Hmm the only Spirit Castle I am familiar with is a $750/day retreat in Malibu where you and a bunch of strangers you hope to never see again get to sit naked in a circle under the midday sun. The ‘shaman’ asks us what we are grateful for. My answer inevitably is deodorant and sunblock.
NLP is not only amazing for it's color negative film profiles, but excellent grayscale conversions as well.
madNbad wrote:
Since I got the Sony A7CII and have been learning my way around NLP, I've been using negatives from the last few months that initially needed more adjustment because I wasn't using NLP properly. Here are a few from March of this year. These are all Linear Gamma tone profile conversions with no other adjustments.
M4-2, Voigtlander 35 1.4 Nokton Classic SC V2, Tri-X @ ISO 400, Film Photography Project FPP-76 1:1
Little Free Library, Multnomah Village, Portland, Oregon:
James Markus wrote:
With all the density tests over the last few pages. What accurate densitometers are people using?
@theHUN will be the one who will have to answer that question. For me there was an equipment change and improvements in working with the software I was using. The first change was moving on from my Sony A7II. It was a fine camera but the old Sony software wouldn't integrate with Lightroom. This required a three step method, open the Viewer in Imaging Edge to position the negative, use an IR remote to trigger the camera, the files would be sent to a folder designated for automatic import to Lightroom, then I could use Negative Lab Pro to convert them. Adobe and Sony fought for years about access and have finally reached an agreement but only with newer cameras. I started looking at used A7C's but ended up with a brand new A7CII. The sensor is 33 MP compared to 24 and I can operate the camera from the program making scanning much more seamless.
With Negative Lab Pro, I was including too much border in the scans which altered the import results. Initially, I thought my metering was off or there were mistakes in development. My personal goal is to import and convert an image with no manipulation other than the NLP presets. An occasional boost in contrast or brightness is ok but some images needed major changes to exposure or contrast. Then, I reduced the border size to zero but since I like a wide white border, started cropping out the excess. My images improved immediately.
No densitometer involved.
