[Leica] The Ted Grant Discovery.

[pdzwig at summaventures.com (Peter Dzwig)]

This sounds kinda interesting; but would someone PLease state succinctly 
what 
Ted's discovery is. I must confess that I got a bit confused by last week's 
discussion.

BD?

All the best,

Peter

B. D. Colen wrote:

> 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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