t_feltus

of course you can. with a still subject and camera you can do what you want. with a person,

you are likely to have movement, though i have done it before. it can be fun.

yes, each burst would give you a stop. but also you can paint in the background separately,

etc.

t

inkjet is related to an office printer, lightjet is photochemical paper. so even purely for this, i

deem a lightjet print to be a "real" print, and an inkjet a rough proof.

but that is my opinion. and i print from film, most often.

t

i might also point out that firewire 400 is technically slower than usb2, so you might consider

checking what speed your usb ports are running at. the only real advantage of firewire, to

me, is that it can be daisychained.

t

CFL data sheets should give you the temperature. said that, the one i have above my desk

right now has the temp written on it as 4000k. if you take the model number, which is

written on the white plastic part of the bulb, then go to the manufacturer's site, there should

be full techical data on it, including the temperature. keep in mind that the frequency of the

current and the bulb's balast will also influence the way that a digital sensor will deal with it.

you probably will have to use a shutter speed below that of the power frequency (1/50" in the

USA, 1/60" most other places) to not risk fluctuations in the intensity of the light.

t

Hi Derek,

i have used it with my S3, but foolishly not since i got my MacBook Pro, so i cannot really

comment on its speed on a decent machine. i used it on my older windows machine, which

despite a 3.2ghz p4 was tedious to use. they hyper utility does seem to be able to draw

more resolution and bit depth out of the raw files than Aperture, as for some reason it

regards the raw files as 6mp, rather than giving the option to open the resolution to

12mp. but HU came with my S3, did it not come with your camera? i guess you could send

me a raw file, and i could export it from HU for you, though i am not sure if that would

help. well, you could send a jpeg of what you want it to look like, and then compare

quality or something.

let me know.

t

AG,

i think you would get a much better response if you explained what kind of use you were

putting the meter to.

the minolta flashmeter range are often deemed the most accurate, can often be found

cheap, if you go for the older models... they are just a bit larger than the newer ones.

but also gossen made the lunasix f and profisix f which are analogue flashmeters, and

very easy to use.

t

why digital? analogue ones are easier to use, in my opinion.

all lightmeters have ISO settings, as all a lightmeter needs is the ISO to be set, then a

relationship between shutter speed and aperture.

... thus, what do you need it for?

T

yep, i can.

on the toolbar, near the bottom there are three buttons. standard view, full screen with

toolbar, and fullscreen. or just hit F on the keyboard, and cycle through the three views.

Standard view is easier for switching between programs.

t

hi k,

in my opinion it is a matter of how you work. cs3 is an upgrade from sc2, and if you are

comfortable working in folders in a pragmatic and organized manner, you may not get any

benefit from Aperture, however if you are like me, who is not good with a file cabinet, then

Aperture allowes you to organize things and work in a very non-linear and organized

manner. plus it does not damage your original files, as they always remain untouched, and

it does not duplicate them when you modify them. yes, if you do an event, and have 400

images to work through, you can chose them from a thumbnail and select the 20 you

need, then run an action on them, or in Aperture you can go through them and rate them,

then view the rated ones, and apply the same settings on all of them by shift-clicking

them right in front of you. then of course if you need to cut, blur, dodge and burn, you

can always open them to an older version of PS. bla bla, i ramble. also keep in mind that

CS3 is a slightly more expensive package than Aperture. try the demo of Aperture, and

watch tutorials on the apple site. if you have an older mac that does not support Aperture

1.5, then i am sure someone can send you an older version to test with (i doubt if Apple

would mind too much).

good luck,

t+

i generally prefer matt paper and gloss glass, as i find that the glass can obscure the image if

matt. yes, in theory gloss paper has better contrast, but if you are printing on colour paper,

there is little difference in it. proper silver-gelatin papers were different, but Fuji Crystal

Archive is much the same between matt (which is a lustre finish) and gloss.

t

hi tyler,

inevitably you will get many mixed viewes from different people on brands of drives.

in my experience: usb2 is much cheaper than firewire, but they cant be daisychained, so

you are limited to the number of devices attached. I have one Buffalo usb drive, and the

case quality is not great, and also its power management hardware is not very good, as on

Windows it stays spinning all the time, and on OSX it keeps the machine from sleeping, so

i have to keep it on manual and switch it off. We have several LaCie drives, which have not,

to date, given any problems, and some of them have been running for 3 years. LaCie gets

a thumbs up from me for case quality/portability, as well as the power management

working, so the drive can spin down when not in use without messing with the OS.

good luck.

t

The shot looks really good the way it is right now, in my opinion, however the guys are right,

can we see the original shot as it came out of the camera?

t

i just moved in december, and it is like a breath of fresh air. my previous fujitsu-siemens

wasted a lot of my time. i would say on average a day a week, either to crashes, slowness,

or just crap networking. and no, it is not true that macs are slower, the FS was a 3.2ghz,

and the macbook is a 2.33ghz. apart from ease of use, silence, the fact that the network is

always online without having to go to a command prompt to get it to work, the mac also

always works. and you dont have to restart it, maybe more than once a week. oh, and if it

is a laptop, PC laptops usually have power supplies the size of a brick, the macbook is a

little magnetic catch white parallelepid, with cable management. no way am i going back.

t

hi mark,

you need to have a "save as" in the action that you are running on the batch, then you tick

the "override save as commands" and it just uses the one in the action. however, make

sure that you do not change the title in the action, as otherwise it will save all of the files

on one file.

