eric_perlberg

You seem to want "the best equipment" (whatever that means...) and you're an amateur which means it won't be earning you money but then you're worried about all these financial issues. It's a fantastic camera. It takes beautiful nuanced richly dynamic photos. Caution: it's not perfect by any means.

 

If you can afford one, and the L lenses you'll need, and the computer infrastructure you'll need to process and store its gigantic files, and you really want one, buy it. Life is short. Personally I love mine, whatever the future brings, I'll deal with that then.

 

If you can't really afford it and you have to build a 3 page spreadsheet to weigh the costs and depreciation and projected resale in 4.7 years and you have columns of opportunity costs, you probably should be very hesitant.

 

If this is only camera lust... beware. Lust is never satisfied.

Have you set up a custom soft-proof using the profile you're printing with and then using soft-proof?

<i> if it is attached to a Mac that would be a whole different issue (gamma)</i><p>

 

Mac and PC users should in most cases both be using a "gamma" of 2.2. The 1.8 gamma on Macs vs 2.2 gamma on PCs is a legacy issue which is no longer valid for users of LCDs and current operating systems. The "native" tonal response curve of modern LCDs is far closer to gamma 2.2 than 1.8 and should be used by everyone. Macs have no problem with setting up their os to use 2.2 gamma

The Epson driver 1.68 (the most up to date driver) is included in Tiger (assuming that your iMac came with Tiger installed). A poster above assumed you're using something called the CUPS printer driver (sometimes referred to as GIMP print). Unless you inadvertently set something wrong, you're using the Epson driver.

<p>

Ian Lyons has decent tutorials at his site<a href="http://computer-darkroom.com/ps8_colour/ps8_1.htm">here</a> and <a href="http://computer-darkroom.com/ps7_print/ps7_print_1.htm"> here</a>

<i>I'm just wondering if the person recommending Ffordes has any personal experience selling their items on commision.</i>

<p>

Yes James, I have had personal experience. It was excellent. I sold off my entire collection of Leica M stuff (a camera, 5 lenses, accessories) in about a week this way. Ffordes offers a 6 month guarantee for you in the 20% they take, they're reputable, they take credit cards, they handle arranging picking the stuff up from you, as you said, they advertise for you and they let you return stuff if you're not happy. I've also bought used stuff from them and was satisfied. Yes they probably charge somewhat more than what you can get on ebay as a buyer but that doesn't mean they don't have a thriving clientelle list. Firms like Ffordes set the price range for good equipment like Leica stuff and L lenses, etc. The stuff that sits around for ages is mostly the inexpensive stuff or stuff which has a very small niche appeal. At least that's my experience.

<p>

Ive also bought stufff successfully from ebay but in terms of trust, I far prefer either a) meeting up with an ebay seller and inspecting cameras and lenses or b) buying from Ffordes. YMMV of course. I'm not one of those people who has to get the "best" price to be happy but I have no problem with those who do. <p>

I could care less whether Yakim sells on Ffordes or ebay or anywhere else. I was only suggesting the idea and may main point was that he had an exchange rate play which would be very advantagous to him. I don't believe that would be true on ebay.

that should read rip-off Britain... If the scheme above is workable, there are other well known UK resellers who do similar service with similarly good reputations, like Jonathan Harris in London.

Well, one very strange solution which you might want to check out. Take a look at <a href="http://www.ffordes.co.uk">Ffordes</a> which is a reputable firm in Inverness Scotland. They sell stuff on commission, mostly to UK customers but around the world. They have an excellent reputation. They take 20% and you get 80%. If you can get the stuff to Ffordes without paying duty and only paying shipping then you would be selling in pounds sterling. Right now the dollar is weak and everything in the UK basically costs in pounds what things cost in dollars in the US (ie UK citizens get ripped off, hence the well known phrase... rip of Britain). Anyway, if Ffordes sell your stuff in pounds and then you get the good conversion rate back to dollars...

