glenbarrington

Sorry I can't be of any help on good local photolabs in your area.

 

But in this digital world, you are going to want to make sure that the lab also does quality scanning, or learn to do it yourself. You are going to want to share photos with friends, post to sites like this, etc and there is more to a quality scan than throwing it onto an $80 flatbed scanner.

 

Scanning negatives and prints is a whole 'nother level of skill that not everyone has or is willing to take the time to learn.

Because it takes a L O O O N N N G G G time with equipment most people can afford.

I'm an old photographer who went digital about 5 years ago. No regrets at all. Yes there is a new learning curve to deal with but you can handle it.

 

What I did was buy an upper end Point and shoot with lots of manual controls available (Canon G3 - latest version is G9) and shot only jpgs. It was a good learning experience and the camera wasn't too pricey compared to a DSLR. It allowed me to move into digital and learn the process in smaller increments.

 

When I felt ready for more sophistication, I bought and Olympus E500 DSLR 2 lens kit. and bought the very good Zuiko 14 - 54 zoom lens. (28 mm to 108mm zoom in 35mm format) . I am very satisfied.

 

I still use the G3, BTW. I toss it into the saddlebags of my motorcycle. Motorcycles are great photo accessories, they allow you to go places and get photos you wouldn't get otherwise.

Colton, my advice is value the negative comments more than the postitive ones. You can't really learn all that much from people who think just like you do. The biggest learning opportunities come from the people who are coming from a totally different mindset.

 

This doesn't mean you have to be a doormat and let people hurt your feelings, but well meant and well intentioned and well informed negative criticism is like gold. Try to use it wisely,

I have an E500 and I love it. It is still a viable camera and produces superb results. But I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you are offered a VERY good price (Say, less than $300 US for the body alone, and say, $75 each for the kit lenses).

 

Why? The newer Oly models have moved on and addressed some of its shortcomings. It's a little weak in low light/high iso situations. But if you rarely go higher than iso 400 (and few really do despite what they say), it is still a most capable camera. But newer models address that issue, and it's better to have that feature and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

 

But. . . if the price is right, and you never shot high speed film anyway, it is worth considering.

I don't think I HAVE been excessively influenced by anyone in particular. In terms of style and subject, I'm still all over the place, even though I've been a professional photographer in the past, and have been involved in photography in some way for 40+ years.

 

Maybe that's why I'm only now starting to get good. For me, getting better has been a struggle, and I'm afraid the struggle isn't over yet.

I believe that Elements 5 has had the ability to play actions removed.

Unfortunately, SourceForge is not the only place from which you can download Gimp. It's the only place you probably SHOULD download open source products as there are a lot of places where you can get these products whse quality control may not be as rigorous as we would like.

 

Personally, I didn't like Gimp. I found its user interface to be different enough from the rest of the Photo editors that I found using it stressful.

 

If you want a free Photoshop work-alike, I've found Serif's PhotoPlus6 to be quite good. It's user interface is close enough to PS that I think a reasonably intelligent person can use photohsop tutorials to learn from.

 

http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/PhotoPlus/default.asp

The 420 just got announced! Along with a new 25mm pancake lens! SMALL! Really, Really, small combo!

I have a love/hate with both ACDSee and Lightroom. I own both and just can't decide which I Love/Hate the most.

 

I think ACDSee will be a better organizer for multimedia projects. It handles a wide variety of file formats. It is very fast, and I love the hassle free way it prints. IMO the best single machine media organizer out there.

 

I think LR is the way to go for processing Raw and cranking out a lot of work as quickly as possible. I have found it nearly impossible to get a decent print out of LR V1.3 or earlier. I've read all the books followed all the suggestions and nothing I do creates a nice print. Some love the print options of LR, and some couldn't get a decent print out of LR if their lives depened on it. An adequate organizer though a bit slow on the displays not nearly as advanced as ACDSee. But a sheer joy to use with processing photos.

ProShow Professional sounds like what you may need. Around $400 US the last time I looked.

Ron, the 14 - 54 is weather sealed and costs less than $400 US dollars. An excellent lens that focuses closer than the kit lens, is faster that the kits, focuses faster than the kits, eliminates the barrel distortion that the kits have at the wide end. The extra f/stop makes my E500 handle much better in low light than the kit lenses.

 

True it doesn't have the focusing speed of the new 12 - 60, but it isn't a $1000 lens either.

 

In my opinion, a great 'walk around' lens and inexpensive enough that despite its ruggedness,if it should get damaged somehow, it will not be all THAT expensive to replace.

I'd be interested in some samples as well. I don't consider my E500 any noisier than other cameras I've encountered at ISO 400 or lower. In fact, I've been rather pleased with its performance at the lower iso settings.

