JamieK

I also suspect that the (non-free) upgrade will work for you. It's an issue of what the software release package allows. I

upgraded to cs3 from Photoshop 7, the version before cs1. No problem, and that was after roughly six years. I think you

spoke with someone challenged. That said, I do not own the premium version.

Also, check out Aperture if you use a Mac. It does not do everything, but it does almost everything much faster, and it is

superb for cataloging.

me again.

You're right - unless you need extreme shutter speed, low light capability, large depth of field, or resolution. In any of these

cases, film will slaughter digital. but if you're just after beautiful landscapes taken on good days, digital is certainly easier.

I like XP2 by the way. Give it a try.

And if you want to take pictures at night, try delta 3200, a magic product.

Digital black-and-white wastes more than half of the light (red, green, and blue filters), and effectively more than half of the

resolution (anti-aliasing filter), and you don't have to decide what filter to use when you take the picture. The last is an

advantage, but too much freedom keeps you from learning how to use filters for black and white.

I use both black-and-white film and digital black and white, by the way.

For those of you using Apple computers, just buy Aperture. It has a fantastic raw converter as well as being superior to

and cheaper than Lightroom. Really, it's Apple's quasi-free gift for buying one of their computers. I do not know about your

specific camera, but the only files it would not decode so far for me are from a Nikon bridge camera (5700) that I got about

seven years ago.

By the way, if you have kids in school, have them buy it for you. Apple has an extremely generous education discount.

sorry, but i haven't read it all, so i may be repeating.

it's not a rangefinder, but the Voigtlander Bessa L is really fun with a wide lens. i have one of these with 12- and 21-mm

lenses.

the voigtlanders which do include rangefinders are supposed to be very good.

start with film. the M8 is crazy expensive, and not really a finished product anyway. see my comment on this other

thread:

http://www.photo.net/leica-rangefinders-forum/00R1oI

It's not realistic to say that the M8 is inherently sharper. It's sharpness looks unnatural and seems to be a result of

absurdly aggressive sharpening. I took a picture of a suspension bridge, and the algorithm took hold of the cables, making

them look amazingly solid - from the bottom until about halfway up. Above that point there wasn't enough left for the

algorithm and the cables just vanished.<div></div>

It's not realistic to say that the M8 is inherently sharper. It's sharpness looks unnatural and seems to be a result of

absurdly aggressive sharpening. I took a picture of a suspension bridge, and the algorithm took hold of the cables, making

them look amazingly solid - from the top until about halfway down. Below that point there wasn't enough left for the

algorithm and the cables simply disappeared into thin air.

Lex, sorry if I'm off base, but it would be interesting to know your answer to the two questions I asked. I can see you have

been on the site for a long time, and I can imagine that many who have a lack of knowledge of beautiful prints might also

have a lack of knowledge about getting high quality scans, but neither you nor Russ has made a credible connection

between those two disparate possibilities. Is there any connection?

Thanks Lex, but I still think that statement is absolutely fatuous and more than a little smug. Mary Ellen Mark is probably

the most successful art photographer living, and her reputation will almost certainly outlast most others. Her prints don't

look anything like conventional "fine art" prints. Whose "fine art" prints is someone supposed to be familiar with - hers or

someone more conventional but decidedly inferior?

On a more basic level, how could not knowing what something good looked like make it more difficult for a person get a

print that was acceptable to himself or herself? Surely being ignorant of flaws makes one tolerant of them.

How could having "no idea what a good print should look like," have even the tiniest thing to do with having difficulty

scanning? That makes no sense and is not helpful.

What might be helpful would be knowing why the opaque silver grains seem to interact with light differently than the

(presumably) translucent dyes in C41 films, and whether they interact with light differently in a scanner vs. an enlarger.

I recently scanned a lot of film for an exhibition. You can view the results at: http://www.photo.net/photodb/presentation?

presentation_id=382758. I had so much trouble getting decent scans of the silver-based (non-C41) films that I eventually

asked someone else to print them for me in a darkroom (Glasgow Rangers Fans images - uploaded files are scans of

negatives, not darkroom prints). I had no such trouble with Ilford XP2 (Wyoming Landscape images). Part of my non-

C41 difficulties were probably due to having ICE switched on, but I have encountered similar problems with it switched off

as well. Try XP2 if you want to scan. It offers major advantages over converting from colour negative.

The lens was designed to produce a full-frame image. If it had been designed for just the central 40% (1/1.6x1/1.6) of the

frame, then it would have been built very differently. The central 40% would be far better in this case, because the difficult

bit of lens design is not the paraxial area (the centre), but instead the periphery. If you want to use the lens to its best

advantage, get a 5D. If you want to use the small sensor camera to its best advantage, buy a lens that was designed for

it. As it is, you are wasting literally 60% of the glass, and an even greater proportion of the lens design expertise.

As far as I know, Illford has quit. The mailers are no longer available, and the last roll I sent

in one of these mailers was processed significantly less well than previous rolls had been.

I'm waiting for a roll I submitted to Jessops. Two weeks, 36 exposures, 5X7", ?13. They

assured me that it would be printed on real b/w paper, not scanned and printed on an ink-jet

printer.

I want to try Advanced Photo at 25 John Dalton Street. They say they do it on the premises,

but it still takes over a week, it seems.