Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/08/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]OK The picture was, of course, from the 1Ds as anyone who looked at the EXIF data would have known. (They would also have known that I got the focal length wrong and it was shot with a 50mm -- the EF 50 f/1.8 in fact, and what a nice lens it is too!) I did think about editing the EXIF data to say that it was taken with a Leica M but was too lazy. The photographer just gave me the raw files in fact and I did the rest. The picture was shot in RAW mode @ 400 ISO and then converted to grayscale using the Photoshop Channel Mixer with 50% Red and 50% Green and no blue. The equivalent of a minus-blue or deep yellow filter, which lightened the skin tones as Mark Rabiner spotted. It had 150% sharpening @ 0.7 pixels with a threshold of 4 levels, which is pretty moderate. I then monkeyed around with the curves to increase the contrast in the midtones and give a nice shoulder to the highlights. I also threw a lasso around the face, feathered it, inverted it, and darkened the surrounding area using curves. The reason I posted it was because I was surprised how close I had got tonally to my own personal BW gold standard of APX 400 in Xtol 1:3. That combined with the shallow DOF and the nice bokeh of that 50/1.8 really made it look very, um, traditional. The 'bad bokeh' that Doug complained about came from the Canon EF 28mm f/1.8, which I happen to think has very nice bokeh and is a smashing lens. Beyond the EXIF data the other giveaways in the image were: - -- Lack of grain. Although the grain structure was quite similar to scanned APX, especially the 'noise' in the shadows, there was way less of it than there should have been. The grain is about equivalent to APX 100, in fact, not 400. - -- Aperture blades. Can't remember who spotted this (okay, I checked, it was Gilbert and Doug) but the OOF specular highlight in the background clearly shows a polygonal aperture rather than the nice round aperture you tend to get from Leica lenses. - -- Horizontal monitor raster line. This should have been diagonal for a horizontal-moving focal plane shutter. (This only showed up in the other pictures, which look more digital to me anyway). Anyway, I guess what I really wanted to point out was that NONE of the comments centred on defects in what we regard as the traditional photographic qualities of the image. In fact if I had posted the image as a Leica image without labelling it a competition, I think I could probably have gotten a few comments about the Leica glow and the nice tonality of Agfa emulsions. Which tells us that many of those things are achievable in other ways. In fact at least three of the comments basically said it was digital because it was visibly superior to what you would expect from the particular Leica combo I quoted... less grain, no dust & sharper. I certainly don't want to throw gasoline on the film v. digital fire, although please feel free to take pot shots, but just wanted to point out that you can achieve a very traditional 'look', if that's your bag, using non-traditional equipment. Oh -- who won? I think it has to be Gilbert, who sussed it from both the octagonal aperture blades AND the grain structure. What's the prize... hmmm... have to think..... - -- John Brownlow http://www.pinkheadedbug.com http://www.unintended-consequences.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html