The Rllmuk Photography Thread

[FishyFish]

On 15/04/2022 at 16:24, Monkeyspill said:

I’m losing the enthusiasm to scan film. It takes so long, and it doesn’t seem worth it a lot of the time. Removing the orange mask and sorting out the contrast can be a chore too. I’m reasonably happy with a few though. These are all on 400iso film. 

 

 

 

 

Those are really nice scans. I'd be very happy with those.

 

I've recently bit the bullet and bought a copy of Negative Lab Pro and I'm getting some nice results from that. Getting colours I'm happy with from colour film has always been a PITA though.

 

He're are a few recent colour film images, scanned on a V550 and then converted with Negative Lab Pro. Shot with a Bronica ETRSi on Lomography Color Negative 100.

 

 

 

 

 

[Monkeyspill]

15 minutes ago, FishyFish said:

Those are really nice scans. I'd be very happy with those.

 

I've recently bit the bullet and bought a copy of Negative Lab Pro and I'm getting some nice results from that. Getting colours I'm happy with from colour film has always been a PITA though.

 

He're are a few recent colour film images, scanned on a V550 and then converted with Negative Lab Pro. Shot with a Bronica ETRSi on Lomography Color Negative 100.

 

 

 

 

 

I like those. Does the software have profiles for different films?

[FishyFish]

1 hour ago, Monkeyspill said:

I like those. Does the software have profiles for different films?

It’s a plug-in application for Lightroom. You basically take a white balance sample from the film border and the application inverts the negative, removing the orange mask.
 

It doesn’t have film profiles as such. There are several different scan profiles to emulate lab scanners and a bunch of other settings to edit the inverted image, giving a wide range of different looks. It’s non-destructive, so you can undo / redo the process using different settings.

 

It’s not cheap - about £80 - but you can try out a fully-featured demo which allows about a dozen inversions with no watermarking or anything.

[Monkeyspill]

2 hours ago, FishyFish said:

It’s a plug-in application for Lightroom. You basically take a white balance sample from the film border and the application inverts the negative, removing the orange mask.
 

It doesn’t have film profiles as such. There are several different scan profiles to emulate lab scanners and a bunch of other settings to edit the inverted image, giving a wide range of different looks. It’s non-destructive, so you can undo / redo the process using different settings.

 

It’s not cheap - about £80 - but you can try out a fully-featured demo which allows about a dozen inversions with no watermarking or anything.

I’ll definitely give it a go and see what I think. Anything that saves time is good!

 

I think I’ve been doing something similar but manually. Using levels in PS, I set the film border to a neutral black using the eyedropper, then find the closest to white in the photo and set that to white. It’s a bit hit and miss though, and I often end up having to laboriously adjust the RGB levels.

The one film I really have trouble with is Ektar. I can rarely get it to look right.

[FishyFish]

@Monkeyspill I've dug out some Ektar negatives I have and tried a Negative Lab Pro Conversion. Ignore the marks on the images - they're on the negs - but the process of converting them took about 5 minutes. I've also uploaded these first two straight to the forum, so they might be compressed.

 

 

 

I made some very minor tweaks to contrast, lights and darks and changed the white balance to the Kodak preset in the NLP controls.

 

For contrast, here are the original scans I did ages back. I think the NLP versions look much nicer and they took a lot less effort...

 

 

 

[Monkeyspill]

The NLP ones do look noticeably better. Less contrasty/harsh and more natural. But your original scans look decent. I often end up with unnatural colours and contrast from Ektar to the point where I’ve started to avoid it.

[majic]

Finally bought a proper tele lens, always wanted one and never owned. Been playing with tits in the park... 

 

 

 

 

[FishyFish]

A few hip-shot street photos.

 

 

 

[Monkeyspill]

 

[FishyFish]

One from the Holga...

 

 

[Monkeyspill]

This was from a roll of film (Ektar) that I got developed in Thailand. I don't know what's up with this roll but I can't seem to get a clean scan without Newton ring artifacts. On this one it's ok as it's barely noticable. I've had the same issue with some really old 1980s negatives I've scanned.

 

Edit: removed the NR in photoshop as it was irritating me.

 

 

[FishyFish]

13 minutes ago, Monkeyspill said:

This was from a roll of film (Ektar) that I got developed in Thailand. I don't know what's up with this roll but I can't seem to get a clean scan without Newton ring artifacts. On this one it's ok as it's barely noticable. I've had the same issue with some really old 1980s negatives I've scanned.

 

 

Do you use the Epson 120 negative carrier? If so, have you used the little plastic card to keep the negs flat so they don't touch the glass?

 

It makes scanning more time consuming, but I find it works.

[Monkeyspill]

2 minutes ago, FishyFish said:

Do you use the Epson 120 negative carrier? If so, have you used the little plastic card to keep the negs flat so they don't touch the glass?

