trenternst

Well, up until this thread came up, Google thought that <a

href="http://www.google.com/search?

client=safari&rls=en&q=greatest+living+photographer&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8"> I was </a>

Now I've been bumped down to #5. Thanks a lot....

Hey Courtney.

Just got involved in a discussion about colour management for print and web over here:

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00MK53

As discussed over there, when looking at images outside a colour managed environment,

the defacto standard is sRGB. It is a narrower colour gamut than what photographers

usually use to output images, and so when you take a colour managed image in

photoshop and look at it in a non-colour managed environment, a bunch of colours go

missing.

I don't use iPhoto, or showitweb, but I do use photoshop and Lightroom. Lightroom is

great, because you tell it to export to web, and it will do all the heavy lifting for you.

Photoshop, if you take an image that is Adobe RGB or Pro Photo and you tell it to export to

web, it will just dump the colours that are outside of sRGB, and the photo looks as bad as

if you hadn't bothered converting it.

What you need to do is, back in photoshop, open up a COPY OF YOUR ORIGINAL FILE!!!

(that's important). Then go under Image:Mode:Convert to Profile, and convert to sRGB.

Convert looks at how the colours currently display, looks at the space your putting the file

into, and does its best to preserve the colours in the destination space. (The other option,

Assign profile starts ditching colours again. Hello? I want those colours)

Save this new file as your slideshow/web version of the file. This *should* make all things

better. Of course, this is a bit of voodoo, and is best learned from someone wiser than I.

Real World Colour Management is a great book, but if you bang your head against the wall

long enough, you'll crack your skull open and the knowledge will flow in. Or your brains

will flow out.

Good luck. Try doing a short slideshow in iMovie and see how it works for you. Play

around with conversions. It's something I've played a bit with, but I am certainly no expert,

though I play one on TV.

Sandy wrote: [snip] "Since common labs will print your photos assuming sRGB color space,

you can get good results by: 1. Caliberate your monitor, 2. Set your camera at sRGB or if

shooting in Raw, open in sRGB space. 2, Set your working space to sRGB..."

I would most certainly not advise doing that. While it is true that low end labs assume

sRGB, that is no reason to shoot in sRGB. sRGB encompasses 35% of visible colours

specified by CIE, while Adobe RGB encompasses about 50%, with much broader tonality in

the cyans. You're throwing away nearly half the colour information by going to sRGB.

While the difference may not be noticeable if you get your photos printed at wal-mart, you

will notice a difference on higher end printers. Also, as printers get better, they are able to

print a broader gamut of colours, so that Adobe RGB is starting to give way to the Pro

Photo profile.

Like I said, Kettle of Fish, and you'll probably get a variety of different answers. And while I

am quite vocal in my opinions, there are places where sRGB is actually a useful colour

space. It is the defacto monitor colour profile, for instance.

As mentioned, a program like lightroom does tend to take and cut through the confusion

an awful lot. The file is held in its original RAW form, and you can choose to output a

variety of different profiles, and create a preset "Use this when printing at Wal Mart" Use

this for Asuka Books" "Use this for Web"

Much of what I do is an attempt to future proof my files. While outputting something as an

sRGB file might be fine now, in three years, printing technology may have changed and the

narrow gamut it presents will seem dull. Keeping your original in a file with a larger gamut

like Adobe RGB or better yet, Pro Photo will help. If you have no desire to future-proof

your files, then by all means, find something that works and go for it.

...and we haven't even mentioned the importance of calibrating your monitor.

Hey:

A while back I stumbled across a site called Black White and Orange, which was a beautiful website out of

Australia, I think, that used orange as an accent colour on BW photos. It was beautiful.

But I lost it. And I can't find it anymore. Does anyone remember this site? Is it still online? If so, do you

know the URL? I've gone searching using the terms that I remember, but I get a lot of search garbage.

Thanks.

Kettle of Fish, kettle of fish. No, this is not easy to understand.

First, go out and buy Bruce Fraser's Real World Color Management, because he has

pictures and illustrations and a couple hundred pages to answer, but here is the short

answer:

Your proof setup shows you what your image will look like when outputted on a variety of

devices. It does this by looking at the gamut and guessing. Well, guessing is a bit of

overstatement, but if you are printing something on paper, the reflected image is going to

be different than the projected image from your computer screen.

What you see under proof set-up, working CMYK is *not* the actual colour space of the

file (unless you're working in CMYK), but the computer's best representation of how these

colours will look once printed. CMYK is what printers (as in off-set web press, not Epson

2200) use to output.