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That may be why your Israeli deal was so sweet too. Just an idea. I do love the 50 1.4<p>

 

Cheers<br>

Eric

oops, a few more hints about choosing who will make your profiles...

 

Ask to see the instructions you'll have to follow. Ask what the turnaround time is. Ask what level of support you can expect to get in installing and using your profile. Ask what happens if your profile doesn't come out to your expectations.

A rather lengthy reply to try and explain why there is such a huge range of prices for profiles.

 

Like Tim, I also do profiling in the UK. There is indeed a range of prices and what's worse, paying more does not always guarantee a better profile (though it should). And better becomes more increasingly subtle after a certain point, you need a developed eye to even start spotting some differences.

 

Here are some of the issues involved. Targets come with a different number of patches. These patches are used by the scanning tool (spectrophotometer) to create a map (the profile) which is simply a table of differences of how your printer and ink and chosen paper differ from known inputs.

 

Depending on your printer, most people these days are using a 918 patch colour target. Check to make sure its at least that big. Some people use a 288 patch colour target. It takes less time to create a profile but that's not enough patches. In some cases special targets are made by the profile maker. These may have for example 2500 patches and would be used in certain rarefied cases.

 

You should also check into what tool the profile maker uses. For example, the scanner based profiles (ie, a regular desktop scanner) really doesn't create accurate enough profiles for most people's use though obviously YMMV.

 

The next step up for making profiles is a kit like Eye One Photo which uses a good quality spectrophotometer and software which in many if not most cases is capable of creating a quality profile. The kit itself costs in the neighborhood of 1000 pounds and if you only need a few papers profiled its not worth it to buy the tools, learn to use them, understand the issues involved with making profiles, etc. We charge 35 pounds for such a profile and the going price in the UK for this kind of profile is in that region give or take (20-50 pounds).

 

My take on this level of profile is that you would have bought this kit for yourself if it wasn't so expensive and in this way someone like me is sharing the cost with you and both of us benefit. You get the same quality profiles you would likely have gotten if you had bought this kit, learned how to use it, read up about profile making and dealt with some theoretical issues but your outlay is significantly reduced (maybe 1/20th the cost). And for someone like me, I learned a lot about colour management, I share that knowledge with you through support and instruct you on how to use your profile. In return, you help pay for the costs I had to lay out and maybe I make a bit of money in a good year.

 

The next higher step up (profiles in the ?100+ range) is where the profile maker has yet more sophisticated tools to tweak issues which effect profiles both before the profile is made if you have some sort of specific request or after the profile is made and it doesn't meet your professional standards. You may for example be doing a gallery exhibit with atypical lighting and you want the prints to be profiled for that lighting. Alternatively, you may have a profile made and its good for semi-pro work but not the agency you have to prepare proofs for. Or perhaps you like a paper which uses a large amount of whitener and you need more than the usual filtering on it.

 

At this level you're hiring a professional who does colour management for a living (for example, I'm a photographer, my profiling is a sideline). These people routinely work with other printing professionals, often in the CMYK print industry. If they are doing their job, they are capable of getting you the highest quality results at a price. It's also fair to say that they may not provide a signifcantly better profile than the 35 pound level. It depends on lots of variables.

 

A word of warning, be careful that there is a known person producing your profiles and not some big name company which buys the kit and then has some unknown person in front of expensive profiling tools making the profile. Good profiles are not just the result of expensive tools just like good photos are not just the result of expensive cameras.. If you go down the route of spending professional money, make sure you know who is making the profile.

 

The higher end profiles (around 100 pounds and going up to really over 1000 pounds) are basically for professional photographers working under demanding professional conditions using exclusively high end camera equipment (Canon IDs MK II level, medium format digital backs, etc), the best lenses, have demanding clients like large companies, ad agencies, etc and who know exactly what they want.

 

Hope that helps explain the range of prices and what you should expect to get for each.

