sarah_fox

<p>Well, there's a 41 MP cell phone camera with a 1.12um pixel pitch (Lumia 1020). If the same pixel pitch were used on a full frame sensor, we'd have almost 700 MP (if my calculations are right). I'm not saying those would be "good" pixels, but rather that this MP race can keep creeping almost indefinitely into the future, perhaps only limited by the processing speed of the supporting microprocessors and size of the memory. So it will be 50, 55, 65, 70, 90, 100, 110, blah, blah, blah, yawn.</p> <p>Personally, if I were worried about neither price nor status, the 6D is already a more interesting camera to me (and will be my next likely upgrade). I'm more interested in ISO and DR, and 20+ MP is already more than I need for 99% of what I do. Better pixels, not more pixels, is what I would like to see in our Canon cameras.</p>

<p>Hector, I've tried exactly that. I found a couple of cabinets at a yard sale for that purpose. My approach was slightly different from yours, though. I tried making it air-tight with clear caulk and weather sealing, using desiccant instead to stabilize the humidity. It didn't work very well. Using heat might work better. However, before you think about heat, think about energy. A 100W solution will cost you $10/mo in electricity where I live -- less in the winter, when it contributes to household heating, and more in the summer when you have to air-condition the heat. Moreover, the RH can easily drop too low in any hot spots, especially during the wrong time of year. Zeiss recommends you don't let the humidity drop below 30%, for unspecified reasons. (I asked why, but they never answered.)</p> <p>A Dampp Chaser style system (two p's in the trade name) is a more intelligent solution. Use a humidistat to cycle the heating rods (or you can use light bulbs -- cheaper and just as effective), so that you're not burning electricity when you don't need to. You can buy substantially similar equipment more economically from Moisture King (moistureking.com). I'd try a Moisture King MK1090 humidistat ($80) with some halogen under-cabinet lights plugged in, perhaps on a dimmer. Be sure to have at least one light for each shelf, as there's not much air flow through the cabinet.</p> <p>The best solution for your equipment is still a hermetically sealed environment with silica gel (lots of it, properly conditioned to the correct RH) sealed inside. The problems I had with using silica gel in the curio cabinet were the air-tightness of the cabinet, the transparency of the materials (wood) to moisture, and the poor air flow. So the problem was all about the cabinet. When I use silica gel in the functional equivalent of a Pelican case, it works incredibly well, especially for long term storage. Depending on how much gel you use and how long you go between opening the case, you can go as long as a year before you need to dry out your gel. For my air-tight containers, I've used Pelican cases, surplus ammunition boxes, surplus equipment cases, and Cambro insulated food carriers.</p> <p>Whatever storage solution you use, you'll want to monitor humidity with some humidity indicator cards from the Drierite Corporation. They're very inexpensive, perhaps 20 cents each. Order a couple dozen of them and stash them around wherever humidity might be a concern.</p>

<p>I love Daniel Joder's idea of applying a radial blur, although it does produce some unnatural artifacts at the tops of the tombstones.</p> <p>I thought I'd seize the opportunity to do some experimentation myself with this excellent image. My goal was to make the haze a bit hazier and to soften the background a bit (although I really like the background as shot -- very good choice of aperture, IMO!). I cut the image up into foreground (tombstone) and background. I used content-aware fill to kill the tombstone for the next operation: I then duplicated the background, applied a strong Gaussian blur, and set the blending mode to lighten, so as to cast a haze/glow around the background features. I masked this layer and blended it out in the near-ground. I also sharpened the tombstone layer a bit.</p> <p>PS: To Tim: Yes, PLEASE talk about processing details! It does very little for <em>my</em> understanding, at least, for people simply to say they ran an image through a given piece of software.</p><div></div>

<p>Very creative edits! As always, Line has taken a wonderful creative angle with the blending of the magnified face. I think my own focus is just to fix the ugly background. This is a pretty rough edit, because I only had a moment to do it, but I simply created a foreground layer and gave it just a bit of rim lighting (dodging) to bring out the shoulders and mic. I also blurred the background and cloned out the flaws. My masking was pretty crappy too, as I used the magic wand for time's sake. ;-)<br /> <img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17954633-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="570" /></p> <p> </p>

<p>Hi all,</p> <p>As promised, here is the next PP challenge photo. I attended a local jazz festival last weekend. This one-man-show guy played between a couple of bands, doing sort of a jazz/funk fusion thing. He was fun to watch. Anyway, I pulled out my camera and got a couple of snaps from the audience. The background is awful/boring, and the lighting is rather plain. However, I thought the guy an interesting subject. I was curious what others might do with such a photo. Feel free to add flying saucers if necessary. Maybe an alien looking over his shoulder? A parrot on the mic boom? Or just work with what's there. Have fun.</p> <p>Here's the larger image: http://www.photo.net/photo/17953649</p> <p>And the smaller image is attached below. No adjustments or sharpening have been done.</p><div></div>

<p>Chris, another option for you, if you really want your output file to preserve the layers, is to use "copy merged" to copy all the merged layers at full size, and then paste the merged information to a new layer on top of all the other layers. Then when you resize, all you will see is the resizing effects on the merged layer. You will also be able to tell whether resizing had any effect on the unmerged appearance by toggling the visibility of the overlying merged layer.</p>

