PHOTO TALK
Prepared by the staff of Marshall’s Camera
Auburndale, Florida -A14

So what moments of truth, what motes of life’s essence do your pictures reveal?

QUESTION: I dropped my SLR camera with the telephoto lens attached to it. The camera is ok but the lens is frozen and will neither zoom nor focus. There is no repair on this lens because parts are no longer available. The camera has been in our family for twenty years and it still takes great pictures. I am trying to decide whether to buy another lens for the camera or buy a new autofocus SLR camera outfit. What do you suggest?
ANSWER: This is a hard question to answer. The short term economical route is to buy another lens and keep using the old camera. This is a gamble because the camera might last another twenty years or it might fail tomorrow.
The new autofocus SLR cameras don’t necessarily take better pictures but they make good pictures a lot easier to produce. The new cameras have features like built-in flash, automatic film load, advance, rewind and automatic film type sensing. The camera manufacturers have removed all the major aggravations the photographers used to complain about. In fact, even though most of the new cameras can be switched from automatic to manual operation, the new cameras are so easy to operate in their automatic mode that we have had people come into Marshall’s Camera and trade their new camera in for an older style camera because the new model “took all the fun out of photography.”
If saving money is not a primary goal then you should look at the new SLR cameras before making a final decision. Actually the camera prices now for the entry level model SLR cameras are lower than they were a few years ago. Lens prices have also had a corresponding drop. At Marshall’s Camera you will also find pre-owned (used) late model cameras at even lower prices than the new versions. To soften the financial blow your old camera and accessories will have some trade in value. There is no cost for a quotation before any final decisions are made.
In making your decision list your priorities. Among the things you might want to consider are comfort level (the known versus the unknown), ease of use, service life (new outfit should be repairable for the next eight to ten years while old camera can no longer be repaired), and cost of equipment (new lens for old camera versus new camera with lens plus telephoto lens).
As I said in the beginning, this is a hard question to answer.

QUESTION: I have taken a lot of pictures in the last forty years. In an attempt to make them more easy to share with my children and grandchildren I have bought a digital scanner to convert the pictures into digital form to store in my computer. However, while the scanner does a good job on the prints, the transparency attachment on the scanner does not make very sharp negative or slide scans. How can I make better scans of negatives and slides?
ANSWER: A good negative scan will always yield a sharper, more colorful picture than a good print scan. This might sound like a bold statement until some of the reasons are listed.
First, if stored properly, the negatives and slides will resist the effects of aging better than prints simply because the film is not exposed to the damaging effects of air and light as much as prints. Aging does not normally affect sharpness but the different dye layers in both the film and prints change at different rates. Since the blue and yellow layers fade faster than the red you often see old color prints with very pronounced reddish casts. Therefore the negative colors, although changed, will not be changed as much as the print colors have changed.
Also when a print is made from a negative the image is focused on the print paper at the time of exposure. Even though it is not noticeable except when viewed through a magnifying loupe the reproduced image on the print does not have the same sharpness as the original image on the film negative. Therefore the scan from the negative will yield a sharper image than the scan from the print.
Now to answer the original question. To make the best scans of negatives and slides you need to purchase a good film scanner. A good film (negative and slide) scanner is designed to make a better scan of film than a print scanner that has been converted to scan film.
In the same price range a film scanner will always have a higher optical resolution and a greater dynamic range than a print scanner. The optical resolution determines the fineness of detail the pictures will display. The dynamic range of a picture indicates the range of light and dark that will show variation in the picture. A print does not capture the dynamic range of a negative and so a negative scan might show details in the shadows or highlights of a picture that were never suspected by looking at the print.
Of course, if you have made the best possible scans of the pictures now you need an outstanding printer to show the superior quality of the pictures. This will be the topic of another Photo Talk column.
Check our website for photoclass announcements. Look at MarshallsCamera.com
Copyright by Marshall Ledbetter 2004