karl_knize

I think the monitor is the great equalizer. How does the print look in the hand? On the

wall? Does it glow or does it lie there like a charcoal drawing? Are the tones on the

surface or do they feel like they're underneath? Is there grain and what does the

texture feel like? Natural or synthetic? Are the highlights really white? In a way it ALL

looks good on a monitor, and more's the pity. But don't get me wrong, I shoot almost

all dig. to meet commercial demand. And more's the pity.

Laeilia, you need custom paper profiles to really get rid of the hit or miss in your

workflow. They're worth the money. I get mine from Drycreek and my monitor match

is right on.

A quick fix with color balance adjustment, + magenta in both midtone and shadow.

Looks like your monitor, or your color perception is off a bit. Good to calibrate your

monitor and keep some kind of color reference handy.

Nice shot.<div></div>

I think it's human nature to follow formulas, to make things less chaotic and a bit

easier to manage, and with wedding photography even more so since the event

typically travels a formulaic path steeped in tradition -- preparation, ceremony,

reception.

On the one hand I suppose this might be seen as endlessly repetitious, generating

endlessly repetitious setups and approaches and lord knows, there's no escaping the

cake cutting and the garter removal.

But on the other, within the framework-- like blues music--I think there's an endless

and open opportunity to create fresh and meaningful photographs if we allow

ourselves to work in the moment and really pay attention to our surroundings. To not

fall back on the point of view we've used 50 times before, or concepts of coverage

and multiple angles to make sure the proof book is full, but to really observe and

react.

I think that this is the most difficult thing to accomplish but where the greatest

satisfaction, and best pictures come from. And no, I don't always get it right and beat

myself up when I catch myself falling into a pattern.<div></div>

I have the same card running an Imacon Flexframe capture back in a G4 dual, OS

10.2.8. When I upgraded to OS 10.4, the Adaptec card wouldn't work any more. Also

wouldn't work in 10.3.The bottom line is that Adaptec has abandoned it's support of

this card and SCSI cards altogether, and this card won't work, or work right, in any OS

after 10.2. It's my understanding that ATTO is making SCSI cards that are supported

in OS 10.3 and I'm not sure about 10.4. Hope this is of some help to you!

There are always parallels, or so it seems.

With traditional B&W film processing I found early on (20+ years ago) that unless I

processed the film myself, or ran tests specific to the lab, that generalized processing

-- even by hand-- was hit or miss. Often overly contrasty and just plain nasty.

It seemed that any given day you could end up with a young tech, and old hungover

tech, or some other mystery maker.

Now, when I send my roll film to the lab for full roll scans -- yes, I also shoot dig.

with MF and DSLR -- the density and saturation isn't consistent. Same with Hi Res

before I started doing my own.

Lab work is seldom on the mark unless you take the time, and have the opportunity,

to work closely with the technicians. Otherwise, mediocre then and mediocre now.

My advice is to use your flatbed scanner to edit and select the most significant/ best

images, if you haven't already, and then rewash and dry the selected negatives.

Set yourself up as best you can with a tray, filtered or distilled water, a drying agent

like Photoflo, and a place to hang them that is low on air circulation and dust.

Better yet, if you can afford it, find a gool film lab that's still processing traditional

B&W film and have them wash the film for you. They'll know how to do it and get you

the best result possible.

In the end though, you're not likely to end up with negatives that are really dust free,

and you'll have to live with what you have or take extreme steps to end up with

perfectly clean prints.

Extreme steps? Clean the negs, make small prints, scan the prints and clean them up

in photoshop. Then output as inkjet or as traditional silver prints via one of the labs

using the new digital enlargers made by DeVere.

Good luck!

Hi Kimberly -- Beyond cloning out distracting elements -- the bottles and hand -- I

also intentionally used auto color, levels adjustment, and the burn tool to darken the

corners of the shot a bit after I selected the gray background and darkened it overall

to let the subject come off it better. All simple stuff that you can do out of elements if

you start there. Including the quick cloning my total time was about 5 min. Color

adjustment is a matter of taste, but also, one must usually address flesh tones /

coloration and basic color balance. A step at a time, you need to tune your eye and

develop your skills. If you're going to be working digitally in any significant way, you'll

need to set yourself up with a calibrated monitor and perhaps some printer profiles,

get a grasp of Kelvin temperature, and work with white point settings as a starting

point in your workflow. Lot's to do, but nothing all that complicated. Good luck and

keep working.

How many photographers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

50.

One to screw in the light bulb and 49 to say "I could have done that!"

