Handcolored negatives to debut at Celebrate the Arts

Varying degrees of success getting the saturation I want with neutral black and white surrounds. With the exception of the yellow rose...that was purely an exercise in color contrasts and pen point vs broad side coloring to build texture.  I think it all worked, 'cept the first.  Am slowly learning that it isn't exact opposites on the color wheel when scanning hand colored black and white negatives to make them into positives.

A bit on scanner settings. I do scan max DPI with the Epson Perfection V600.  I scan from the profession mode where I can get the best control of the final output.  The max DPI is 12800 which even from a small negative yields huge files...along the order of 50-70 megs depending on the detail in the image.  I chose the scan in 48 bit color to capture all the subtleties of the color I apply to the negatives.  I still use the Black and White film as type as opting for "color negative" gives it all a ghastly orange tint that simply can't be corrected out.

File resizing for image size and usable dpi for images is done with the help of Adobe CS5. While we are on the topic of CS5, have I mentioned recently how much I love the "spot healing brush tool"?  Its simply magic and is the most useful tool in working with scanned negatives and "spotting" out rough spots in the color or removing dust particles.  No matter how clean I keep things there still is dust that makes it into the scan...microscopic stuff that I can't really see until the scan is blown up, yet the tool removes it and blends in the scene perfectly.

These images will be appearing in the trusty satchel of images and possibly framed for the coming Monrovia Association of Fine Arts "Celebrate the Arts" to be held on October 8/9 in the heart of Old Town Monrovia in Library Park.  (Monrovia, California, not Libya).

Just a little taste of spring

Shot this in March 1976 could be dogwood. Could be forsythe. Both were the first to bloom in MO once winter was done and before the rest of the stuff was ready to go.

This is from a scan of the original negative done with an Epson V600 Photo scanner, set the dpi for a max 12800 (extrapolated) that picks up every little piece of grain. I dumbed down the images just a couple of notches so it loads faster here.

Funny how my love of things up close was there in the early work. I like how the depth of field is so shallow that only a couple of blossoms are in focus.

Praise be...the new scanner arrived

Can't wait to find in storage all of my negatives,not just those stashed in with the trusty High School yearbooks. This gem came from the first set I shot with my first brand new, spanking way cool 35mm camera that I bought with all my graduation gift money.

Best I could find to celebrate the arrival of my new scanner, an Epson V600 that is comes set to scan both negatives and transparencies. Should be interesting to see how it does with the old Kodachromes...will it reproduce the same rich color? Right now am pretty amazed at what it does with old color negatives like this July 4th shot done summer of 1975.