kevinconnery

Softboxes don't have to be large and far away, or large and close. This isn't has the look of small softbox (about 16-20 inches square) 2-3 feet away, <i>possibly</i> with a 1/2 stop or so soft-edged flag to enhance fall-off, or--it'd help if the catchlights were more clear--a grid on the box. It doesn't have the typical specular look a beauty dish would, though the shadows are consistent with that as well.<p>

It's not unreasonable to postulate that the darker right side was done in post, but it, too, could have been done in-camera. (A little harder to get the background fade to contour to Dicaprio's head, but not horribly difficult either.)

Recipe books are good if they have a recipe for the problem you have. They don't, usually, teach you how to get the most from a tool, though.

If you plan on learning more about Photoshop, Martin Evening's book is better, and even better still is Real World Photoshop by Bruce Fraser and David Blatner. Both of those books teach how to use and understand Photoshop, not just which buttons to push to achieve a specific effect.

If you're talking about the head-and-shoulder portrait with

Decaprio looking to the side in front of a green background, it

looks like a very straightforward setup: large soft light to camera

right, with a soft light on the background to camera left. (That

gives the cross-fading look.). Possibly with a fill card or light to

deal with the shadows/

Both lights are probably pretty close, as the fall-off is moderately

strong.

Pretty much any soft lighting modifiers would work--diffusion

panel, softbox, window light...

If you're asking<p>

<i>for advice for how to go about learning how to use my N80, SB-80DX Speedlight, and 35-70mm f/2.8 lens, with Ilford Delta 100 film. </i><p>

The answer is straightforward. Shoot the camera in a user-controlled fashion, taking notes of how your exposures were relative to what the meter said, and check the resulting negatives.<p>

If, instead, your <p>

<i>main priority is making pictures of my

baby daughter. </i><p>

You won't be learning as much about getting the best results possible.<p>

You CAN do both, but if you try to learn the camera's mechanics while trying to get good photos of your daughter, you're making it much (much!) harder on yourself, risk losing shots you'd otherwise get, and won't learn much.<p>

Try spending time shooting your daughter in one of the automatic modes, and expect decent-but-not-necessarily great photos, and, separately, spend time shooting with more intent, paying careful attention to what your camera is doing vis-a-vis the lighting conditions.<p>

Once you're comfortable with the camera and flash, THEN deal with the variables of black and white film and negatives. If you want to, go ahead and shoot it, but you're not going to learn much from the prints until you develop some skill at 'reading' the negatives themselves--machine-based prints are so variable that it's difficult to learn from them.

<i>That strikes me as foolishness to an extent. a 50mm lens is presumed to have a certain field of view, created by the geometry of

the focal length and a 35mm frame. </i><p>

ONLY if you assume the format, which is not inherent to the EOS line of cameras. The APS (ick), digital, and 35mm EOS cameras all use the same lenses: what is the "correct" field of view?<p>

35mm is not universal--many pros still use 6x6 or 6x7 cameras, and a 50mm lens is pretty wide on those bodies...but it's still 50mm, and

'<i>in 5 years, a 50mm lens will behave "like a 50mm lens" does once again.</i>'

Gas mileage improvement: less than 5%

Monitor size improvement: nil (prices are lower, but the maximum is still pretty much the same)

Are you a chip designer? Do you understand how each design is created, and how chip yields are created, and which processes are being used? (JFET, CMOS, etc.)

Without knowing where the state-of-the-art was at the beginning of the measuring period (early, evolving, mature), it's impractical to project improvements--when was the last time there was a serious improvement in, say, videotape technology or buggy-whip manufacturing?

If development is actually that slow relative to its capability to improve, someone will find the profit in the field, and start developing newer, faster, better, cheaper stuff. If it's actually as fast as it can given the resources the market is throwing at it...

While it's by no means a general-purpose camera, Horseman's Digiflex cameras ( http://www.schneideroptics.com/cameras/horseman/digital_cameras/digiflex_II/ or http://www.horsemanusa.com/dgf2.html ) provide 11-16 megapixels using Kodak's DCS Pro Back, Imacon's IXpress, or PhaseOne digital backs. It's a bit of a hack, but it uses Nikon's lenses and most MF-type digital backs, and gives a 24x36 frame size.<p>

Of course, the backs alone cost more than the 14N or 1Ds, and the camera's another $2-3K...<p>

CL Ho: if they list the physical focal length and angle of view (not that stupid "equivalent", I'd be delighted.

