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rob_sronce

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Posts posted by rob_sronce

    Color calibration question

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    You might try posting a new question to the forum rather than a response to this old thread. The only reason I saw your post was an old "alert me to responses" that I left on.

     

    You are not the first to post a problem with laptop monitor calibration. Laptop screens are designed to be light, run cool and use little power not to render accurate color or contrast. I'd suggest you get another monitor (maybe a CRT)and attach it to your laptop for photo editing.

     

    - Rob

    Making something more visible

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    What you see is lens flare. I'm not an optics expert but I know that you need to use a hood on the lens or shade the lens with your hand to prevent it. You should be able to see the lens flare in viewfinder the if you are using an SLR camera, as well as see the effect of your hand shading the lens and/or your hand entering the frame. If you are not using an SLR, you can be pretty sure you are getting flare if the angle of the light source is small relative to the perpendicular axis of the focal plane. (Facing the sun, sun low in the sky.) In this case, shade the lens from the light source.

     

    There is some but not much you can do post-production. Prevention is the best cure.

     

    BTW, flare is not always objectionable. It can be used artistically.

    processing

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    I am not aware of any but I am sure there will be some day if not already. In the meantime I'd suggest you shoot in JPEG or TIFF, whichever your camera offers.

     

    Photoshop should import RAW into PSD or other formats. You may need to get an update from Adobe to support your camera.

     

    The major benefit of shooting in RAW is the ability to post-process your images. There is nothing wrong with shooting non-RAW. The greatest determinants of *intial* image quality are going to be the camera, the glass, your skill as a photog and the lighting of the scene.

     

    I often shoot in JPEG to force myself to get it right the first time rather than think I'll fix it later.

     

    - R

    Best online digital print service

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    I actually use shutterfly for 4x6 proofs and "novelty" items like poster prints and photo books. Its cheap, very fast and decent.

     

    I use Mpix for "display quality" printing or if I want to avoid automatic color correction. They also do a very good job of mounting prints on matboard. The best thing about Mpix is the impressive handling and packing job they do. Your photos will not arrive scratched or bent. They also offer a nice variety of finishes and metallic paper.

     

    I also use the local discount photo shop (Ritz) for proofs and novelties and as Kier mentioned, the local color lab (Photo Source) for high quality stuff (esp drum scanning film).

     

    Anyone use photopipe?

     

    - Rob

    Any tried Costco Professional Glossy photo paper?

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    When I want a good print, I send a TIFF to a lab to print. When I want a decent print, I use manufacturers inks on manufacturers paper. I'm a Canon printer guy and the lustre and density is un-matched using all Canon. That's not to say that I don't use Ilford and the Adorama brand papers, which are quite good for the price and offer more choices for finish. I have also used Kodak. The biggest difference has been how the paper is handled by the printer. Cheapo papers (like OfficeMax house brand) tend to leave a lot of lint behind in the printer and sometimes the edges are not finished well (sometimes not even cut sqaure!). One other issue I have noticed is getting the right settings to match the paper. Other than Canon brand paper, the Ilford papers seem to require the least adjustment, meaning that the settings Ilford provides for my printer give decent results right out of the box. I would suspect that the Costco brand paper will work better with some brands and printers than others.

    External Drives for Back-Up

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    Beware of relying on internal drives for backup. If your disk controller goes down, at best you will lose access, worst it will damage your files and/or disk structure. With an external drive you can just hook it up to another PC and off you go.

     

    You might also consider keeping your external drive FAT32 formatted rather than NTFS. Its more compatible if you happen to take your backup to a PC that is still running an older version of Windows ... but this is less of an issue as most have moved to XP by now.

    Photographing Surfers - Advice Please!

    in Nikon

    Posted

    I'm sure you have already made your trip and had time to evaluate the results. I'd thought I'd contribute another method for action photography that has worked well for me.

     

    I find that if I use shutter priority my aperture is all over the place and I really want to control DOF in action shots to isolate the subject (or move away from the soft end of a cheap-o lens).

     

    So rather than use shutter priority I use aperture priority, open wide and (using a D70) set the ISO so that the camera is setting high shutter speeds (without it getting too noisy in the shadows). (The in-between "ISO's" like 640 come in handy here!) Keep an eye on the shutter speeds so you can dial down the ISO to avoid the noise when possible.

