[Leica] Beauty of the digital darkroom

[drodgers@nextlink.com]

Mark

I read your excellent message again. My early  experience with scanning
echos exactly many of the things you point out.

For instance, film makes a difference.  Portra films are excellent for
scanning. I'm shooting VC400. I tried some Kodak Gold, because it's so much
less expensive and I wasn't sure there would be a difference. There is,
though for screen viewing I'm not sure the difference is that great.

Lenses make a difference. Most of my shots are taken on a 50/2 Summicron. I
photograph while cycling and I usually only take that lens. But I've used
older Nikon and Pentax (when I ride a moutain bike instead of a road bike
my camera is far more at risk so I'm reluctant to carry my Leicas) and
there is a difference. Again it's slight, but it's there. I've found that I
don't need to punch up saturation or contrast on the Leica images, but I do
with the others. I thought it was just a function of the montior I happened
to be using.

My biggest problem right now is inconsistent monitors. We have offices
around the county. I plug my laptop into different monitors, depending on
where I'm at. I'm running NT. The environment is far less consitent than
the Mac I use at home. I'll get an image just right on one monitor and then
open a file on another and it's different. Haven't yet figured out how to
make things more consistent. I wonder if the Adobe Gamma utility you
mention would help. I understand that Win98 and Win2000 have better OS
support for graphics than NT or Win95.

I bought the Coolscan III instead of the 2000. Cost was the reason. I'm
partial to neg film (especially now Porta films) so I didn't think I needed
the dynamic range. I'm not sure if the Coolscan III supports 16-bit
scanning.

Thanks again for your very informative posting.

Dave