[Leica] The Ted Grant Discovery.

[bdcolen at earthlink.net (B. D. Colen)]

Okay. So I took several shots at 400 iso with 2 Evs of underexposure
dialed in, which means I shot at the exposure equivalent of 1600 iso.
Two shots were taken of a scene with window light and indoor dim. Then I
took a self-portrait, in basically flat, low light.

(Keep in mind that I am shooting in color and running my standard bw
conversion routine in Photoshop as the E-1 does not have a bw shooting
mode.)

As I suspected, the contrasty scene ends up looking very close to the
way Ted describes it. With no photoshop adjustments, other than my
standard routine for conversion to bw, the shadows go way dark almost to
black, the brighter areas are much closer to properly exposed. There is,
indeed, some noise in the mid-tones, just as there would be grain in the
midtones in a shot taken on tri-x at 800 asa. The noise is definitely
there, but it is grain-like, and not as displeasing as as noise when the
camera is set at 1600.

The second shot, with the very low, generally flat lighting, is another
story. Here I had to goose the highlights way, way, up, compressing the
tonal range, to get a useable image. But when I did, and when I then
took the midtones up by about 20%, I got an image that resembles nothing
so much as a shot on Delta 3200 @3200, processed in Xtol. Noisy as hell,
BUT again the noise looks much more like film grain.

Now, one of two things are entirely possible here:

1. While I am nowhere near the photographer Ted is, I am more digital
savy, and I may be seeing noise as noise where he either isn't seeing
it, or is interpreting it improperly;

2. Ted may be 100% correct in what he is seeing. And if that is the
case, it would indicate that whoever has written the software
instructions for the DigiII to shoot in bw has performed a miracle of
some sort - and that alone would make the camera, or at least it's less
expensive Panasonic incarnation, a definite 'must have.'

I have no idea which is true. But in either case, the results are
surprisingly good. I would certainly want to fiddle with this a great
deal more before trying it on money shots, but it is very, very
intriguing.

Late on I'll post the two images to the gallery and you can see for
yourselves - as much as you can see at 72dpi on screen. :-)

B. D.

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of
Eric
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 7:55 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: [Leica] Re: I R.I.P. ILFORD now Delta3200


Nathan:

>My choice is Neopan 1600 processed in XTOL or Fuji developer.

I concur with Neopan 1600 in Xtol.  Love the tones.  Love the grain of
Neopan 400 better, though.  Better grain than no shot, though.  :)

What's the main difference you've seen between Neopan in Xtol and in the
Fuji developer?

--
Eric
http://canid.com/

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