roger krueger

Bruce: No such thing as blown highlight on b&w neg? On what planet? This is apparently a specular highlight on bright metal.

Of course it can--and probably did--blow. It's only slightly different from an in-scene light source.

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And if magnifications are such simple physics how do you explain getting it so wrong? Looked at another way, 4800 ppi scan

divided by 72 ppi screen = 44.69x (obviously the original 11x @ 360 used to get 11x * 5x was just an estimate).

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Re: callier effect--The part where it messes up the curve is, as you point out, fixable. The part where it sends the density

past what's readable is the problem. I have no clue where you get the idea that b&w negs top out at 1.5 dmax, sure not my

experience. But yeah, I was thinking drum vs. dedicated film scanner, as opposed to consumer flatbed, forgot about the

expensive pro flatbeds out there.

Remember that people who have early deaths are far more likely to be motivated to write a review than the boringly satisfied.

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I've always had good look with all the brands, I even had a Deathstar make it through 7 years of continuous use :-)

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The only time I lost more than a file or two was when I fumbled a billiard ball (being used in a Kensington Turbo Mouse) onto

a drive running on the floor without a case. Hopefully you're a little brighter than that.

Bulent: No getting around it, film looks scary at 100%, especially old-tech ISO 400. It's a very, very different look than

digital. Post with well-resolved grain is about eyeballing and test prints, histograms are at most ballpark estimates.

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Best test would be to get a couple of enlarger 8x12s done and compare print-to-print, not 100%. This is getting hard to get

done locally a lot of places, but it's the only way to get a solid baseline for your expectations.

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Without that it's impossible for you--or any of us--to tell if it's your scans, your post, or your expectations that are messed

up.

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There's absolutely nothing in the image you posted that's conclusively scanner error, but a couple of things that COULD well

go wrong: A lot of scanner workflows have considerable sharpnening built in, which works fine for Velvia but isn't appropriate

for large grain. If your operator neglected to turn it off that could be a problem. Using multi-pixel eyedroppers for white and

black points can give bad results with heavy grain too. You can't unclip a histogram, better to leave it loose, save in 16-bit if

you can. If you can't don't sweat it, heavy grain mostly stops banding, grainy film you can make moves in 8-bit that'd be

catastrophic in a nice smooth digital file.

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Bruce: There's no way to tell from the info we have whether the earring is blown on film or blown in the scanner. Hard to

blame an operator for a specular highlight on shiny metal.

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11x and 5x don't add, they multiply. So 360ppi at 11x is 55x at 72 ppi 100%. Yeah, that's gonna look awful. Digital looks

awful at 55x too, but that'd be way past 100%, no one goes there.

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Drum scanners do suffer some from Callier effect, but many CCD scanners suffer at least as much, and the larger real

dynamic range of good drums should far more than compensate.

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Most drums before about '96 had 8-bit internals and were seriously C41-mask hostile, but even these were usually O.K. with

b&w negs. Later scanners shouldn't have any particular trouble with any negs. As noted above there are a couple of pitfalls

for tranny-trained operators, but no reason most hardware can't do it.

Robert Goldstein: Pretty much any electronic release can be operated in your pocket if you have big enough pockets--my big

Canon TC80N3 timer remote works well in the cargo shorts I usually wear shooting, and in slacks as well, although it'd

probably be tough in jeans. You can also get cables to use flash radio remotes like Pocket Wizards, Alien Bees Cybersyncs

or Elinchrome Skyports to trigger your electronic release camera.

Stephen Asprey: Enemy may be too harsh a word, but yeah, I have zero patience for people who think their way is the only

way.

The HCB disciples who think because their hero didn't crop no one should; Ansel Adams and the Newhalls virulent campaign

against anything not f64, pictorialists in particular; film v. digital partisans; brand snobs, anti-zoomists, long lens deriders,

Photoshop phobics--they'd none of 'em be missed (O.K., O.K., maybe Adams).

Making these decisions about your own photography is one thing--I don't own a zoom, and don't even use my 50 on the

street, let alone my 135. I crop pretty much every shot. But that's just what works for me, I don't presume my choices make

me superior to others who've chosen differently... except people with the subject dead center every shot, and chronic

backstabbers--they need to switch to badminton or maybe Popsicle-stick sculpture :-)

I mostly shoot stealth, pre-focused, from a neckstrap, behind my left arm, shot with a cable release, FF + Leica 19/2.8 when

there's enough light for EI 3200-f2.8-1/100, 24/1.4 when there isn't. Usually shoot the 19 at 3 ft., 24 at 4 ft. I find this gets me

past the AF-point encouraged tendency to center everything, and my sense for "about 3 ft." is a lot faster and more reliable

than AF in low light anyway. And after a while you get a pretty good feel for where something this wide is pointed.

When I do shoot from the eye I find I get a lot of hostility with my big 1dsII whereas my funky old Mamiya Universal just

makes people chuckle.

<a href=" title="Del Mar Fair #6 by Roger_Krueger, on

Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3288/3056697162_9897c11937_b.jpg" width="700" height="462" alt="Del Mar

Fair #6" /></a>

I'd go with diluted Acufine for the compensation, TMax gives good shadow speed but zero compensation.

