Anything not look good with clarity increased in LR?

[David Mitchell]

Hi all,

I am just scanning in 4 rolls of film for my mate (who I gave the 1926 Kodak folding brownie to at Christmas), I have scanned in and working on doing a little post process work, they are all in colour and they do need a slight tweek to the saturation to give the colours a help lol.

Basically if I convert any of the images to black and white, then max out the clarity the images look amazing lol is there anything that clarity doesn't fix? lol

 

[David Mitchell]

Here is a shot from one of my mate's rolls, shot by him, PPed by me in LR, its just personal perference but I rather like them PPed like this. Just means I need to get out and shoot more things first lol

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Good shots, and great pp. Love the last one especially. Very atmospheric.

 

[David Mitchell]

The shots are my mates, as a comparison here is how it was scanned in from the negative:

I plan to go out and get some nice shots at some point, I think I have found a style I like, I think this might also be from that Agfa Vista plus £1 film I gave him. Some of the images have been cropped, that 1 I didn't as I didn't want to miss off any of the detail.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Try shooting xp2, it gets closer to that out of camera with a contrasty lens.

Clarity is a great feature of LR, and yes does work well on a lot of things ... But it can fail you! Keep a look out for halos on things (less of a problem in lr4) ... And (since lr4) be careful of how it effects exposure.

as for things it doesn't fix ... Acne is one thing ... ... Basically, be careful with it on people!

 

[Paul Lange]

Well that is unless you get a commission from Acne Awareness..............

 

[David Mitchell]

Try shooting xp2, it gets closer to that out of camera with a contrasty lens.

Clarity is a great feature of LR, and yes does work well on a lot of things ... But it can fail you! Keep a look out for halos on things (less of a problem in lr4) ... And (since lr4) be careful of how it effects exposure.

as for things it doesn't fix ... Acne is one thing ... ... Basically, be careful with it on people!

To the shops, AWAY! lol I usually have the histogram option on to show me where things are missing data values, its most useful!

What would define a contrasty lens btw?

 

[Hamish Gill]

A good question ... And one I'm not sure i know the answer to really... I'm not sure i even used the term right really.

Lens Contrast is actually the ability of a lens to resolve difference in close tones ... Something like that ... Ill find a link for you to read.

I think for eg. That my yashica t5 has a more contrasty lens then my Nikon af600 ... Maybe I'm using the terminology wrong? I haven't get my head around it really. But the output from my yashica looks sharper and more contrasty ... And for me, the difference can be replicated using clarity!

I struggle to care about some of this terminology, and as such struggle to learn what it actually means ...

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Here, blow your own mind ... I'm far to tired to blow mine
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/lens-contrast.shtml

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This also looks good http://www.photozone.de/lens-terminology

 

[Paul Lange]

Testing contrast of lenses with digital is fairly easy as you can take a few pics and compare them. The lens with more contrast will produce more punchier images of colourful subjects. For film camera lenses that you cant attach to a digital SLR it will be more trickier. You can take a chance if the lens is cheap but you wont know until after you have had the film developed. Pretty much all lenses have been tried and comments made on the internet. Probably a bit of research before you choose your lens will be the best bet. People tend to comment is a lens has good or poor contrast and usually if you Google a lens you will find a Flickr group for that lens and can check out some photographs taken with the lens.

 

[David Mitchell]

Thanks guys, I will have a look around, might as well find a lens that is the most contrasy before tweeking the clarity, with regards to lenses and mounts, I have a Nikon D3100 and an FM2n so the mounts are the same, plus I have an M42 to Nikon adaptor which should mean most lenses will be ok - Luckily im not stuck with a difficult mount like the Canon that can only really take Canon lenses lol.