rory_edge1

The Mamiya 7II is a somewhat bulkier camera than a 35mm rangefinder, but the viewfinder is great for people who need to wear eyeglasses.

Hi Albert,

 

I love your web site.

 

There is a store in New York called FotoCare that is an oasis of sanity. Jeff Hirsch, the owner, is a gentleman as well as highly knowledgeable, and they are Leica dealers:

 

136 West 21st Street between 6th and 7th Avenues

www.fotocare.com

Andrew,

 

As I said, I am not interested in the whole Photoshop guru business.

 

I think that what Fraser was doing amounts to tied selling, which is a well understood, but controversial, approach to marketing. In this case, I have no doubt that it was and is legal, I just think that it was and is unethical.

 

My comments have to do with a well-understood phenomenon of industrial economics, and nothing to do with conspiracy theories. I'm at a complete loss to understand how or why you would draw an analogy between this discussion and the assassination of John Kennedy.

 

Cheers

Patrick,

 

I mentioned the Alsheier book only because you are one of the people who posts here who comes off as speaking with some authority. I merely wanted to suggest that you might want to reconsider your enthusiastic endorsement of this book. I wish that I hadn't wasted my money on it. As for your suggestion that I can just return it to Amazon, you are right, but I have this idea that having read the book, returning it for a refund is unethical.

 

For my views on teh Alsheimer book, in case you want to reconsider your endorsement of it, see my response to your earlier thread: http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00NIiv

 

Cheers.

Andrew, you did a great job of responding in a way that sidesteps the substance of of what I said. As for your question, what do I do for a living, that is irrelevant. However, I will admit that I am not a Photoshop guru groupie.

 

Ellis,

 

The fact that the actions were being sold before the book was published demonstrates that there was a deliberate decision to split the product. The only logical reason for that was to turn the sale of a $40 book, or the sale of a $100 sale of a piece of software, into a $140 sale.

 

As a purchaser of the book, I don't respect that. I will repeat what I said before. I think that it is cheesey, and that is putting it diplomatically.

 

The remaining question is whether I should buy the software, in addition to the book, despite the fact that what Andrew and you have had to say does not exactly improve my view of the guy (and now his estate) who is peddling it.

 

I think that I won't, on principle.

Andy, the gentleman died a year ago.

 

It is obvious that the Photokit package could have been included in its entirety in the book. Instead, the first 158 pages is a discussion of principles and tools, the last 46 are examples, and a total of 64 pages are about putting the principles and tools to work. The 64 pages give one a taste for the actions, indeed it includes a few, but does not lay them out in their entirety. As far as I am concerned, they should have been in an appendix.

 

To get what should have been in the appendix, one has to either make the actions oneself, drawing on the first 158 pages of the book, or pay another $100, on top of the $40 for the book, for Photokit. On the other hand, if one first buys Photokit, the accompanying 35 page .pdf manual is fine as far as it goes, but it would certainly help to buy the book.

 

What this comes down to is that Mr. Fraser, and now his estate, are selling a $140 product in two pieces.

 

Some people won't have a problem with that. Personally, I do. The lack of transparency, and the marketing method, make me wonder a about the entire exercise.

 

Cheers.

The one thing that I will say about Fraser that gives me pause is that his book, which lists for US$40, talks about the actions but doe not lay them out expressly. Which is why there is a market for spending another US$100 on the download.

 

For people who have paid for the book, there is something pretty cheezy about that, so cheezy that one might wonder whether the whole thing is a con.

Patrick,

 

I don't understand your position on this.

 

On the one hand, you have just made a post about what you consider to be essential books on Photoshop, one of which, in your view, is Bruce Fraser's book on sharpening.

 

On the other hand, you say that the Photoshop actions that are necessary if one wants to adopt Fraser's methodology are no more useful than Smart Sharpen and a waste of money.

 

Which is it?

