Presbyterian College > Academic Web Server > Jon Bell > Transit > Technical notes (Photo)
Here are some technical notes about my pictures, if you're curious about how I made them.
I currently use a Nikon D80 digital SLR camera that I bought in December 2006. It has 10 megapixels and the standard Nikon kit zoom lens that has a focal length range of about 28-200mm (35mm film camera equivalent). For examples of pictures from this camera, see my Charlotte light rail page, specifically the pictures from November 2007 and January 2008.
Its predecessor was a Minolta Dimage 7i digital camera that I bought in January 2003 and used until December 2006. It has 5 megapixels and a 28-200mm zoom range. All pictures taken during 2003-2006 are from this camera. At first I had some problems with bright white highlights "blowing out" and becoming completely white, using the automatic exposure modes. Using the exposure compensation helped a bit, but I finally switched to manual-exposure mode. The electronic viewfinder showed me approximately what I was going to get, and I could refine adjustments by monitoring a real-time brightness histogram in the viewfinder. At first I had the camera save pictures in JPEG format, but later switched to RAW format, for more flexibility in post-processing (adjusting color balance etc.).
All pictures from 2002 and earlier were taken with a 35mm single-lens reflex camera. Most are from a basic Pentax K1000 with manual focus and exposure control. Pictures from the 1970s and 1980s were taken with a Miranda Sensorex.
In addition to the normal 50mm lens, I eventually bought a 28mm wide-angle lens and a 70-200 zoom telephoto lens for the Pentax. This range of focal lengths heavily influenced my decision to buy a Minolta Dimage 7i; it was the only digital camera that I could find at the time, that covered the range of focal lengths that I had gotten used to working with.
In the 1970s and 1980s I used mostly slide film, mostly Kodachrome with some Agfachrome. In the 1990s I switched to negative film for most of my photography, usually Kodak Gold or Royal Gold, mainly for the convenience of prints. I was disappointed when Kodak apparently stopped selling Royal Gold 100 in the U.S. because I had gotten pretty good results with it and it didn't have much grain.
I have gone through three major "phases" in scanning technology.
I started out in 1995 by scanning ordinary 3x5 or 4x6 inch prints with a flatbed scanner, an Apple OneScanner attached to a Macintosh in one of our campus microcomputer labs. Usually I scanned at 120 or 150 dpi, which had the effect of enlarging the image by about a factor of two when displayed at typical video resolution of 72-80 dpi. I sometimes tweaked the image a bit using the Ofoto software that came with the scanner. Of course, with this method I was usually handicapped somewhat by the quality of the prints that I got from the photofinishing lab.
Then, the college's media center got a film scanner, a Polaroid SprintScan 35 LE which could scan 35mm slides and negatives at up to about 1900 dpi. I started to use this in the summer of 1999. Normally, I scanned at 1200 dpi, then resampled the resolution down by a factor of 2 in Adobe PhotoDeluxe software; I got slightly "cleaner" images this way. Usually I played around a bit with the color balance and the brightness/contrast controls. In retrospect I can see that the results were often not very good.
In April 2001 I bought my own film scanner, a Nikon Coolscan IV ED (also known as the LS-40) which scans at up to 2900 dpi. I used it for all my new pictures until I bought a digital camera, and have been re-scanning old pictures as I update various pages. So far I've been very happy with the results. Because Nikon's own scanning software was originally incompatibile with the added-on USB port on my PowerMac G3, I started out using Ed Hamrick's VueScan software, which has worked very well for me. I haven't been tempted to try newer versions of the Nikon software, even after I bought a PowerMac G4 which could use it. I crop and resize the pictures, and make other adjustments, with Adobe Photoshop CS2. Earlier I used Photoshop LE, which came with the scanner. This was the predecessor to Photoshop Elements, which I've never used.
In 2006 I started to re-scan all my old negatives using a workflow which corrects the color more accurately for the orange film base.
In 2007 I started to scan the slides that I took during about 1970-1994, before I switched to negative film for most of my photography.
You can tell which period a picture belongs to by looking at its date/copyright label:
Flatbed scans from prints: I don't think any of these remain, except for one that I kept as an example: Duquesne Incline in Pittsburgh. Compare it with the film scan that I made later from the Nikon Coolscan. The identifying feature (besides the poor picture quality) is the single-line location/date label with a simulated copyright symbol, (c).
Film scans from negatives, using the Polaroid SprintScan: single-line label with real copyright symbol, ©. Example: Duquesne Incline in Pittsburgh.
Film scans from negatives, using the Nikon Coolscan (first pass): two-line label. Example: Galveston Island Trolley.
Film scans from negatives, using the Nikon Coolscan (second pass): three-line label, with a photo date from 1994 through 2002. Example: Chestnut Hill Trolley in Philadelphia.
Film scans from slides, using the Nikon Coolscan: three-line label, with a photo date in the 1970s or 1980s. Example: Innsbruck, Austria.
Digital camera: Three-line label with a photo date in 2003 or later. Example: Kenosha Streetcar.
I experimented with Kodak Picture CD once, in late 2000, while I was still using film and before I bought my own film scanner. I thought the images worked rather well technically. The images on the CD were at 1500 x 1000 resolution, and downsampling them by a factor of 2 gave just about the right size for posting, comparable to my other pictures. I didn't have to spend time scanning, just on fixing the color balance, cropping, etc. The main drawback was the cost. I couldn't get [b]only[/b] the CD (and the negatives, of course), without any prints. This meant doubling my processing costs. Ouch. So I went ahead and bought a scanner instead.
This page was last updated on 10 February 2008.
Presbyterian College > Academic Web Server > Jon Bell > Transit > Technical notes (Photo)
This page is © 2008 by Jon Bell (jbell at presby.edu), who is solely responsible for its content.
