I went to the library today, to get books for my mom. She's a voracious reader. This shot was 800 ISO.

I like that portrait of your mother.

Since we're in a black-and-white mood, I found a couple interesting tidbits: The Merits of Black and White

And something to try when you're shooting skies:

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With a digital camera, you might not want to use specific B&W filters because you can achieve similar effects during post processing in Photoshop. However, if you're not terribly Photoshop savvy and want to use the B&W setting on your dSLR to its most optimal effect you can use color B&W filters. B&W filters will block certain wavelengths of visible light thereby enhancing the monochromatic look. For instance, the Red 25 blocks red spectrum that enhances visible blue, and your skies will be much deeper in their tonality. It's a good idea to experiment with these filters, as you can get exactly what you want in-camera without having to go to Photoshop.

Filters may be good for other things as well…

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A std yellow filter will lighten skin tones and slightly reduce blemishes. A yellow-green filter will reproduce darker skin tones and make blemishes and freckles more visible. A green filter will make the blemishes and freckles stand out. An orange filter make suntanned skin appear lighter. A red filter will produce very light skin tones and scars, freckles will 'disappear'.

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IMO, filters are cheap and you should have several- medium yellow, orange, green and maybe red. Don't be afraid to evaluate your scene by looking through the filters. I often do that before attaching one to the camera, even if I'm using an SLR. You can get a very good idea of how the filter will affect tones by looking- Kodak used to include some colored viewing filters right in their little photo handbook just for that purpose.

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A yellow filter in daylight will help make different colors appear as the shades of grey that we expect. The color sensitivity of the eye is different than that of black and white film. Our eye more or less follows the spectral mix of sunlight, peaked in green and yellow wavelengths. Film has a pretty flat curve. I started using a yellow filter all the time when I noticed that red and blue (on a flag) appeared the same shade of grey in the print, where the red was much brighter (and I would have expected a paler grey) in my vision. The filter costs me a stop but the prints look more natural to me and more like I want them to.

Smithz, one thing I read about flatbad scanners and film is that they simply don't focus as accurately as a dedicated film scanner does...and apparently even they can have trouble with film that is curled. Hopefully my brother will bring in that needed equipment so that I can test his Epson scanner.

The review site Photo-i does a thorough review of many photo related gadgets. They did an in depth review of the Epson V700/750 flatbed scanners.

These scanners are probably the best flatbed scanners. Very comparable to the Nikon 5000 and 8000 dedicated film scanners. I have the precursor to these scanners the Epson 4990. My scanner does a decent job at scanning 35mm film but really excels at medium and large format film.

I suggested this earlier to batch scan at lower res to create an archive that you can then go through choose the good ones to scan at much larger sizes for printing. Doing it this way you will be able to scan all the slides at a fraction of the time.

OMG smithz that is a sad story about your Uncle throwing out his slides after scanning them.

I think everyone had those glasses at one point. I know I did. I still have mine some where around here.

Four of today's photos:

bulldog. A nice color picture.

pimp ho

newspapers. Shot inside the town's academic hospital.

boots. A flash picture.

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I suggested this earlier to batch scan at lower res to create an archive that you can then go through choose the good ones to scan at much larger sizes for printing. Doing it this way you will be able to scan all the slides at a fraction of the time.?

That's not a bad idea, Rico. I'll consider it. Add the V700 could be a nice compromise. $492.00 doesn't seem too bad if it does the job. And that ICE technology seems to work going by those samples on the Amazon page.

Nice one of bulldog, Yabor.

Pim & Ho. LOL. Nice on-the-street-with-zuster-Petra photo as well.

Ellie 2

Spotlight

Wow, what expressive hands and face from Lady Ellie. I would suggest trying the opposite on this one. Let the hands be the in-focus point of interest and let the face fade to slightly out-of-focus. But that's a rich black and white photo. You used the medium well.

Is it me or you who has the fetish for mannequins? She's cute, though, in an androgynous sort of way.

yes, I'll certainly try and get Ellie's hands in focus--but that's not so easy. Fortunately it turns out she loves being photographed, so I'll have plenty of chances for good shots.

That nice buldog above is not a buldog but a Boxer, zuster Petra tells me.

Holy crap, some of these are breathtaking. I particularly liked pimp ho, newspapers, Ellie 2, and Spotlight.

Pimp ho is a masterpiece. I love how the figure is so camouflaged.

