Cleaning up old images and deciding if I want to keep them around on my site seems to be a never-ending chore. This may have been one of the very first sunrise photos I was ever happy with back then. From my database notes, it was originally exposed on Oct 1, 1997, using 35mm film, Fuji Velvia 50 slide film (of course), with my first Nikon SLR, the N70, and a kit lens, a 35-70 zoom. I made note that I also used a Tiffen Enhancing Filter. I remember really liking that filter for sunrises and fall colors.
So using that, combined with using Velvia, likely added quite a bit to the colors here. Probably one of my earlier attempts in experimenting with how film choice and using lens filters help pop landscapes a bit. The film scan has no other development modifications that I can tell. (My old Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 is collecting dust next to me as I type this. 🙂 )
I really have no desire to adjust anything in this image to bring it up to date. I ran it through Topaz Sharpen AI just to see how it might help the overall sharpness. Very slight improvement. I’ve noticed these AI tools don’t do so well with film-based images. Film grain is likely interpreted as “noise” and it seems to just confuse the heck out of the AI – creating uneven removal. The grain was just accepted as a fact of the medium back then. I wonder if we begin to lose sight of some of these things in pursuit of perfection. I could remove the blurry moving birds out of it as well, but I think I’ll just leave it as is.
It looks very nice on the screen. On the bottom, the reflection of the clouds adds some interest. Interesting colors.
thank you! The colors match the original slide as well.
Quite a nice photo. Velvia was a bit line pushing up that saturation slider on the warmer colors. But 1997….you were barely even a teenager ???
The emojis disappeared 🙂
I’m a grumpier old man than you think!
Aren’t we both!
That’s a really nice photo — the vibrant colors look very convincing and I instantly thought “Velvia” when I saw the thumbnail in WordPress Reader. 🙂
I too think noise is overrated — well, at least grainy luminance noise (and color noise is easy enough to get rid of). I don’t know what size you can get out of the original but on screen, it looks absolutely great to me.
Good eye then for spotting Velvia! I think I printed the photo once at 12×18 and it looked fine. No sign of grain at that size. Could probably go larger, but then those blurry birds become more noticeable and might bug me more.
Significant color for the time frame of the photo. It’s interesting about using Sharpen AI on film-based images.
I’ve tried Topaz Sharpen and DeNoise on a number film images – all with disappointing results. Given the youngsters that are programming the AI, it probably doesn’t know what film is.
Those young whippersnappers…. LOL ? Careful, or you’ll sound like me.