Critique Welcomed Messehallen U2 station

[Bill Watts]

Photo of Messehallen station down platform.( a British railway term indicating that the trains stopping at this platform are travelling away from a point of origin, in this case Hauptbanhof Nord) I think this is fairly evocative of days gone by. I am finding HP5 a bit too grainy for my taste.

Camera: Olympus iS-3000
Lens: 35-180 ED f4.5-5.6
Film: Ilford HP5+ exposed at box speed, ISO 400
Exposure: 1/20s, f 4.5, 35mm.
Scanner: Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV, 24bit colour, 3200DPI
Software: Scanned and inverted in Vuescan 9 Pro, contrast adjusted in Affinity Photo 2

 

[Gianluca Drago]

A little too grainy, but a great photo in my opinion, @Bill Watts. Makes me think of 2001, A Space Odyssey. Tube photos are often very evocative, even more so when the tunnel is so narrow as to appear almost cylindrical.

 

[Bill Watts]

A little too grainy, but a great photo in my opinion, @Bill Watts. Makes me think of 2001, A Space Odyssey. Tube photos are often very evocative, even more so when the tunnel is so narrow as to appear almost cylindrical.

Thanks for the comment. You'd love the London Underground then, some of the tunnels are really small.

If I may ask, what is a "Hugo High Five"?

 

[Gianluca Drago]

You should ask to @Pete Askew but it's like a super "Like".

 

[Gianluca Drago]

Hugo High Fives

We now have a system for liking peoples posts! If you like a post, you can High Five Hugo When ever you High Five Hugo, he will let the person who posted the post know that you like it! If you change your mind and decide you don't like the post, just slap hugo and he will go away ... The idea...

realphotographersforum.com

First Roll Of Film

Ah yes, the Hugo High Five. It is indeed a 'like'. It stems from the forum mascot, and orange hare called Hugo. Used to live in Hamish's back garden but then caught wanderlust and started appearing as links on sites affiliated to RPF. He lives on as the HHF. @Ivar D. Larsen @Tom Dunne

realphotographersforum.com

 

[Beth Anthony]

nicely photographed. i love shots like that, esp. if you can capture the scene without people. i'll second gianluca about it being a little too grainy when viewed full size.

 

[Gary R. Smith]

I am finding HP5 a bit too grainy for my taste.

Is there another film stock that will give you the speed with less grain?
I understand the desire to "not touch" a film scan however it's quite easy to get this from your image.

 

[Gianluca Drago]

nicely photographed. i love shots like that, esp. if you can capture the scene without people. i'll second gianluca about it being a little too grainy when viewed full size.

esp.

The Urban Dictionary has confusing explanations for this acronym: Extra-Sensory-Perception, Enemy Sound Position, Electric Shock Protection, Eat-Study-Piss, Extremely Sensitive Person, Enthusiastic Saxophone Player, Earwig Secret Police, and something else that is better not to cite here. @Beth Carter?

 

[Beth Anthony]

esp.

The Urban Dictionary has confusing explanations for this acronym: Extra-Sensory-Perception, Enemy Sound Position, Electric Shock Protection, Eat-Study-Piss, Extremely Sensitive Person, Enthusiastic Saxophone Player, Earwig Secret Police, and something else that is better not to cite here. @Beth Carter?

especially

 

[Stevenson Gawen]

Earwig Secret Police,

 

[Bill Watts]

Is there another film stock that will give you the speed with less grain?
I understand the desire to "not touch" a film scan however it's quite easy to get this from your image.View attachment 19980

Gary, Could you explain exactly what did you do to "de-grain" it like that, it is a technique i need to know!

 

[Gary R. Smith]

Gary, Could you explain exactly what did you do to "de-grain" it like that, it is a technique i need to know!

