still has it's place. I haven't done it much but do have this image on the forum. My scanner is a canoscan. I forget the model (it's at home and I'm not)
It was the only reasonable price scanner I could find that would scan 120 format film. At 2400dpi each 120 negative frame is over 100mb.
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Old 16-11-2007, 09:21 PM
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I'm definitely a film / plate dinosaur!

Terry, I like the image, I hope to do as well soon!

Suzy looking forward to the report.

Bojan, for me part of the pleasure is being in a lab and processing film and using the enlarger etc. The time I would spend there probably equates to the time others would spend on photoshop or similar. I also appreciated the link to cloudynights ... uh oh another forum joined ( FWIW the scanner we ahve at the moment is the Mikrotek Scan i800, no slide / negative holder yet but does an adequate job on all of the other things we do. It claims 9600 dpi.

snaggs, processing is fun (yeah I know, I'm not normal, they told me that when I was undergoing training as a psychologist!) seriously though, E6 is not that difficult.

Benny, you get what you pay for re scanners as with anything else.



michael

Last edited by mlcolbert; 16-11-2007 at 09:23 PM. Reason: spelling
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Old 22-11-2007, 01:42 PM
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Hi Everyone,

a few preliminary results of my new Nikon LS50ED film/slide scanner...

So far I've scanned in a few rolls of 200 ASA negative film, taken on a Olympus OM2n with a OM 28, OM 50 1.4, OM 135 f2.8, or 'Beraflex' (Sigma) 35 - 75 f2.8 zoom, and the results surprised me a bit.

Firstly I suppose that the results of the scanned film image depends a lot on what is being scanned. So far I've scanned mainly family photos, rock climbing and only a couple of astro photos (and they were evening, not real 'night' photos.) The results also depended a lot on the scanner settings. For most of the scans I used the various anti-scratch, anti-dust and anti-grain filters as these gave very good results with normal photos - but basically almost completely removed any stars or other astro type objects in the photos that had them. Turning all the filters off brought them back. It also decreased the acquisition times from about 5 minutes per image down to less than 1 minute.

But really surprised me was that in many of the 'normal' images, the apparent quality of the photos is often much better than images from my 10.1 MP 40D. I say ‘apparent’ as there are lots of factors to consider when discussing this sort of thing.

Film grain is about 2 um, so in 35 mm film this works out at something like 250 - 350 MP. However the scanner does 4000 x 5000 = 20 MP (in round numbers), so this is the limiting factor – or is it?

Now the silver halide crystals in film is actually ‘digital’ while the pixels in my ‘digital’ camera are actually analogue…. Hey? Well, a crystal gets hit by some photons and changes state (after processing) from no colour to black – with nothing in-between, so it is really binary. A pixel in the dig camera collects photons and gives a linear (more or less) output dependent on the sum of the photons – so is actually analogue… Now what this means is that to get shades or tones of black/colour with film, you need 20 – 50 crystals which effectively reduces the actual resolution of anything other than a monochrome line - or point – image to about 2 – 20 MP.

So to sum up, the image quality results depends a lot on the type of photo taken, but generally speaking for the photos I have scanned in so far, it seem that the film + 30 yo camera/lens combination wins over a 10.1 MP + L-series lens combination. Of course against the film is the fact that the dig is so much more versatile – the other day I took about 50 photos of my 3 YO daughter blowing out her birthday cake candles – hand held, by candlelight with the camera set to 800, 1600 and 3200 ASA. Try and do that with film!

I'll do more astro stuff soom and let people know how it went.
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Old 22-11-2007, 02:27 PM
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What slide film are people using these days?

I stopped using slide film when Provia 400F was discontinued. I never had great success with Kodak E200 like many others did.

Roger.
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Old 26-11-2007, 01:44 PM
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What slide film are people using these days?

I stopped using slide film when Provia 400F was discontinued. I never had great success with Kodak E200 like many others did.

Roger.

Fuji announced that Provia 400f was going to be replaced with Provia 400x early last year I think. It finally became available in about May this year. It is supposed to be even better. I have some in the fridge that I'll try out one day.

I still use slide film in both 35mm and 120 formats. My film of choice (for daylight) was the original ISO50 Velvia until it was discontinued, then I started using Velvia 100, and now the new Velvia 50 has been released I have stocked up on that. I've also used Provia 100F with success.

I take my slide film here in Adelaide - http://www.atkins.com.au/#. They do 2 runs each day, so it's never a long wait to see how the shots turn out.

I scan all my 35mm film on a Konica Minolta Elite 5400II. I cannot reccomend this scanner highly enough. It produces the best results I've seen from any home scanner, even better than anything I've seen from Nikon or Canon! I've made many stunning 20" x 30" prints from this scanner.
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Old 27-11-2007, 09:03 AM
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Fuji announced that Provia 400f was going to be replaced with Provia 400x early last year I think. It finally became available in about May this year.
Ahhhh... thanks for the tip-off! I will definitely get some to try.

Surely it could only have been bad for their sales to discontinue the 400F before the 400x came out. .. people like me just assumed that was the end of Provia 400.
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Old 19-04-2008, 10:41 AM
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Hi Guys,

Apologies for jumping in, but I noted the link one of you kind people (Jonathan) shot to my lab AtkinsTechnicolour, and just wanted to comment on the results you were wrestling with.

Processing E6 film is quite simple, but to do it well and most importantly consistently, is a nightmare, particularly with low volumes of film, I know how much we wrestle with it. But I don't believe this is your problem.

We do long-roll scans of film, that is when you have a film processed we can scan each frame just after processing (this minimises dust and handling etc), but tranny film, particularly images of contrasty subjects, is tough to get right when doing this one-off-each process. There is not the money in it to concentrate on each frame and do the best, and the long-roll equipment is a compromise of speed and quality.

I would guess that that scan is not a result of a drum scan from Vision, but from a full roll or long roll scan. If they pointed their big scanner at the frame and you were happy to pay $50 for them to scan, you'd be very happy. Perhaps they just did a bad job! In which case if it was me, I'd want to be told.

We have the same problem. Those long-roll scanners do not have a good d-max to record the "blacks" adequately. The result is a milky, mushy black field and blown out highlights.

While both Vision and us would love your scanning business, I'd recommend you get yourself a dedicated film scanner, like the cool scan, and take you time with those special frames. Frankly the cool scan and other dedicated ones like it are pretty good, but they take time to master to get the scans to look like they came from $100k scanners, but it can be done. You may also want to look into scanning at multiple densities and use photoshop's HDR feature to combine them to one scan.

As far as processing your own, don't complicate your scanning by introducing inconsistencies in your film. The secret to all of this stuff is reproducability, "can you go out and shoot that shot again but better?" And if you throw in the variable of processing your own film......you will be chasing your tail.

We'd love to scan your work, but it can be un-economical for you, so perhaps save your money for that shot of a new star that you want enlarged massively for the cover of New Scientist.
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