Your *actual* working space will most likely be an RGB space, sRGB or ( better) Adobe RGB

(1998)

Assuming your printer (here meaning neither of the above, but the person who is taking

your file to print) is not outputting on a web press, most likely, you want to keep the

colour space of your file as RGB.

SO. Having confused you, here is how I work it.

IMPORT PHOTO as an Adobe RGB (1998) file. This is a preference set on the camera. You

don't want to use sRGB, because it is a smaller colour space, meaning that you won't see

as many pretty colours. If you are shooting Camera RAW, I believe you can change this

preference in your RAW converter from sRGB to Adobe RGB (1998) without actually

damaging the file, but I'd need someone a bit smarter in the ways of RAW to confirm that.

Get the photo looking the way you like it in ADOBE RGB (1998). This, most likely, is the file

that your lab will want, but talk to them. They might have a colour profile for the output

device they are using.

If they do send you a colour profile for that device, here is where you use soft proofing

(View: Proof Setup:Custom:Lab Profile).

Some labs want you to convert the file to that working space, others just want you to send

the Adobe RGB file, and they'll handle the conversion. Again, talk to your lab.

So, that should handle the printing side of things. Now for display on the web. You'd think

because you're using an RGB profile, other programs would understand it, but no. When

you output the file to a slideshow or a web gallery, the profile is usually assumed to be

sRGB, which, as we've already determined, has a smaller colour space. So, it starts ditching

the colours from Adobe RGB to fit within the smaller colour space. Thus, the grey/dark

issue.

What you need to do is, back in photoshop, open up a COPY OF YOUR ORIGINAL FILE!!!

(that's important). Then go under Image:Mode:Convert to Profile, and convert to sRGB.

Convert looks at how the colours currently display, looks at the space your putting the file

into, and does its best to preserve the colours in the destination space.

Save this new file as your slideshow/web version of the file. This *should* make all things

better.

If not, come back with more questions and the specific software you're using.

Just a note, Lightroom handles these conversions more or less seamlessly. Get things

looking exactly the way you want, then hit Export and select either Adobe RGB or sRGB as

your colour space. Adobe for printing, sRGB for web. If you screw up, your original file is

still safe and sound.

That is the short answer. Like I say, there are books and books on this topic. It is not easy

to wrap your head around, blonde, red or other, so don't think yourself stupid. At the

same time, it is very important if colour is important to you.

When you say high quality, do you mean HD quality? There are burners starting to come

on the market, but I don't know how they'll interact with Mac, especially since Apple threw

their hat in the bluray ring.

DVD quality is 480 p, which means the size is basically 640X480 pixels on a screen.

Considering that a 5X7 print has about 10 times that resolution (unless my math is

freakeshly off), of course you'll be disappointed by a DVD.

If you're worried about quality, though, why are you using iPhoto to control your slide

show? Pop over to iMovie, and you have a tonne more of control over how things look and

feel. And if you're really a bug for quality, you can do it as a High Def movie, then instead

of outputting to iDVD, output to H264 at 1080 p, and show it to your clients on your

computer.

Assuming your computer has the juice to play said 1080 p file....

It will take longer, but once you figure out iMovie's quirks, you'll be much happier. I don't

know how iMovie 08 treats slideshows, though, so you might want to stick to iMovie HD....

I like working with natural light, even indoors, but I got saddled with a wedding in a church with no

windows and terrible lights, and so I bought a couple Vivitar 283s and Cactus radio flash triggers, which

worked quite well, considering.

However, as I was taking pictures, I would notice that not all pictures would have the same lighting levels,

even though I was shooting under exactly the same conditions.

There are a couple or three options I can come up with for the change in lighting.

1) The Thyristor is seeing different things at different times. I had one flash set way at the back blasting

on M, but I had another flash off to the side set to about half power.

2) The flashes are firing before they are fully recycled. I was just running the flashes off double A

batteries, so this is the most likely option. I just wanted to know if it was a valid one. So, I'm looking for

feedback from those of you who have shot hundreds of weddings with these things, and maybe some

suggestions as to what to do to make sure they are fully cycled before you shoot, especially when they're

100 feet off camera.....

Hey All:

Got a 30 D. When I stop up (F4, 2.8), I see an odd ring pattern.

It shows up most when taking pictures into a projected light (sky, light table).

This only just started happening the other day after shooting some shots of a storm.

Happens with different lenses and different CF cards.

Anyone ever experience anything like this? Any thoughts?<div></div>

It is interesting that he used the word Theft. And because he names Graeme Spratley

specifically, there's now rumours of a counter-suit for defamation of character or some

such....