Check out the archived threads. There's on from 2000 about <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=004Dhh">tricolor filters</a>, another one on <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000jOZ"> Tri-color composites / feasible with Photoshop</a>, and some others. (Search for 'tricolor')<p>

Rather than attempt to duplicate the process, though, you might want to examine what about the results is "as lovely as tricolor printing in the darkroom", and work on those specific elements. While duplicating a process can be useful, it's often more effective to use the results as a goal, and use the strengths of the new process (digital in this case) to achieve those results.<p>

(If, on the other hand, you're trying to recreate the archivability of a 3 AgX-based filmstrip, the same filters used in the capture would apply.)<p>

3x3 tricolor GELS are around $15 each. If you're careful, you shouldn't need glass ones. The most common colors used are 25 (Red--but sometimes 24 or 29), 58 (green--but sometimes [rarely] 61), and 47B (Blue)

<i>135mm is so nowhere in focal length. [...]<br>In my book, 135 mm is a transitional focal length, like 70 mm ish. </i><p>

Everyone "sees" things differently. My standard lens in college was a 135mm, and it was used about for over 80% of the shots I took, with 50mm getting most of the remainder, and 28 the rest.<p>

My partner in photography at the time used a 35mm as his 'standard', and 85mm as his long lens. Not surprisingly, we got very different photographs at the same events.<p>

Just because a given length isn't to your taste doesn't make it a bad choice, and repeatedly saying so simply makes you look foolish. In the case of 135mm, it gives a good distance for head-and-shoulder portraits, giving a somewhat flatter perspective than 85 or 105, but less extreme than 200.

What conditions?

The Acute 1200 should easily give you f/32 at 10 feet in a plain reflector for ISO 100. That'd be plenty in a softbox for up to 8-12 people, and nowhere near enough to light a group of 100 or an automobile.

Even better than using an existing channel as a mask OR Extract is doing both.

Load the highest contrast channel as a mask, clean it up where it's obviously wrong, then use it in Extract via the Extraction Channel option. That's usually close enough to get Extract to do a good job, without requiring the painful edge tracing.

Alternatively, or in addition, use Layer > Matting > Defringe to get rid of the fringe pixels. (That'd be my first choice given the example, but it's not as universal a technique.)

<i>.if we're all agreed that colourmeters are accurate and that you can

reasonably expect to take a Kelvin reading from a meter, dial that value directly into the camera and get accurate

reproduction, then why - for something costing as much as the 10D - hasn't this level of accuracy being built into the

internal WB sensor ?</i><p>

Cost is part of it;

Minolta's ColorMeter costs over $800 (street price).<p>

Design is the other. The built-in WB meter looks at the scene and estimates color. The Expo disc, or the incident dome on a handheld meter measures the light itself. Scene contents can make a significant difference in how the meter 'thinks' the scene color is. (Blue sky vs yellow wall, even in the same lighting conditions, for example.)

If you have a decent printer profile, and your monitor is properly calibrated and profiled, the Soft Proofing function works VERY well.<p>

A lousy profile, for either the printer or the monitor, will make softproofing of very limited value.<p>

Using "generic" CMYK to proof an inkjet--whether it's a 4-color or 7-color one--won't help much. How the "CMYK preview" will work will depend on how you have your CMYK set up, as you note, but it'll be a whole lot more work to get an accurate setup for your printer than it would be to simply profile the printer itself, as it's based on an incorrect model. It can (probably) be done well enough to make kinda-sorta estimates, but if you took the same time and just made test prints, you could probably get an equivalent mental picture just from the samples than you would using pseudo-softproofing.

<i>The test colors above did not test for blue sky reflected off of a gold light disc.</i><p>

Brooks said: <p>

<i>Today I managed to shoot an example showing the difference between a photograph <b>made in open shade, lit by blue sky</b>. And the very <b>same photo in blue shade using a gold reflector</b>. The reflector was positioned to catch sunlight and reflect it onto the subject, just as you would on a outdoor portrait. </i><p>

Are you saying he didn't do what he said he did?

Not mentioned, but still important is that Photoshop dithers when it converts from 16-bit to 8-bit mode. That will usually give a more pleasing histogram, but has a negative effect on the 'accuracy' of the data.

EVERY tonal change damages the underlying data. A 'good' change is one where the raw data is tuned to look better, not one where the histogram is better. But any manipulation is throwing out data from the capture or scan. The goal is to trade 'bad' data for 'usable' information. (Note that data is NOT information. Information is data viewed in context.)

The gamma of the color space used ("working space") will have a large effect. 127R, 127G, 127B in sRGB is significantly different than 127/127/127 in ColorMatch or ProPhoto RGB, and a tiny bit different than in Adobe RGB (1998).

The gamma of the display itself should be corrected out by Photoshop's internal color management, and shouldn't have any visible effect, if it's working properly and the display is calibrated.

If you're getting "muddy magenta" images, I'd suspect either your printer is out of spec or your settings aren't right.

How are you printing?

What I recommend for 2200 users is: source space=your document's space, output space=the profile for the paper and ink you're using, media type set to the right media, and NO COLOR ADJUSTMENT.

If you have it set to "automatic" or "vivid" or anything else, the distributed profiles aren't going to work properly. (They can be useful settings for other profiles, but not the ones from Epson.)

If that doesn't work, custom profiling is what I'd suggest, unless you want to use a LOT of different papers. A few custom profiles will cost less than any of the cheap packages, and should give better results.

If you do go with scanner-based profiling, the matte papers DO profile reasonably well in Monaco's EZColor; the glossy ones less well. I don't know if that's a package-specific issue or paper, but do know that the UV brighteners in most 'photo' papers can cause difficulties in profiling.

