frank_ernens

I seem to make a lot of typos/slips posting on this site - more later, on why. I generally notice them in a couple of

minutes, and either leave them alone if obvious (e.g. negative meaning, missing words) or make an immediate follow-up

with the correction. You'd need 2 to 3 minutes to complete the edit; 60s is not long enough.

As to why, I think it's because the confirmation screen renders text with lines that are too long to easily read. In the

forums, the ads on the right make the lines short enough. If you added an empty box to the right in the confirmation

screen, or increased the borders, I think the need for this feature would go away. Resizing my browser window won't narrow the text lines.

I think you should tread carefully allowing edits. They are widely abused elsewhere.

Oh, I never really answered your question if you did understand focal length. 300mm is "long", 400mm is about the limit

without big tripods and fancy gimball heads. There's a 500mm mirror lens that fits your Minolta which can be hand held.

Tanya wrote:

<p>

<i>allows me to see over the moon</i>

<p>

I wonder whether you are confused between fast and long here. Length is the focal length, measured in mm, and is the

28 and 210 in your 28-210mm zoom. Speed is the f-stop, and you want it only to see and shoot in dark places or to blur

away the background. You probably don't want to blur away the background in this case.

<p>

A fast lens with fast film will get you a shot inside a tomb or passageway if flash isn't allowed, as I've read it isn't. A

wide would be best, and I'd have taken my 21mm with my old film gear. Noreen says above you can't photograph in the

tombs at all, now, so if there aren't any other interiors a fast lens isn't much benefit.

<p>

When you use a lens like a 24mm, and even more the 21mm, you have to learn to "get up close" and compose the

picture with either something in the foreground or, more likely for this subject, strong geometry. It takes practice, which

means you'd need to find the lens and then try it out - meaning, running to the lab each time to get your film developed -

all in the 3-4 weeks you have. That could easily turn from fun into a death march.

<p>

If you're going to burn as much film as you did in London, the second body will solve your film-changing problem. Just wait a few minutes

and

one's free. I don't understand why you're choosing slow film for night and fast for the day. Is it because of reciprocity

failure on the fast film? Do you know about "sunny 16"? Together with the rule that to hand-hold (no IS, no tripod) you need to keep shutter

speed above 1/focal length (in secs and mm), that will let you estimate what film speed you need with that lens. Overall, ISO 400 is a

useful speed.

<p>

How long a lens do you need? If the boat is in the middle of the Nile (2km across in many places) you can't shoot the

shore and get anything much interesting without very special equipment. So I have to believe the cruise company will

stick close to one shore precisely so people can take pictures with the typical 200-300mm lens. You're not getting answers here, so ask

them!

F-stops: yes, lower numbers are faster, but less is in focus. For travel, you often want everything in focus anyway, so a

slow zoom lens is OK, but then you need faster film. And all ISO 400 films are the <i>same</i> speed - ISO is the

International Standards Organisation and all the national governments make it illegal to say something follows such a

standard when it doesn't.

<p>

Filters: a circular polariser would be useful on your trip to cut glare from the Nile, and maybe to darken the sky. But,

especially when sunscreen and sand is involved, putting them on and taking them off can be a menace.

<p>

I don't see how having two bodies will help if you are now going to use three kinds of film. I think you're much better off

saying each day "today I'm only going to use such-and-such kind of film", informed, of course, by knowledge of the

itinerary and suggestions people make here. Then you only have to carry one camera and lens that day. And you don't

have to buy another body. (Another lens, a fast one, <i>might</i> be handy - Minolta made some crackers - but I'm

guessing it's a frill.)

Mention of filters reminds me that most people use a yellow filter with black and white to darken the sky (yellow is the

complementary colour of blue). ISO 400 is a common speed for black and white, which gives you a handy 2 extra stops

in your slow zoom.

<p>

An 81A/B/C filter is made for removing the blue cast when shooting in shade; the light there is from the blue sky rather

than the sun. It's a good thing to have with you if shooting slides, but with film the lab will usually correct the colour for

you - and also correct away such use as Joseph suggests.

<p>

Fuji films available in Europe are shown <a href="http:/www.fujifilm.co.uk/film/film.html">here</a>. According to that,

PRO 800Z replaces NPZ 800. I would be cautious about using ISO 800 speed film in the desert with an older camera,

because you could run out of shutter speed.

<p>

I forgot to mention that when you are deciding whether the zoom lens you bought is good enough, you should use a print

the size you eventually want. Better lenses and films can make bigger prints.

If you're shooting both black and white and colour, you'll probably want two bodies so you don't have to reload (and hope

the film is aligned) or finish the film. I would go mad with two bodies that didn't take the same lenses - imagine if you

wanted to take a black and white photo with one lens and that one was on the colour camera.

