paddler4

I'd give a somewhat different answer. I agree of course that coated papers in general have larger dynamic range than uncoated papers. However, I think there are some images for which the difference is quite substantial. It's not just a matter of losing blacks on matte paper. Papers with smaller dynamic range have less contrast, less pop. Moreover, the surface influences how much fine detail is apparent. So IMHO, it's an important choice, and the best choice depends on the image and what you want to do with it. I do a lot of photography that emphasizes small details and relies on contrast, e.g., close-up and macro work, so I use mostly coated papers. for some other things, however, that's not a good choice. There are also differences among papers of a type, as Conrad noted. My go-to paper for most serious printing used to be Canson Baryta Photographique. when they discontinued it and replaced it with a paper with a smoother surface that I didn't like, I ended up spending a lot of time and money printing test prints on a bunch of different papers looking for replacements. However, these differences are generally much smaller than the general difference between coated and uncoated papers.

And those who are dumb enough not to back up their data are good photographers? Damn, I always wondered why I wasn't better at this.

The most straightforward explanation I have ever come across was an article written by Bob Atkins, http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/technical/digitaldof.html. In addition to providing an explanation, he starts with 5 simple summary statements.

Do you really need to have this explained? It is not the same thing. When is the last time you heard heavily armed men marcihng in front of a church chanting "conservative white Christians will not replace us"? It means something different when the identity of groups that are the subject of bigotry--Blacks, Jews, gays, immigrants, whoever--are the focus. When I was a kid, the newspapers never failed to mention when a criminal was Black but virtually always failed to do when a criminal was White. What that fostered is the impression that Blacks are dangerous people. The same happened to a lesser degree with poverty. Because of the drumbeat of criticism about poor Blacks (remember Reagan's comments?), people are often startled to find that most poor people are White. A minor example: my town has a large Asian population, mostly Chinese. I recently heard someone who was clearly somewhat bigotted (she made other comments making this clear) complaining about a minor dispute about clearing leaves. She made a point of saying that the neighbor with whom she had a complaint is Chinese. She wouldn't have identified the group if the person hadn't been Chinese. These are the sort of subtle behaviors that act as fertilizer for bigotry. When my kids were teenagers, I was delighted to see that they never did this. We rarely knew the race or ethnicity of a classmate or friend until the person walked in the door. My kids were clear: it simply had no relevance to them. Unfortunately, this isn't yet universal.

Thank you. This is very well said. Gratuitously pointing out what group a person comes from when it is of no relevance can often inadvertently encourage bigotry, particularly when it fits with stereotypes, and it can also signal bigotry. This happens so often that people often aren't aware that they are doing it, but it pays to try to be aware of this and to avoid it.

good heavens. I wasn't implying that the OP's comment was comparable to the examples I listed, and if anyone took it that way, I apologize for creating that impression. My point was simply to use examples that everyone should know to make it clear that antisemitism has very little--often nothing whatever--to do with the religious practices of the people subjected to it. What bothered me here was the gratuitous identification of the store as being owned by Jews. As I said, I take the OP at their word that they had no bigoted intent.

I won't comment further on your problems with your purchase. However, if the mod will accept my commenting on another aspect of this, I would like to. I think it's important enough to warrant a digression. You wrote: There are two problems with this. First, you clearly don't understand antisemitism. It usually has nothing whatever to do with the religious beliefs of Jews. The armed racists who chanted "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville weren't concerned about Friday evening prayers. The Republicans in the House and right-wing commentators who have pilloried Alvin Bragg for supposedly "listening to his master, George Soros" (that particular quote is from Fox) don't care and probably don't even know whether Soros is an observant Jew or an atheist. I doubt very much whether the antisemites who murdered virtually every member of our family in Europe, including children, first lined them up and asked who was a believer. So what made your phrasing offensive to me had nothing to do with observing the Jewish Sabbath. it was offensive because it came across as "see, one of the stores owned by Jews". I'll take you at your word that you meant no offence. But if that's the case, "I couldn't care less" is not an appropriate response when people tell you they found it offensive. An appropriate response would be "I meant no offense, but I apologize for inadvertently offending people."

A great image. You have every reason to be proud.