Especially since it's TMY--pushed in TMax it tends to put highlight detail up at extreme densities most scanners can't reach.

I've been cleaning my 1dsII for years now, mostly with an original Visible Dust. Yeah, the first time there was some shutter

grease or something that got worse before it got better via wet cleaning, but I haven't had to touch the wet stuff since then.

It's just a normal part of before-shoot maintanence for any situation where I'm likely to get past f5.6.

Although I probably get more crud than most people, I don't own a zoom, and do a lot of lens switching front row of punk

shows with all sorts of you-don't-wanna-know in the air.

Things that have no direct replacement maybe--the Epson RD-1 seems to have held its value pretty well. The M8 will

become very collectible once Leica finally goes out of business.

For significance and rarity the only one I can think of is Contax N digital, "the camera that killed Contax", I'm guessing the

right person might pay big for one of the what, six? prototypes they actually produced.

Big color correx _towards neutral_ are better filtered than white-balanced due to latitude issues. Under tungsten your red and

blue channels are a couple of stops offset from each other. So if you want no blocking or blowouts you've two stops less

latitude.

It's like shooting color neg uncorrected and fixing it in the enlarger--it can more or less work for nailed exposures, but over,

under, and high scene brightness range start to come apart.

I'm not an expert on the under-the-hood of Bayer interpolation, but I'd certainly assume that the filters are pretty weak, that

the green pixels do in fact contribute resolution to the red channel, and that "starving" them with a red 25 is a bad idea. At

the very least it's going to completely screw up your metering.

re: UVs--they don't do much damage unless you've got in-scene or near-scene light sources, but the whole protection thing is

wildly over-rated. I've taken a tuning peg off a guitar with the front element of my Leica 19/2.8 (I did a face plant onstage

after being clobbered from behind at a small, rough punk show, the camera hit the guitar on the way down), even transferred

some paint to the glass. But a little spit+t-shirt+blind panic and I was fine. In fact, I've got to believe a filter, by shattering

and driving sharp shards into the coating, would've probably _caused_ damage rather than prevented it.

There's no need to toss low-value obsolete-process rolls, pretty much anything can be developed cheaply as b&w (although

watch out for the remjet backing on Kodachrome and movie film).

Best bet would probably be something like Microphen with lots of compensating action to cover for not having a clue what

time to use, but if you don't want to get wet having a commercial lab do it in D-76 or whatever should work reasonably well.

After TMY's huge leap forward there's certainly reason for high hopes. So sad this big move in film tech happens after it's

just a footnote.

If you're covering the wedding for the local paper, sure, the pen stays. But if you're working for the bride, your job is to give

her pleasant memories of her day, not screeching accuracy. I think the other pro who gave you advice is flat-out nuts.

Posing people and recreating events are gross violations of journalistic ethics too, but how many wedding photographers

don't do both? You may as well ask 747s to obey traffic lights they fly over.

The job interview thing is the lowest point of his stupidity. If there aren't names attached, how exactly is the prospective

employer going to find it? Duh. I suppose if you're someone already of public interest an anonymous photo might get

republished with your name attached, but for anyone else the chances are zero out to several decimal places. People get

screwed on stuff they post themselves, pics their traceable-via-social-network-site friends post, not random anonymous

pics.

Cohen strikes me as one of these ivory tower sorts so surrounded with polite sedate older intellectuals he no longer has any

connection to how the rest of the world lives, yet gets off on pontificating about segments of society that may as well be

Martians for all he really knows about them.

He also has that liberal confusion of equating "nice" with "ethical". Shooting and shaming is hardly a nice thing to do to

someone. Neither is sending them to prison when they commit a crime. But I see zero ethical problem in either case. Ethics

is about fairness and honesty, not niceness. I'll take a fair, honest asshole over a sweetness-and-light crook any day of the

week.

Paris is an especially unlikely place to see street photography in a gallery, in France it's effectively illegal to exhibit or

publish most of what we think of as street.

But really, a lot of what is now canonical art was derided and ignored in the era it was produced. We may all be famous once

we're dead.

I'm not sure he "gets away with it"--just because he hasn't turned up in jail or the East River doesn't mean he doesn't get

hassled.

But having done this for so long I'm guessing he's gotten pretty skilled at identifying people who'll be trouble, and, failing that,

at ending confrontations before they snowball. How much confidence you project influences how people react to you too, and

Bruce seems to have plenty.

So ditch the DSLR and donate the money. Or use the time you spend taking photos and do some practical good in your

community.

We lack the strength to confront the callousness of the choices we make, so we get all high-horsey over moral trivialities

trying to feel better about ourselves.

Someone starved today in Africa for my art. Yours too.

Deal with it. Or cling to your denial--not my problem. But quit trying to reclaim yor moral superiority on the back of someone

else by getting all preachy about some subject's dignity.

