Lensbaby

Hi all

During my Liverpool day out (see my earlier thread 'Lensbaby in Liverpool'), I mistakenly shot one of the frames in jpg mode instead of raw, this particular shot seems to give me a nice fine grain whilst the other 'raw' shots are smoother.

I'm a b/w fanatic, and I love film grain, should I consider always shooting in jpg mode to get the fine grain artifacts? Or possibly a higher iso? I know I can add a little grain in Photoshop, but I'd like to capture it.

Also, I don't have a printer set-up at the moment, but hopefully, soon I'll have an epson printer with a quad black inkset (lyson or permajet), on hannemulle (spelling?) papers. Does anyone have any experience with this set-up.

Cheers

Steve

I'm no expert, but JPEG artifacts, digital noise and film grain are all very different things. JPEG artifacts are a product of the amount of JPG compression you use, so if you shoot or save JPEGs at lower quality, it will often more artifacts. If you're shooting at highest quality JPEG there will be very few artifacts.

Shooting digital at higher ISO will genearlly add more digital noise that mimics film grain but its not a chemical process as with film exposure--longer exposures can also add digital noise. Also, different digital camea sensors have varying amounts of noise-- so two cameras both could experience varying degrees of noise, even at same ISO setting. I had a camera that produced a great deal of noise -- sometimes this was acceptable or even desired, but didn't give me control when I didn't want it.

I'd say that you're best bet for mimicing film grain are higher ISO settings, or longer exposures, or editing afterwards with your graphics program. Using JPEG artifacts to accomplish this gives you less control of the "grain" and greatly reduces the quality of the image.

Regards, David.



Post Edited (09-13-04 16:23)

Steve,

Regarding the grain at jpeg I would not be as excited about that type of noise in my file as I would be about high iso noise on most of the digital slrs I have used. That said, dynamic range suffers with higher iso settings on jpeg especially.

I add grain in Photoshop if I want my prints to look like they came from film. This is usually only an issue with 8x10 or larger images, sometimes smaller prints with grain added create a nice effect but this is usually only necessary with the larger prints. Noise for online sized photographs would need to be very aggressive to be much of an effect at all but is worth playing with for sure.

Often noise is too sharp and needs to be blurred slightly on the noise layer to be convincingly grain.

Here is a link to my grain action: [strongphotography.com]

At the end reduce opacity of the layer set to where you want it.

It is written on a full rez 6mp image. If you have problems with smaller images, let me know and I will rewrite it.

Hope you find this fun.

-Craig



Post Edited (09-13-04 16:27)

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.
Heraclitus of Ephesus

Rightclick on that action link and download to disk before unstuffing the compressed file.

I did update it for smaller files and have a whole seperate version for websize files.

Let me know if you like it or want something changed.

-Craig



You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.
Heraclitus of Ephesus

When I shoot with my lensbaby, I jack up my ISO to about 400. As long as you're not using a flash, you should get some hellacious noise. :)