i would advise two things: one that you save to a separate folder, rather than destroying

the original files.... and the other is that for the first time in the history of software help

files, the adobe help actually explains how to batch process and resolve such issues rather

well. but it wont help you with anything else, i dont think.

t

i would suggest that the fastest way to fix would be to crop and make them B&W, go for a

noisy snapshot look. you have a lot of noise in the areas not lit by the flash... which can be

eliminated with film grain and desaturation. i cropped out the bed, and other clutter, and also

added a lighting effect, to make the glare on the door more acceptable.

will that kind of thing do?

t

it really depends on what you want to do with them. short clips, like spinning logos, or

animated buttons are good in flash or gif, but if you want to do anything longer than a

second, really, i would say either flash (which is something like what youtube uses,

apparently), or quicktime.

t

christine, the burst coming from the flash is far too short for you to worry about tripod

and shutter speed. 1/60 is fine, and will not change your exposure if you raise it to your

max sych speed.

for maximum sharpness use 100asa, and change the aperture by adjusting the light

output. as for aperture, i would chose it based on the effect that you want to achieve,

depth of field wise. if you want everything in focus, then keep it closed, if you want some

DOF then open her up. i am pretty confident that the f8 rule was a standard with 35mm

analogue prime lenses, i would not count on it making any difference to the optical

sharpness with a zoom lens on digital. digital is more of a selection of effects, than actual

optical purity, so chose what looks right. mind you, with a group of 17 people you would

probably have everyone in focus even at f2.8, considering the distance you will need to

have from the victims.

t

the print resolution on the Durst Epsilon lightjet is 254dpi, if that helps any. apart from that,

it oddly seems to have something to do with the actual neg. i have had some that have not

scanned well on the imacon, and have had to opt for other methods. but i think your eye is

the best judge. you could always scale a 6x4" sample at the enlargement you plan to print,

and try it on an inkjet or a minilab, to see what you think.

t

Thank you Frank,

I guess i was just hoping, or assuming, that if they could communicate, the one could tell

the

other what to do. in my mind the way that the TTL is measured should not make any

difference in this, but i guess Nikon needed to eliminate all retro-compatibility possible.

however the SB800 is dTTL compatible, thus it seemed logical to me that it could interact

with its older

dTTL brother.

ho hum,

t+

Hi,

I have, to hand, an SB800 and SB80DX, and was wondering if they are wirelessly compatible. since they

have a different menu layout, i think all i have succeeded in doing is having the 800 trigger the 80 as a

manual optical slave, but since i am not yet familiar with either of the units, i am not entirely sure what to

expect. hunting the web i have found little on the 80, and surprisingly nothing on using the two brothers

in conjunction, so any tips would be appreciated.

thanks,

t+

Hi J,

that actually looks like a straight transparency to me. the tones are very much what

something like Provia 100 rollfilm would give.

however, one kind of standard way of smoothing skin tones is to add a gaussian blur to

the Red channel. you can select the face, then click on the red channel, and add a light

gaussian. but do work on a copy of the file, not the original/only copy. you can then go

back in and sharpen the eyelashes and things. the red channel seems to contain most of

the skin imperfections, and on its own looks almost mottled.

t

i know sekonic makes some odd looking machines for the low end like the l308, but i have

never used them. in new, Gossen makes the smallest and easiest to use little Digisix units.

if you were to go for used, then i find that the Minolta meters are good. harder to use, but

very accurate. i use a flashmeter, but the Autometers are perfect, and should have a good

range of accessories. then, Gossen is a milestone: the later Lunasix F, Luna Pro, and

Profisix meters take standard PP3 batteries, do incident and reflected, have spot

accessories, and are, by far, the easiest meters to understand. their only drawback is

limited flash metering, and possibly size, as compared to a new meter.

i might also point out that i have not taken a reflected reading in years. i find incident

more reliable, even with complicated metering systems in dSLRs, i still prefer incident.

this opens you up to the classic Sekonic Studio Deluxe meters. built like tanks, no battery,

and from what i can see, very reliable and easy to use. but i dont think they can do a

reflected reading. they are not made for it.

t+

philippe, do you need it for incident, reflected or spot, and do you need to meter flash, or

just constant light? and finally, are you thinking of a new meter, or a used meter?

:-)

t+

i still think it is the scanner, to be honest, and not the lens. i think the cheap canon lenses

are optically ok, it is just the housing that lacks a bit. and yes, vigniette is generally more

common on short lenses, however a light hood or somethign can vigniette a telephoto

easily. but the stock one wouldnt, and still, that would effect the corners, and not parallel

sides.

wide angle lenses can produce slightly wider negs, due to the angle at which the light hits

the film... but this is not going to be very noticeable on an slr.

my suggestion would be to try a different neg holder, or even to cut one of the negs and

put it in a slide mount, and see if the problem persists.

t

no no, rishi, that has nothing to do with your lens, that is coming from the scanner. dont

touch the lens. a lens vigniette would effect the corners more than the sides, but the scan

you showed clearly has a dark edge on either of the 24mm sides of your tranny. the

additional noise may have to do with the scanner working harder. I have had similar

problems with a Flextight, and don't really understand it. our assumption is that it has to do

with the refraction or shadow in the actual film base. is this a mounted slide, or a strip? if it is

a strip, then it might be solved by masking off the edges of the film so that there is no clear

divider inbetween frames. oddly, the only solution we found with my last scans was to not

use the flextight at all, and take a raw scan off of a Frontier 570. yes. oddly better.