Look at Winogrand's legless Legionnaire. He's being shot because he's a freak, he's looking right at the camera, he knows

damn well he's being shot because he's a freak. Yet the shot has a punch-to-the-gut power nearly unsurpassed. I'd trade the

dignity of a whole boatload of people for a shot that good. Not even to have a shot of my own be that good, just to have

something that good exist in the world.

Yeah, I'm thrilled at the idea of a quality compact, but as mentioned above, the market in general is hardly screaming for

them. Hasn't been for years. The really nice film compacts--Hexar, 35ti, T4, G2, etc.--were never big mainstream sellers. The

cost of R&D for digital makes this kind of low volume project even tougher to justify.

The Epson RD-1 is good niche economics example--they used cheap parts (a Bessa body and D70 sensor, not even a built-

in motor, you hand to wind on between shots), priced it to the moon, sold a respectable number to desperate rangefinder

fans pre-M8, and still didn't make enough money to continue the project.

If there's goo, it's the capacitor. Flashtubes usually die a silent death, they only go bang if the envelope shatters. I've killed

several flashtubes in my double-power 283, and none made any noise.

This isn't the first time someone's been busted under this law at Hippie Hollow. I know they nailed Arizona tourist Dale

Witenhafer for improper photography a couple of years ago (when the law was pretty new) for a camera hidden in a cooler

with a hole. No idea how it ended up, apparently the trial/plea bargain was less interesting to the media than the arrest.

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The Chronicle coverage has a glaring error: <i>But some criminal defense lawyers say the case raises complex legal

questions because the women were at a public nudist beach where no laws would prohibit photographing those clothed or

wearing swimsuits.</i>

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Duh, did any of those idiot lawyers contacted actually read the effing law? There are only two elements of the crime: no

permission, and intent for sexual gratification. Since the latter element requires/permits mind reading, you can pretty much

get busted for any unpermissioned photography. The Oktoberfest guy (another incident from around when the law was new)

got off because the DA realized the charges were silly, not because it would've been impossible to come up with a

conviction.

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Again this law does NOT have an expectation of privacy requirement. Which is why it is so dangerous compared to the laws

of other states that do make expectation of privacy a requirement.

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This law may be stupidly vague, but I have trouble seeing how it would be generally unconstitutional. Although I could see

how it might be unconstitutional in specific cases unlike this one. If there's an obvious artistic or journalistic purpose in

addition to gratification, maybe--Garry Winogrand apparently admitted to being aroused by the women he shot on the street

for "Women are Beautiful". Hate to think that kind of work would now be illegal in Texas.

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More amusingly, a few months before the first case they had an excursion boat going down the river capsize because

everyone ran to the rail on one side to see all the nekkid people. Oops.

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Zoe: I disagree that "he should be charged with something". To my mind police stretching some B.S. charge to cover

something they don't like but isn't explicitly illegal is far more offensive some sad-sack perv. In this case there actually was

a law, in some states a vague "disorderly conduct" statute might have covered it, and in other states it would've been legal.

But in a state where it's not illegal, it's not illegal. Politicians get to make up laws, not cops.

You'd be amazed what you can get away with if you practice, and are willing to tolerate losing some shots. I can pretty

dependably get 20-25% in focus shooting my 24/1.4 at or near wide open, sticking to a single distance (4 ft.). At this

distance f1.4 gives me 8 inches of DoF, each 1/3 stop to f2.0 gives me about another inch.

<br><br>

<img src="http://www.punktures.com/photonet/EW1C9009.jpg">

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24/1.4 on FF, 1/160 at f1.6, shot from a shoulder strap, cropped a little to accomodate a rotation fix.

There are two paths, chutzpah and stealth.

Which one is for you depends on what kind of person you are, and what kind of subjects you want to shoot.

Those at the top of the game tend to be more about the former than the latter.

The situation where this really bugs me is noise performance. Current Nikons use much more agressive--and competent--

noise reduction on jpgs than Canons do. But comparing similarly converted raws shows the sensor noise performance to be

pretty similar (allowing for variables such as sensor size and density), with a slight advantage to Canon.

It also amazes me how popular review sites have bought into the Nikon extended ISO BS. Tweak a Canon with exposure

compensation to get the same EI and you get the same (or better) results. Kudos to Nikon for making access to these

extreme settings simple and convenient, but don't pretend their cameras are actually two stops faster. And especially don't

limit your tests to factory-approved speeds, leaving Canons with needless blanks at high EIs.

I'm mostly about really close and really wide. To avoid getting beat that mostly means hip/strap shots. I've developed a

pretty thorough feel for what my lens will take in, but I still crop a lot afterwords. Finding/nailing the moment seems a full-

time job, better to clear your mind of that which can be accomplished later.

But in the end, it's all about what kind of pictures you want to take, and chosing a path that works for you personally to get

there. If you don't know what you want no technique in the world will get it for you.

For me stand development is mixture of laziness and highlight control. Different developers have wildly different propensities

to streak. X-TOL resists streaking as well as any I've seen.

I do Delta 3200 in XTOL 1:1 as stand development, around 20 minutes for 6400. Works well, just be careful about the temp,

this combo likes to fog if the developer's too warm.

Using 1:1 instead of full strength helps control the highlights.