 

Let me add that I am mystified by your enthusiasm for Leslie Alsheimer's book, Black and White in Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Lightroom. Having bought and read it, on your recommendation, my reaction is that apart from a decent chapter on colour management, if only because it is written in reasonably plain English, the book is lame.

As a result of this thread, I purchased a copy of Alsheimer's book. I have now read, it which doesn't take long.

 

This book has all the earmarks of a book that started out OK, but which was rushed to completion. There are some reasonably good discussions, but far too much of the material is grossly superficial. One is left with the impression that entire sections are essentially reproductions of handouts that the authors give out at their Photoshop courses.

 

I don't see any reason to say that this book is about Black and White, except as an attempt to distinguish it from the many introductory books on Photoshop, many of which do a far better job of explaining basic concepts and techniques.

 

Given that the book is supposed to be about processing Black and White images, it is kind of amazing that there is nothing about scanning and processing monochrome negatives, except for the sentence, on page 36 "Scan grayscale images and negatives in RGB mode".

 

That's it. The authors don't offer a single word on why to do that, how to do it or how to process the resulting scan.

 

On the upside, one can read the whole book in a couple of hours. Unfortunately, that's two hours more than it is worth.

Thanks, that clarifies things, I thought that you were talking about scanning in colour and maintaining the channels throughout.

 

It's interesting that you don't seem to be a proponent of 48 bit colour scans of monochrome images. I've been playing with both colour and grayscale scans, and it is not at all clear to me that there is an advantage to the former.

Andrew,

 

As you know, there are a couple of camps involved.

 

There are those who scan black and white in grayscale and those who scan RGB. As far as I know, many if not most of those in the latter camp select the channel that they want to use, and discard the rest, either as a first step or shortly after dust busting.

 

It is news to me that people who work with black and white maintain the file in RGB up to and including output. I've been playing around with doing that, as part of some experimenting that I've been doing with the CS3 Black and White Adjustment Layer, but I don't think that it is common, let alone the norm.

 

Do you have a reason for both scanning a black and white negative in RGB and maintaining the scan in RGB up to and including output?

 

For me, doing that just to use the Photokit Sharpener package is not obvious.

 

Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to understand your views on this, particularly as I have a high regard for your writing.

Yes, page 8 of the manual: one of the two requirements is that the file be 8 or 16 bit RGB.

 

That's a serious limitation if one does a lot of black and white.

On the face of it, the fact that the document has to be RGB is quite a drawback for someone working in black and white. It means that the programme won't work if one scans greyscale, and won't work if one scans RGB and discards two of the layers. I guess it works if one scans a black and white negative in RGB and then uses CS3's black and white adjustment layer. Awful big files, though.

"you must be working on an RGB document"

 

Ahh, so if you are working on scans of black and white negatives, or colour negatives that you want to convert to black and white, the programme dictates a particular workflow.

 

Is there a reason why the document must be RGB?

Picking up on Mr. Rodney's point, Fraser says in the book (p. 11) that the true resolution of one's monitor = the width of the image area on the monitor divided by the number of horizontal pixels the monitor displays.

 

In his example, he says that his monitor is 16.875 inches and that, when run at 1600 x 1200, the resolution is 94.8 ppi. But 16.875 divided by 1600 is not 94.8. What am I missing in the arithmetic?

I've read the book and I'm now trying out the software. With CS3, either I'm missing something or the programme is a bit flakey. When I open some files, and go to File>Automate, it works fine. With others, it is greyed out. I can't identify any factor which would make it available some times and not others.

 

I certainly don't mind paying $99 for a sophisticated set of actions (assuming that I can get the actions to function properly), but I do wonder whether there is something to be said for working out this stuff for oneself.

"I would love to hear from anyone who has recently begun using it and having success with it. How do you get started?"

 

Leaving aside whether I am having success with it, I am fairly new to the programme.

 

For me, the key has been to work on photographs that I care about with a good size, calibrated monitor, a decent printer and a selection of paper.

