Interesting project! I scan 35mm and medium-format film with a mirrorless camera, macro lens, and Lomography film holder, then convert with Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom. I’m happy with the results, but the Lightroom subscription has me considering writing my own converter.
Could you share more about your NumPy pipeline, or publish the code? I’m particularly curious about how you use the blank film reference and roll-level measurements to handle the orange mask, color balance, and tone curves. Do you use camera/scanner calibration profiles or film-stock-specific adjustments, or estimate everything from the scans themselves?
Also, your screenshot appears to show an OpticFilm 7400. Would you recommend it, and roughly what did you pay? Have you tried camera scanning? I’ve been considering automating film advance and capture on my setup, but consistent color conversion is the part I’m least confident about.
Can you please not post AI-generated or AI-edited comments to HN? It's not allowed here - see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079.
Of course, it's impossible to know for sure what was LLM processed or not, but some of your posts (like this one) have been getting classified that way.
For whatever it's worth: It's definitely phrased a bit strangely but it passes my own sniff test. If they really are using a dictation-oriented method for getting text into a box (as they wrote in a followup reply to themself) then that may adequately explain the strangeness.
There was a time when scanning and [photographic] printing of 35mm film negatives was what I did for a living; it's likely that I've touched more film than most people ever will. I think they're asking questions that are a good combination of solid, thoughtful, and practical.
It wasn't a generated comment at all! Read the comment, and then what the author wrote elsewhere saying they spoke it into their phone.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49948614">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49948614
"To reiterate, those were legit questions. I used voice dictation to my phone, with an app that transcribed and formatted my message."
harassing a user for doing that is just unncessary and I dont't think it violates the site's guidelines. Further, the comment itself was high quality, and contributed to the discussion.
It's not a hill I want to die on either, ultimately the moderators run the site and make the rules and we comply with them at their pleasure.
dang believes that the "transcription and formatting" adds a signature. I entered into Gemini Pro (at the highest level of reasoning) and it calls it human written text and provides a far more detailed description of why:
"If an LLM was used here, it was likely just used as a grammar checker or "polisher" rather than a generator. If we had to flag anything, it would be this section:... .his reads like a standard, high-quality comment from a technical forum like Hacker News or Reddit's r/analog. If the user utilized an LLM, they likely wrote the entire comment themselves and merely passed it through a tool like Grammarly or ChatGPT with a prompt like "Fix my typos" without letting it change their voice or vocabulary."
I tried ChatGPT and Claude (all the most recent models I have access to) and they all agree: human text, slightly modified to be more readable.
Looking at Pangram's output, it only mentioned the last sentence as AI generated:
"Would you recommend it, and roughly what did you pay? Have you tried camera scanning? I’ve been considering automating film advance and capture on my setup, but consistent color conversion is the part I’m least confident about."
That's absolutely a sentence a human expert might write. Even if it wasn't, the content contributes to the discussion. Seriously, why would grammar checkers for voice dictation even be remotely an issue?
ravila4 · · focus · HN ↗
Could you share more about your NumPy pipeline, or publish the code? I’m particularly curious about how you use the blank film reference and roll-level measurements to handle the orange mask, color balance, and tone curves. Do you use camera/scanner calibration profiles or film-stock-specific adjustments, or estimate everything from the scans themselves?
Also, your screenshot appears to show an OpticFilm 7400. Would you recommend it, and roughly what did you pay? Have you tried camera scanning? I’ve been considering automating film advance and capture on my setup, but consistent color conversion is the part I’m least confident about.
dang · · focus · HN ↗
Of course, it's impossible to know for sure what was LLM processed or not, but some of your posts (like this one) have been getting classified that way.
ssl-3 · · focus · HN ↗
There was a time when scanning and [photographic] printing of 35mm film negatives was what I did for a living; it's likely that I've touched more film than most people ever will. I think they're asking questions that are a good combination of solid, thoughtful, and practical.
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
dekhn · · focus · HN ↗
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
dekhn · · focus · HN ↗
"To reiterate, those were legit questions. I used voice dictation to my phone, with an app that transcribed and formatted my message."
harassing a user for doing that is just unncessary and I dont't think it violates the site's guidelines. Further, the comment itself was high quality, and contributed to the discussion.
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
dekhn · · focus · HN ↗
dang believes that the "transcription and formatting" adds a signature. I entered into Gemini Pro (at the highest level of reasoning) and it calls it human written text and provides a far more detailed description of why: "If an LLM was used here, it was likely just used as a grammar checker or "polisher" rather than a generator. If we had to flag anything, it would be this section:... .his reads like a standard, high-quality comment from a technical forum like Hacker News or Reddit's r/analog. If the user utilized an LLM, they likely wrote the entire comment themselves and merely passed it through a tool like Grammarly or ChatGPT with a prompt like "Fix my typos" without letting it change their voice or vocabulary."
I tried ChatGPT and Claude (all the most recent models I have access to) and they all agree: human text, slightly modified to be more readable.
Looking at Pangram's output, it only mentioned the last sentence as AI generated:
"Would you recommend it, and roughly what did you pay? Have you tried camera scanning? I’ve been considering automating film advance and capture on my setup, but consistent color conversion is the part I’m least confident about."
That's absolutely a sentence a human expert might write. Even if it wasn't, the content contributes to the discussion. Seriously, why would grammar checkers for voice dictation even be remotely an issue?