 

It makes scanning more time consuming, but I find it works.

 

Yes, but these negs were rolled back on to a spool after being developed. I tried to flatten them under heavy books for a few months but they're still bendy! 

[FishyFish]

38 minutes ago, Monkeyspill said:

 

Yes, but these negs were rolled back on to a spool after being developed. I tried to flatten them under heavy books for a few months but they're still bendy! 

It can be a nightmare if the film gets really curly.

[Petrousgyre]

On 17/04/2022 at 18:15, FishyFish said:

@Monkeyspill I've dug out some Ektar negatives I have and tried a Negative Lab Pro Conversion. Ignore the marks on the images - they're on the negs - but the process of converting them took about 5 minutes. I've also uploaded these first two straight to the forum, so they might be compressed.

 

 

 

I made some very minor tweaks to contrast, lights and darks and changed the white balance to the Kodak preset in the NLP controls.

 

For contrast, here are the original scans I did ages back. I think the NLP versions look much nicer and they took a lot less effort...

 

 

 

Is that Milos?

[FishyFish]

2 hours ago, petrolgirls said:

Is that Milos?

 

No, Capri.

[majic]

A squirrel. Not the most exciting subject but fun to shoot nonetheless! 

[Naysonymous]

A cat. 

[Monkeyspill]

I took this about a year ago.

 

I can’t figure out if it’s the film in general (Ektar), this particular roll, the light on that day, or the processing- but every scan from this roll came out a bit off. The colours and contrast are both kind of fucked - muted and shifted weirdly in both lights and darks.
 

It’s not really fixable (without a lot more effort than any of the photos are worth).
 

 

[PeteJ]

I've had a bit of a poor year for photography so far, with only pre-arranged trips yielding any results. I've not had a single opportunity* to get out with my camera locally at all.

 

*

this is a slight lie. I have chosen to play Elden Ring a lot. I regret nothing!

 

Anyway, I've been out again at the weekend. This time focusing - ha! - on Macro work. Macro is where I first fell in love with photography but I've let it slip in recent years in favour of landscape work, so it was lovely to pick it up again. My macro lens - 100mm 2.8 Canon Non-L is my oldest and technically lowest spec lens, but it produces some lovely results.

Mixture of handheld and tripod. Natural light with occasional use of a small handheld LED to the side. All subjects photographed in the wild and unharmed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Naysonymous]

Dramatic skies make this. I think I was sat beneath a weather front here, facing north the skies looked murderous with thick black clouds but to the south they were almost perfectly blue so the light hitting this structure really shone.  It’s called Sanctuary  by the artist David Best.  Built this week, it’s being burned on Saturday night. 

 

[Transient Curse]

What do you guys use to edit photos? 

 

I don't want to start subscribing to Photoshop as I like to own things outright, needs to work on Mac. 

[Naysonymous]

I’ve got a Lightroom CC subscription, some people hate CC but I find the cloud based nature of it to be incredibly convenient.  I like to think I get as much right in camera as possible that I could just shoot jpeg, and for the most part that’s true but I always like the option of being able to tweak stuff.   I don’t use photoshop.  

[PeteJ]

18 hours ago, Transient Curse said:

What do you guys use to edit photos? 

 

I don't want to start subscribing to Photoshop as I like to own things outright, needs to work on Mac. 

I also use Lightroom but prefer the classic version. I subscribe to the cloud version (£10 per month ish) so you get the online version, classic and Photoshop all included.

Lightroom is great for minor tweaks like to shadow darkness or reduce highlights, or photo stitching/ HDR but isn't really meant for anything more advanced. It's also pretty good as a catalogue. 

 

I try to get everything right in camera, very rarely I'll have drop into Photoshop....which is ideal as I'm pretty clueless with it.  

[Transient Curse]

Cheers, I'm really not keen on taking out a subscription though, if anyone else has a recommendation, that'd be great. 

[Naysonymous]

I've never used it but it might be worth checking out DarkTable.  It's free and open source.  

 

 

[Naysonymous]

Went back to watch that thing burn.

 

 

And boy did it burn. It spat out four or five fire tornadoes before it collapsed. 

[Sidewaysbob]

Do BB codes not work anymore ?

 

[Naysonymous]

Jubilee gubbins, the soldiers garrisoned at our local barracks marched through town earlier. Quite happy with a few of the photos I got, gonna post a little gallery on Insta but I’m wrestling with how to crop this one. Thoughts? 

[Monkeyspill]

This one was a pain in the arse. I had to hold the camera upside down in an awkward position and fucked up the angle. Then I had to crop it quite a bit because of reflections off the glass.

This one was cropped even more. Still for 800 iso film, it’s not bad.