Film to digital processing: I have an old Pentax 645 film camera. I still love it but would like to do some post processing on the pictures I get from it.. If I have the images put on...

sbettis

I have an old Pentax 645 film camera. I still love it but would like to do some post processing on the pictures I get from it.. If I have the images put on a cd of thumb drive what will I be able to do with Lightroom 5 or Photoshops.

sb
Vancouver WA.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

sbettis wrote:

I have an old Pentax 645 film camera. I still love it but would like to do some post processing on the pictures I get from it.. If I have the images put on a cd of thumb drive what will I be able to do with Lightroom 5 or Photoshops.

sb
Vancouver WA.

I also do a lot of shooting with my Pentax 645nII and both programs will do just fine for you!

Wall-E Loc: Phoenix, AZ

sbettis wrote:

I have an old Pentax 645 film camera. I still love it but would like to do some post processing on the pictures I get from it.. If I have the images put on a cd of thumb drive what will I be able to do with Lightroom 5 or Photoshops.

sb
Vancouver WA.

The biggest hurdle is to find someone to make high-resolution scans of your negatives/prints.

As to WHAT you can do in LR and/or PhotoShop?
Anything you could do in a darkroom and WAY more!!!!
Everything from simple exposure/color adjustments to 'retouching' to full on graphic arts using your image as the basis.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

I scan 6 x 4.5 cm transparencies regularly and save them as a TIFF file for processing, you could also save them as a JPG and processing in any PP software is no different than processing a TIFF or JPG straight out of a camera. The best quality scans seem to come out at 4800dpi which yields a quite large file size.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

MT Shooter wrote:

I scan 6 x 4.5 cm transparencies regularly and save them as a TIFF file for processing, you could also save them as a JPG and processing in any PP software is no different than processing a TIFF or JPG straight out of a camera. The best quality scans seem to come out at 4800dpi which yields a quite large file size.

Yes, my file sizes run usually around 9000x8000 pixels.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

sbettis wrote:

I have an old Pentax 645 film camera. I still love it but would like to do some post processing on the pictures I get from it.. If I have the images put on a cd of thumb drive what will I be able to do with Lightroom 5 or Photoshops.

sb
Vancouver WA.

When you scan them, make sure to scan at a high dpi so you have the ability to enlarge them in post processing and print large at 300 dpi that printers like. I have scanned small old family photos at 1200dpi so I can enlarge 4X bigger than the original. In your case, 600dpi would allow you to print at 8X10 and 300dpi. I'd still scan at 1200dpi for yours as well because the clarity of 4X5 deserves really big prints!

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

sbettis wrote:

I have an old Pentax 645 film camera. I still love it but would like to do some post processing on the pictures I get from it.. ....

If you are going to scan more than a handful of images you should look into getting your own scanner. Scanners that can handle medium format film will be capable of scanning at a fairly high DPI.

If you only want to do a few images, get someone else to scan them but ask for something between 2400 and 4800 DPI.

Resolution up to about 4800 is practical, beyond that is not too useful. But this will produce pretty large files, upwards of 50MB per image in your case.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

sbettis wrote:

I have an old Pentax 645 film camera. I still love it but would like to do some post processing on the pictures I get from it.. If I have the images put on a cd of thumb drive what will I be able to do with Lightroom 5 or Photoshops.

sb
Vancouver WA.

Anything you want to do. It would be best if they were put on disc in tiff format instead of jpg so that you have more bit-depth to work with. As long as your images are properly exposed and you don't have to adjust them more than on stop you should be able to do any kind of editing.

I read here yesterday that many film developing stores don't give back negatives, instead they give the customer a CD with digital images. They are probably jpg thought - but I may be wrong.

sbettis

Many thanks to all of you, this has been very helpful

SB

georgevedwards Loc: Essex, Maryland.

I was going to tell you about Clark Color Labs where I used to send my film canisters, they were very reasonable and did 5x7's which even some camera stores didn't do. The last time I sent them film they had a CD option. Wow, times have changed, I couldn't find anything on a film search there, just t-shirts with "film strips" graphic designs on them! Now they have a place to upload files and they do canvas prints. Everything has doubled, tripled in price, no more 20x30 posters for 5.99 (16.99 now).

sbettis wrote:

I have an old Pentax 645 film camera. I still love it but would like to do some post processing on the pictures I get from it.. If I have the images put on a cd of thumb drive what will I be able to do with Lightroom 5 or Photoshops.

sb
Vancouver WA.

sbettis

thanks