Fun Challenge for those that fancy it.
 

To go with the BBC 4 tv series thread, on the cheap create an image that has the feel of an old picture. Duncan has of course already started with this
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...ppuser=34&sl=y

I don't have the photoshop skills so will rely on doing a lot of it in camera.

My route as I have failed to get a sharper pinhole image, and cannot afford Focus Magic that was mentioned in Marks link in the BBC 4 tv series thread, is to try a simple lens from an old film camera on a bellows for focussing. Similar focussing could probably be done with sliding tubes as in Marks link which is here.
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/a...s_pinhole.html

Don

Here's an easy Photoshopped one to start with - I'm sure there'll be a lot better to follow (a few with dog-eared edges would look authentic!):

Rural scene with no 'modern' items to date it (not much of interest at all, actually!)

Convert to Grayscale, then Duotone to apply a sort of sepia colouring, then back to RGB. (I think you can use 'colorize' for a similar effect if you have Photoshop Elements rather than the full Photoshop)

Eliptical Marquee tool to select a circular area in the middle of the image with 'feathering' of 100pixels - then Select-Inverse to apply blurring to everywhere except the middle via the Blur-Lens Blur Filter. De-select marquee tool.

Re-size and save for web and we have an instant 'sharp-in-the-middle-only' shot from an early, poorly-corrected lens!

Don;
That is one nice link to pinhole shooting.
I must give a go.

Credit to Mark ( mw aurora ) for that link Sassan.

My update:

Too late in terms of light by the time I had the lens sorted. Something from a boot sale folding roll film camera, possibly from the 50's. Built in leaf shutter with Bulb, 1/25, 1/75 and 1/200 sec shutter speeds. Probably well off in accuracy terms.

This will be a tripod job to use as it does have to be set to Bulb to open the shutter to allow for focussing. Aperture then needs stopping down from f4.5.

Pic of the camera attatched to confirm my insanity. :D :D :D

Don

challenge
 

Missed the progam but like the idea of a challenge. Attached is a photoshopped version of a lighthouse given a treatment to make it look like an older style photo. (Original attached for comparison). Any comments or suggestions for improving this welcome. Perhaps we could have a monthly comp with a theme like the photo comp for those of us who like to tinker with our pics

Dan

Nice grain effect in that Dan.
I see you have also taken Adey's route re softening the edges. Possibly still a bit sharp in the centre relative to the edges.
Are those scratches or rubbish on the enlarger condenser lenses. :)

Personally I will do an image that is straight out of the darkroom including all the spotting.

Don

A slightly different route to Andy. I used a layer mask with the Circular gradient tool to have a less pronounced edge. desaturated the image then messed about with the curves for the sepia tinge. Added some grain using a filter.The scratches were added with the pencil tool as all the old photos that I see have scratches from poor storage/ mishandling. I am sure that there are 101 ways of achieving a similar effect. The darkroom way looks like a lot of hard work, enjoy yourself
Dan

That's the beauty of Photoshop - there are many different ways to achieve the same effect!

Looking through some old photos I've noticed that the 'sepia' toning is very variable from one to another - some are very brown whilst others are much more subtle; perhaps it's not toning, as such, but just a warmer base-colour in the paper.

One of the hardest things to simulate is the 'smooth' effect you get through old photos often being contact-printed from quite large negatives coupled with the softness of less than perfect lenses albeit not being 'stretched' by any enlargement. And, of course, old film was more likely to have been orthochromatic (a job for the channel-mixer in Photoshop!)

I've done a different version of my original shot with a different tone, more extensive feathering of the sharp middle-circle and some vignetting in the corners

Don;
Are you talking of something like this? Of course minus the swimming suit that is a bit in-dated...(Opposite of out-dated).

Well wouldn't you know it. Weather here today is GRIM so no opportunity to try my lens outside, so I may have a go with flash. At least it will give some idea of sharpness or lack of it from a low end lens.

Very good Adey.
Your comment on contact printing from large negatives is very relevant to the sharpness/resolution issue. Professionals, or at least those that could afford it would be using 10" x 8" or larger. Amateurs really got involved with the advent of roll film in its various sizes that did require some enlargement. I have looked through a lot of my grandparents images from the early 1900's and they appear to be contact printed from 6 x 6 or 6 x 9 cm.
Toning to protect the image from the ravages of time/exposure to light was common and varied from sepia to selenium. Selenium being particularly nasty to health. I used to do it in an open area wearing a super filtered face mask.

Sassan,
I really like your image but perhaps the grain indicates film rated at 6400 ASA or a very heavy crop. I notice you say the swim suit is a bit in-dated but if you are not up with fashion then it could be from the 50's. I would really like to see this with a finer grain structure as it really looks like a photo enthusiast/pro shot, could be a winner. :)

Don

The shot I used, above, was already processed from a jpeg, having been taken on my Sony compact camera, so perhaps a RAW-TIFF file without any sharpening at all might be a better starting point.

