-- Ilkka Nissild (inissila@cc.hut.fi), July 23, 1998

Answers

Apology for repost. I did test the URL but then copied it from a previous Emacs which had one of the '0' missing.

-- Ilkka Nissild (inissila@cc.hut.fi), July 23, 1998.

Even if it were sharp (in focus) it wouldn't be any good. Too many haphazardly arranged leaves among the pines. Compare to Frank Kolwicz's image#1 (Frosty Laurel Leaves) which achieves a beautiful decorative effect with leaves!

-- (andreas@physio.unr.edu), July 23, 1998.

I agree with the above poster. I have tried the "decorative leaves" effect myself and have had varied success. I believe that the lighting on the individual leaves must be interesting in order to compensate for the lack of depth. Keep trying!

-- John Butler (jbutler@pond.net), July 23, 1998.

The image reminds me of a rug. The problem is too much pattern. You need to break it with something interesting. The yellow leaf in the top left corner for example. Crop out a rectange about 200 x 300 from the origional from the top left corner. Position the cropping frame with the yellow leaf in the bottom right corner of the cropped image. This image works a lot better than the original.

-- Paul Lenson (lenson@pci.on.ca), July 23, 1998.

There is also too much contast, photographer has made about a dozen beginner mistakes.

-- Lester LaForce (102140.1200@compuserve.com), July 24, 1998.

Ilkka, checkout Cleeo's "Morning Frost".

-- Paul Lenson (lenson@pci.on.ca), July 24, 1998.

The scan was by a highly regarded professional lab on PhotoCD, but the scans were badly underexposed. The operator said that the scanner was completely automatic and there was no possibility of adjustment on the analog exposure side (for slides). The scanner was set up to do well on slightly overexposed (snap-) shots, but it increases the contrast of the image quite intensely, and thus normally exposed, or otherwise dark-toned pictures become very dark scans indeed. (I will contact Kodak about this, as I cannot believe they would make such a machine.) The people at the lab were very apologetic, and said that the ProPhotoCD scanner was better (for $5 per scan), and then they had the high-end scanners which produced very good scans indeed (for $30 per scan!)

I will try to find a lab that has a newer version of the PhotoCD workstation, or buy a relatively inexpensive slide scanner myself. In the meanwhile, I'll submit some over-contrasty images lacking in subtlety of tonality, sorry. The best images that I had scanned were darkish moody forest shots, and they scanned poorly, which is why I submitted this image, which was light enough to have enough information left for a fairly good representation of the colours of the original, after a 'highlight' adjustment in Paintshop Pro.

As far as making the image 'look' sharp, there are two ways, one is a high-resolution image (not permitted here), and the other is 'sharpening' the scan with an image-processing algorithm. I chose neither. I think the softness (not present in the original) adds 'air' to the image, which would otherwise be lost due to the increase in contrast.

The composition ... yes, the 'placement' of the leaves is arbitrary, which is the way things are in nature. The background is 'turbulent'. I certainly could make a more traditional plancement of the leaves (rather than random as they are now), but then I would be using an engineering approach to photography, rather than an emotional one.

Ilkka

-- Ilkka Nissild (inissila@cc.hut.fi), July 26, 1998.

Also, I noticed that by cropping out the right third of the image, thus leaving a square, the composition is better. The right third adds nothing. I'm unused to having the opportunity to modify the original viewfinder composition, but I will try to take advantage of this in the future. Thanks for the critique.

Ilkka

-- Ilkka Nissild (inissila@cc.hut.fi), July 26, 1998.