Hi Bill,
I regularly tweak the results I get from negative scans using both Affinity Photo (v2.5.3) which accepts Photoshop plug-ins. I currently have 2 plug-ins installed: Neat Image and the free Google version 2 of the NIK Collection.
I saved your image and opened the jpg in Affinity.
I then opened Neat Image which is accessed from the Filter menu as a Plugin.
Within the Neat environment I used the AUTO PROFILE option which looks for a suitable area of the image to determine the noise level.
I then selected the ADJUST & PREVIEW tab to allow Neat to do its thing.
I use HIGHEST as the QUALITY MODE as well as the FILTER TUNING ASSIST.
And voila...
I admit that I'm not particularly adept at the finer details of using the Neat s/w but so far, I've been extremely happy with my minimal abilities.
It works great at taming the noise produced in digital shots with high ISO and I'm also not opposed to using it to tame grain in positives resulting from negative scans.
Neat Image is available for both Windows and Mac as either a plug-in or stand-alone tool. It appears that it is currently half price of what I paid for it. It is old s/w and doesn't claim to use AI or need a monster h/w platform to perform (the reason I use it - my laptop is 10+ years old).

Also, while the de-noised image that I posted above is "smaller" as far as pixel length/width, my initial results were the same size but my image was too large to post?

 

[Bill Watts]

Hi Bill,
I regularly tweak the results I get from negative scans using both Affinity Photo (v2.5.3) which accepts Photoshop plug-ins. I currently have 2 plug-ins installed: Neat Image and the free Google version 2 of the NIK Collection.
I saved your image and opened the jpg in Affinity.
I then opened Neat Image which is accessed from the Filter menu as a Plugin.
Within the Neat environment I used the AUTO PROFILE option which looks for a suitable area of the image to determine the noise level.
I then selected the ADJUST & PREVIEW tab to allow Neat to do its thing.
I use HIGHEST as the QUALITY MODE as well as the FILTER TUNING ASSIST.
And voila...
I admit that I'm not particularly adept at the finer details of using the Neat s/w but so far, I've been extremely happy with my minimal abilities.
It works great at taming the noise produced in digital shots with high ISO and I'm also not opposed to using it to tame grain in positives resulting from negative scans.
Neat Image is available for both Windows and Mac as either a plug-in or stand-alone tool. It appears that it is currently half price of what I paid for it. It is old s/w and doesn't claim to use AI or need a monster h/w platform to perform (the reason I use it - my laptop is 10+ years old).

Also, while the de-noised image that I posted above is "smaller" as far as pixel length/width, my initial results were the same size but my image was too large to post?

I have the same NIK Collection picked up some time ago, I will have to look into Neat. Thanks for the pointers!

 

[Gary R. Smith]

I will have to look into Neat.

I think the current price is something like $40 USD.

 

[Gary R. Smith]

I have the same NIK Collection picked up some time ago

Bill, the DEFINE 2 app within the NIK Collection will get you some denoise capability but I don't think it's as good as NEAT. That said, I'm comfortable with NEAT and have only really played with Silver Efex and Color Efex.

Here is a quick attempt at using DEFINE 2 (like my NEAT version, it is also somewhat smaller to allow it to pass the size test here).

 

[Bill Watts]

Is there another film stock that will give you the speed with less grain?
I understand the desire to "not touch" a film scan however it's quite easy to get this from your image.View attachment 19980

Hi Gary, I have no hang ups about tweaking an image to improve the quality of the image. During my research I came across Ashampoo's Denoise #5, an AI driven de noise program for 15 euro! so I tried it. Image below is as the program adjusted it completely automatically - I think that is quite impressive.




Another tool in the arsenal for delivering good images - I don't condone over editing but even when printing black and white prints I would adjust the hardness of the paper and dodge and burn to get the desired result - this is much easier!

 

[Gary R. Smith]

I think all of the de-noised versions are acceptable, depending on what your goal is. Each of them vary somewhat and have more/less noise/grain and may/may not be softer than your original image.

 

[Bill Watts]

I think all of the de-noised versions are acceptable, depending on what your goal is. Each of them vary somewhat and have more/less noise/grain and may/may not be softer than your original image.

Happy bunny!!

 

[Beth Anthony]

any of these denoised images will work. glad you found something that works, it makes a huge improvement on the final image.