 

Eric

You can use <a href="http://www.paypal.com">paypal</a> for selling prints on your website, probably a host of other companies too. <p>The harder part is the marketing. How will people know you're there? How will you drive potential purchasers to your site? One solution to that is <a href="http://www.adwords.google.com">adwords</a> from Google. You'll only be one of maybe 1,000 photographers doing this.

<p>

With paypal, you only pay a fee (based on item cost, maybe 3%) if you sell something and the payment is far more reasonable than any gallery. With adwords you can set an amount per day you're willing to spend and they'll stop showing the ad when you go over that amount. You pay per click, so only if people click on your ad do you have to pay. Google uses an auction system so its hard to say how much you'd pay, possibly between $.10 to $1 per click is a rough idea of the range. <p>

Don't expect miracles.

If you do decide to get an Xpan, yes it is possible to use the 5000. You have to cut the little knobs off the strip holder and scan the frame in 2 parts and stitch together in photoshop. Michael Reichman's <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com">website</a> goes into more detail in his article on the xpan.

Something you really should consider is that Elements doesn't support soft-proofing and doesn't allow convert to profile.

 

This presents 2 major problems:

1) Soft-proofing is an essential tool in a colour managed workflow. If you're buying a top printer, you need a fully managed colour workflow or you're likely to waste time and money and get very frustrated. Soft-proofing essentially allows you to see what your print is going to look like before you print out. Without it, you don't know the real affects of using curves and levels, etc (and by the way, you need to hardware profile your monitor). No point in buying a sports car with a windshield/windscreen painted black so you can't see out or in this case, no point in buying a good printer if you don't support it with the right tools. This in ability to soft-proof alone makes Elements fatally flawed except for Walmart/ASDA level work.

 

2) Convert to profile is essential for preparing files for the web (and has other uses). Although you can still use "Save for Web" to compress your files for the web, it will compress them using the colour space they're in (or maybe strips all colour space info, I can't remember). If for example you're working your images in Adobe RGB, your web images will too often look substantally different and less good if they aren't first "converted to sRGB" using convert to profile and then using Save for Web. If you plan to put up images anywhere on the web, this is another fatal flaw.

I don't know the 9000 but on the 4000 you can cut off the small plastic notches on the 35mm strip holder and then scan an xpan image. If its a similar holder to the one you describe on the 9000 you can try that, its not hard to do. Michael Reichman has an explanation of how to do it on his website, www.luminous-landscape.com in a technique article on panaromic images or in his review of the xpan.

Well Frank, if Ethan has worked up some routine for dealing with the optimiser, more power to him. If you're sending colour targets to Dry Creek, you should follow his directions. However, if Francesco is sending targets to anyone else I've come in contact with, using the gloss optimiser should be off or he'll get a resulting colour cast. No profile is perfect, its hard to know the effect of Dry Creek's Optimiser technique or how much better if indeed at all or just different it is. We are currently getting excellent results with the optimiser off. I define excellent in two ways, first, the results match an independent verification print (not made by us but used by an expensive colour consultant here in the UK) and secondly professional photographers who have seriously big time clients and who use the 800 for doing proofs for clients seem happy. YMMV

Don't use the gloss optimiser, it distorts the readings in the spectrophotometer. This isn't off the top of my head, its based on practical experience, I do this professionally. It's also the practical experience of other professionals making profiles. There are similar references here and on other discussion boards. If you want to find them, do a google search.

<i>Personally I think the whole thing is a City photography conscept</i> <p>

Even in the city its a mixed bag. I know candid people shooters on city streets use 28, 35 and 50 primes and belittle zoom users, perhaps that's what you're alluding to, but I do a lot of city stuff, urban landscapes and urban details and I just couldn't make primes work for me, at least to this point. I know Jay Maisel (well known gritty NYC advertising photographer) says that his city stuff is always with 70-200 zooms.<p>

Now to find some graph paper...