<p>

You should definitely shoot a roll of the film you plan to take and get it developed where you plan to get your Egypt

photos developed. I speak from bitter experience: all of my Papua New Guinea shots from the 1980s were ruined by bad

development; only in the last few years have many of them been printable at all, through the magic of Photoshop. Shooting a roll

will also tell you whether you are happy with your Tokina 28-210mm zoom. If you <i>are</i> I would seriously consider

taking just that lens and the Minolta camera and no other camera. If you <i>aren't</i>, I would not take the lens at all;

when will you be getting to Luxor again?

<p>

The 24mm is a good all-purpose wide for an experienced photographer, but I'm not sure it's easy to use for a novice.

28mm is a very good focal length.

<p>

If by "large" you mean "long" (i.e. long focal length) then be aware that anything longer than 200mm is hard to keep

stable without a tripod or Image Stabilisation (gyro in the lens). Often there's little call for such long lenses travelling

anyway, though someone who has been to Egypt can say better than me. I have shot a lot from boats and ships, and

180-200mm is a very good focal length for that, long enough to capture the shore and short enough to keep stable; forget

about using a tripod on deck.

<p>

I can't give specific recommendations on print film that aren't out of date. I did use and like Kodak Gold 100 through the 90s because I

liked the colours.

There's a natural tendency to hold one side lower than the other, because of the way our skeletons are made and the

fact that we don't see through a central eye. (I forget which side is always lower, but you often see it in films when a non-

photographer plays a photographer.) Every beginning photographer who uses a camera they hold up to their eye has to

learn to compensate for this. It's much easier with a bigger camera and lens, but beginners usually have the smallest they

could find that does the job.

So if you have a consistent tilt on every shot, it's not you but a rite of passage you have yet to pass through. The camera makers can't

really fix it with an angled grip or anything clever like that, because then those of us who do it so automatically we've forgotten which side

used to be lower will all get crooked horizons. So it's like Western musical notation or English spelling - everyone's stuck with it forever.

With the camera held correctly (right hand gripping camera, left hand cradling under lens or lens and camera), tuck your elbows in.

One will be in more than the other when the camera is level.

The most recent <a href="http://web.canon.jp/imaging/eos5d/eos5d_firmware-e.html">firmware update</a> supports at least 16GB.

I've applied the update and it hasn't cause any problems. I don't use large cards myself.

Jacopo wrote:

<p>

<i>Sometime relative is better, sometime perceptual is better.</i>

<p>

and Andrew wrote:

<p>

<i>I'm a little confused (as I was originally) as to how the various black point adjustments can be applied...</i>

<p>

In fact, there are three rendering intents of interest to photographers: perceptual, and relative colorimetric with and

without Adobe's Black Point Compensation.

<p>

Relative colorimetric will "block up" the shadows because everything blacker than the blackest the printer can do will be

clipped to that. Adding black point compensation will map true black to the printer's deepest black, at the expense of

lightening the midtones. In other words, relative colorimetric with black point compensation is like perceptual applied only

to the luminosity.

<p>

Whether to turn black point compensation on is a matter of judgement and taste. Photoshop ships with it <i>on</i> - that

is, it isn't really using relative colorimetric according to the ICC's definition - but there's a checkbox under Color Settings

and one under Convert Profile. As inks improve, it should matter less.

<p>

Adobe's definition of black point compensation is at <a

href="http://www.color.org/AdobeBPC.pdf">www.color.org/AdobeBPC.pdf</a>.

<p>

Because I send out for printing, I get to choose the rendering intent (and whether to use black point compensation) when

converting to the printer's profile independent of what rendering intent is used for the monitor (the one in Edit | Color

Settings). For the monitor, I want relative colorimetric with black point compensation on when editing, so I can see

gradation in the shadows. I can see that relative colorimetric with black point compensation off could be what you'd want

if that's also what you're using for the printer and you want to hold a print up to the monitor. And I can see that you'd

want to use perceptual rendering intent for the monitor if you're manipulating something with a lot of colours outside the

monitor's gamut.

<p>

Don't forget that whoever made your printer profile had to assume an illuminant, which is generally D50 (5004K daylight

spectrum). This means you either use daylight or a suitable task light. I've had some success with a particular brand of

5500K compact fluorescent, but so far have only been looking at transparencies and Crystal Archive prints using it; it

might be different with inkjet prints, which have a much wider gamut.

<p>

If you want to hold the print up beside the monitor and compare colours, you want to set the monitor's white point to D50.