I have a friend who is an intellectual property lawyer and an avid biker. He likes to document his trips on

his website, complete with stats and photos. Not a great photographer, but not bad. And as they say, 80%

of the work is just showing up. <p>

Anyway. Friends of his parents, who were in the UK picked up a copy of Active Magazine, because they

thought he would be interested in seeing a UK mountain biking magazine.<p>

He was very interested, especially in one specific article about his own stomping grounds (he bikes around

Vancouver, Whistler, Pemberton area). <p>

What interested him most were the pictures of him and his friends out mountain biking. Pictures that he

and his friends had taken.<p>

Pictures he and his friends had no idea were going to be used in the magazine.<p>

Anyway. You can read the whole sordid tale here: <a href="http://www.leelau.net/2006/activemagazine/

activemagazine.htm">here.</a><p>

The question is, has anyone run into any issues with Altitude Media before? If not, if you want to post your

favourite story of having one of your pictures nicked, and how you dealt with it....

I'm not sure I fully understand the question, and why you want a smaller file size (for web

page, for quick review, to save space), but here's a couple thoughts on each.

If you want to view it on web page, there's lots of automatic web page generators. Can't do

it in camera.

If you want something that reviews faster, may I suggest shooting Raw + small jpg? That

way you've got a good quality original and a fast preview copy.

If you want to save space for storage. Don't do it. Buy a DVD burner. Buy a fleet of external

drives. Keep as much information as you can with the original file. Shoot Camera Raw.

Trash the crap photos rather than save them all small. I just had to do design for a

document, and the pictures that were supplied came in at 1X1.5 inches @ 300ppi....

The reason I picked up a 20D over the Rebel is the same reason that I won't be jumping

over this, even though it has that fancy sensor cleaning technology: ergonomics. It's been

said before, and I'll say it again, the click wheel on the back makes the 20 and 30

extremely usable; the lack of click wheel on the Rebel makes it not so much.

Here's the situation I kept running into when testing the Rebel. I'd set mode to Manual. I

would go to change my aperture. To do that, you hold down a button on the back and turn

the same wheel that you turn to change shutter speed. I would hit the wrong button, and

instead set the camera into timed mode. After a couple hours of this, I decided less money

wasn't worth the headache.

Don't get me wrong, the new Rebel has some great things going for it, but I just don't find

it as easy to use. And I will pay extra for something that I don't have to fight to use.

Thanks. Car TV wasn't an option I thought of. It would need to be portable, so the battery

pack is necessary (unless he was only shooting within a short distance of his truck, which is

also a possibility.

Looked at your pictures, and I think you could definitely use a slightly longer lens, just to

frame the action tighter. My favourite lens for lowish light action is the 70-200 2.8; I know

you don't like the zoom thing, but it beats running back and forth to get your framing

correctly. Especially in something like dance competition, where it seems to me (having never

shot), having an audience member moving around a lot would be verboten.

But if you're looking for a fixed lens, the 100 f2 is a slightly longer lens than the 85, and a

good price point. Some people have complained that the AF is a little slow....I wouldn't know,

as I don't use many primes.

My boss just came in with a question.

And, while I have a handful of answers for him, none of them worked for him.

He wants a field monitor for his 20D. I told him to shoot tethered. He said he didn't want to go hauling his

laptop around just to preview the image, and the trouble in shooting outdoors is the screen on both the

camera and the laptop wash out in bright sunlight.

A friend of his just got a field monitor for his HD videocamera, which comes with a hood. But I don't think

he wants to drop $2000 for something like that.

So, here's my question: Has anyone used an external field monitor (other than a laptop) for their camera?

If so, what? I'm looking at portable security monitors (http://www.spytown.com/mar4higreslc.html, for

example), which I've heard of some Astrophotographers using (and part, though not all, of the reason why

he's looking for an external monitor is for astrophotography), but am looking for any suggestions people

can toss out.

Thanks.

So.

I've been doing some outdoor portraits, using a reflector positioned well off to one side, but

I've noticed that a number of my victi...models have complained about how bright the

reflector was, even though it is not directly in front of them.

I don't want them to look all squinty during the pictures, so I was looking for positioning

advice, as well as general reflector usage advice. How do you get the light to be what you

want, without causing grief or distress to your models? Other than, you know, shooting them

wearing sunglasses.<div></div>

Scott:

Let us know when the web site is up; Rainier is beautiful. I spent one day there on a whirlwind

tour last summer and got some great pictures, but would love to be there when the

wildflowers are blooming.<div></div>

Hi:

Somewhere along the line, I read something somewhere about someone doing an annual

portrait package for families and children. It might have been here, it might have been in a

book, or it might have been at some other website.

