alcyon

<p>John,<br>

You're right, it's not worth losing my health over it and I'll move on (luckily, I've got some prints).<br>

But I'm definitely moving back to film (medium and large format) for my personal work - I was looking at some old B&W and Cibachrome prints I made years back and they're so much richer and deep than digital prints...<br>

To the others, thank you for all your suggestions but I've already had a couple of guys look at it and it cost me $50 each time and they both came with the same reply. So never mind, I'll forget about it and move on. Thanks again!</p>

<p>Again, thank you all for your input.<br>

Let me close that thread by saying that I don't consider a piece of equipement dropped 6 inches on a carpeted floor as I pulled it out of my bag "safe and reliable". I'm quite sure that many (serious) cameras can be dropped that height and still function very well. As for fires and floods, so are at risk computers, hard drives and CDs! So Maybe I'm a ludite but I don't see what the great improvement is here...</p>

<p>Thank you all for your answers. I contacted other shops and basically the replies were pretty much all the same: min. $500 and not even guarantee of recovery... This is an expense I just cannot deal with right now.<br>

I did indeed understand the "back up" issue but the reason why I bought an external hard drive is because I had been told that they were "extremely safe and reliable" and because I was tired of burning scores of CDs and making back ups of back ups of back ups. Maybe that makes it clearer why I was asking contributors not to be too patronizing...<br>

I am really considering moving back to film with medium format.</p>

<p>Hi,<br>

Last week I dropped (only from 6 inches high) my external hard drive which caused it to fail... Since then I have desperately tried to find a place where a technician could retrieve my 2 years worth of photography.<br>

From the few persons I've approached I've gotten the same answer: "the hard drive has permanent damage and needs to be sent to the manufacturer and that could cost in the vicinity of $1000, maybe more depending on the amount of data to be retrieve..."<br>

And they don't even guarantee that they'll be able to save the data but there's a flat fee of $500...<br>

All my files are NEF converted to TIFF and JPEG and it amounts to a lot of data to extract. In short although this files are very important I don't have that kind of cash right now.<br>

Has anyone been in the same situation and if yes did you find a cheaper way to retrieve your work?<br>

Any info will be appreciated (but please refrain from telling me that I should have made back up copies and back up of back up, etc...)<br>

Thanks.</p>

<p>Hi,<br>

Very interesting debate with very valid arguments from both sides.<br>

I don't have much to add apart from that I am a semi-professional photographer and I do submit some of my work to certain stock agencies. While I agree they're a bunch of sharks cajoling the ego of beginners and wannabes it's also a great way to learn (through a lot of rejection) to strengthen one's photography. It certainly isn't for everyone and if I had a solid base of clients I would stop submitting them images. On the other hand some professional photographers who can separate "commercial" and "fine art" photography are doing very well with stock (see Yuri Arcurs).</p>

<p>Hi,<br>

I'm not sure if your problem is now fixed but you may want to check the settings in your camera. I have a D300 in which I pushed the sharpening to 9. It resulted it terrible color fringing (or CA) in all my pictures. However, I was able to correct the issue on the NEF files in post processing with the help of Nikon NX. With that software you can revert or alter the in-camera settings. I strongly recommend that you do not exceed 2 in sharpening in your camera. BTW, this doesn't work with TIFF or JPEG.</p>

<p>Hi all,<br>

A quick update to let you know that after some testing with the sharpness set to 0 in the camera my pictures no longer show any chromatic aberration or so little it's very easily fixed in Photoshop or NX.</p>

<p>Hi,<br>

I think I've found the reason for the excessive amount of CA in my pictures. I had set the in-camera sharpness settings at the highest number. As I have been reading further about it I discovered that it's not recommended to have the sharpness set higher than 2 or 3 and that further sharpening should done in post-processing. It appears that NX applies sharpening when processing RAW (or other) files which is compounded with the camera hence creating ghosting between areas of different values. I will do some testing in the next few days and keep you updated on my results.<br>

Cheers.</p>

<p>Hi,<br>

Thank you all for your very informative replies. Of course that includes the Elvis one which reinforces my dislike of the man.<br>

Cheers,</p>

<p>Hi,<br>

I'm not entirely a beginner but I wasn't sure where I could post my question.<br>

On Monday I am doing a photo shoot of a set of a few tvs we have in the lobby area of our building. It's a row of four HD screens hanging on the wall at approx. 7' high. On the right of the screens there is a large bay window from which comes a lot of natural light. The goal is to capture the screens and the content as cleanly as possible because the shots will be used for our advertising.<br>

Any suggestions on how I should approach the situation and how to set up my lights?<br>

My equipment: D300 with 18-200mm and 50mm. 3 strobes. 1 speedlight sb600. Polarizing filter for the 18-200.<br>

Thanks in advance.</p>

<p>Try OtherPeoplesPixels.com.<br>

It's $160 a year for your domain name and email account. You build your own website using templates provided. It's simple to use and they have a good customer support.<br>

You can have a look at my website to give you an idea: www.alcyonphoto.com</p>

<p>Hi,<br>

Thank you all for your excellent comments.<br>

I understand that an 18-200mm zoom is focally stretched and will display some chromatic aberration but what I am getting is truly excessive. On top of that I get the same fringing with the prime 50mm lens which, although cheap, is of good quality especially at f4 or 5.6. Purple fringing isn't my major problem. Fringing appears along all lines where there is a strong contrast between two values, for instance the edges of a grayish building against a blue sky. By the way this happens whether I'm at 100 or 400 ISO. I will try to upload some examples later today.<br>

Anyway, I was getting to the point where I thought something was wrong with my sensors or in-camera settings. So yesterday, I asked our in-house Photoshop wizard about it. She told me to try opening the .NEF files with CS4 instead of Capture NX. She was right. Strangely enough, the RAW file in CS4 showed no fringing (or so little it's not worth mentioning) while the exact same file in NX has excessive fringing.<br>

Are you familiar with that issue in CaptureNX (not to mention that it often freezes on my Mac and PC...)?<br>

Thanks.</p>

<div></div>

<p>Hi,<br>

last year I moved to digital and bought a D300 with a 18-200 and a 50 mm 1.8 Nikon lenses. I've have some good results but more and more an awful amount of fringing is showing on my images. I try to sell my images with stock agencies and many of them are rejected due to that reason.<br>

Does anybody why this is occurring? Are the sensors or the lenses to blame?<br>

Thank you in advance</p>