I've got a lot of old family snapshots from the '30s through to the '60s taken with either a Box Brownie or a basic Ensign folding camera and the 6x9(ish) contact prints look fine but as soon as you get them enlarged the limitations are there to see!

OK I am struggling a bit now. Image looks a bit like a contact print.

Grain used is HP5 courtesy of Duncan.

Attatched pic was taken with the camera lens combo in post #4 and is full frame - a smidge cropped as the grain did not quite fit on the long side. Lens to subject distance 10ft. Flash was used that will have increased the contrast a bit. I did apply usm at Amount 65%, Radius 0.1 to try and sharpen the grain for that condenser enlarger look.

To confirm my amazement at the lens performance I attatch a 100% crop that has had NO sharpening. The grain structure is very obvious in that.

I will post this in the ' Anyone want to reverse engineer an image? ' thread to see how Mark and Foxy get on ;) , and then post the behind the scenes shot in that thread.

Don

No Don not ISO boost. Its only adding Noise in PS plus some blur and vignette effect. I did a quick on your picture. Most olden 6x9 cameras of those days had a vignette effect due to light fall off at the corner of field. I added some dust that is usually gathered over time.

Here is one more with the tone of sepia that seems a more correct approach.

Well it makes you play in pp. This version has been through NX, CS and Paintshop.

Duncans 3200 grain used plus additional noise in photoshop then softened a bit.

Sassan even my pre war Kodak 620 did not vignett as far as I can recall. Its decoration now but I will see if I can find a pic from it. Certainly none of my 1950's folders do so this must be a very early trait. :)

Don

Seeing Adey's image made me think of an image from a Holga camera and that I had seen someone selling Holga lenses 'glued' to SLR camera body caps. A quick dig through my 'DIY to do' bookmarks found this:

http://www.holgamods.com/

I notice he does pre-made pinhole caps too...

Don't sell old lenses short
 

Hi to all - as one who has in the past made his own plates, here is one I made earlier of my late father in law. What you see today as "old photos" in pubs etc are often scans of old pics that have then been played with. This is a part scan of an actual 6" by 4" glass plate I made over thirty years ago when playing around and yes- the flash was magnesium powder. I have converted the negative and added a sepia tone. Its not as clean as it was but it's quite sharp.

Looking at the size of pinholes I guess this either from a Giant land Pins or these are nailholes :)

Andy M:
Very sharp and nice indeed.
The main advantage those days cameras had was the huge film size. Cant think of how much a digital sensor at that size can cost us!

Andy,

Great image.

I have never done that sort of thing, but I have seen incredibly detailed images, traction engines and other parts of the industrial heritage, taken on glass plates.

I like your post title - Don't sell old lenses short. This will set me on a hunt that will be a bit at odds IQ wise with Marks ' Holga ' link. :) Might just revisit the pinhole though as I have found some very thin shim material.


Don

Thanks Sassan - I know what you mean - you only have to look at the price of the new digital H series Hasselblads to get some idea. The full H3 rig costs about £30,000 over here last time I looked and that's no where near 6"x4".

0.25mm big??? I think you are seeing the hole he covers with a very thin material to make the actual pinhole. :)

Sassan,

From what I have read the pinhole should be in as thin a material as possible. For max sharpness it should be as close to perfectly round and there be no burrs. I guess in this case the caps only act as a carrier for the fine material containing the pinhole.

I will test the theory, but I do not want to shell out for any special focus sharpening progs. Of course I could always post a large image here for you photoshop gurus to play with. :)

Don

I have been thinking softness in pinhole photography will be greatly affected by diffraction limits of the sensor. I have posted a test somewhere that shows this effect and my conclusion was f13 is the D2X limit before the effect starts to show. So a pinhole giving an aperture of around f200 is really challenging that, and cannot expect too much in the way of sharpness at all.

I have just found this link which looks interesting.
http://galactinus.net/vilva/pinhole/index.html

If you scroll down to ' The Retro Way : My Other Photography ' then this guy has tried out more alternatives than I have. :rolleyes:

Don

I thought the only problem with long exposure of pinhole and digital sensor should be the excess noise that you also get in long exposed deep sky images (Those unwanted mostly bright and dark red spots similar to pixel dead on monitor). I sincerely hope to find some time to do my own exploration in this interesting field.

That was a nice link Don. Loved the L class lens on 350D Canon only the red L colar is too obvious and a bit backwardly placed:D

It wasn't my intention to make this picture look old, I was aiming for an authentic B&W film feel rather than an historical record of a bygone scene. Not sure how long pedallos have been around, but I dare say it's not very long ago.