I too have purchased a lot from B&H over the years--virtually all of my equipment over the past 15 years or so--and have not had problems. I have rarely needed customer service, but when I have, it's generally been very good. One time, a hair light arrived broken, and they simply replaced it. One time I made a mistake in my order, and they accepted the return. I recently had several problems with Commenity Bank, which now handles B&H's credit cards, and B&H's customer service got involved even though the problem was entirely with the bank. I have never been treated in any way other than courteously. You wrote: "The mention of closed Saturdays was relevant because it identified the store as one of the 2 big NYC stores, both with excellent reputations." Do you didn't mean to identify B&H, but you wanted to tell us that it was B&H or Adorama and not say which. And while you may have not intended it, the choice of wording also also struck me as bigoted. You could have simply written "one of the two big NYC scores with excellent reputations," since that's what you say you wanted to convey. The fact that they close on Saturday is irrelevant. "I was looking for an additional discount". Not enough just to fix the mistake? It sounds to me that either someone goofed, or someone filched the contents, and that the initial response wasn't great but that B&H made good in the end. For this you call the police? BTW, if you contest the charge and the bank voids the charge, you haven't bought anything, and I don't think they have no obligation to send you anything. . "I don't think I can ever, in good conscience, make another purchase from them again." Then don't. I certainly will.

I would follow the same workflow. Keep the image in the broadest gamut you can, and definitely 16 bit. When you are done, change it to whatever you need for output, or print directly from it. If the question is changing: whenever you change any kind of software, compatibility is a potential issue, so you would have to check the new software to see what it can read. Pretty much everything can read TIFF files, I think, but I don't know which other software can read TIFF files with layers preserved. Raw files aren't changed by the software, so changing software shouldn't matter. If you want to save your edits from LR, you can have LR store the exits as an XML sidecar file, which some other software may be able to read. If the new software can't read TIFs with layers, I would save a flattened 16 bit TIFF in the broadest gamut the new software can read. I do this in focus stacking. My stacking software can only read JPEGs and TIFs, so I use 15 bit prophoto TIFs from Lightroom and again from the stacking software back into LR or photoshop

Virtually exactly the opposite of the advice I would give, and not factually correct in one place. It simply isn't so that "pretty much every workflow ends up in 8-bit sRGB." Good printers have gamuts that extend well beyond sRGB, and converting to sRGB degrades the quality of some images. Unless I post online, none of my images end up as 8 bit sRGB. I print directly from 16-bit images that are either in the Melissa color space (Lightroom) or ProPhoto (photoshop). Using the ICC profile and other settings (e.g., rendering if any colors are outside of the gamut of the printer/paper combination), the software translates to the gamut of the printer. Maybe you can't tell the difference, but I can sometimes see the difference between sRGB and wider gamuts. Most of my images are within or nearly within the sRGB gamut, but some aren't. 8 bit images are more prone to artifacts when extensively edited. Google it. The safest is to discard data only when you need to. Raw files aren't very large. PSDs and TIFs are, but I almost never have speed issues editing in Photoshop. I keep virtually no JPEGs. I upload them using a script that creates them and then discards them on my computer after they are uploaded. If I have the raw with any parametric edits and a TIF or PSD with layers from photoshop (if I've used photoshop), I can re-create the JPEG in seconds if I need it but retain complete flexibility to re-do the image in new ways. Storing JPEGs would just waste space and greatly increase the number of files I need to keep backed up. I'm not saying that you should do what I do, of course.

I think this thread is mixing up two entirely different topics. One is your question, which is advice about B&W photography. The second is about exposure guidelines, which apply to color as well. (In the film days, different films had different exposure ranges, but that's irrelevant in digital photography.) With respect to exposure guidelines, you wrote: "It's just sometimes I will have darker faces in a picture that my light meter tells me the correct setting." That suggests you need to study metering techniques. Most images have a wide range of tones, from light to dark. Some reflective (in camera) metering modes take an average, or a weighted average, over a large area. An alternative is to take a meter reading off the area that is of interest. Another option, if you are using an incident meter, is to hold the meter so that it is getting the same light as the area of interest. Another issue is that you, as the photographer, have to decide what areas in the image should be a neutral gray. How faces relate to this depends on complexion. For example, a typical Caucasian palm is about one stop brighter than neutral gray, so spot metering off a palm and opening by one stop is sometimes a good starting point. The the digression about whether it is better to start with film: this isn't helpful for you, since you are in a class that is using film. However, as someone who shot only film for many years, I think starting with film in this day and age is counterproductive. You can learn about the basics, e.g., exposure, metering, depth of field, etc., with either format, and digital allows you do experiment much more freely without additional cost and frees you from having to fuss with toxic chemicals. I enjoyed darkroom work, but nothing I did there was better than learning the same thing with digital.

Yes, a lot of changes and improvements have been made in the last 13 years. I'm not sure what pop-ups you are referring to. Nothing pops up on my screen. However, one of the great things about using software that many other people use is that there is a huge amount of helpful explanation and advice online. I suggest you find some online presenters whose style you find helpful. For example, one YouTuber who has good Lightroom Classic videos is Anthony Morganti. There are many for photoshop as well.