A monitor white point of 6500K is commonly recommended, probably because sRGB uses that. Another reason might be

that LCD backlights tend to have a whitepoint around there or higher (the "native white point" of the monitor).

<p>

If there's no ink on the paper and the paper isn't white, then... you don't have white. Beyond some point, chromatic

adaptation is not going to cut it.

<p>

Andrew Garrard wrote:

<p>

<i>As for Photoshop's internal dithering, I have to eat humble pie, having just performed an experiment...</i>

<p>

No, I should. It's a settable option, under Color Settings, and also available in Convert Profile. It doesn't apply with 8 bits

per channel. I think this means I should never see dithering even with it turned on, since I edit in 16 bits and convert

profiles in 16 bits and only narrow to 8 bits once the file has been converted to the printer's profile.

Two paints (white and black) may well have the same infrared absorption characteristics, but it hardly matters, as most of

the energy in sunlight is in the visible and UV parts of the spectrum (higher frequency, therefore higher energy).

I was reminded watching a documentary that went out last night in Australia that the effect has a name: the albedo effect.

The Arctic sea ice absorbs 25% of the sun's energy (it's white), and the ocean absorbs 93% (it's dark blue), hence the

concern aboiut it melting.

Andrew Garrard wrote:

<p>

<i>...you might need to have a colorimetric rendering intent...</i>

<p>

I suspected this was where your misunderstanding was. There is <i>always</i> a rendering intent, since the

engine always needs to know what to do with out-of-gamut colours. Photoshop CS3's help gives a succint and clear

explanation under Color Management | Color Settings | About Rendering Intents if you can't digest the ICC stuff. Based

on the complaints in your first post, you appear to have set rendering intent to "Perceptual" when converting to the

printer's device RGB. Photographers usually want "Relative Colorimetric". "Absolute colorimetric" does what you asked for with your

mauves, but is not useful because the paper probably isn't the same white as your monitor.

<p>

<i>...the vast majority of many images which the printer can represent will also be within the monitor's gamut</i>

<p>

No, unless you buy a very expensive monitor.

<p>

<i>my LCD *can* accept an internal LUT, but it uses spatial dithering to add the extra colours and therefore won't do any

better than Photoshop's internal dithering</i>

<p>

No monitor designed for photographic work does dithering, either spatial or temporal. The internal LUTs are at least 10

bits per channel and their output is fed to the DACs. But then, your monitor is designed for CAD/LSI; its high resolution is a disadvantage

for photographic work, and I don't see either S-IPS or PVA there in the specs. Photoshop isn't doing any internal dithering, and neither

should

the colour engine be. Only an inkjet printer driver needs to think about the 8 subtractive inks and combining droplets, and the colour

management has already happened by then.

<p>

I'm not going to correct any more incorrect responses in this thread. Colour management works - plenty of photographers

and graphics design professionals know that, and know how to use it, and some of them have even posted in this thread.

Andrew Garrard wrote:

<p>

<i>Since, with a DVI connection on an old card, the monitor can display exactly the 16777216 values that the frame

buffer can represent, any change to the LUT will only reduce the number of colours that I can show.</i>

<p>

You are absolutely correct, and the way to avoid banding is to spend more money on the monitor. A decent monitor

allows for hardware adjustment of brightness, and of RGB individually. There is an additional step early in the calibration process in which

you work the controls on the front of the screen until the software sees the correct white. Then it does the amusement park display thing,

and when it has calculated the transform you will see it is closer to 1:1 than it otherwise would have been, and gradation is better. More

expensive monitors (e.g. Eizo

ColorEdge) come with an additional LUT in the monitor and the calibration software talks to that directly, so no human is needed to work

the buttons and that last bit of gradation is recovered.

Henry, you need to step out of chilly Britain, because if you lived in a hot country you would appreciate the white lenses.

White cars are measurably cooler than black ones when left in the sun (Mythbusters showed it if you don't believe me), but

no Australian needs to be told that. A black lens is absorbing the light, which is why it is black, and the energy from the

absorbed light has to go somewhere, be that as heat, electricity or whatever.

I'll try to be a bit clearer: the software should set TIFF ImageDescription = EXIF ImageDescription = IPTC Caption = DC

Description all the same, and I suspect Lightroom's Caption does that.

Not only *can* the EXIF ImageDescription be edited by software, it *must* be to maintain consistency with all the other

copies of the description in the file. And, indeed Photoshop CS3 does exactly that.

Margaret, the information you are seeking is spread across half a dozen technical documents from different

organisations. I'm not going to post links to them here because you need a solid computer science background to read

them and they run to several hundred pages. So really it is up to your software vendor to provide proper documentation

as to what text box sets what.