<p> thanks for the feedback so far.

<i>Zooming doesn't change perspective but walking does</i>

<p>

I understand that. I tried to say as much in my post, though inelegantly when I mentioned that the two aren't the same but I was interested in the framing of the image in the viewfinder.

<p>

The way I visualise it at the moment, thanks to Antons point reminding me that distance from the film plane or the lens is a critical factor, is that two different lenses have two different angles of view going out from the camera in a cone like fashion. When object A is x size at y distance from the camera in lens 1, there must be a way of calculating how to maintain size x at z distance with lens 2. And then I could figure out how far one would have to zoom with their feet to go from for example a 135 lens to a 200mm lens with an object that fills 40% of the frame. Unfortunately, maths is one of many weak points.<p>

What puzzles me is how many times people write in on questions about zoom lenses and say somewhat disparigingly something like "get a prime lens, sharper, cheaper, faster, lighter and zoom with your feet" Nobody ever really says, "that doesn't work except in limited situations". All they do is point out the perspective issue which is pointed out above. Whereas my mental reaction till now has been, yeah, stand in the middle of traffic and take your photo, the drivers will understand... or yeah, hike over that river, no sweat, what's your hurry. But then I realised, not having done any prime lens photography, that I didn't know if my quick flippent thought reactions are accurate. Hence my question and its corrolary ...so who are these people who zoom with their feet and what sort of images are they making that little issues like traffic, rivers, fences, etc don't get in their way?

We've all seen the comment written on zoom questions, "I use primes

and zoom with my feet". As a person who has always used camera zooms

to footzooming it never even occurred to me until last night to try to

figure out the number of steps (I know, not really a scientific

measurement) involved in zooming from say a 28mm lens to a 35mm lens

or a 35 to a 50. I know too that zooming with a zoom lens and

footzooming are not exactly the same but I'm thinking here in terms of

framing a picture in the view finder.

 

Anyway, I gave it whirl and was surprised with my very makeshift test

to see that to go from 28 field of view to 35 field of view was just a

step or two and 35 to 50 maybe double that. Assuming I haven't done

something totally stupid or illogical it then occurred to me that

there must be a way of figuring this out mathematically rather than

just focusing on a few objects and taking a few steps and changing the

focal lengths on my zoom lens. Anyone know a formula?

Thanks for the heads up, I went today. Good stuff! Some of the nature work (contrast of rows of black trees against snow, stark melancholic) is very similar to Abbas Kiarostami's work showing at the V&A and Cheadle gallery. I preferred Kenna's aesthetics though both are powerful.

Today I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington

which has a huge collection of photographic prints dating back to the

late 1800s. On a hunch that I could get access to these prints, I went

up to the print room where they showed me how to search their archives

on their internal database. I only had time to ask for a box of prints

dating from 1903 from Edward Atget. I filled out a form and the prints

were delivered to me in 15 minutes and I sat sifting through perhaps

fifteen 100 year old images made by one of the legends of photography.

They seem to have images by a large number of the greats including

Brandt, Cartier-Bresson, Arbus, Brassai, Kertesz, Winogrand, Weegee,

Eggleston and on and on. So the next time you're stuck for something

to do on a rainy day in the London, go on over to the print room at

the V&A and sift through the actual prints of some great

photographers. Not just look at, but handle! How cool is that?

The person who is Dry Creek Photo has been very ill and not able to keep up with his email or producing profiles from what I've read at Rob Galbraith. I don't know what the current situation is. Despite your frustration and obviously your desire to get a profile or at least your money back, I can say from my experience from many postings by satisfied customers and his comments here at Photo.net and other distinguished boards that you haven't been ripped off by an unscrupulous supplier. Dry Creek Photo is a reputable supplier of profiles. Rather you're the victims of unfortunate circumstance. You certainly have the right to get your money refunded. Just don't be unnecessarily rude too or angry at the chap.

