Scanning Photographs
The appearance of paper copies made
in red room vary a lot because of the different film materials
and the plentity of variables affecting the process.
Here is presented
6 samples of the many of copies we made which best show
the typical characteristics of the different film materials.
The paper of these copies was a high contrast one, and so
the histograms show a high peak on the 'white' side where
the background has been overexposured.
These paper copies were scanned using Mustek III flatbed scanner
with 600dpi. The area of the sample text of the paper copies
was 4.6x1.6cm, resulting in approximately 1100x380 pixel images.
The scanned images can be seen in figures [7 - 12], and.
their histograms in figures [13-16].
The differences in film materials can easily be detected.
The Kodak's HiE has quite large grain, the contrast
of Technical Pan is large (the image is almost pure black
and white) and the Tmax image contains smoother set
of grey scale values. The HiE and K750 are presented with
pictures taken in normal (400-600) and in
near-IR light (600-800nm).
There seems to be no significant difference between images
taken in normal light and near-IR light. The IR images seem
to be a little noisier. The differences in contrast are
difficult to spot, as the manual work in a red room
affects the results much more. The differences in negatives
were also invisible.
Some details like the dark joint between the lower
right-hand side stroke of 'K' and lower part of 'j' are
different in these images. This joint is really a dark
scratch, not a part of a character. In IR light, it is almost
invisible (compare figures [9,10]). Also, in the TP image,
it has vanished, but that is caused by the very high contrast
of the film and the paper - the scratch has been thresholded
out of the picture.
Figure 7:
Scanned image of paper copy made from Kodak HiE negative, normal light.
Figure 8:
Scanned image of paper copy made from Kodak HiE negative, IR light.
Figure 9:
Scanned image of paper copy made from Konica 750 negative, normal light.
Figure 10:
Scanned image of paper copy made from Konica 750 negative, IR light.
Figure 11:
Scanned image of paper copy made from Kodak Technical Pan negative.
Figure 12:
Scanned image of paper copy made from Kodak Tmax negative.
Figure 13:
Histogram of HiE negative.
Figure 14:
Histogram of K750 negative.
Figure 15:
Histogram of Technical Pan negative.
Figure 16:
Histogram of Tmax negative.
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Antti Nurminen, 34044T, andy@cs.hut.fi