tom_swanson

<p>I like the fotodiox adapters. I've bought two (FD and MD) and they've both been fine. $30 each.</p>

Photoshop CS3 would get you photostitching, HDR, RAW and editing. Unless you can hunt down some special it will likely cost you more than $300-400.

I rate it interesting. But then I've only been playing with it for a few days. I'm not sure I'll be able to learn enough about it before it times out to decide if I should buy it. But it is worth downloading the demo to try.

Just to get the obvious question out of the way. you don't have it set to manual focus, do you? The tokina has that odd MF clutch system and all.

Uh, don't save them as jpeg? Is there any reason you're concerned about the file size? The whole idea of jpeg is compression.

Crane Museo Silver Rag and Harman Matte FB are both very nice. I've printed no color images on either one so I can't help you with that. Not sure how either would work with the HP7350 but they work great with the HP B9180 pigment ink printer.

You can get away with letting the printer manage the colors with hp advanced gloss and semi gloss. Otherwise have the application manage the colors and don't forget to soft proof.

 

The luminous landscape sells a tutorial video called "from camera to print" that is very useful for figuring out how to process and print images. (Although it uses CS3 and light room.)

HP B9180

From 17-24 it is okay. Better the closer you get to 24. From 24 up it gets better and better. Contrast is a little low but easily fixed with the local contrast adjustment of your choice in post.

 

The biggest issue is that it is a dark lens.

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossary/

The manual controls on the 430ex made it worth the money to me.

Your best friend in printing is the wonderful Luminous landscape from camera to print tutorial. I think it cost $35. It is a 6 hour download with michael riechmann and jeff schewe.

 

Anywho, the range of your monitor is much greater than your printer. So your blacks will be lighter and block up sooner. Just what you are seeing. Or are you saying that the print is worse than the soft proof?

I would look for two actions. 1 to do the frame. The other the watermark.

 

Try looking around www.atncentral.com.

You really need to take them for a test drive. I'm currently test driving lightroom. You might consider it as well. Of the ones I test drove I think iView was the nicest. It had some odd glitches on my particular computer so I didn't go for it. (That and the MS buyout made me wary.)

 

A couple of cheaper options with a lot of followers are imatch and idimager.

 

Not an answer to your question but I would throw it out there.

The radiant vista has a lot of videos you can download. Lots of good landscape/photoshop information there.

I set it to the native 1280x1024 resolution. (It is a dell.) Anything else is going to be ugly.

Photoshop CS3 has a much improved photomerge. Far better than CS2.

 

Have you considered buying a tilt shift lens to go with your planned DSLR? This is a pretty painless way to take 3 images quickly that will stitch together painlessly. It is expensive, however.

 

Alternately just buy one of the new 12mp cameras. Should give you what you want in one shutter click.

 

(It should also be noted that I've had 6mp images blown up to 16x24 that have looked very nice. Depends on subject matter. It will often work fine. Sometimes not.)

All the current 13x19 printers will crush his 1280. So I wouldn't worry about "visible dots". (Actually I just picked up the stack of photos off my b9180 and can't see any dots. So I don't know where that came from. Using a loupe?)

 

To the OP: If you print a lot and want to save money on ink you'll want to consider the epson 3800. 17" printer with much bigger ink cartridges. Otherwise the HP B9180, Canon 9000 and 9500 (the newer ones), epson 1800 and 2400 and the new dye ink epson 13x19 are all good.

You should have luminance and color noise sliders in acr. Twiddle with them. Or just use noise ninja.

No, but you can get a viable image. With reduced dynamic range of course.

Underexposure is a great way to get noise in your images. Far more noise in the shadows. Tends to be pattern noise for me and that is a pain to deal with. Shoot at a reasonable ISO if you can.

 

At the same time I shot this at iso 3200 -2 EV and hammered it with neat image. Worked for this subject matter. Might not for others.<div></div>

I love the printer. It is (mostly) painless. Every now and again it refuses to respond and has to be power cycled but all in all it is great. Just prints. No clogs. No odd colors. Very pleased.

 

B+W is so good on this thing that I've started to learn B+W photography. (Hard thing to want to do when your photos print green or yellow because your printer can't quite do B+W. Works great with this one.)

Try asking here...

 

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/hp9100Series/

 

For satin paper I like the inkjet art luster. Great stuff. Pretty cheap.

j.v.

 

You need to push the histogram to the right. Digital is inherently more noisy in the shadows. You can pull the photos back in post if you want them darker. But you need to maximize the exposure.

Have you considered something like the tamron 28-75 f2.8? Great optics and low price. (Build isn't great. I've bent one.) But it should tell you if that focal range is what you want and be cheap enough to keep on top of your current lenses. (And if you DO want that range you can sell em all and get that 24-70.)