For what its worth Meyerowitz will be giving a talk at Tate Modern in London on 23 May. You have to book in advance.

If you're shooting RAW and using Photoshop's Camera Raw tool then

 

1) the image is coming into photoshop without a colour space since its just the raw info the camera chip captured

 

2) As mentioned above, the colour management policies can be set up how you want.

 

3) At the bottom left of the Camera Raw tool there is a selection box for the colour space you want to tag the particular Raw converted image with. If you chose the same colour space that you used in the colour management policies as your preferred colour space you won't see the dialogue asking if you want to change, modify or keep the current colour space. If you choose a different one you will see this dialogue when leaving Camera Raw.

 

4) Since you're shooting RAW, the colour space choices in your camera are irrelevant because RAW doesn't have a colour space. Those camera menu choices refer to when you're working with jpegs from your camera.

 

5) When you are working with jpegs from your camera instead of RAW you would probably be best off with Adobe RGB but there could be reasons why you would choose something else (I'm not familiar with the options on D70).

 

Adobe RGB's strength is that it is a large colour space. The idea is that your camera can capture lots of information, why restrict it by chosing sRGB. But the catch is that neither your monitor, nor your printer can print out all the colours in the Adobe RGB colour space. On the other hand they may be able to produce many of its colours and possibly some colours which are outside the range of Adobe RGB. The largest of the colour spaces is ProPhoto RGB but again, your monitor and printer can't produce all of those colours. For almost certain, your monitor and printer can produce all the sRGB colours.

 

So why not just use sRGB? First, because your monitor and printer can produce some colours outside this colour space and second, because monitors and printers are improving all the time and you probably want to preserve as much of the original information as possible for future conditions.

 

The better your equipment, the more likely you are to benefit from a larger colour space. The more pedestrian your equipment is, the less likely you are to benefit.

You can calibrate a monitor with a colorometer or a spectrophotometer. The former will only do monitors but not printers and are significantly less expensive. There are no IT8 cards involved.Monitors need to be calibrated regularly so you pretty much need to buy the hardware. If you're on a PC, don't use ADOBE GAMMA. If you're on a Mac, the built in calibration is no substitute for the above hardware solution.<P>

 

A spectrophotometer is used to make printer profiles (as well as monitor calibration). You can try and use the generic printer manufacturers profiles first and see if you're happy with the results. In order to see what you're going to get (WYSIWYG) you have to learn how to use soft-proofing in your image editing software. Otherwise you won't "see what you're going to get". <P>

 

If you're happy with the generic profiles from the manufacturer, job done. If not, you can either buy the kit (example: eye-one spectrophotometer and match software) or buy a custom printer profile over the internet for a smallish fee. Unless you need a lot of profiles made, its cheaper and easier to have someone who knows what they're doing make them for you, making an inkjet printer profile using the standard printer driver is not rocket science.

<P>

If you use a custom RIP or have some special gallery needs this may change but even professional photographers can and do use custom printer profiles made with the above equipment.

<P>

If you're doing CMYK professional work its a different story.

<P>

There is a ton of good stuff on this subject in the archives here at photo.net, on the net in general including Rob Galbraith's website and there are several good books on the topic.

<P>

You can use my <a href="http://www.stonequay.co.uk/links.html">links reference page</a> as a jumping off point for learning more as well as several other good reliable sellers of profiles including the above Cathy, Dry Creek, or Andrew Rodney's Digital Dog (do a google search) or even my own service depending on which continent you live on.

Walter, you can learn more about the memory situation on Photoshop CS2 <a href="http://photoshopnews.com/2005/04/04/photoshop-cs2%e2%80%93how-much-raw-%e2%80%93-fact/"> here</a>. Photoshopnews.com is run by some major industry heavyweights and is worth adding to your bookmark list if you use photoshop.

<p>

Cheers,

Eric