B/W shot of a b/w shooter

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Dave A's post of his old camera got me thinking about whether or not I could do the same.
This is the oldest camera in my arsenal shot with my sharpest manual lens.
Comments welcomed.



I think I need to work on the reflection in the lens.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[Donald]

Top right hand corner. Needs fixed.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Ya got me Donald. I cropped it out on another version but uploaded the wrong one. It cuts right at the edge of the corner of the book's backing.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

How's that look?
I may shoot this tonight when the windows won't be letting in as much light. That would cut down on the reflection in the lens.

[Donald]

How's that look?

That's better.

Beautiful bit of kit presented very well in an appropriate and well executed B & W image.

[Black Pearl]

Thats a little beauty

[Chrisclick]

I like that you presented the camera sitting on the manual. They (the camera and manual), tend to validate each other and, IMO, look better than if the camera was just placed on a table or on the cloth.

Did you try other arrangements before settling on this one?

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Thank you all.
This was a quickie on my part. Hardest part about it all was getting the background to be all black. I just set it on my coffee table and shot it with light from the window. Was debating about how to position the book and decided it was best this way so you could see that it was a Leica Manual.
The b/w conversion was done in/by my little photo software program. I don't know much about how it does it as it's just a 'button' I can click on. I did try changing the color sliders before hitting the b/w button, but it didn't make much difference in how the b/w version came out.

[IzzieK]

Not shattering but it is a good shot, clear and sharp at the right places...even the shine did not bother me.

[Rob Ekins]

Alan,
The creases in the table cloth could do with an iron

I like that you have not gone crazy with over sharpening the textured parts of the camera, lots of folk do...

The lighting is really nice, perhaps add a small reflector to CR to bump up the side of the piece a stop or so so it is not black.

I love that the camera is what... 1/4 the size of the manual? That says something to me

[bnnrcn]

Very nice image , I prefer the cropped version

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Rob - This was shot with my relatively new to me used Micro Nikkor 55 2.8 so very little sharpening was needed.

bnnrcn - Glad the cropped works for you. I tried to get it SOOC that way but just didn't have the right angle.

[Manfred M]

This was shot with my relatively new to me used Micro Nikkor 55 2.8 so very little sharpening was needed.

Alam - the need for sharpening is primarily driven by the softening of the image by the camera's Anti-Aliasing filter as well as some of the side effects of how a digital image is reconstructed. This is irrespective of the lens you have used to take the picture. Look at both images in Lightbox and use the arrows to flip through these two.

Here is your original shot:





Here is what the unsharp mask set to 100% and a radius of 1.0 pixels does.




What I've done is referred to "import sharpening" in some of the books on sharpening and is one of the first things I do when I start working an image. All sharpening should be done with the image at 100%.

Compare the texture of the camera's leather covering, the engraving on the lens and the machined surfaces of the camera.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Thanks Manfred. I don't have very sophisticated PP software, so I've always tried to get the picture as sharp as I can SOOC.
I see the differences, especially in the machined surfaces (I once was a machinist).
I've always just figured that if you don't start with the sharpest picture you can get, you don't stand much of a chance of ending up as sharp as you want.
Is this problem avoided if you start with a RAW file instead of a jpeg?

[just me]

I like it.....nice idea too......

Griddi........

[Manfred M]

Thanks Manfred. I don't have very sophisticated PP software, so I've always tried to get the picture as sharp as I can SOOC.
I see the differences, especially in the machined surfaces (I once was a machinist).
I've always just figured that if you don't start with the sharpest picture you can get, you don't stand much of a chance of ending up as sharp as you want.

Alan - I virtually always shoot jpeg + raw and most of the images I've uploaded "to the cloud", whether here or to other sites are jpegs.

The one thing I have found with SOOC shots is that the in-camera sharpening is quite conservative and images like this one where we are looking at precision manufactured parts are often under sharpened.

I did this as a simple one-shot sharpening, but frankly if this were my image and I had the original file, I would have done less global sharpening so that the leather texture was a bit softer and done some more localized in-process sharpening to accentuate some of the precision engraving and machining.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I was fortunate, when I first started shooting digital, to have a friend recommend shooting RAW and jpeg, even though I didn't have a clue as to what RAW was or how to work with it. I admit to still being clueless on the later part of that statement. So, I have saved, somewhere, almost every picture I've ever shot with a RAW capable camera. My software won't allow me to do selective sharpening so the pictures are what they are. Maybe NEXT Christmas I'll ask Santa for some software, but this Christmas I'm still holding out for a Sony A7ii.

[doomed forever]

A really nice old Leica...it seems...like the look...good image.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

A really nice old Leica...it seems...like the look...good image.

Thanks Marc.
I've never even run a roll of film thru it to tell the truth. It could use a CLA since it's been sitting for so long (20+yrs?).