<p>John, very interesting! Thanks for doing that experiment for us! Fortunately I've always created a flattened output file from my master file for resizing, output sharpening, etc., but I can't say I knew it could make that much of a difference. I had assumed it wouldn't really make much difference when the resizing was done. ;-)</p>

<p>If it's an image you care about, save a full-resolution, master working file with all your layers, etc. Then save to another merged output file for printing or displaying. If you ever need to do anything different with your image, at least all your work will be preserved in the master file.</p>

<p>I'm not a very successful businessperson, so consider the source. However...</p> <p>People hate not having choices. When wrestling with the whole film vs. digital thing during the early days of digital, I finally stopped trying to educate clients. Instead, I acquired a nice film body and told them I shoot either -- whichever they prefer. This inevitably begs the question of which <strong>I</strong> prefer and why. I tell them digital and cite my reasons. Then they follow my advice. My film cameras continue to gather dust, but they stand ready for action for that one discerning client I may never have. Anyway, the whole elitist digital vs. film quagmire evaporated the day I started telling people I shot both.</p> <p>I think the same approach can be applied to inkjet technology. Your son should offer both, but when asked, he should state his preferences and justify them. He could even show clients aged C-type prints. I'm going through quite a few somewhat-old family photos right now, and the image deterioration is often shocking, even coming out of good labs.</p> <p>FAIW, I don't think I could use the word "giclee" with a straight face, if I didn't insert the word "inkjet" in the same sentence. For instance, "For vibrant colors and image permanence, the state of the art is currently a 'giclee,' which is a pretentious French term usually referring to a conservation-quality photographic print made on archival paper with special, pigment-based inks on a professional, wide-carriage inkjet printer. I just call it a pigment inkjet print." I don't think we do ourselves any favors by trying to snow our clients. I can only imagine they will harbor resentment after discovering what "giclee" really means. I'd rather be the one who tells them up-front.</p>

<p>Another option: Minolta DiMage Dual IV or similar. I love mine. I think it bought it for $400 many years ago. Unfortunately the price seems to have doubled, but it's still a relatively economical (and very good) 35mm scanner.</p> <p>I also recently bought a V700, and I have to say it's quite fiddly for such a small negative. (I bought it for med/large format and print scanning.) The V700 is nowhere in the same ballpark as the DiMage with regard to resolution. The DiMage focuses either manually or automatically on each image, actually resolving the grain.</p>

<p>Before taking your printer to the dump, try flushing it and selling it to someone who might use it more frequently. Art Entlich has worked out methods for cleaning these beasts, and I've adapted his methods specifically for the SP4000. See here:</p> <p>http://www.graphic-fusion.com/sp4000.htm</p> <p>And if I were you, even if you feel strongly about throwing away the printer, I'd sell or give away the paper and ink. Someone can (and will) use it. You could offer your supplies right here, in this thread, free to anyone willing to pay the postage. (I hate to see things wasted.)</p>

<p>Oops... Here it is...</p><div></div>

<p>Well, I re-did it, because the rays in the trees were just too subtle with my first version. Here it is again, with the blacks diminished, but not so badly crushed. I also applied a mild crop on the right of the frame to offset the sun a bit, balancing the rays to the left of the frame. In this version, I also cloned out the extreme foreground buildings, so as to have only trees.</p>

<p>Similar to what Rick did, I kept the original drama and accentuated it some. I moved in the black point a bit, applied a rather steep "film'ish" sigmoidal contrast curve, with a pretty broad shoulder. Boosted the saturation a bit, despite my predisposition to ditch the color and go to monochrome, and dodged in the detail of the rays through the trees just a bit (keeping it soft and subtle). I did clone out the lights/reflections on one of the buildings. Everything done in CS5. Nice photo, BTW!</p><div></div>

<p>Just thought I'd say "hi." Not much time for the computer this weekend. Company in town. I look forward to working on next week's challenge.</p>

<p>How about making a CMYK contact negative and then printing to silver from that? You could even use dye-based inks. ;-)</p>

<p>Humorous, yes. Possible, no.</p>

<p>I never did warm up to my Wacom tablet. Perhaps I should make that one of my PP challenge objectives: Dust the thing off, and get serious about using it!</p>

<p>Very sinister, Line! ;-) Reminds me of when I would feed crickets to frogs. Sometimes a crickets would perch atop a frog's head, and the two of them would sit there as content as could be.</p> <p>At my university, there was a turtle pond zoologists had set up outside one of the buildings. They were interesting to watch as they sunned themselves atop rocks (like these two little guys are doing). When I first saw them, I thought they were bronze sculptures. Good rocks were in short supply, so often one turtle would crawl atop another turtle to get more sun. Then when a third turtle would try to pile on, the three of them would fall into the water and start over. </p>

<p>The photo will take some fiddling, no doubt. Two other approaches/tools you might use in combination with adjustment to the masked semicircular area (where you might drop the green channel a bit) are colorization and cloning, which might ease the transition between the adjusted and unadjusted areas, if applied subtly.</p>

<p>Not much I can add, but just for fun...</p><div></div>

<p>Here you go:</p> <p>http://graphic-fusion.com/sp4000.htm</p> <p>Have fun!</p>

<p>Thanks for your edit, Mathew! I don't object to the structure overhead (sort of like it), but I have to say I love the cleanness of your edit. Nicely done!</p> <p>Happy New Year, everyone! :-)</p>