mr._kenny

nice snaps jorn

great thread. <br />cracking good snaps brian. i love martin parr, and i think he loathes/adores modern life as much as anyone else with half a brain, englishmen and yanks detested/idolatrized equally and in equal measure!

marc, i had to ask about the killer hermes strap the last time i checked out the hermes MP -- $500. for a strap.

i've got it down to the right tools for the job most of the time.<br />

leica m6 ttl>> 35 summilux asph ,135 TE <br />

contax g2 >> 21mm biogon, 28mm biogon, 45mm planar, 90mm planar<br />

rollei 6008E >> 80mm planar,90mm symmar, (180mm Tele-Xenar this week!) <br />

nice snaps. i've always liked that man. #3 feels just right.

great points jack. i just unpacked the grand dame of color paper processors -- the durst rcp-50 -- and it's no fun moving that 90+ pound processor around. the whole time i was shoehorning that beast into the 'darkroom' i kept thinking 'epson 7600, epson 7600!' the investment was minimal for me though, so i thought i'd bite for the durst, b/c color feels natural to me right now. <br />

i went with analog color for a few reasons:<ul>

<li>wet color gear is cheap right now compared to an epson 7600 + mf scanner</li>

<li>it's pretty easy to print color with a processor, in my experience, and with my demands</li>

<li>i wanted to see how big prints work for me before i go and blow $3500 on a full blown color system</li>

<li>the two systems have roughly the same per-print cost -- recurring costs are very equal, if not cheaper in wet color if you take good notes and have reproducable methods. </li>

<li>if i had a digital camera i liked to work with, and that felt as good as the leica gear i have, i'd be more into a digital workflow.</li>

<li>my professional use of photoshop tought me that i don't like photoshop, including CS.</li></ul>

i'm under no illusions that digital is more accurate and more convenient, but it's not cheaper for me, and i'd rather invest travel and myself to get good photos.<br />

but good to see you again, stop by anytime and pay a visit, you're welcome here as an honorary guest!

and what's up with people who buy SUVs for 'their kids?' <br />

how big are your kids? when i was a kid, we all fit in a car!

ray i like your photo. it's great, the tones are nice, and suvs suck. <br />

the blank parking lot, the flat lighting, the weird ennui of airport parking lots -- good one, mate.

i admire the interest/ambition it takes to snap pictures of prostitutes, but the impression i get after looking at the snaps is that you're either reaffirming the taboo/illicit nature of prostitution by concentrating on the grab shot cliche or you just don't want to be identified with them, and choose not to talk to them, which makes you a voyeur. i'm not trying to be harsh, but Tim, what's the point of your photographs?

i have a minolta dual scan elite II -- almost identical to the multi III, minus the usb 2 but adding the ICE3 features, which for b+w/kchrome don't work. nice scanner for $350 from minolta's refurb department, but i would get a higher res scanner though if it were my only scanner.

nice snap man!

rollei was purchased in 1990 or so by samsung, and the giro and prego korean-made p+s cameras were korean-made. in the mid-90s the company was for sale and purchased by a group of rollei employees. they in turn have this year agreed to acquisition by yet another company, imacon.<br />

interesting aside: the rollei factory in braunshweig has very few classic rolleiflexes to display, they were sold to samsung!

i forgot to add that 5x7 works best <i>in hand</i> matted in a folio box as a series. very cool way of showing, i think.

what eric said. photoshop is bi***y about it's environment. i have a pc/xp with 2gb of ecc ram and no page file. photoshop reminds me EVERY TIME it starts that this is a 'bad' idea, never mind that i've got more than enough memory for it and xp.<br />

but eric's advice about selecting preferences>scratch disks is not a bad idea. and from what i remember about macs/ps1.0, it's in the same location on the reportedly superior macs.

light green for fair skinned folks outside or inside.

he let me develop them ;)

6x9 in 35mm. sometimes i get cocky and get 9x13s that work, but it's the imgage that does the picking, not me. i like a sharp print though. you can usually print a contrasty neg a little bigger, the eye sees acutance better anyway. 5x7 fiber prints off leica negs are a sight to behold, though, and cheap/easy to crank out, good work/gratification ratio with those<br />

12x12 in medium format/6x6. again, sometimes i get a good 16x16, but it's a demanding, unforgiving medium at that size. plus framing a 16x16 print is a PITA. <br />

i just got a durst rcp50 (20! x 28!) roller printer, so you can ask my christmas present recipients in january if they work!

wierd coincidence today: i was at jury duty, which as raymond burr says is a 'privelege of a democracy' and wanted to stretch my legs. walked to glazer's camera in seattle, and some business suits were talking, some speaking german. guess who? herr cohn of leica AG! he mentioned the new leicasonic, and they claim that they are very pleased with the lens, they think it's one of the best lenses they've ever designed. <br />

i'm definitely interested.

i bought the g2, added 3 lenses. after buying a m6/35cron/50cron for my gf, i was hooked. i still have the g2+lenses, but i don't use it unless it's the tool i need. my attachment is pretty superficial, i wouldn't cry if i lost/sold it.<br />

pros ...