Theresa -- My carrier is Cincinnati Ins.. You might be able to find an agent in your

area if you start with a search on their site.

It may take a few calls but once you find the right agent he should be able to get

coverage in place quickly, even if it's temporary. I have $2MM liability coverage plus

equipment, plus studio fixtures, loss of business, etc., and it comes in at a couple of

grand a year. Not too bad. We live in a litigious society at the mercy of greedy

attorneys, and businesses are increasingly covering themselves against any possible

exposure. The upside is that you're protected in the event that something wierd

happens, which could be as simple as grandma tripping over you as you step

backwards while working with a camera to your eye. Also, if you're not incorporated

it's a good idea as well. Let the greedy ******ds sue the business and not you.

Good luck.

Steven -- I just had and idea. Next time, make the kid in the front hold up a grey card

and shoot one more.

I checked in today to see the responses and I find the range of approaches quite

interesting. I took a second look at my quick fix and didn't like the greenish cast to

the background wall, and the diminished color in some of the clothing. I have to

confess to my tastes running to softer "junkie" color, which is a factor here. Anyway, I

took a second try and did the following in PSCS: in selective color, I minused R-30

and minused Y-20, which took a lot of the heavy saturation out without getting into

an overall correction; in curves, I eyedropped the bride's dress to clean up the whites

a bit; and using color range I selected the flesh tones and made an adjustment layer

in hue/saturation and adjusted saturation -10. I like this one better as the

background is warmer and the overall colors are a little truer and more vibrant.<div></div>

Hi Steven -- As the environment was warm, I've left this a bit warm but not so orange

by doing the following in PSCS: eyedropper the brides dress to clean up the white; in

hue/saturation desaturate -30; and in color balance 10 cyan in midtones to eliminate

more of the orange in the faces. Just one way to do it. If this is a common issue for

you, you may be over saturating . Do you have a calibrated monitor?

Good shooting.<div></div>

I've found that when I get a rapid and severe color shift -- using the same

paper and software -- it's usually a bad cartridge.

Shoot real Tri-X. Make a real sliver gelatin print. Use your dig. camera to copy the

print.

Just wondering. Or is Leitz in such bad shape that this concept

is going to die on the vine?

Paul, let me preface this by saying that I'm not a numbers guy.

I'm a photographer. Left brain/right brain. But as I get older and

wiser (I'm joking), I'm learing how to use them a bit better. If I

were in your location I'd evaluate the numbers as best I could

and try and determine if the relative lack of business is due to the

niche you're trying occupy and simple lack of demand, the size of

the market and the number of entrenched wedding shooters,

your business model/pricing strategy relative to what you're

offering and what your competition is selling, or perhaps a

combination of the above or something I've missed.

If you're in a small, conservative market then no doubt, your job is

going to be a little tougher than in SF. (Damn, what a great city.)

But it seems to me that there might be a real upside to your

approach / aesthetic if you can get the numbers to work. If your

market is relatively conservative at heart, I can't think of a better

product to offer than "classic," black and white. But obviously, it

can't cost twice as much or more than the competition's prints at

the outset and it really has to look better. Also, I'm assuming that

you do your own darkroom printing and have better than average

skills.

Here's my system and how I think you might be able to create

your own version better suited to your needs:

I set up a wet darkroom printing system in my studio that allows

me to quickly process clean film , and make an average of 8

really good prints and hour for albums. Nothing big, and nothing

really fancy beyond the Leitz V35 enlarger and the Heiland

splitgrade analyzer/controller. This was an investment that paid

off pretty quickly. My thinking was that at 100-150% markup

relative to local custom lab prices, I could offer offer great prints

at prices that are in many cases less than the cost of average

machine prints being offered by other photographers.(I'm still

stunned by $50 and $75, 5x7 machine prints.) When a potential

customer comes in, along with album samples, I lay a few loose

silver gelatin prints next to a few machine prints and simply let

them be the judge. (You know that old Groucho Marx line: "So

who are you gonna believe... me, or your own two eyes?" ) The

ones that get it, really get it. And of course, some don't. If I don't

have the time to get the printing done on schedule there's still

enough margin to send the job to a good local lab and

concentrate on the task at hand. The work is still hand printed,

and it still looks great.

Assuming that your market isn't going to support the pricing that

Chicago will, I'd be asking myself if I have the time and energy,

and the skills, to initially produce my work at prices that are

competitive with the local competition. I'd find out what every one

of them charges for different levels of service and see if I could

cut them off at the knees by offering a superior product at or near

their pricing. Hard ball. Hard work. But it's the only way I know to

unseat competition that's taken root.

