tibz

<p>I believe a lot of this has to do with analog gain. Many scanners have a so called "analog gain" control to adjust the actual exposure that the CCD in the scanner receives. Correcting with anything other than that control merely screws with the levels and brightness controls. It's like underexposing in your digital camera by 4 stops and just brightening later. The result is a very grainy nasty image. Silverfast may not how to use the analog gain on your particular scanner and be blowing everything to hell afterwards by increasing the electronic gain. Try looking through the menus to find the analog gain control.</p>

<p>Neg-a-fix is the system that silverfast uses to correct color on color negative film.</p>

<p>That is due to the image compression. If you take any image and convert it to 256 colors you will get a similar effet. Go back to the original file.</p>

<p>One would have limited usage if compiled... That's why you make test strips when printing-to find out the proper time. Development is usually carried out to completion which is either 2-3 minutes for fiber paper or as little as 1 minute with some RC papers (this is for standard dilution. different printing processes/slow or diluted developers will take longer, sometimes much longer. If you can see that the paper has developed sufficiently then it's okay to remove it.)</p>

<p>If you're just starting out you can learn by experience. Paper is cheap and if it takes you three test strips to get the time right so be it. Just remember that less light/time makes a lighter image. That confuses some people at first because it's a negative printing process.</p>

<p>Cool.</p>

<p>Unless you really need the enhancing, leave the enhancing off. Given the price of space these days the only limit to your size constraints are the transfer/scan speed. Scan at however big you need to print, and remember that you can rescan images if you want to print really large. You're going to be spending a lot of time scanning for 2000 files.</p>

<p>My grandmother stores them in a closet; a few of them have fungus though. Find a room temperature dry place (a desicant won't hurt) to prevent fungus. To prevent fading as John said, you need to go colder.</p>

<p>The D1H predates the D50 and the D70 before that. That makes what you're about to do a "downgrade." Personally I'd keep the D50. I have one, and it takes great images. If you want to upgrade, I'd go with the D90 as it is a great camera; though the 80-200 would be a better investment than a camera in the long run. I'd recommend selling the D1H (keep the lens by all means) and getting the 80-200.</p>

<p>Your D50 price in USD is absolutely unrealistic. Check eBay.</p>

<p>You have to adjust the mirror/prism so that it shows the actual image that will be exposed on the film. If you've lost infinity focus the screen must be too close and must be moved further away on the light path. I believe Nikon can do that for you, maybe not with a camera of such age. IDK if you can DIY that project.</p>

<p>Oh the zip drive...</p>

<p>My XP pro runs floppies fine. If you're drive isn't reading I think your best option is to hunt ebay for a functional USB Floppy drive which you can plug into your computer and open the floppies that way. Good luck copying the files off. You'll be there all day.</p>

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<p>No Matt, but there are pleanty of people who bought into the Digi cam thinking it would do the profesional job they could not do with film. They drank the KoolAid and found it was the same old thing. The problem is they now accept the unprofesional results.</p>

 

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<p>I think that's the biggest problem: people's acceptance.</p>

<p>was the game worth $30,000?</p>

<p>Microfilms will get you resolution that bests all but the highest quality NASA type lenses. Unfortunately they're expensive and very very slow (ASA 6-20.) I think TMAX 100 is a good compromize, though.</p>

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<p>This may be true if you don't consider productivity as an important factor of your printing. The advantage of inkjet printing is it takes very little time to print, adjust then print again... Printing in a real darkroom on the other hand takes a lot of time and you can only crank out very limited number of good prints a day. The time it takes to wash/clean equipments, bottles, trays or processors, mixing chemicals, etc. was what wore me out in printing in a real darkroom before. I am so much happier doing inkjet printing now. I can print easily 20 8x10 good prints in an evening of time and there is no time spent on preparing and washing/cleaning equipments.</p>

 

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<p>That's not the disadvantage of traditional darkroom equipment. Setup/cleanup time is minimal. I can crank out a single print in about 5 minutes, and the time decreases the more I print as I can process many prints at a time. Color materials are all standardized in contrast and whatnot, and if you shoot with the same film and are good at exposure, you will have to make very limited corrections between prints.</p>