Nevertheless, you lot all seem to be having fun, so I thought I'd have a go at the intended theme. This is my real attempt to get a digitally produced image looking like it came out of an old shoe box in an elderly relative's attic.

D.

Sassan,

Specially for you I have had another go at pinhole photography this evening.
I made a 0.3mm ( very fine sewing needle ) hole in a piece of shim. Shim was attatched inside a body cap suitably drilled. I found info that suggests the aperture for this is f229. D2X diffraction limit has been tested by me, and the image gradually goes soft from f13 so I am not too surprised by what I see here.

I tried the pin hole body cap direct on the body but found plus 50mm of tubes gave a sharper result. Exposure under the workshop lights with some assistance from flash was 20 secs at ISO400. Not sure the Multiblitz flash enjoyed being rapidly fired manually during that as it started smoking. :eek:

3 pics attatched.

1) The effect of such a small aperture on sensor dirt. This is a 100% crop. Foxy would have had a nightmare at leaving everything open to crud but at least it shows the effect. :rolleyes:

2) A resized image with no sharpening or focus correction.

3) A larger version in case anyone fancies a go at it.

Don

Duncan,

I wondered how long before you joined in. :p :)

Don

This thread has me playing around in photoshop.

Following from Sassans gallery IR pics I thought I would have a go at trying it in photoshop so this is not shot in IR. Luckily AP had an article on this a couple of weeks ago or I would not have stood a chance.

So a bit of a more modern look, but for those that ever had a play with Kodak High Speed Infrared film this may strike a chord.

Don

Don:

Very nice go both on pinhole and then IR.
One thing I can say for sure is you have invented an inexpensive way to check sensor cleanness when buying a use DSLR:)

Now all I like to see more is your go on Photoshop. Its really fun an easy the only tricky thing with photoshop is they didn't put up their icons in right spot; As long as you start with "Image" from tool bar, try all three listed Auto-Things, then, from same menu, reduce the size to say 800 pixel and lastly from "Filter" menus use the USM (UnSharp Mask) and play with parameters, you have made that giant leap. If you have already done this, you are ready to check the non auto version of same choices then exploring every option under "Image" attention to "curve", "highlight and shadows" "Hue and saturation". Next is to change the canvas size from same menu. To let real fun begins, you may want to go through the "Artistic filters" under "Filter" toolbar. And the next step to discover the power of Layers. This is where real fun begins and next sky is the limit.

You definitely don't have any noise as I thought should be a problem. Sorry if your flash got smoked but for a fact I know those repetitive bust flashes are fun to make (You remembered how I smoked my 30D's circuit twice that way on 5fps and BTW Canon repaired the second time for free:)). I am wondering why the sharpness is not any better. Was the pin too thick? 0.3cm look that way to me but then for indoor light it sure was a good choice. Or may be your distance form sensor was too close.
I know some good result are achieved by exposure of upto an hours or so but of course talking of old film manual cameras. Don't know if DSLR's batter can coupe for such a long exposure in first place (From sensor cleaning experience I am sure they can't. BTW my suggestion for any one who is planning to use a very long exposure don't know how or doesn't have an external lockable remote shutter release, is to use this sensor cleaning feature that basically keeps your mirror locked up with curtain open for as lone as main switch is turned to off or battery is completely drained.

I promise to give a go on this pinhole, this weekend. You see week days are hard to get back home on time, before sun is up and then with Halloween that is at its dawn (With being interrupted at least a 50 times since started this short paragraph by spooky creatures at the door who are here for treat or treats {Wrongly called treat or trick}) there should be more time this weekend.

Sassan

See attatched pic of my pinhole. I think you may have miss read the hole dimension. In pinhole photography the size of the hole is relative to the focal length and should not be confused with adjustable f stop in your normal lens. A couple of examples - my 0.3mm hole from a fine sewing needle = optimal focal length 75mm, my first attempt with a domestic pin at 0.6mm = optimal focal length 300mm. Focal length in this case being the distance from the pin hole to the sensor plane. My couple of experiments showed +/- a few mm was of no consequence. Scroll to the bottom of this link to get the idea.
http://home.online.no/~gjon/pinhole.htm

On the subject of fall off of sharpness then I have attatched a crop of a set of images from my test of the diffraction limit of the D2X. f8 is optimal, f11 is OK then things start to go downhill. So looking at that image and given my reckoning of the f stop range to the pinhole of 0.3mm -f8, f11, f16, f22, f32, f45, f64, f90, f128, f192 plus about 1/2 stop to f229. Link to the original thread on the subject
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...ead.php?t=1186

Don