richardvanle

Personally, I like the use of Flash on your site, Kirk. I always hear

people rail against the use of Flash -- probably because most of

time when it's used, it's poorly designed and executed. Not the

case here. The download is fast and (most importantly) the

navigation is clean and easy to understand. Don't dismiss Flash

just to dismiss Flash.<p>

Great photos, Kirk. I especially liked the street scenes from

Rome.

More details about the new epson printer can be found

<a

href="http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1019743201.htm

l">here</a>.

Don, be sure to keep us updated on your experience with the

scanner. I, too, am getting the itch to pick up one of these

scanners -- it just may possess me to start using the Rollei

more...

<i>You never know if a Leica is focussed correctly or not either.

</i><p>

Peter, could you expand on your comment? I don't understand

what you're trying to say.

I've seen Men's work before. Great stuff. And I think the "contest"

that he won the M6 was the Mother Jones Documentary Photo

Fund.

In fact, looking at the rest of the site, it seems to me that most of

the photos on the site suffer from too much JPG compression.

Very amateurish. Do they not have a photo editor looking at the

site online -- he/she must notice how bad the compression is. It

rally takes away from the presentation.

Is it just me or does the person who puts National Geographic's

photos online suck? There's a lot of artifacting and noise.

The LUG is bad enough via email. Can you imagine getting a

bunch of them together in person? I'm sure there will be plenty of

equipment-fondling and discussions about scotch or

something.

<i>this is about carrig on an art that one must not forgot that this

art is bigger than all of us. </i><p>

Those are some pretty deep statements considering your

question is whether or not you should buy a chrome or black

camera.

Brian, more great work as usual. There are some really powerful

images in there. I especially like your tight framing -- it heightens

the sense of urgency.

<i>And it works well for my trademark underexposed shots as

well!</i><p>

Rob, I love your trademark underexposed shots... of trucks!

<i>The Epson 2450 scanner at $400 opens up the field for cost

effective, 2400ppi scans of up to a 4x9" piece of film. A 4.5x6cm

negative returns a 22MPixel scan file and prints to a 13x19" print

at 300+ dpi with this scanner. </i><p>

Thanks for this piece of info, Godfrey. I've been wondering how to

incorporate my 6x6 work in a digital workflow (without spending

too much money). This scanner seems like it would be the ticket.

Do you find yourself doing a lot of color correcting and

Photoshop work after scanning? How well does it handle the

negs?

Tse-Sung, I used Photoshop for image processing and I

designed the site in Dreamweaver. The idea was to keep the

site as simple as possible, so the focus would be on the photos.

Oops. That last sentence sounded weird. Meant to say that I

won't improve my photography unless I learn from my mistakes.

Oh, I left out one part of the technical data: I used a Sunpak 1600

flash for the night shots. It's a bit anemic, so I'm considering

getting an SF20 for more power and control (of course, I'll lose

the TTL function with my non TTL-cameras).<p>

Ivan, I try to take responsibility for my mistakes -- after all, I won't

learn a damn thing unless I learn from them.

On the issue of the general murkiness of the photos, I think there

are a couple reasons for that. First, there were definitely pictures

that were simply underexposed -- due to a couple major

mistakes on my part at the time of the events (wish I could

blame AE!). At all the events, the light would change very

dramatically (suddenly dropping 3 stops, for example) and I got a

little too distracted by the event itself and could have paid closer

attention to the light changes. Second, I'm still getting the hang of

scanning and color correcting in Photoshop, so it's a matter of

improving my digital workflow. The 8x10 work prints "pop" more

than onscreen, but there's definitely a lot of room for

improvement.<p>

Technical details: M6/M4-P, with 25/35/50 lenses. I used Portra

800, rated at 800 and 3200 (big mistake pushing it 2 stops, but I

hadn't done it before, so I thought I'd experiment a bit). Negatives

then scanned at 4000 dpi.<p>

Again, I appreciate the comments from everyone. Very helpful.

Thanks for all the comments and critiques, so far. Pro-Palestine

rallies are still going on throughout the city, so I'm not done

shooting yet. Angelia, I agree a tighter edit is necessary. Please

consider this set of photos a work in progress.

For the past few weeks, I have been covering various

Pro-Palestine rallies and demonstrations in NYC. I have up a

rough edit of my work <a

href="http://www.vanle.com/palestine/">here</a>. <p>

<center><img

src="http://www.vanle.com/palestine/images/02-022-35.jpg"><p

>

<i>Pro-Palestine Rally, NYC 2002</i></center>

Travis, I say this in all friendliness, but lighten up. It's the internet

and obviously there will always be people with rude or obnoxious

or unhelpful comments. Don't take it all so personally.

Practice. Practice. Guessing distance isn't hard and the lens has

such an enormous DOF, it's kind of hard to get it wrong. All in all

it's a fun lens. I like street shooting with it.<p>

<center>

<IMG SRC="http://www.vanle.com/misc/02-011-01.jpg"><p>

<i>Chinese New Year 2002, NYC</i>

</center>

In general, I don' t read photography magazines that review &

discuss equipment. I second the vote for the magazines

mentioned by Mark Lewis (PDN & Comm Arts) and Jeff Spirer

(Aperture, DoubleTake, La Nueva Luz, Lenswork). I read all of

these regularly and between them you get a nice mixture of the

business side of photography, emerging photographers, and

great photo essays. All in all, very practical and inspiring stuff.

For those unfamiliar with Chris Rainier's work check out this

<a href="http://www.pdnonline.com/masters/MasterRainier/">

gallery</a>.<p>

Martin, be sure and post an update on how the workshop went.

Lutz, I'm not trying to be smartass, but what does the scoop

improve upon? When you first mentioned this product in another

thread, I thought it was going to be some sort of plastic cover that

you could put on older M cameras' eyepiece so the metal

wouldn't scratch your glasses. But looking at the photo of the

Scoop, I'm trying to figure out what it does. Block out extraneaous

light?