Here's what happens to ISO 200 film when you try exposing for Indi Blue in the early evening with a full moon rising . . .



(might as well have been early morning)

 

(BlacknBlue, I see Pnut Jet, SCoop's MCS in the piccie....cool!)


Clover :smile:

 

Just snapped this one really quick... I think I'm going to go back and perhaps try to go for a calendar shot.

 

. . . a humble offering:


Carrizo Plain National Monument

 

Good lighting! Very nice! A little grainy and I wish you would have turned your wheel in but really, fantastic outcome on that one! Well done mate!

by the way kyle, nice shot. i think it's missing some movement.. like the trail of a car going throught the pic, or if you can fit the cars going underneath the bridge. lovely though!

 

Thanks for the suggestion on the wheel.

When I saw this pic, my first thought was, "Oh sh*t, I forgot to reclean the tire!" (I had wiped it off for a previous shot but then I backed the car up over the little hump the front driver-side wheel is resting on.)

I would've bracketed but it was the last frame on the Plus-X.

 

Thanks Hafid, I went tonight trying to reshoot that one on the bridge with my car on the opposite (closer) side of the road to make it slightly larger (still not all that big) and despite moving around 4 or 5 times and trying the best I could I couldn't get rid of a damn flare from a light on the other side. All the pictures from that set are marked up so maybe I'll go back some other time and give it another shot... would a polarized filter help at all you think?

Anyway, I still think I got a few decent shots. Here's tonights offerings.

 

Lighting wise and capture wise, I like this a lot.

That said, here's my wish list:

- I wish the roof line didn't peak at the same point as the mountain range behind.
- The driver's side front tire seems to be up on a little mound of dirt and it makes the car seem uneven.

Question: maybe you can answer this from the high res version. What's going on with the reflection on body above the rear wheel? The reflection along the rest of the body is nice, but I'm not so sure about that rearmost part.

Like I said, I like this picture a lot and most of my comments are nits.

 

Kyle

1: I'd try to photoshop the chimney out, so it's not poking out of the MINIs roof. Otherwise, great picture and easily my favorite of the four, more so once the chimney is gone.

2 & 3: the cellphone transmitter does have kind of an alien feel at night, but it's not really clicking with me.

4: the reflections off your car are nice. For some reason I wish your car was parked a couple more spots down the row though.

Dave

 

Vinyl graphics- I see what you mean about it breaking up the continuity.

 

Questions-

Looking at the D70 pics, the grain/noise is obvious on my film pics. Plus-X is normally a finer grain film so it makes me wonder:

* Is the lack of (obviously noticeable) noise on the D70 pics inherent to the camera (i.e. cam settings, optics, sensors, electronics, etc.)?

* Could it be that the (b/w film) negative scan being "2nd generation" causes noise/grain?

* Is grain all that bad?

Here's a pic with grain purposefully photoshopped onto image . . .


Went and bought a roll of Tri-X which I'm gonna push, just for the grain.

 

1) the D70 is very low noise if the ISO is set appropriately. That said, most digital cameras will shoot fairly clean images when the settings are adjusted correctly.

2) I think this is really the source of the problem. Do you have a flatbed scanner that you could scan your print from? You might try that. The other thing to do is after scanning to use Neat Image and the noise filters in photoshop to clean up the image.

3) I don't think film grain that shows texture is a problem. Digital random noise is distracting though.

Here's your pic Neat Imaged and noise filtered in P.S. I also did a crude blending to rework the rear corner where your graphics were and to rework the line from the reflection. All this was done in about 5 minutes, so grant me a little leeway.



I think it does show the potential for image clean up. In this case the sky had random noise, and the car was relatively smooth, clear. It wasn't grain IMO at that point, more digital noise from the scan than anything. Thus, the clean-up makes sense. The noise picture where you added the grain in P.S. looks great as it is IMO, because the "grain" is more evenly applied.

 

Tri-X? Film? Holy cow......

 

Wow, what a difference!

Is Neat Image the same as Despeckle?
(I'm using the less-expensive Photoshop Elements 2.0, which doesn't appear to have a Remove Noise option.)

 

Neat Image is a little more advanced than the despeckle and noise functions in photoshop. It lets you select an area that has noise in it, it then takes an initial adjusted view, lets you adjust the settings further and then you can output the entire image in cleaned up form. The autosettings are usually very reliable. It's a very good piece of software plus it has the benefits of being free and easy to use.

 

Thanks for the info and link.
Even after 30 years of this photography habit of mine, I'm still learning a lot- especially in the area of digital imaging.

Unfortunately the Neat Image software is not yet available in native Mac version.

 

I like the first pic. The wheels in motion on both pics are cool.
Does the car have an invisishield? The 2nd pic shows a line where the clearbra would end while the 1st pic doesn't.
There appear to be two light sources- the harder shadows underneath and softer forward-facing ones. I like how well-distributed the light is because of this.

Wider angled lens might cause undesireable distortions. Stepping further back is less expensive, unless there's a cliff behind you.

 

clearbra - yes, it does have clearbra. I photoshop'd that out of the first one and missed doing that on the second one. I just finished editing that out of the second pic.

lighting - The parking area was lit by two overhead spotlights. That combined with the three second exposure and the arc the car carved made for pretty even lighting.

wide angle vs. getting further out - yeah, I was only kidding about going wider. I'm at 18 mm and there is some distortion as a result of that already. Plus as you point out it would be considerably cheaper, though I would like a wider lens anyway.

I'm off to contemplate how to get another two feet further outboard and still have a reasonably solid mount. The D70 with a lens is a bunch of weight to suspended like that.

 

Hey, that looks better. I notice you burned in the hot spots under the passenger-side window also.

As to solid mount, the tensile strength of the material you use, coupled with the base area, should be taken into account.

 

Interesting results! Certainly is great to see our cars in motion like that I think.

Photoshoot is planned this week with Tuls and Minicoop

 

If your refering to how the top picture has a hot spot all the way down the top of the passenger door and the other picture doesn't have that, it's because I changed the position of the car to get a little different lighting during the shoot. I did not photoshop that out of the second pic.

 

This Tuesday is a full moon.
The Harvest Moon is inviting me up to the local mountains.


(pondering whether i should take my camera along . . . )

 

You're right. It was should've been obvious in the mirror shadows.

 

Hey DiD, thanks for the NEAT tip. I just processed an image, and wow, what a difference. In the past I used Photoshops Smart Blur to smoothen grain, but this works so much better. Kinda gives that Airbrushed Model look to surfaces. =)

Richard

 

I have found it helpful to use Neat Image in combination with an unsharp mask in photoshop. Neat Image does cut the noise down, but like you say it leaves a plasticy feel to the image sometimes. The unsharp mask helps to correct that.