Someone who has Lightroom should verify this, but I would expect its Caption field sets all the copies of Description.

Title and Headline should normally be blank ("Title" is like a file name, and "Headline" is for use with newspapers.) Once

you know what Lightroom does, you can import a Paint Shop Pro file into it to see what that does. Or just use Lightroom,

since Adobe sets the de facto standard.

Most (perhaps all) laptops only have 18-bit displays, and fake 24-bit colour by "temporal dithering", which is a sneaky term

for very fast flickering. Some people say they can't calibrate their laptop screens because of that. Watch out for migraines

from the flicker too.

This isn't anything to do with selling to a non-Western country and it isn't anything to do with selling on the Site Whose

Name We Cannot Say Here. A similar thing happened to me years ago selling in a magazine listing within Australia. I

duly dispatched the item to a tiny rural hamlet in Tasmania, and waited and waited for my COD payment. Eventually I

rang the postmaster down there, who told me there were 32 COD items from all over Australia stacked up waiting for the

guy, some for weeks. He did whatever he had to do to waive the bounce period and sent all the items back to everyone.

There are people with mood swings who impulsively buy stuff and then think better of it the next day. It's a symptom of

some kinds of mental illness. Get in touch with your "buyer" and offer to cancel the sale - he might jump at it. Don't

expect a rational response.

I mistyped Mr Hulls's name. <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200607/s1696323.htm">Link</a>. Obviously

you could be stopped if acting suspiciously, whether or not cameras are involved.

Nick, have you actually tried taking pictures in the city? (Where are you from and how long have you been here? No

Australian would say "downtown".) You must remember that when the owners of the Southgate shopping complex put up

signs "prohibiting" photography, Attorney General Rob Hulls gave them a humiliating dressing down on television... and

the signs disappeared within days.

You do need a permit to photograph weddings in the Botanic Gardens. Can you imagine trying to walk around the place on a Saturday

if you didn't? But it's also crawling with tourists and locals taking pictures.

I agree the National Park "licensing" is a worry, and that's one reason I concentrate on NSW. But for personal use there

is no problem.

I'm not sure what Federal building here is worth taking a picture of, now the "Green Latrine" has been demolished and the GPO has turned

into Chaddy on Bourke.

Can you point me to information on what DSE tried on with Ken Duncan?

November normally brings one or two wild spring storms in Melbourne - torrential rain and 100km/h winds. Otherwise, it's

usually pleasantly warm and fine, occasionally very hot (40 C). This is considered the best month to go hiking in the

High Country, although you need to be prepared for the rare blizzard. The roads are all open to 2WD vehicles and chains

are not required, although it's not silly to carry them if you have some. Bushfires are another possible disruption, especially in the Mallee

where lightning starts them. Of course, the climate is very different on the other side of the continent.

The first Tuesday in November is Melbourne Cup Day, so if you plan to be here then or the preceding weekend or fly in

or out then you need to get accommodation and flights organized soon.

I'm not sure what you're asking about with "the right places". The 1 to 4 day trips already suggested will get you much

more than the 3 or 4 good shots you asked for if you keep your eyes open. If it's "standard shots" or cliches you're

asking for, the only ones I can think of are The Twelve Apostles (Ocean Rd.), Bridal Veil Falls (Ocean Rd.), The Nobbies

(Penguin Parade), the city from Williamstown (tourist cruise from Southgate or suburban train), and Fed Square from

Southgate.

If you can ride a horse I would suggest a trail riding tour through the High Country at that time of year.

Ted, you inspired me to do some testing using Photoshop CS3 (version 10.0). It turns out Adobe are using horizontal differencing (TIFF

tag 0x13d is 2) for 8-bit LZW but not using it (tag is missing, defaults to 1) for 16-bit LZW. Hence the "compressed" file

actually is bigger for photographic images, exactly as you said. ("Differencing" means that what is compressed is the

difference between adjacent R, G or B values rather than the values themselves.)

That arithmetic-type compression like LZW is useless for photographic images if you don't use differencing should have

been obvious to whoever wrote Adobe's code, but just in case it wasn't the TIFF standard goes to the trouble of pointing

it out on page 65.

Adam Petty wrote:

<p>

<i>TIFF is not compressed at all.</i>

<p>

TIFF does allow for lossless compression. Even if the Nikon uses that, the TIFF will still be larger for the reason Rainer gave.

Although information is measured in bits and file size is also measured in bits (well, multiples of 8 bits), they are not the

same thing. For example, if I write a single letter A to Z in a computer file I will probably use 8 bits to do that - but there is

only between 4 and 5 bits of information there, because 26 is between 16 and 32.