A test roll of Kodak Ultra purchased in a bulk lot from the UK via Ebay was an opportunity to also play with a polarising filter. While I didn't actually learn much about the polariser, one of the 7x4 prints I got back from the photofinisher I found stunningly sharp and clean. Both the 2000dpi scan done by the lab and my own 4000dpi scan don't appear equal to the print. The lab in question at that time still had an older enlarger style printer, in addition to the fully digital Frontier printer, and based on a conversation with one of the staff I'm sure that this roll was printed on the older printer.

What particularly struck me was the text on a traffic sign close to a short edge of the frame (near the bottom of the image below); on the print, the text was nearly all quite legible. I haven't been able to measure the distance of this sign from where I was shooting, but estimate it at about 60-70 metres. The traffic sign text is about 75mm high. I was using the 25-150mm lens on the S-1, and this frame was taken at 150mm.

I've had this frame blown up to 14x8 by the original photofinisher, and have also had a 4000dpi scan printed by a different shop, with the "from film" enlargement being visibly sharper (though not drastically so). Both large prints hold up very well for film grain & noise, especially since all I had done to the scan was use PhotoshopLE's despeckle filter once then adjust the colour levels. Neither came out the same as the original 7x4 colour wise, though the scan was a bit closer than the enlargement.

Unfortunately, the scanned and downsized images included here don't do the original print justice.

Having recently acquired a number of new gadgets via eBay, some testing was in order to make sure the bits worked and to find out what said bits might be capable of. This coincided with having an unfinished roll of film in my S-1 from an excursion (Kodak HD 200), and some Agfa film (also ISO 200) which I've never used before.

The location was selected for being easy to get to after work, and having scenery that might look attractive at both very wide-angle and extreme telephoto. Pity about the traffic and the haze...

For those who might want to look at a map of Canberra, the site was on William Hovell Drive just south of where it crosses into the Murrumbidgee River valley. The view to the south is towards Mt Stromlo, with the Brindabella range from the south through to the west. In the 240mm shot, the eastern slopes of Mt Stromlo are still marked with the windrows where the unmillable remnants of the pine forest destroyed in the fires of 18 January 2003 have been burnt; some remnant stands of burnt out pine are still visible on the western slope.

All these images were shot using a tripod, and the telephoto shots were fired using a remote.

These shots were taken with Agfa 200 film. I was quite disappointed with the amount of grain apparent compared to the Kodak and Konica film I've used recently. I've used a 5x5 Gaussian filter to reduce its impact in these images, but at the cost of some detail in the trees. [Update: this grain is probably from imperfect development, as other rolls of this film developed at the photofinisher I usually use exhibit much less grain]

I'd left the 22-80mm lens at home and the 25-150mm lens was having trouble focussing in the low light (autofocus only lens), so I used the 80-240mm lens.

This roll, and another roll of Agfa shot a couple of days earlier with another S-1 body, was developed by a shop I haven't used before. I was annoyed to discover that the only back-printed data was the frame number. Several of the scans weren't properly aligned either (offset to one side, so the image had a black strip down one edge and cropped at the opposite edge); it shows up in the prints too. Just as well I was only playing...