     

    I recently shot my friends waterskiing using this and it worked fine hand-held leaning back in the "look-out" seat next to the pilot at 9:00 before the wind and other boats made it too choppy.

     

    I also use spot metering on the subject to eliminate the high reflectivity of the water. To expose properly for an off-center subject I lock the exposure on the subject and re-frame. (My AF/EL button is set to "lock/un-lock exposure only." Check you D70s manual for how to set this.) Make sure to move your AF point to off-center or lock focus before re-frame.

     

    BTW leaving it on matrix meter will sometimes produce nice shiloettes (sp?) or you can meter off the water.

     

    Have fun!

    -- Rob S

    Archiving images - external hard drive or DVD-R, or use both?

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    For what its worth here is my backup workflow:

    1. transfer to PC's main internal HD

    2. burn to DVD (CD's are too small)

    3. copy to backup HD

    4. perform incremental back up of all HDs

     

    I use an external HD (USB) to backup for two main reasons:

    1. I can take (almost) all my images with me.

    2. If your disk controller craps out you can still get to your images.

     

    Yes I have lots of DVD's in binders with contact sheets but thats nothing compared with the countless bins of proofs and negatives!

    Formatting CF card for D70

    in Nikon

    Posted

    You can also format the card from the PC while its in the card reader. For larger cards (1GB+) I format using FAT32. If you do not reformat you may accumulate lost clusters wandering sadly about! :D

    Loose copyright ends when working for free

    in Business of Photography

    Posted

    I am sure this has been addressed before, but I can't find it in the

    archives. My apologies in advance.

     

    I am strictly an amateur but I often take photos to document events

    for my employer (a small city in California) and others. I do this

    for fun as well as to develop my skills. The photos are sometimes

    good enough that they want to use them and more often than not they

    do so without asking me. When I have asked that they ask permission

    first, they reply "hey you GAVE them to us" even when there has been

    no license granted informally or otherwise. I now accompany any

    transmisison of my images with a note to ask first before using.

     

    I know that if they are good enough to use, I should really set up a

    business and license them properly. Short of that I want to at least

    control the use of these images. First because I want to know when

    they are being used and second because I rarely obtain model

    releases when doing these photos, so I want to have something that

    acknowledges that the user knows that there has been no release.

     

    So ... any advice on how to do a license agreement when working for

    free? Or should I just realize I have let them out of my control,

    suck it up, and be better about the formalities from here on out?

    BTW, the advantage of working for free is that I get access to

    events as a photog that I would not have otherwise.

     

    -- Rob S.

    VUESCAN - WHY ?

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    "[muti-pass scanning] can also in some ways sorta increase the bit-depth"

     

    Multiple sampling does not in any way effect the bit depth. If you will remeber from "intro to PCs" there are eight bits in a byte. A bit is the smallest unit of memory that can be manipulated. It has a binary value of 0 or 1.

     

    Generally when referring to a "bit depth" of "x" what we really mean is "bits/color channel." In the RGB world an "8 bit" scan actually has 24 bits or 3 bytes that make up the information each pixel holds, one byte/channel or "24 bit color." With a "bit depth" of 16 you are getting "48 bit color."

     

    Why care about bit depth? Each bit/pixel can represent two values -- "on" and "off." Each addition bit doubles the number of values. So follow me along 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 and we are up to 8 bits being able to hold 256 different values. We keep going and with 16 bits, 65,000 possible values; with 24, 16,777,216.

     

    Some will tell you that going beyond 48 bit colr is a bit silly since the human eye can't see much better than that. Others will surely disagree. I won't argue since I still say I can hear a difference between an analog recording on vinyl and a CD even though the audiologists say I can't.

     

    Bit depth is driven by the device that made the original image. If your device (camera, scanner) does not convert the analog light value into a digital value using 16 bits/channel you are not going to get there using software.

     

    On many scanners you can choose the bit depth of the resulting image, but you are not going to exceed the maximum depth of the device. Why you ask? Because some image-editing software (PSE 2 for example) cannot handle 48 bit images.

     

    "I thought the multi-pass is just a way of averaging cell reading errors so the value averaged is much closer to the real."

     

    You are exactly correct. Its a way of averaging values. The scanner takes a few readings and "decides" which one is "best" using some really cool math no doubt. This is a way to reduce "noise" in the image.

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