Glad you like it--I like mine--but to keep things straight for others: the camera on the Air 2S is 20 MP, not 48 MP. (I consider that an advantage.) see https://www.dji.com/camera-drones?site=brandsite&from=homepage

Lightroom classic runs on your computer. What is now called simply Lightroom runs in the cloud. Both come with the $10 subscription. Lightroom Classic is more powerful, and I use only that version. There are a lot of very good free video tutorials for Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.

JTG1--Your postprocessing software should allow you to approximate how neutral these are. I get the following RGB values: Whites of one boy's eyes: R 116 G 159 B 201 Whites of one girl's eyes: R 142 G 180 B 203 Collar on boy at left (not area in shadow) R 210 G 232 B 245 In other words, the software confirms what seems clear from eyeballing the image on my calibrated monitor: these images are too blue to be neutral. Since these areas are all approximately neutral, the RGB values should be similar for any given one of these three locations.

I absolutely agree. I was just trying to separate the two questions for the OP. The OP said in another thread what tools he has. I don't recall for certain, but I vaguely recall that it was Affinity and ACDSee. The question in that thread was whether he has tools that provide for color management, and the answer was yes.

There are so many options and so many variables that this is hard to answer. But a few general thoughts that might help: -- Lots of the bells and whistles on more expensive cameras won't make be any help with the sort of photography you describe. You don't need fancy autofocus, burst shooting, or top-of-the-line image stabilization. --Consider buying into a system rather than just buying a camera. As you get more experienced, you will want to add more things. --Mirrorless is clearly the way the world is going, but at that very low budget level, I suspect that most of what you will find will be DSLRs. That's fine for your purposes, but you will be limited to lenses designed for DSLRs. In the other direction, with most brands, those lenses will be usable with a mirrorless body of you switch. --Re night photography: It depends on what you do. I do quite a bit of night photography, and for what I do, you don't need a camera with a relatively new sensor that can handle very low light with short exposures. This is because I do it all with long exposures. However, that requires a tripod, which adds $$. For example, I have one night photograph that one a competition even though it was taken with a Canon 50D, an old, noise-prone camera that is currently worth almost nothing. So this requires more information. --With that low a budget, I would consider looking at used equipment, or at least refurbished equipment. The safe way to buy used equipment is from a retailer that guarantees it, like KEH.

The local tonal adjustments in Tony's make it far better than mine. But for clarity's sake, since hjoseph asked about color tint: the white balances of Tony's, Dog's, and mine are virtually identical. Once that's corrected, which is very easy to do if you have (as in this case) a neutral surface to use in setting WB, it's time to move on to other adjustments, both global and local.

sorry. My last post was unclear. I was responding to hjoseph saying he had decided to use Sanford's edit. My numbers refer to that edit, not the original. I think this is nothing more than a straightforward WB issue, although as Dog and Tony mentioned, the faces are also dark. Using the dropper in adobe camera raw on the front of the collar does a -9 on temperature and +15 on tint. That turns the shirt almost a perfectly neutral white and creates natural skin tones. A little bit of a curve brightens the faces and add a tiny bit of contrast. Other edits may improve the image, but they aren't a response to the color cast.

Unless you don't think the white shirt is white, that image isn't close to neutral. Here are the measurements I got from the collar: R 191 G 220 B 250 Using the L*a*b values to evaluate this, as Dog did, gives me this: a -6 b-19 Dog's is spot on, again if you consider the shirt white. Mine's pretty close, but as he suggested, still dark: R 215 G 217 R 212 a -1 b +2 Of course, there is no reason to choose the shirt to to aim for a perfectly neutral WB. However, the blue cast on the face on the left seems clearly off to me

The white sweater clearly isn't really white because using it for white balance turns the boy's face blue. I used the top of the boy's collar for a simple WB adjustment. That cooled the image a little and changed tint. When in doubt, shoot one image in the same light with a neutral card and use that to set an initial white balance. Without that, you have to play it by ear, finding something in the photo that is nearly neutral or just adjusting to taste.

You can perceive the red color of a stoplight, if you aren't color blind. You many not be able to distinguish between two red stoplights that are very slightly different in hue (or, more likely, in mix of hues). Does that make your perception of red useless?

No. None of the several brands of paper I use are available in square formats. Use a paper cutter, or just mat over the borders. Almost all papers are available in 13 x 19 and 8.5 x 11, which would give you all but 14 x 14. 14 x 14 would entail more waste, since the next US standard size larger than 13 x 19 is 17 x 22, which is expensive.

I know little enough about color science that I don't know whether this is correct (Dog, where are you?), but I believe that while the horseshoe is supposed to encompass all humanly perceivable colors, it is NOT the case that all differences among colors within the horseshoe are expected to be humanly discernable. The fact that we can see color where you added text is consistent with the standard definition of the horseshoe.