 

That being said, I do shoot raw and process with Lightroom. I don't know if there are presets in LR that are working to my advantage or not.

I would suggest that you buy Scott Kelby's book on PSE. It's well organized to answer questions just like that. It walks you thru the process step by step and with photos, screen dumps, etc. You don't really need the one for V6, if you can find one on V5, that'll be close enough. I'm using the one for V3 with V5.

Is LR eaiser? Yes, but. . .The reason it is easier is that it is NOT an editor. It is an Organizer/developer. You can't to layers, or select parts of a photo and work only on the selection, leaving the rest of the photo untouched. With LR, you will still need an editor of some sort.

The difference between the 14-54 and the old 14-45 is more significant. But really, there is no universally correct answer on this.

 

For me, the 14 - 54 is the way to go since I shoot at 14mm quite a bit, and I really like the lack of barrel distortion. That extra f/stop makes my E500 handle a lot better in low light. Focus is faster, the viewfinder is brighter, etc. I don't regret tis purchase at all.

 

Really, this is a question only you can answer.

About what I expected. Most of the issues had already been discussed before.

Cropping is the only practical way. But then again, you could etch a square into the front lens element.

I never heard of that feature.

Well, it may be worth downloading the LR 30 day free trial.

 

Basically, Lightroom (and ACDSee Pro2) is what is now known as a workflow manager, kind of an organizer on steroids. It is a raw developer, an organizer, slideshow creator, print utility, and photo web page creator. It also works with jpgs, tiff, and psd files.

 

Basically it does all the batch stuff you could want, allows for incredible control of raw file manipulation and manipulates the jpgs, tiffs and psd images, all with the same set of controls as raw. This means you learn one set of techniques to manipulate your images.

 

It also does this in a 'non destructive' manner. In other words, the changes you make are not applied to the photo itself. Instead the changes are written to a special file and applied whenever you display, export, or print the image. This allows you to always go back to the way the image looked the first time you imported the image into LR no matter how many changes you have made to the photo.

 

If you hate the thought of having to keep track of the 'sidecar' file as well as the photo itself, LR allows you to convert the images to the dng format. You can tell LR to avoid the 'sidcar' file and write the changes to the changes section of the dng file itself. So that way, the unchanged image and all subsequent changes are stored in a single file format.

 

Lightroom is kind of expensive, different than similar competing products, and is only in version 1 at this point. But even so, it is extremely easy to learn to use and allows you to process images faster than just about any other workflow manager on the market. If you've got to get a large number of images processed and out the door within a limited period of time, it most definitely the way to go.

 

Then, the only reason you would need an editor like PSE, CS3, or PaintShop Pro, would be for those problem photos where selective editing and layers are needed to get a good image.

 

I rarely use my editor any more. I do virtually everything from within Lightroom. (Except print - I personally prefer to print from other programs, but many other people love the LR print utility)

I dont' think you can do batch resizing in PSE. Batch capabilities have always been somewhat limited in the PSE organizer.

 

The Editor portion doesn't have any batch capability of any sort. What batch capability that is available in PSE is in the Organizer. You might want to replace the PSE organizer with ACDSee or Lightroom which do have excellent batch capabilities and will do a lot of what you want to do without any editor. You would then use the PSE editor only for the "problem" photos that we all produce from time to time.

I've not upgraded from my E500 yet as I am pretty happy with the output so far. I may go with the E3 if I DO upgrade to a different body.

 

But I don't think you'll be disappointed with the E510. The results I've seen are pretty impressive even with the kit lenses.

 

One thing I did though, was buy the 14 - 54 mm lens. The kit 14-45 is pretty good for a kit lens, and the 40-150 kit is very good IMO. But I use the mid range focal lengths the most and the 14-54 is faster, a bit sharper wide open, and focuses faster. Basically it made my E500 handle a whole lot better in low light. For a guy like me, it was a good first additional lens purchase and not very expensive (< $400 USD)

I believe the Sigma is a bit slower than the Zuiko 11-22, but it does have a pretty good reputation.

 

If you are looking for a lens whose size is complimentary to the E400, in that case, you may be a bit disappointed. These lenses, while not huge, do look big in relationship to that tiny body.

The DNG converter is a standalone batch conversion program and doesn't work from within PS CS3 or from within PSE. If that is what you want, ACR itself will convert to dng though not in batch mode. You can only do one photo at a time. (At least, that's how it works with PSE).

 

Of course Lightroom will also batch convert photos to dng.

I suspect it is a basic incompatibility between Vista and PSE5 organizer. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that PSE 5 Organizer has not been certified for use of Vista. You might want to consider PSE6 which DOES work with Vista.