Montrose Beach, Illinois

This was a tough call, exposure-wise, given that there was a wide subject brightness range, from the shadow cast by the tree to the brightness of the late afternoon sky.  That - and the fact that I was using the 'blad and only the light meter between my ears.  It wasn't easy to print and I've a feeling that there's a better print in there somewhere but this is the best I got the other day in the darkroom:

Montrose Beach, Lake Michigan, Illinois, 2018

As you can see it’s cropped from the 6x6 format. I  I cropped to a 2:3 aspect ratio (like 35mm), which seemed to fit the composition better. It's on Ilford Fibre Classic paper which has a lovely look about it.  This one was toned in sepia.

To get the print into digital format for this place, I did what I normally do and scanned it.  I use a fairly old Epson 4870 scanner and the standard Epson Scan software, set to 48-bit colour and 300dpi, which gives me a file about 50Mb in size (!) from a 9.5"x12" print.  (I always do a preview scan first and then the full scan but I don't check histogram or other stuff).  But then I sat at the computer and looked at the scanned image and compared it to the print.  Well, there is no comparison - the print is always sooo much richer, deeper, nicer.  I know, I know, it's a dumb thing to do but I was surprised by how poor the scan was.  The problem may not be down to the software settings alone (or at all) - the scanner is A4 size and a 9.5”x12” print is slightly too large to sit flat on the glass.

Anyway, I took the print into a room where the weak winter sun was coming through the window, set the print up and snapped it using my phone.  Then I brought it into Photoshop on the desktop machine and already it was looking better.   That's the image you see at the top of this page. Here is the scan:

Same print, scanned.

I left these deliberately on the large side, by the way, so as to make full screen comparisons a little more authentic.  Apologies if you're viewing these on a dial-up modem...

There's a real difference - to my eyes, on my monitor. I must admit I was surprised, as I thought that the scanning would have been the better way to go.  And yes, I'm sure there's a ton of stuff I could do to make the scan better but as I've said elsewhere, I've no real interest in scanning other than to get the print into some sort of digital form.  So for now, it looks like a phone shot of the print is the best way to go to share my masterpieces on the Interweb ;)