Ellie 2 is also a masterpiece, absolutely love the way she's addressing the camera... almost like she's casting a spell on it, or directing some silent-movie-actress energy at it. Cool chick.

Sister Petra is also still scarily photogenic... lovely. And how the hell you got a guy in a friggin' JOURNALIST'S VEST, the second he walks by some newspapers is beyond me. That's one in a million.

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Ellie 2 is also a masterpiece, absolutely love the way she's addressing the camera... almost like she's casting a spell on it, or directing some silent-movie-actress energy at it. Cool chick.

I love that characterization.

Joerie, a colleague newspaper boy. Dislikes being photographed.

Victory ... 2012

The stated optical resolution of the Epson V-100 scanner is 3200 x 3200, so that's the resolution I scanned this test 35 mm transparency at. The only in-scan settings applied were unsharp mask and tweaking of the levels to avoid clipping. Other than cropping, I didn't do any post-processing in Photoshop.

Compare it to the previous test scan of the Epson 1600 and the Epson 636, both which were scanned at 1200 dpi. It would easily appear that Epson's claims of 3200 dpi optical for the V-100 are completely bogus. Completely and utterly bogus. I'll test this if I feel like it but I've seen interpolated scans before, and this "3200" dpi scan looks no better than an interpolated 1600 dpi optical scan, at best.

Tribe is wonderfully bizarre. They look like a troop of hardcore colonists on a hostile planet from one of the various Star Trek Next Generation episodes.

Brothel and I got out my dad's old Bell & Howell 35 Slide Cube (that appears to be the product's name) projector from the attic. We were both expecting to have to fiddle with it for quite a while in order to get it working. The thing is, he had four of these puppies stashed in the attic. It looks like he was collecting them for parts...probably as he found them at garage sales. Some were marked with little sticker like "Works, but removed over-heat fuse and soldiered." But one of the four appeared to be in better condition and, sure enough, it fired right up. Both the bulb and the rotating slide advance mechanism worked perfectly. So we got out a few of the cubes, put a piece of white foam core on the wall, microwaved some popcorn, and did a little slide viewing. The thing jammed only once. Very easy to correct. Nice design for the most part with these things. The entire projector head hinges easily back exposing the entire slide transport plane.

I noticed the lens was a bit dirty at both ends so I cleaned it with the usual care with the required products. Most of the old slides from circa 1965 were holding up rather well. I couldn't darken the room all that much, and without a proper slide screen, the slides were not at their full brightness and color. But it was good enough to preview them and enjoy them. I worked out that the thing to do was to get brothel and my mother to go through these and pick out the ones they want. Then I would likely get Costco to scan them if they offer that service locally. Okay. Just got off my butt and called them and they do. 29 cents per slide at aprox. 3000 x 2000 pixels. The person on the other end of the phone said they do some color correcting as they scan them. I'll take a few dozen first and see how they do. But I'm just not going to try to do it myself. I figure we can cull the slides down to about 900 or so. Maybe more. But certainly we can get the price down to $350.00 tops. And I suggested we all share the cost between a few of us, so that will work fine.

A video on how the Slide Cube operates. It actually works rather well. and when you have a jam, it's rather easy to take care of. The slides all rotate around and get dumped into a tray just below the cube. When you're done viewing all the slides in that cube, you just pull up a little slider and it loads the slides from beneath into the cube. It may sound a bit rube goldberg, but it works very well in the way they implemented it. You can preview the next slide in the little window at the front center.

Someone's sample of a Costco slide scan. Another sample. Not knowing what the originals looked like, it's tough to judge them. The resolution they do is 3139 x 2048. That should be adequate. I know there's a practical limit to the amount of detail you can get out of a 35 mm slide. I doubt that 3139 x 2048 is that limited but I doubt it's all that much more than that.

XXL weeks a.k.a. "thalonesque"

Uh oh. I hope "thalonesque" wasn't a shot at anyone's...err...stature. But I like that photo. It looks right out of the late 1950's.

BN, the scans from Costco doesn't look too bad. I think they're using a filmscanner.

Yabor, great shot at Lidl. What a poor dude. I think it was a bit *indiscrete* to take a photo of him, but anyway.

smithz, I talked to a friend yesterday who once had a bunch of slides scanned at Costco and he said they did a good job. He's going to show me some samples. Even if I do let them do it, I'm going to do it in batches, I think, starting, of course, with just a few dozen to check out their results.