"Decisive Moment" Re-Issue artefacts

[Chris Livsey]

Not Medium Format but I am sure the digital experts here can offer comments.
The Stiedel re-issue of Decisive Moment is supposed to be exact but I noted "blemishes" have been removed. Now that is in comparison to my only   original copy so that may vary but they don't look like book printing blemishes so are on the original negative or print?

More strangely the shots showed why I thought the reproduction not "right" in comparison.
So, what are these strange artefacts?

In all cases OLD then NEW
Frame 105




GONE



OLD then NEW




Just the NEW artefacts:


All originals on my Flickr.

[ondebanks]

Chris,

I'm no expert, but my suspicion is that they scanned the original book instead of the original source print, and did a shoddy job of de-screening the printing dots.

Also, marks on the wall behind the bed are clearly retouched/cleaned up. I'm not sure if that's justified or not (ok if the marks were dirt on the source print, but not if they were actually on the wall)

Ray

[Chris Livsey]

Ray, We are told the book was scanned, the best copy they could find in the HCB Foundation collection. On examination they have touched out numerous "faults" in the originals. Some dust/hairs so familiar to traditional workers were in the originals, now gone. To me that is not correct, they set out to provide an exact copy not a tidied up digitally sanitised version. Nothing wrong with doing that if you are clear and open you have done it. It should have been warts and all, but preferably without added digital warts!!

[yaya]

Chris the bottom image looks like it was captured with a camera rather than a scanner as the page doesn't look like it is sitting flat or against a glass plate. It could be that they were using a low-ish res camera and dressed the file up, which could make the screening pattern look a bit fuzzy. You can see that there's a difference in density as well between the original and their version. In short as you say someone there was making some shortcuts or did not have the right tools and workflow available.

If you have TIFFs or JPEGs you can check the EXIF or IPTC (if available) which may shed some more light on it...

BR

Yair

[Chris Livsey]

Chris the bottom image looks like it was captured with a camera rather than a scanner as the page doesn't look like it is sitting flat or against a glass plate.
Yair

Thanks, just the book available to examine. They may have planned to scan but the original is a poorly made volume, fragile is the polite word used, and the Foundation may not have allowed the plates or flattening on their copy to achieve a scan so they photographed it, not to the highest standard as you comment.

[Iluvmycam]

Too bad, thought it was a faithful repro.