I'm not talking about your run-of-the-mill school type round em up, run em through, but

actual Capital P Portrait portraits. If I recall correctly, the someone in question offered

some discount for these annual bookings because a customer you have now doesn't cost

as much as one you have to find. Or something like that. But I can't find where I read that

anymore.

I've been tossing around the idea of implementing something like this (for the, you know,

one customer a year that I get), but was looking for people who might already be doing

something to encourage repeat customers: find out how it's working, what sort of discount

or incentives you're giving to encourage people to sign up for an annual portrail

session...that sort of thing. I know about the whole seven ages of childhood thing; now I

am just looking for ways that people use to encourage repeat customers. I live in a place

with a tiny market of mostly photographically ignorant people and need to find ways to

maximize opportunities and educate customers that it's okay to get your picture taken

more than once a decade.

Anyone doing anything like this, or was I just imagining it?

If you think you can get a custom site done for less, then the person you're getting to do

your custom site is probably not a professional. Not that there aren't great amateur web

designers out there, but it can be hit and miss. Just FYI.

Eric: You see what Darin's doing with a broken binocular? Check out his flickr page. Pretty

cool stuff. Doubt that it has a place in wedding photography, but it's interesting....

Wow. Just came looking to make a comment on this whole non-destructive editing thing,

and fell into an all out religious war.

Anyway. Is it just me, or is this non-destructive RAW editing a bit of a red herring? You

can't (at least in photoshop; I've always assumed this is across the board) destructively edit

a RAW file anyway. You can open it and make changes, but you have to convert it to a PSD

or TIFF or JPEG or something to save it. The original RAW file always stays original.

The true strength is that you don't have to export the file to a different format; you can

keep applying effects to the original raw file, and, if something you do later on makes one

of your earlier adjustments look bad, you can go back and change the original, unlike in

RAW Import, where you'd have to go back and re-export the RAW file.

Instead of saving the file out to a PSD or a tiff, Aperture instead saves out the XML

information to a SQL database, which will save a bunch of space on the hard drive,

especially if you're the sort to do a couple or three variations of a file and save each as

unique file.

Anyway. It's an interesting looking program. Not sure we'll get it, but it is interesting. The

loupe is a brilliant little feature, and something that Photoshop shoulda done years ago

(and probably will do for CSIII).

Having used both, I can tell you that the 20D is a much nicer camera to use. It just feels

nicer. It is much more intuitive (changing Aperture on the XT was a pain in the butt in

manual). The 20D says "professional". Feels professional.

Looks professional.

Yeah, baby, I'm a professional photographer. Can't you tell by my...camera?

Does it take better pictures? Arguably yes, but that depends on whose hands the cameras

are in. I didn't see great differences between the two at 1600, but I don't have the most

refined eye for digital noise. I didn't have them around at the same time to compare them

head to head.

Is it worth the switch? Again, depends on what type of shooter you are, and what sort of

budget you have. Do you find yourself getting annoyed at the small buffer on the XT? Do

you find the XT hunting for focus, and is that because of the lens, of the camera, or of the

settings? I'd be more than happy to take concert shots with a XT and a 70-200 2.8 L.

But I'd be happier with the 20D and the 2.8 L.

Would I be happier with a 20D and a, say 100-300 F4.5? Probably not. The more I shoot,

the more stock I put in the lens. The lens makes or breaks the picture. The camera? Will be

replaced in a year by something even beefier and torquier.

But that's just my opinion.

Is it worth the price difference? Well, I haven't bought one for myself, if that means

anything. I got to play with both the XT and 20D at work (and the 20D is still around). I

still have a d30 that works perfectly fine for most of my shooting, though I have been

looking long and hard at the 20D lately. There's enough little things that bug me about the

XT that, given the choice, I'd go for the 20D.

In fact, given the choice between the XT and an old 10D, I'd probably take the 10D

because of the interface issues, even though I'm losing 2 mp.

Again, just my preference. You might not have any issues with the XT, and if you don't,

then don't switch just because the 20D is slightly better.

Yes, though I haven't done it.

Just a quick Google search turns up:

http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/photo/ir.html

http://www.usefilm.com/image/697641.html

http://dpfwiw.com/ir.htm

Oh. Here.

http://www.pbase.com/scho/infrared