gary_a._hill

I'm with Lex on this. As I browse Photo.net, I'm amazed at the numbers of contributors who have the spelling and punctuation skills of a third-grader.

As it is a strictly mechanical camera, presumably using a cam for aperture control, it works fine with the dial set at intermediate positions. The problem is that as it is uncalibrated, you are not likely to get 1/3 stop accuracy. I suggest settling for one intermediate stop, not two. You won't find anything in the manual about this.

I'll accept that it's possible that chromatic aberration of short wavelength light could contribute to the problem, but the "purple fringing" that is most talked about is strictly a problem with digital cameras. Color corrected lenses have been understood for a long time, and even inexpensive cameras have lenses which are good in this respect. There is no reason to expect that digital cameras would have inferior lenses, so the answer must lie elsewhere.

 

I have found no good explanation of the phenomenon, except that blooming (a phenomonon of CCDs) could be a factor, and color interpolation (required by Bayer arrays) is definitely a factor. I'm wondering if the fact that Bayer arrays have twice as many green sensors as red or blue influences the color of interpolation errors, but I've found nothing on this point.

 

There ought to be a standardized test for comparing the performance of digital cameras in this respect.

By the way, purple fringing is not chromatic aberration.

Opera. I switched to Opera because upgrading Netscape would require a change to OS X, but I still keep the last version of Netscape which runs on 9.2 as an alternative.

The view through the 58mm lens is actually not telephoto, but matches the view of the eye, whereas 50mm lenses are slightly reverse telephoto. This means that you can keep both eyes open without the distraction of seeing different views.

I use FG7 and have a data file at home, but I don't remember what site I got it from, and it's probably changed anyway. Do you just need the development chart? What films?

Square is cool. Diane Arbus shot square format. Look for a Kowa 6x6 as an alternative to Hassy. I would rather have the Contax 645, myself

For color negatives, you must photograph a reflective target on every roll, and calibrate the roll.

I'm guessing you might pay a professional photographer a lot for expertise in lighting, and so on, and still not be happy with the results. My suggestion is to find an amateur you know and are comfortable with to do a shoot. It's essential to use a cable release, so the photographer can take shots unobtrusively.

I'm not sure what the substrate of a UDO disk is, but it is certainly not paper. UDO is commercial archival media in a 5 1/4 form factor which is replacing 5 1/4 Magneto-Optical (MO) media. Typically used in jukeboxes holding vast amounts of data, but it can also be used in standalone drives. See www.plasmon.com for more information.

 

Of course, the real problem with long-term archiving of digital data is not merely the longevity of the media, but of the software which supports the media. There are many aspects to this: Operating system, file system, file format, and the hardware and software systems which read the media.

If you really want the archival qualities of longevity and capacity, then the new blue-laser Ultra Density Optical is the best. Available in write-once or read/write media. Capacity is 30Gb today; 60Gb and more soon. The technology is phase-change, like DVD, not MO.

The earlier Fuji models, which are entirely mechanical, except for an exposure meter, are excellent cameras. Mine is the wide-angle with 45mm lens, equivalent to about 28mm on 135 film. I have used it as a travel camera. It's lightweight and convenient for that purpose, when one focal length suffices.

Kodak Technical Pan. Contrast is adjusted by varying exposure index and developer concentration (HC-110).

All this makes me even happier that I went with Mac and Binuscan Photo Retouch Pro.

Ok, I read the FAQs from West Coast Imaging. I don't see anything in there that makes me want to change from Portra 100T negatives for my application (copying flat art).

Digital cameras with a CCD sensor sometimes exhibit a phenomenon known as "CCD bloom" which is often called chromatic aberration, which it is not. Please be clear what you mean.

 

Why is this in the Nikon thread?

I don't have a "normal" normal lens, and use the 60mm 2.8 AF micro as my normal lens. This works very well as a normal lens unless you need a wider aperture.

I use Portra 100T color negative film and Pro PhotoCD scans, with excellent results, by the way.

R. Kreuger makes a good point I hadn't thought of. If you prefer to scan color negatives, 12 or 14 bit sampling instead of 8 should be much better.

On the contrary, scanning negatives is easier, because negatives have a compressed dynamic range. The dynamic range of slides can exceed the range of some scanners. As for the color mask and complementary colors making it more difficult, this is irrelevant nonsense. It is trivial for the scanner software to deal with this, given the proper profile.

 

On the otherhand, color fidelity is less well controlled for negatives, as color correction takes place during printing. It is not sufficient to have a color profile for the film type. Good color calibration of negatives requires putting a color target on the film.

This is nonsense. Photography (more or less) is the recording of images on paper (or other hardcopy). The traditional chemical methods of photography are one of the means, not the essence. Most "professional" photography is commercial and is ephemera. Commercial photographers and commercial printers have converted to digital because the economics are overwhelmingly in favor of digital for commercial photography and printing, with equivalent results.

 

That being said, I photograph with film only, and when I need a digital image, I use a scanning service. I can do this because I my photography business is very small scale, so the efficiencies of digital aren't worth it for me.

 

Fine art photography is another matter, but this is a tiny share of the photography market.

I will second that. Hire a photographer. If your budget is small, you don't need to hire a high-end commercial photographer, but you should be able to find someone who knows something about it and has the necessary equipment (or knows what to rent).

Nikon 85mm 1.8 lens with fast rear-element focusing for your portrait requirements. Then any Nikon body which suits your requirements and budget.

Sigma is touting their latest digital camera as 10.2 Mpixels, then go

on to say 3.4M red, 3.4M green, 3.4M blue. This sounds like 3.4

Mpixels to me. What is the conventional definition of a pixel?