Dating old photos (Page 2): It was Ilford FP4, one of my favourite films at the time. As you say, very fine grain. I used PanF occasionally, but at 50 ISO it was very slow. FP4 was 125...

rocar7 Loc: Alton, England

selmslie wrote:

You probably have the date narrowed down pretty well.

It would also be interesting to know what film was used. If it is 35mm I'm guessing it was PanF or Panatomic-X since the grain is so fine. If medium format it could have been almost anything else.

It was Ilford FP4, one of my favourite films at the time. As you say, very fine grain. I used PanF occasionally, but at 50 ISO it was very slow. FP4 was 125 ISO, so better for general use.

gwong1 Loc: Tampa, FL

I did not store originally because I was not sure, or had your permission to work on the photos. The program I use is Imagenomic Noiseware. Gary http://imagenomic.com/

rocar7 wrote:

Could you post those again with "store original", and what was the noise reduction program?

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

gwong1 wrote:

I did not store originally because I was not sure, or had your permission to work on the photos. The program I use is Imagenomic Noiseware. Gary http://imagenomic.com/

I have been using Neat Image ( http://www.neatimage.com/ ) which is a little less expensive but also does a nice job.

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

Sorry to say but that noise reduction has actually taken the fine detail out of the pic and made any writing and fine detail harder to read.

gwong1 wrote:

I did not store originally because I was not sure, or had your permission to work on the photos. The program I use is Imagenomic Noiseware. Gary http://imagenomic.com/

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

lighthouse wrote:

Sorry to say but that noise reduction has actually taken the fine detail out of the pic and made any writing and fine detail harder to read.

Where are you seeing the lost detail? In the scaffolding?

Both programs did a pretty good job cutting the grain and losing hardly any detail that I could observe.

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

In the poster on the back of the bus - can hardly even see people on the "Jeremy" poster now and any other hint of writing apart from the main word is gone altogether,
in the writing on the door of the truck on the right side of the pic (can hardly even tell that there is any writing there at all now),
in the sticker/poster on the side of the bus,
number plate on the Leyland truck is much much softer and harder to discern the numbers now.

selmslie wrote:

Where are you seeing the lost detail? In the scaffolding?

Both programs did a pretty good job cutting the grain and losing hardly any detail that I could observe.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

lighthouse wrote:

In the poster on the back of the bus - can hardly even see people on the "Jeremy" poster now and any other hint of writing apart from the main word is gone altogether,
in the writing on the door of the truck on the right side of the pic (can hardly even tell that there is any writing there at all now),
in the sticker/poster on the side of the bus,
number plate on the Leyland truck is much much softer and harder to discern the numbers now.

Now I can see these issues in the posted image but not in the image I processed with Neat Image. This does not mean that Neat Image is better.

In my case, I took no pains to adjust the processing of the grain reduction, just used the default settings. I would guess that the posted image did not get more than minimal attention either.

Both programs can be tweaked to produce grain reduction that could have less impact on detail. Nevertheless, grain reduction will, by its nature, naturally sacrifice a little detail. It's up to the user to decide how to employ it and how strongly to apply it.

Radioman Loc: Ontario Canada

Mogul wrote:

Doesn't the van on the right side of the bus appear a bit newer?

********
British number plates belong to the vehicle - and among other things, gives the date: On the truck, the last letter is H and this identifies it as being licensed between August 1st 1969 and July 31st 1970.

This means that the photograph cannot be previous to Aug 1st 1969

gwong1 Loc: Tampa, FL

This was done quickly to clean up the grain. I did not attempt to do anything else. Gary

lighthouse wrote:

In the poster on the back of the bus - can hardly even see people on the "Jeremy" poster now and any other hint of writing apart from the main word is gone altogether,
in the writing on the door of the truck on the right side of the pic (can hardly even tell that there is any writing there at all now),
in the sticker/poster on the side of the bus,
number plate on the Leyland truck is much much softer and harder to discern the numbers now.

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

I think Mogul was referring to the Ford Transit van going the other way and we have already researched this option with the L plates, several Ls but no Ms it seems but the film is newer than that.

Radioman wrote:

********
British number plates belong to the vehicle - and among other things, gives the date: On the truck, the last letter is H and this identifies it as being licensed between August 1st 1969 and July 31st 1970.

This means that the photograph cannot be previous to Aug 1st 1969