olli.pekonen

OK... so what are the rumors, Yakim? The 22Meg 1Ds

sounds really nice... but the price does not, of course...

I'm contemplating the purchase of 10+Mpixel camera in

EOS range, leading to 5D or 1DsMII. 5D is a very recent

release with 12+Mpixels and a price tag around 3000?. 1DsMII

is about 16+Mpixels, and 7000? in Finland, released about a

year ago.

 

Questions:

 

a) do you foresee that Canon will continue the pushing of the pixel

range in conjunction with increasing camera price. So far this has

been the case in any release of the EOS range (even with 10D -> 20D).

Thus, if I wait for a new model of 1DsMII in the hope of a

better resolution, I will get it, but I will also pay more.

Is this so?

 

b) Are there any rumors of upcoming DSLR EOS releases after the 5D?

 

BR,

 

Olli Pekonen

Petrilux Inc.

Every now and then I have to add a logo (a GIF image) to several

pictures in a folder.

 

a) The pictures can be either landscape or portrait. The size of the

images is the same (or at least similar)

 

b) the position should be the lower left hand side of the image

 

 

How to automate this best in Photoshop CS? I gather that I have to

do an "Action" of this, but what are the necessary steps? I'm sure

some Photoshop guru can lay this out in a jiffy...

Yes, glamour and fasion perhaps go hand in hand... but what about Vehicles... where to put those?

Perhaps this has been suggested before, but I would like to suggest

two new categories for the critique forums

 

a) Vehicles. I was about to write "cars" but vehicles in general are

very much photographed objects (cars, airplanes, ships, boats, what

have you). E.g. for car photography, there is no suitable place...

it combines fashion/portrait photography (if the driver is in

place), or hobby photography (but e.g. airplanes can obviously be

more than a hobby)

 

b) Glamour. Yes, there is the Nude section, but now Nudes contain in

a hodge podge two quite different approaches for the nude body -

1. "glamourous Playboy style shots" and 2. "Classical nude shots",

where e.g. only portion of the body is visible, and black and white

dominates.

 

How do you find these suggestions?

Hi all,

 

Thanks for the tips. After being spoiled with the image quality of

20D, a "pocket camera" is not an option. Will do more investigation.

 

BR,

 

Olli

Dear Miles,

 

Thanks for the tip. The canoe is to be used (as always) in the wonderful archipelago of the Gulf of Finland, no running water. However, as the sea can be rough, the danger of tipping over is ever present. What is a "pelican box" you mention above?

Hi,

 

Summer is approacing, and I'm planning to take my Canon EOS20D

SLR on top of my Wilderness Systems 170" Tempest kayjak. But how?

Obviously some water tight housing is needed, but what is available

out there?

 

I suppose diver's camera housings are a bit bulky. Are there e.g.

any reliable drybag systems that would have a quality lens shield?

The way I see it, the on-camera flash adjusts its power based on its A,B (or C) information so it is basically controlled just the same as the remote units, having less (fill) or more (main) power than the off-camera units.

First, thanks for the really cool answers. They helped a lot.

 

Here's a try of my Volvo V70 midst a cold cold winter night in Finland. The car is dirty, but still shines a bit oving to this treatment.

 

Specs: 300W halogen floodlight (meant for indoor renovations) worth $10 used (needs power cord). 8 secs at f16, ISO100. Canon EOS20D with Sigma 17-35mm. This is the result of about the 3rd try.

 

Things to do and not do:

 

1) walk straight and smoothly - sweep the car with light, do not jerk it.

2) avoid spillage of light backwards. The unit is not light tight automatically.

3) use dark clothes

4) experiment with different heights.

5) avoid tripping the tripod with the cord

6) rehearse especially the first and the last second of this job

 

Have fun with this technique. With proper equipment, I think it could replace far more complicated flash setups used in car studios.<div></div>

I'm planning to use light painting techniques to light tuned

cars of a car club in street surroundings at night time.

 

Due to light pollution in the streets, the conditions are

challenging: it is not easy to create bright enough "painting light"

to create substantial contrast of the highlighted main subject and

background. A hotshoe flash fired tens of times is totally

inadequate.

 

Has anyone tried a similar setup:

 

a) not completely dark surroundings

b) on-location work

c) large subjects (in the size of a car).

 

My next guess would be using a halogen floodlight powered by

generator... getting a bit clumsy.

OK, thank's for the input.

 

This is actually the text snippet from the Canon marketing material (press release for the 16 megapixel EOS) that caused me to ask this question:

 

"Featuring a full-frame 36 x 24mm 16.7 Megapixel CMOS sensor, the EOS-1Ds Mark II produces images with outstanding colour rendition and dynamic range. It has sufficient resolution to produce files which convert to 50MB uncompressed TIFF at 24 bit colour depth, now considered standard acceptable size by leading international photo agencies and stock libraries."

 

But it is absolutely true that you have to know the standards of a certain photography sector, and follow those.