<p>The main disadvantage is the limited control. You cannot adjust contrast when printing (for the most part) nor can you control seperate color curves. All must be done during exposure. This does not effect digital based systems. You can achieve more controlled colors and correct for the impurities in the paper. While inkjet is faster, RA-4 printing has a larger gamut than digital based systems, is cheaper, and highly archival. Especially for gloss, RA-4 prints are superior. Inkjet printing is better for use on canvas or matt surfaces, however.</p>

<p>I believe the "dry" technologies involve dye sublimation printing. The ink comes in a huge roll with cyan magenta and yellow sheets (and sometimes a laminate) lined up and is selectively heated to sublimate onto the printing paper. They make very nice prints. The ink can be expensive and is set per number of prints versus quantity used because one print uses three to four sheets no matter if it's almost all white or almost all dark. It's available for consumer use on many photo printers.</p>

<p>Cross processing is for effect mostly. Optimal quality will be achieved using the correct development technique. If you want the fast turnaround, you should shoot Negative film and process it accordingly.</p>

<p>You should use negative film if you print in a darkroom, but for almost everything else slide film is easier to work with (despite longer turnaround these days.)</p>

<p>Nikon FE? It's about $40-80 depending on condition. It offers automatic exposure if you need it.</p>

<p>If you have all nikon lenses I wouldn't go out there and buy a pentax K1000.</p>

<p>I mounted a luster inkjet print and it's been fine for a year. There are two things that I've discovered. The temperature can be quite low; a temperature of something like 150-175 degrees is fine to mount. At that temperature, the mounting takes less than 20 seconds. Leaving it in for longer makes it bubble and get that dry mount texture.</p>

<p>Actually I believe the actual "gigapixel" camera used 9 inch rollfilm. Your 6x17 is a "far cry" from that.</p>

<p>Here's an idea: stop worrying about megapixels and take some pictures with your umpteen thousand dollar camera.</p>

 

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<p>been reading Ken Rockwell have we?</p>

 

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<p>Quite.</p>

<p>Or you could shoot ASA 10 microfilm and get yourself a 6x17 enlarger and a wicked nice beseler HD series 6 element lens and then do color seperations and print on dye transfer just to make things more complicated than they have to be!</p>

<p>It depends on the subject. Darker backrounds tend to make subjects look lighter in comparison and vice versa for lighter ones. Colored ones change the appearence of the colors too.</p>

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<p>(unless of course you are doing conventional printing and can't find the right paper).</p>

 

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<p>Yup. I'm 16 and I do RA-4 color printing in a real darkroom (I'm not sure, but I think that puts me in the .0000001% minority of people.) What you say is absolutely true.</p>

<p>However, inkjet prints are expensive. The RA-4 paper itself is much less expensive than the inkjet paper, and the chemistry is many times less expensive than the ink. Our school has several hundred dollars of ink on hand at any given time. It's ridiculous. One $15 cartridge will not do very many prints, and you need about 8 of them (leave it to the industry to find ways for us to spend more money on ink.) Inkjet is also best for printing on matt, canvas, or luster. If you print on gloss with an inkjet, you can see that the gloss itself changes based on the thickness of the ink heaped upon the paper. RA-4 dyes are inside the paper and not heaped on top.</p>

<p>Digital RA-4 printing also goes further than analog ever could by factoring in the inadequacies in the paper itself and optimizing the recording process to compensate for these, producing cleaner colors. So in a way, the printing has changed.</p>

<p>I don't think the RA-4 standard will change. RA-4 prints look great and they're cheap. What could be better? Also with the paper industry will probably go Kodak and Fuji along with all my color films so let's hope a transition doesn't occur anytime soon.</p>

<p>Fluorescent light bulbs will often give a CRI number indicating how continuous the spectrum of it's output is.</p>

<p>If it works...</p>

<p>This screams "where's waldo?"</p>

<p>Scrap book look? Try printing your images and using those little sticky corner tabs to adhere them to the inside of a nice photo album book.</p>

<p>It's more than likely that this is the fault of the printer more than your own. This is why pros prefer to shoot chromes. With negative film no matter how perfect your exposure is there is always the printer to screw it up for you. The best (and really only good) use of print film is for those still doing optical enlargements in the darkroom.</p>

<p>For everything else you can shoot chromes (slide film), but you will have less room to play with exposure. You can try a roll. In a scene of high contrast though you will have to choose one area or the other and expose for the sunset while losing detail in the rest of the image.</p>