robert_brook1

<p>My apologies, but at 07:05 non-Greenwich Meantime, I accidentally dropped a post into this thread which was meant for the 'Creation' thread. <br>

On the topic of web traffic, my view is that if the site is right the viewers will come. You may need to find ways of kick starting it, but word-of-mouth is what will take it up.<br>

Use http://www.alexa.com to check the performance of photography sites you know about.</p>

<p>I already posted this, but mistakenly posted on the other live thread on the related topic of web design issues. Apologies to anyone who is wondering what it is doing there.</p>

<p>I produced my first website ten years ago, hand scripted in HTML, which seemed to me to be the only way to go back then. I don't think I ever got more than 500 visitors.</p>

<p>Once you start learning HTML you realize that you need to know CSS. So I learned CSS. To turn CSS into a powerful tool you need to know a little JavaScript. So I learned some JavaScript. So in 2002 I was able to produce a better site that attracted a lot more visitors. I also produced <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.photolucid.com/" target="_blank">http://www.photolucid.com</a> which still exists - albeit in a slimmed down form - and still attracts visitors by the hour, if not minute. In 2003 I produced another site that received around 40k visitors in the first month, and still occasionally picks up over 1000 visitors a day, although it often plummets to 50 a day.</p>

<p>To make websites really functional you need to learn a server-side scripting language. So I have now acquired a reasonably solid grasp of PHP.</p>

<p>What I have learned is that if you want visitors, you must create something at least a bit unusual, if not unique, built around a concept. Simply sticking images in galleries in today's Flickr mad world might be a fun thing for the relations, but isn't going to generate serious traffic. Unless your one-word name begins with R and ends in N, that is. Most cheap website kits will not help you to produce anything that doesn't look remarkably like a lot of other websites that no one visits. If you are work shy, but have money, get a young, innovative, but not yet established web developer/designer to do the job for you. Otherwise get some very big books. Or at least learn some basic HTML alongside Flash.</p>

<p>There are, of course, techniques for generating traffic that don't depend upon anyone wanting to visit the site in the first place, but there isn't a lot of point to this unless you are hoping to make a living from Google Ads.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I produced my first website ten years ago, hand scripted in HTML, which seemed to me to be the only way to go back then. I don't think I ever got more than 500 visitors.<br>

Once you start learning HTML you realize that you need to know CSS. So I learned CSS. To turn CSS into a powerful tool you need to know a little JavaScript. So I learned some JavaScript. So in 2002 I was able to produce a better site that attracted a lot more visitors. I also produced http://www.photolucid.com which still exists - albeit in a slimmed down form - and still attracts visitors by the hour, if not minute. In 2003 I produced another site that received around 40k visitors in the first month, and still occasionally picks up over 1000 visitors a day, although it often plummets to 50 a day.<br>

To make websites really functional you need to learn a server-side scripting language. So I have now acquired a reasonably solid grasp of PHP.<br>

What I have learned is that if you want visitors, you must create something at least a bit unusual, if not unique, built around a concept. Simply sticking images in galleries in today's Flickr mad world might be a fun thing for the relations, but isn't going to generate serious traffic. Unless your one-word name begins with R and ends in N, that is.<br>

Most cheap website kits will not help you to produce anything that doesn't look remarkably like a lot of other websites that no one visits. If you are work shy, but have money, get a young, innovative, but not yet established web developer/designer to do the job for you. Otherwise get some very big books. Or at least learn some basic HTML alongside Flash.</p>

<p> </p>

"How well does the Epson 4870 do with 6x7 negatives & slides? Are the results worth the efforts of shooting medium format?"

The quality gap between medium format and 35mm is the reason to use medium format - you will never get a 35mm image look like a 6x7, but you might, one day, get a 6x7 looking like one. If you find expense involved means you have to make sacrifices elsewhere then the 4870 is a good compromise. But to get good results you will need a lot of processing power. I get the best results from this scanner by initially scanning at 4800dpi without any pre-sharpening and digital ICE turned off. Then, in a series of small steps involving unsharp masking and fine dusting (to get rid of noise) and further reduction, end up with a 2400dpi image which has more detail than my poor old Coolscan III can manage at that resolution. I further reduce working files to 2000 dpi and find that these can then be sharpened further (or as required) without any significant noise being generated. All this can, of course , be automated in Photoshop. The only labour involved is in final retouching.