[Leica] My "real world" digital experience

[Paul Chefurka <Paul_Chefurka@pmc-sierra.com>]

>From: George Lottermoser [mailto:imagist@concentric.net]

>It feels much more useful for a working photographer to let me
>know that s/he, "Sscanned a 35mm, NPS 160, Leica 35mm 1.4 wide
>open negative, on an X scanner, at Y resolution and made a print,
>at size A, using B printer, C inks (if an inkjet printer), on D
>paper and here's how I'd describe the results." Rather than to
>throw numbers around in theoretical space.

OK, here's my current setup.  I'm shooting Provia 100F, Astia and Supra 400 in M6's with current Leica lenses. I scan the slides and negs on a Polaroid 4000 using Ed Hamrick's Vuescan, at 4000 dpi.  I output a mostly corrected 16-bit file which is loaded into to Photoshop 6.0 where I do spotting and final colour corrections (a calibrated monitor helps for this).  I'm a Photoshop tyro - I can use layers, but I'm still tring to understand curves.  I usually sharpen the lightness channel in LAB mode (I have nik SharpenerPro but don't like it - it sharpens too much for my taste, and coarsens the image).  I print resized but unresampled files on an Epson 870 usually at about 8x10 (actually 7x10.5 or so) using Tetenal Spectra Jet 264 Glossy paper.

I took a batch of prints in to my Leica dealer last Saturday.  He described the results as "Wow!"  I'd describe them as a work in progress.  I have about eight prints that I'm happy with, technically speaking - which makes this a VERY expensive hobby.

My dissatisfactions relate mostly to scanning negs - I've been getting weird colour crossovers that I think (hope) are mostly due to my inexperience with the scanner software.  The prints are plenty sharp enough to detect camera shake. Skin tones turn out well, although I'm never totally happy with the colour of grass, either from neg or slide.   The other thing I'm finding is that the tips of tree branches against an overcast sky scan with a blue halo around them, either from slides or negs.

Overall, as a beginner at this game, I'm very pleased with the results.  I'm getting better prints from my slides than I ever got from a lab, though getting equivalent results from negs is proving elusive.  And I'm convinced that the advantages of Leica glass show in the prints.

Paul