<ul>

<li>good lenses</li>

<li>semi-fast AF</li>

<li>semi-good fill flash, with second curtain sync</li>

<li>decent winder</li>

<li>nice finish/excellent ergonomics, my favorite of all cameras, actually</li>

<li>excellent/pricey addon back which also will 'summarize' your roll's apeture, shutter speed and date both between frames and at the end of the roll. sweet!</li>

</ul>

the cons...

<ul>

<li>squinty viewfinder</li>

<li>slowish undercover of darkness lenses</li>

<li>klugey manual focus/no DOF scale unless you make one in excel and stick it on the back door like i did</li>

</ul>

i still own it, and occasionally shoot it, but wouldn't be all broken up if i lost it. my leica is pretty and efficient at snapshots, and i am a snapshot shooter. i almost always prefer the leica as my tool of choice .

the best advice someone ever gave me about street/travel photography is that most people are totally oblivious to you or your gear. i've always liked steve mccurry, he'd make a lame lpf member, he doesn't talk enough about his equipment ;)

key question: how big do you want to print?<br />

another key question: what are you printing?<br />

epson makes fine flatbed scanners, i've used a 3200 for scanning in photos before, works great, quite nice actually. but you're getting 25% of the film's true resolution, both in terms of image density and resolution. if i were printing digitally, i would do a little math first, because while you can add(interpolate) pixels, you cannot add resolution. and consider that a 'sharp' print, whether conventional or digital, really should be getting 6 lp/mm at a minimum, your target print size is determined exactly by your input. it's no coincidence that the top epson printers are engineered to meet this requirement, the horizontal resolution is 1440dpi, it's getting close to perfect. and when i mean perfect, i mean 'perfectly sharp' e.g. the average person's eye can't resolve anything finer at arm's length. of course if you print really big, nobody will stare right at the print, so you may be able to interpolate the image a bit, but up close, it's not sharp.,br />

if you are printing 13" x 19" --3302mm x 4826mm -- your scan should supply this amount -- not interpolated, but actual pixels, at arm's length. also realize that a very good digital technique is to downsample, e.g. sample at a higher resolution then downgrade the pixel count both to get a smoother file and to allow for cropping. plus it makes sense to get a raw file to archive and then hack up in Photoshop. <br />

the best way to put it is that it's all downhill after the shutter snaps. the film itself will have issues getting flat, the emulsion will add noise, the optics of the scanner will affect the image, the printer will have to alias the diagonals. just because you are shooting and then inkjetting does not mean you'll have far greater success at printing. i reckon that most sharp negs will have at most 1 paper size of bonus resolution for an induvidual viewer. if you are happy with your prints from a 35mm neg at 16x20, you'll be happy at 20x24. myself, i'm happy to get 6x9 conventionally, so i'd not expect a 'sharp' print larger than 9x13.5. sucks to be picky!

<br />

and for the record, when i shoot something more than a snap i use a rollei 6008 slr. i think there's a psychological demand in play when you shoot a face or a body that we don't want to see grain, and we want smooth tones, at least most of the time. for these reasons, plus the square is just cool, i use a medium format camera and a tripod.<br />

sorry for my long post, but i hope this helps you understand this subject a bit more. <br />

as much as i really like kodak b+w and hope they stay around, i prefer fuji color neg films. i really really like reala 100 -- very lifelike color. also prints conventionally extremely well and prints on a frontier system are fantastic. home scans are a bit hit-and-miss though.<br />

for high speed/low light i like npz shot at 640 (true speed) to 1600 -- but no more, it falls through the floor with a 2-stop push, quite dramatically. and it's sharper than nph(400) to boot!<br />

if you're scanning films, you're better off with most scanners going with a slide film ihmo. i print color in my own darkroom optically, so i almost never buy slide, can't help you there.

aah, rollei. i just passed up the famed 75 summilux for a rollei 600x series lens. i love rollei.<br />

but the aforementioned camera is pretty poor re: specifications. it has a 'schneider' lens, but if they (schneideroptic kreuznach) made the lens, i'd be shocked, and stoked to tell you the truth.<br />

but there will be more competitive rollei digital p+s cameras to come, rollei phototeknik was purchased by imacon, specifically for the purpose of making digital p+s cams.<br />

<i>not that i don't love leicas, josh!</i>

oliver, lovely shot. welcome to leica photography. leave your wallet with the nice german man at the door...

amen tom. has anyone seen a 4+MP pointless shoot with a fixed lens -- at f1.4? 35mm or 50mm equivalent? the thing i hate about most the digicams is their lateral chromatic abberations -- the purple fringing that you see so readily maginified on the sub-APS sized imaging sensors. i'm fine with an AF camera, even if it's the minolta/pentax style screwdriver kind vs the USM-style, but zeez, i don't want a 20-200 equivalent lens that makes a tree look like a stained glass window!