Re: need some help

[Ben Kreunen <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
>Could anyone put a guess at the amount I over-exposed by ? I scanned from 
>a Nikon Coolscan LS-20 E straight and didn't adjust or play with the 
>levels. I'd put my guess at 2 stops over, the HIE was rated at 
>50,sometimes at 10 if I remember corect (most reading from a Minolta 4F). 
>I live in Singapore, which is in the tropics. I think there may be more 
>red in the spectrum here than say in America where HIE's recommendations 
>come from. Anyone else in the tropics with any thoughts ?

As I told you before, that's one hell of a high key effect you've got 
there. I don't know what you've done but it's technically neither 
overexposed nor over processed as there is both highlight and shadow detail 
in the scans.  Somehow your processing has produced a very interesting 
characteristic curve for the film. To see what I mean, try taking 
<http://home1.pacific.net.sg/~danzig/main/gallery/infrachurch.jpg> and 
adjust the gamma to 0.2, which I would normally consider to be an extreme 
adjustment. You'll see that all the detail is there and it now looks like a 
"normal" IR image. (OK so the shadow detail may be a little too good on the 
unadjusted scan, so you could reduce exposure by a stop, possibly 2, but 
I'd stick with 1 to give a bit of a safety margin)

Your problem then is one of contrast and how to extract that very subtle 
highlight detail.  The best paper I've found for this is Ilford's 
Multigrade IV, which seems to have an extended range and much better 
highlight contrast (i.e. the contrast of the highlights also changes as you 
change grades). I found I can print almost the same detail as I can scan 
with my LS1000. It's not the only paper that I use as the better highlight 
contrast can push the other tones to be on the dark side, but I'd say it's 
exactly what you need here.

Cheers

Ben

===================================
http://www.bigbenpublishing.com.au/
===================================

*
****
*******
******************************************************
*  To remove yourself from this list, send:          *
*         UNSUBSCRIBE INFRARED                       *
*       to                                           *
*         MAJORDOMO@xxxxx                            *
*----------------------------------------------------*
*   For the IR-FAQ, IR-Gallery and heaps of links:   *
*  http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/mainpage.htm  *
******************************************************