Lifted from my Flickr posted questions... re: PP vs. Shift lens.

[alanscape]

I've D&D'd the text below from my post in Photoshop Elements Club on Flickr.... I'm afraid that nobody seemed to want to reply except one kind person who didn't understand the questions.................

"I have decided to start using my Sinar, Hasselblad and Nikon F2A cameras again for a specific job... my questions are:-

1) Would members agree that I'd be better sticking to my old favourites, Provia and Velvia (as I'd much prefer to do) from the point of view of editing in PSE5 or to use Ektar/Reala by reason of of exposure latitude? I assume the former, being 1st. generation positves and that the latitude really isn't of concern.

2) When I ask the photo lab to scan the 5"x4", 120 rollfilm and the 35mm films... what precise instructions do I give?

3) Should I ask for DVD or have the images loaded onto flash drive/memory card and save to my computer and external back-up drive?

4) Will the images open in PSE 5 without any prior plug-ins?

5) Will the images appear as raw files as regards editing or will PSE5 patch up 'Cannot open..........wrong type of file'?

The main reason for doing things this way is that I have two years work on a building restoration project and the Sinar and the F2 both have shift abilities (35mm f/3.5 PC for the Nikon).

I obviously use a step-ladder when I can but I find that vertical perspective correction (now called 'keystone'?) if taken beyond a certain limit results in a loss of apparent definition/sharpness....re-sampling is the cause, so I have been told (?).

Previously I've used the Filter in PSE5 and recently have tried the PTlens plug-in which I find very good but are there any really top-notch plug-ins for this correction procedure that will avoid the resampling(?) 'problem'?

Sorry for such apparently basic childish questions but if you don't know, then you don't know..."

Maybe I should have come here in the first place... or are the questions really stupid? I've been doing this job for 48 years but
I surely can't know everything.....

[Lightbox]

I'll try an answer a few for you -

1 - All of the film I shoot ends up getting scanned into a digital format, so I prefer to shoot low contrast film which makes it easier to scan well and I can then add contrast if needed in Photoshop.

2 - If you plan on getting large prints or highres scans at a later stage, just get the lowest res scans for proofs onto a dvd, makes it easy to check through your images and they are good enough for the web.

3, 4 & 5 - Most likely your images will be supplied as Jpegs so will open in Elements depends on what your Lab uses to create low res scans, my lab just uses a digital camera so they are supplied as Jpegs, you could probly request Tiffs if you wanted to a small amount of editing to the proof images.

and its always better to use tilt/shift lenses if you have them, whether creatively or correctively.

[Dave Gurtcheff]

Before I switched to digital, I had a darkroom, and shot color and B&W *NEGATIVE* film as it was, and is, the easiest to print for a traditionally trained dark room worker. I down sized, gave up the darkroom, and started scanning 6X6 Hasselblad, Pentax 67 and 645 negatives, and various 35mm  negs with a (then state-of-the art) Polaroid 120 Sprintscan scanner at max resolution (I recall it is 4,000 ppi), and saved as TIFF. I found the negatives much easier to scan than the few slides I tried. The slides tended to blow highlights or block shadows. Kodak has released new color neg films "Optimized for scanning". If you have the time, I would shoot both neg and positive and get them scanned, and see which works best for you.

I do very little architectural work, and just sold my 24mm TS; the little bit I do I post process.
Good luck with your project.
Dave
www.modernpictorials.com

[EduPerez]

[...]
I obviously use a step-ladder when I can but I find that vertical perspective correction (now called 'keystone'?) if taken beyond a certain limit results in a loss of apparent definition/sharpness....re-sampling is the cause, so I have been told (?).

Previously I've used the Filter in PSE5 and recently have tried the PTlens plug-in which I find very good but are there any really top-notch plug-ins for this correction procedure that will avoid the resampling(?) 'problem'?

Sorry for such apparently basic childish questions but if you don't know, then you don't know..."
Maybe I should have come here in the first place... or are the questions really stupid? I've been doing this job for 48 years but I surely can't know everything.....

Layman explanation (hope not to offend anyone):

When doing perspective and distortion corrections (or even rotations), pixels move from one place within the image to another place; the problem is that those pixels not always end on top of other pixels, sometimes they fail somewhere mid-place. Then, some kind of interpolation must be applied; that is resampling.

As far as I know, it cannot be avoided.

[alanscape]

Many thanks for all your most useful and informative replies... I think that I'll do some tests to determine where I use my digital cameras and where the
shift lens should 'take over'... I'll have to develop my own 'rule-of-thumb' with experience. There must be a change over point somewhere from digital + PP to film and PC lens.

Often I've found with photographing buildings that it's not getting the shot 'correct' that's important, it's achieving an image that looks right, rather than is right.

Thanks again.