johnclinch

This is a recomendation purely based on internet research but it sounds like the sigma 100-300 f4 zoom may be the answer

http://www.fredmiranda.com/reviews/showproduct.php?product=103&sort=7&cat=37&page=1

I have to say that I haven't needed a custom profile for kodachrome, but have had problems with velvia

you may find this thread useful

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

I post picture of the same slide with different profiles

the first greener one has a velvia profile applied

I have suceeded scanning velviaith my minolta 5400, infact I have had some great results, but its been alot of work

I can now work fairly quickly using a custom scanner profile I got free from ethervision http://www.ethervizion.com/lost_found/

One answer is to save the raw file as a tiff with no profile at all ( unassigned colour numbers).This is saved and archived

Then apply the scanner profile when you open the file in cs2

You could the say prepare files for screen use (conert to srgb)

print files could be generated from the archive tiff

personally I find I'm fine with srgb for printing so just use srgb

Please note!

I own a fast focusing panasonic fz5. But all this fast focusing snappy shutter response misses the point.

My camera like a F11 has no true viewfinder.

So although shutter response is fast you are working from a screen/evf that has quite a lag from reality. So when an event occurs on the screen, it actually was long enough in the past for you to have no chance of catching it.

So you need a view finder

maybe a canon a610/1620

The perfect TC doesn't degrade the image, it magnifies the image from the main lens. So roughly speaking a perfect x 2 TC will give half the resolution of the main lens.

A real world TC might introduce its own degradation as well.

The scientist answer

shoot identical shots at 5 mP AND 8 mP

print them

compare them

only your opinion counts

(The catch is if you find a better printer later or want bigger prints)

How aboy picture window pro

www.dl-c.com

Its pritty functional

Its not better value than CS but is aloy cheaper but I preferred it to ACDsee pro

all 3 have 1 month free trials

Yes it appears so

I haven't used for a while

In the end I had to have ICE

You have my sympathy!

Try this its not perfect but its free and faster than simple clonning by hand

http://www.polaroid.com/service/software/poladsr/poladsr.html

http://www.dl-c.com/Temp/

Try picture window pro for a month free

No plugins but full colour management and fully 16 bit

Slide scanners are calibrated be photographing standard colours (a colour chart)

Therefore when making a profile we know what the colours in the real world are.

Your problem is comparing a photo and a sepetate target

If the target was in the photo it would be alot easier

Are you trieing to achieve an exact reproduction of the photo or the scene in the photo?

If you'r reproducing the photo calibrate to a grey wedge thats a photograph

I have to say as a farly inept slide scanner colour balance is rarely the thing I find hard (90 % of my slides are Ok with a white point set in rgb curves)

Tom's point is that If the step wedge is not a photograph

it will respond differently

My hunch is that the grey wedge is actually reflecting rhe whole of the spectrum that shines on it. Thus under say sun light it looks neutral.

A grey in the photo may look the same but probably doesn't reflect the whole spectrum. However it does reflect what your eye sees as an equal mixture of red green and blue light.

However the red green and blue detectors in the scanner will not respond in exactly the same way as the detectors in your eyes. For example the wavelenth of peak sensitivity of the red detector in you eye and scanner may not be the same. So perhaps your scanner is more sensitive to the red light from the photo than your eye. Thus the scanner sees as red what you see as grey.

This doesn't happen to the target because it reflects the full spectrum, so the exact features of the detector are less important.

OK I just made all that up, but it was my understanding of the above posts. I teach physics and I'm not really a photohrapher. I'm constantly amazed by everything I read about colour and colour vision

Mendel are you saying you use vuescan for levels and cropping etc.

What advantage does this give over a phote editor like photoshop?

Ok no idea

Did you try setting part of the wedge as neutral in vuescan (I unerstand this just a click)

Thanks or contributing. Its good to get imfo on a wider range of products.

I have to comment that it must be worth scanning at a lower resolution (or down sampling). You HD must be full of 1 and 0 describing noise.

I mainly scan at 2700 ppi

Now I understand

Sorry no answer.

In the uk this company do what you want online

http://www.photobox.co.uk/

I think your clients could work on dialup with this service. It allows fine tunung of cropping on low resimages

You just need an Australian version of the same thing perhaps

Im a happy fz5 owner

The S2 does the Canon pumped up colour thing very well, if you like that sort of thing

Ok I'd try a few things like:

Have you got "word" or another wordprocessor. You should be able to set a picture on a blank page and get out pritty much whatever you want. This should at least isolate where the problem.

Yes you need a photo editor

"The Gimp" is free, google for it

I like and use "picture window pro" www.dl-c.com to download a 1 month free demo

Tutorials here (and one is included with the programme)

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints.html

My experience

If you use a mini lab you'll learn nothing

I took some birds flying across sunset

It came back white balanced so the sky was grey. Exposed so the blacks were also grey

Shoot slides then you'll know whats going on. Provia 400F is fine if you need speed

I'm not quite sure what you mean

However Xnview does batch resize and is free

Or do you mean have a crop tool that will crop to a specific size and resize to a specific resolution.

I use picture window pro for this but it doesn't do batches (http://www.dl-c.com/ free 1 month trial). I assume that photoshop does this but as I'm not a regular user so I'm not sure.

But to be honest I can't imagine doing a batch crop

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

You may find this discusion relevant

My hunch is that anyone who can really print black and white will learn enough PS (or a similar programme like PWP, see the articles here http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints.html ) to develop a shot fairly quickly.

I think the main issue is to find a course/ book that teaches you what you want to know. The problem being that so much is a general intro to to digital graphics. My hunch is that you don't need to cut holes in your pictue the same shape arial fonts.

You only really need a few tools to achive what you want

Lots of scanning is a big deal

IMHO even if you get a fast scanner with automation each scan will need some attention

My scanner is slow but the bottle neck is me cropping and doing levels etc.

I compromise on scanning only "good" shots

start reading up on stuff

maybe here

http://www.scantips.com/