And of course, this is assuming you've put the rest of it together

in terms of your samples, album suppliers, your shooting

approach, personality and the rest.

Just a thought, and perhaps not what you need, but I hope this

helps at least a little.

Paul, I feel you pain. I feel the same way. One the one hand I shoot digitally for

commercial ad work on a weekly basis, other than some stock, and have no desire to

go back to film for the meat and potatoes work. No desire to ever again pick up film

at 10 p.m., at the end of a 14 hour day only to have to re expose a complex set of

exposures because a card fell over. The certainty is wonderful. And in the day to day,

I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between high quality digital work and film

work, if I could tell at all. This is squeaky clean commercial color work I'm talking

about here though, and not well executed silver gelatin printing. With black and white

film work, particularly medium and large format, there's a depth, a luminosity to the

highlights and skin tones that's simply lacking on the dig. side. The blacks are

different. The edge transition is different. I say this as personal opinion, of course,

based upon almost 30 years of professional work. To me, the best B&W dig. output

looks like either flat, synthetic silver gelatin when printed on endura style color

papers, or extremely nice gravure when printed on matte surface art papers. But

neither looks like good silver gelatin to me, not even close.

I'm guessing though that you and I are in somewhat different boats, so to speak. I

shoot mainly commercial ad work and mix in a small amount of wedding and portrait

work, mainly generated by word of mouth. Between the demands of family and

business I have less and less time to print my personal work let alone commercial,

and this is increasingly painful.

If I were really in the portrait and wedding business full time, though, I'm not sure

how I would be feeling at the moment, depending upon the size of the market I was

working in. We are awash in the digital wave. Being in Chicago, there's enough money

and enough population to support niche marketing for traditional and high end work.

Most clients seem to be price driven and not terribly concernced about print quality

other than basic longevity and appearance, but there's a percentage here that wants

tradition and quality and is willing to pay for it. Is your market large enough to target

this kind of client? Or can you work digitally for part of your market and traditionally

to satisfy your own vision? Your own sense of what's right for you?

I wouldn't worry about being conflicted. Unless you're 19, I think we're all conflicted.

And there's certainly no sin in working on both sides of the fence and liking both.

I had profiles done a few weeks ago and Ethan was on top of it completely. He even

threw in some free profiles which allowed me to compare using color control, or no

color adjustment with the same paper. Seems like a really nice fellow.

Hi Sean, thanks for the input! I did a quick test and the results are the same. I

converted a 16 bit file to 8 bit and the stair stepping looked the same, in the 16-33%

range. Also, I changed my preference for bicubic to bicubic smoother and there was

no change. It's not hard to live with and I always check results at 100%, and when I'm

viewing at a lower magnification and see the stair stepping I increase maginfication to

the next level and it generally goes away. In fact, the stair stepping seems to

alternate from one magnification to the next as it increases, up to about 33%. All in

all, there are worse things to live with!

For you Mac users out there: I purchased a LaCie 250 gig. HD the other day and

couldn't get it to mount. I checked the LaCie website and got the ususal BS about

checking your cords. I downloaded LaCie's software upgrade for my OS 10.2 version.

I zapped my PRAM, disconnected power for 20 minutes and even installed a new PCI

firewire card (which I needed anyway) and nothing. Nada. I checked all of the firewire

ports with three different devices and everything worked. I rummaged around the web

looking for info. and read about formatting the device, but didn't see that option in

my Mac. The Lacie wouldn't show up in devices and volumes but would show up in

my disk utility. But there was no formatting option as I could see. Finally, I called

LaCie tech support and spoke to them after only a 5 min. wait or thereabouts. The

answer was to go into disc utility, select the LaCie and go to the erase option. Select

Mac OS extended for the format and erase, WHICH IS THE SAME AS FORMATTING.

The Icon appeared immediately on the desktop. Why the tech support guy at LaCie

could tell me this but not have this tidbit on their web site is a mystery to me. On

the average, I think tech support sucks and this is a better example than most.

Anyway, I'm copying to the new HD as I write this.

Sounds like I've wandered into the techno swamp. All I know for sure is that my

monitor preferences are set to millions of colors, and my monitor controls don't show

anything about setting different display sizes in regard to bits. If it isn't broken ...

To those who jumped in here, would you guess that the stair stepping effect I see

has to do with working in 16 bit with my current video card, or something else?

I did a google search for 16 bit video cards, and video cards for 16 bit image editing,

and came up with a bunch of info that went over my head and didn't sound like it

pertained to the issue at hand.

Thanks everyone! I'll do a little more research and see what evolves.