Back to scanning rally photographs

Been busy in the run up to Christmas and since then I have been suffering from a cold.  Apart from family stuff no pictures taken in the last couple of weeks. 

I took the opportunity to do some scans of my old rally pictures.  The first two are from the 1976 Circuit of Ireland Rally.  The one of Billy Coleman was the first I had published in a UK national magazine (Motoring News) and the one of Bengt Lundstrom won me a prize in a local competition - an 8 track cassette player - remember those? - I sold it and bought something photographic instead!

All shot with Pentax Spotmatic on Tri-X rated at ISO 800.
Click on the pictures to enlarge.

Billy Coleman/Dan O'Sullivan

Bengt Lundstrom/Fred Gallagher

And I couldn't resist this one - of a very young Ari Vatanen (later to become World Rally Champion and Finnish MEP) on the Donegal International Rally in 1975.

Ari Vatanen/David Richards

All pictures copyright Leslie Ashe.

See also posts for 13 and 20 November for more rally pictures.

See http://www.lesashephotography.com/ for more rally pictures.

Polariser - another comparison

In the course of reviewing some older pictures I came across these two.  My polariser was on the lens for both pictures but in the first one it was turned off and in the second it was almost fully on.  Everything else was identical - exposure and processing in Lightroom.  Which do you prefer?

Mourne Mountains 12 December 2010

A day's walking in the Mourne Mountains today with some friends .  On the way out I noticed a rock which I had photographed before (on 30 December 2010) and I decided to take another.  The thing which caught my eye from a distance is the patch of white lichen which stands out very starkly against the rest of the rock. 

It's interesting to compare the different treatments a year apart - 2010 is a bit underexposed to preserve the detail in the mist on the background.  Both shot with a Canon G10.

 30 December 2010

11 December 2011

Just walked round to the front of my house this evening to see this:

Canon G10

Scanning - SW USA

I decided to go back over some old transparencies of my trip to SW USA in 2005 to see how well they would scan. 

Pre-dawn- Grand Canyon

Sunset - Grand Canyon

Behind the waterfall - Zion National Park

Dawn - Bryce Canyon

What I noted was that however much I might complain about noise in digital capture ( too much time is spent pixel-peeing but that's another story), it's still less than the grain which shows up in these scans.