 

When I'm working on a real photograph, it's great to be able to turn to the various books that I have for assistance. Read on their own, without reference to photos that I want to print, it is very theoretical.

A few questions...

 

Is this software still state of the art, or are there credible competitors?

 

What does it offer that Fraser's book doesn't?

 

Does anyone have comments on Photokit Color 2.0?

 

Thanks.

By the way Byron,

 

As you may or may not be aware, one of your local photographers, Jeff Wall, is pretty important.

 

A few months ago, I saw a show of his work at New York's Museum of Modern Art. I was pretty much blown away. Of course, he has his detractors :)

 

If you haven't seen his work, check it out. The MOMA site is OK, but the UK's National Gallery site (have I got the right UK gallery?), where the show was last fall, is quite a bit better.

 

Cheers

Hi Byron,

 

The key is to get to know people in Victoria who are using film.

 

There is nothing to prevent you from calling up the photography department at UVic just to talk about what's happening and to make some connections.

 

If it sounds a bit pushy to phone these people and ask to speak with one of the instructors, despite not being enrolled (at least not yet), don't sweat it.

 

My bet is that they'll be happy to talk and help out.

 

Best of luck.

One other comment...

 

If you intend to print digitally instead of in a traditional darkroom, and you aren't sufficiently wealthy to pay a lab a lot of money to do high quality scans for you, you have to buy a scanner. Earlier in this thread, someone mentioned the Epson V750. I have that scanner because I also scan medium and large format negatives. If you are scanning only 35mm, do yourself a favour and buy a Nikon film scanner.

 

Cheers

Byron,

 

You need to connect with people in Victoria who are working with film and know the local scene. It will be a bigger community than you might think. You might start, as I suggested in your earlier thread, with speaking with people in the photography department at UVic. Or perhaps with people at your former school. It will save you a lot of time, and perhaps a lot of money, when it comes to questions about what stores/labs are available to you and who you should be speaking with about processing film and printing negatives.

 

To respond to your concrete questions:

 

If you are going to process your own film, you have to identify a store in Victoria or Vancouver that sells the necessary gear and chemicals. It isn't expensive, but it isn't stuff that you are going to find in a department store. Starting out, there is a lot to be said for buying developer in liquid form, such as Ilford DD-X.

 

When you have your negatives developed, you have three choices about printing:

 

(1) print a contact sheet yourself or have it done by a lab (there are probably one or two in Victoria that can do it);

 

(2) have the lab print 4x6 prints;

 

(3) scan the negatives, which you can do yourself or have done by just about any of the local photo stores (if you have a store do it, you want cheap Frontier scans).

 

Whatever route you take, the underlying idea with film is that you will be pretty ruthless in editing, based on evaluating cheap prints or scans, and will then concentrate on what you think is really worth printing.

 

But to get back to my basic point, the sooner you connect with other people in Victoria who are shooting film, the better.

 

Cheers

Byron,

 

In Victoria, the trick is to identify a lab that processes black and white to begin with :) You want a lab that does it daily or every couple of days. There are unlikely to be more than one or two.

 

There is a lot to be said for doing your own processing, at least at the beginning. You'll learn a great deal, very quickly, about how film works, and processing is so cheap that it encourages experimentation both in your shooting and your processing.

 

Some people think that one should pick a single film and stick with it. I think that a little experimenting can be interesting. For example, if you shoot in low light, you might want to try a couple of films - an ISO 400 film pushed a couple of stops to 1600, and a fast film such as Ilford Delta 3200 processed normally.

You may find it helpful to read this: http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=321608&sliceId=2

Hi Karen,

 

My copy of Eye-One Display 2 came with a CD that contained a detailed audio-visual presentation. Your CD probably has the same.

 

Adobe Gamma should be turned off permanently; it is not what your lab is talking about.

 

The Photoshop settings are in Edit>Color Settings.

 

If you have any further trouble with Eye-One displaying on the laptop monitor but not the external monitor, look at your earlier thread in which I made some comments on how to avoid this problem.