Dear Ellis,

 

About scanners - I had in mind the top Nikon models costing around 2000-3000$, dedicated film scanners, not the flatbed ones.

 

No, I'm not with a stock agency, but I want to make sure that the images produced are not substandard if I ever will be...

I'm considering setting up a photographic studio, and it is my

understanding that for stock work something along the medium format

quality is needed. How would you compare the Canon EOS1Ds-MII

with some digital medium format cameras, or with a standard medium

format camera with a digital sensor pack.

 

I currently have EOS20D as the body.

 

Can Canon EOS1Ds-MII pull off what the medium format cameras can,

image quality wise. I inted to shoot portraitures and groups of

people. Or is a film scannera and a good'ol film Hasselblad still

the way to go?

 

I know that this is a bit of a vague question, but all help is

appreciated before I end up spending 7350? for the Canon EOS1Ds-

MII :-)

Thank you Wilfred for a very interesting demonstration.

 

I have a Pentax 645 and recently purchased EOS20D for "all round"

photography. Your tests would indicate that my Pentax 645 could

have its future as a "digital camera" by virtue of scanning the negatives (in my case, mostly B&W) finally with an affordable scanner (not reaching > 2000? with top notch Minolta / Nikon film

scanners)

 

However, this process seems to be slow and cumbersome (sharp scans take a lot of time, and you have a "wet" step in the process).

 

Thus, before I buy a can of ID11 and two packs of FP4, I should ask: in your opinion, "how much better" (taking the downsampling etc. into account) are the images taken with 645 camera and CanoScan9950F when compared to EOS20D?

 

Assuming 20D has 3500 pixels horizontally, the scanner is 4800ppi

and you have 6cm film (6/2.54 = 2.36"), is the resolution 4800*6/2.54/3500 = 3.2x better, or "just" (downsampling by 2) 1.6x better? Is this even a feasible way to compare these issues?

 

I would appreciate comments on this subject as I strongly plan to revive the good'ol bazooka Pentax 645.

 

I also understand that this has been discussed elsewhere, but given the a) fast development in affordable flatbeds, b) good availability old excellent roll film cameras and c) digital darkrooms, where do we stand?

Thanks for all the comments on RX300.

 

What about RX800?

 

How special are its "special" inks like the gloss control?

What kind of life span does one expect to see for a printer

with so many inks. I assume that the printer is usable even though

not all inks are available in the future.

I do not know if you have considered light painting, but if you shoot digital, it is fairly straightforward to generate stunning pictures of flowers with long exposures and a Maglite. With 3-4 iterations you usually end up with a stunning picture of a flower light painted. Obviously the feasibility of this technique depends on your basic requirements (artistic, documentary or scientific) and size of the flower.

I'm currently wondering between EPSON RX300 and RX800 printers. The

price of RX800 is almost double of the 300, but it seems to feature

several more advanced features.

 

I plan to use the printer to print out circa 10 images a week in A4

size, taken with Canon EOS20D, modified in Photoshop CS. I want good

quality and low volume.

 

Especially I wonder if the ink cartridges of the new models of Epson

will be maintained over the years - will they be available in some

years' time? What has been the longevity of ink cartrides in older

Epson models?

Dear Les,

 

At least in DPP, both files appear to be .jpg.

 

I emphasize that when shooting pure RAW without JPGS,

all is OK.

 

BR,

 

Olli

Gentlemen, thank you for your input. I'm not quite sure I made my point clear enough... the problem is that when shooting RAW+JPEG combined, I get, for one click of the shutter two files (which is something you would expect), but the files are identical in size (which is not what you would expect), and the other file has no file type information (but it has the extension). Thus, by erasing everything in my CF and then shooting one click of RAW+JPEG, I will

have files

 

_MG_1234.jpg of type "Picture File" and of size e.g. 2,23meg

 

and

 

_MG_1234.jpg of no(!) type (the field is empty in the file explorer),

and the size is identical (2,23Meg).

 

I have the hunch that the second file might or should be the RAW file, but if so, the size and extension of that file sure are misleading. The size of the file is true in the sense that this

file is also shown in the command prompt of the operating system.

 

Is there something out of whack still in this setup?

I have had EOS20D for two months, and otherwise this works

like a beauty, but when shooting combined RAW+JPEG, I can not

find the RAW images from the camera at all. Instead, I have

two times files for a shoot, but the other file has no extension

(.CR2) and its size implies that it is indeed a JPG, not the biggie

CR2.

 

Any suggestions? Is this some firmware/computer glitch, or a driver

or driver version problem?

I have 20D and Sigma 17-35 WA zoom. With widest zoom angles this lense does not always focus correctly, and I often have to check from the distance dial that the setting makes sense. What happens is that if I put the camera on a tripod and focus it to a fixed target in 2m range with 17mm setting, the focus can be anything from 0.8 to 3m. Quite often it is the wanted 2m.

 

Anyone heard of this?