In addition to "don't shout opinions on subjects you don't understand", I'd like to add "don't clutter up Photo.net with topics completely unrelated to photography."

Talking about OSes is akin to talking about cars: most photographers use them, but they're not even tertiary tools for photography or the business of it.

"<a href="http://www.jinxhackwear.com/images/products/71bgBlack.jpg">Don't voice strong opinions about things you don't understand</a>" applies to many areas. Sometimes people enjoy a level of fanaticism about their camera choice, film choice, digital over film choice, computer choice, automobile choice...often without any real understanding of the issue.<p>

Ignoring it saves those who do understand the issue time, but it seems to encourage back-and-forth between the ignorant...leading to a more firmly entrenched ignorance--new "facts" that are demonstrably not facts.<p>

And the cycle continues.

The Matte Black CAN give a 'darker' black when used on non-glossy paper.

However, even Photo Black should give acceptable results (for different values of "acceptable"), IF the right printer settings are used.

What paper did you tell the printer driver was being used, what profile did you specify, and what printer settings? (And if you're using a RIP, which one?)

I have noticed that the 2200 is less prone to getting lighter when way too much ink is used, but it still can happen. Try printing a black-to-white step wedge with blacks going from 0% to 25% or so, and see when you stop seeing any difference on the paper you're using. Then adjust the image to take that into account. (For example, if a brightness of 15 on screen can't be distinguished from 14 or 13 or 12..., you can get better results by adjusting the darkest points to that range--it'll keep the dark areas from blocking up and looking muddy.)

Check the archives.<p>

There's an article on choosing <a href="http://www.photo.net/learn/studiolighting/">studio lights</a> that's currently showing on the main page, and threads on

<a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=005LW4">How much light needed</a>, <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=005D3k">Hotlights or Flash</a>, <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=003n7V">Lights for digital</a>, and many threads like this one on <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000Ecu ">What studio lighting to buy?</a>.<p>

The first things you'll have to identify is WHAT you'll be shooting for a subject, and WHAT you'll be using to capture it (film speed and aperture). Then it gets interesting...

Why wouldn't I recommend Speedotron for <i>this</i> job?<p>

Well, since Jason doesn't already have a lighting kit, it's not the easiest system to use. Most of the newer pack designs (and probably all the monolight designs) are quite a bit more novice-friendly. They also weigh less. Some don't have the maximum power capabilities or the same durability, but the situation he's discussing would be one where weight is a probable issue, and durability isn't: almost any monolight or pack with one head would work fine--he doesn't need a LOT of light, and he doesn't need an unusually high recycle rate.<p>

A Profoto 7B would work great here, too, but I wouldn't recommend it <i>in this situation</i>, either--it's overkill.<p>

Jason: how close to the stage can you get the light(s)? While it won't have the recycle rate you're looking for, if you can place even a Vivitar 283 40 feet from the stage, you could get about f/2.8 from that using ISO 100. At 20 feet, it'd be f/5.6. Or f/5.6 and f/11 with ISO 400 film. (I'm not recommending that flash, merely using it as an example of how little light you probably need.)<p>

Quantum, Lumedyne, or Norman batery-powered systems are available with more power and much faster recycling times; you may want to check them out if freedom from wall power is a concern.<p>

The key thing is to identify what YOU need, then find a system that solves it for you. Not what anyone else uses.<p>

So far, it's a recycle rate fast than 1/second, a typical flash duration (under 1/500th), and an unspecified amount of power. All of those are available in many different systems, from the low-end Alien Bees (great value) to, well, much more expensive systems.

Critter, it was worth a try, but the only irony some folks recognize is the iron in the sturdy workhorse powerpacks that SPEEDOTRON makes. [grin]<p>

It's kinda annoying, as Speedotron does make good equipment (I own a bunch of it), and it's appropriate for many uses...just not every single solitary lighting situation whose post Timber notices and adds a dozen responses to.<p>

Jason, check out the <a href="http://www.photo.net/learn/studiolighting/">article on choosing studio strobes</a> in the Learning section, and see which capabilities YOU <b>NEED</b>. Then look into the various options. (For what it's worth, while I love Speedotron systems for durability, this isn't a situation <i>I'd</i> recommend it.)<p>

If it comes down to it, rent a system for two days, and do that again next year. It'll be cheaper than buying something you probably won't need very often.<p>

If you feel you must buy, just about every half-way decent pack-and-head system or monolight system will recycle within a second and give better than f/8 at 20 feet or so. (That'd be a GN of 160--MUCH lower than most studio systems.)

Can anyone recommend a <i>good</i> way to get closer focusing with the

70-200? I'm looking for no more than about 1/4th life-size, but closer

than what it currently limits me to. <p>

Why the 500D rather than Extension tubes, or vice-versa? How about

Nikon's 5T?<p>

Since the usual 'just slap a close-up lens on it' is so expensive (500D

is $125+), I'd like to see what alternatives exist and what their

trade-offs are.<p>

Typical use would be stopped down to at least f/8-f/11, using strobes.