frank_gary

And this is why I love photo.net I always get the best advice here. I'm gonna head to the local store that carries used and

start trying those out. All the mp of the D800 are calling but I definitely need to try the 610 and 750.

 

For those wondering about lens. I've got a 35 f2, 50 1.4D, and the 70-300 VR. All Nikon. I'm probably going to pick up

something fast on the wide or short end soon as well.

Thanks.

<p>I'm looking to upgrade from my D80 to something better and newer for all around photography. My budget is in the $1,000 to $1,500 range for a body only. I'm looking to drop the D80 mostly due to the weak high ISO performance and poor resolution. I'm not sure that I need a ton more resolution but I do frequently find myself wishing I had more once I've cropped an image to 4:5 or tighter. I've mostly been looking at used in order to get a body with the better ergonomics and faster control that I would find on top of the line cameras that are out of that price range new. I have a preference for FX as all my lenses are already FX. Weight and complexity don't worry me as my favorite body right now is a F5 and the new digital body will likely share space in the bag with it on trips out.</p>

<p>I'm going to have to ask the body to cover a pretty wide range of tasks. Day to day family shots, landscape, planned portraits, and light action (animals at the zoo, festivals). I'm not planning to do any sports shots with it.</p>

<p>My biggest challenge in comparing bodies is that there are no good comparisons between different generations of camera, the D3 vs D800 for example, just those automated sites that only care about resolution.</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

<p>The time has come for me to calibrate all of my monitors. I"m planning to buy used as I do with all my gear. looking through the archives I have a feel for which calibrators are well respected but wanted to ask this question with a twist. Buying used what system do you feel offers the best value and performace?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I use SoftTALK 2000 to download shooting data from my Nikon F5. I just tried to download some recent rolls and got the following error "Invalid argument to date encode." I have no idea what may be causing this as the camera has downloaded just fine before, and the date data seems to be correct. I started getting this error about halfway through a roll of film and thought that it may be related to the partial roll but after finishing the roll and adding a few more I still get the error. I know this is a pretty random error on a little used program but figured if anyone knew how to fix it it would be the this group. Thank you in advance for your help.</p>

<p>I just got some slides back and it was suggested that I rate my slide film at a 1/3 slower to improve saturation. This was recommended for both velvia and Fuji provia 100F. I'm a bit confused about this. It seems to be that as exposure goes up (which I'm doing by rating lower right?) then we are mixing white into the pure color and therefore causing the saturation will become lower. Could someone explain how increasing exposure increases saturation because it just doesn't seem right to me. Thanks</p>

<p>Ohh as for what is holding the chart it is a gloss bar stool. Lighting was provided by an SB28 pointed at the white ceiling at full power. Background is white seamless paper. I wouldn't read anything into the overexposure on the chair but of course things should be read of the chart. On the whole though I think I prefer scanning slides since I know at once if the problem whas my shot or my scanning.</p>

<p>Frozen Water<br>

Nikon F5, Provia 100F 70-300 lens 1/2 sec @ f40</p><div></div>

<p>I believe I have found the problems. Vuescan was very worried about clipping blacks so I needed to set it to clip 1% of those (not to mention finding the correct graph to be looking at). Aside from that I was saving as a digital negative and when brought into Lightroom or Photoshop Camera Raw wants to set brightness to +50 which causes a lot to blow out. I have now built a preset that sets exposure, brightness, contrast and basically everything else to 0 along with applying a Camera Calibration that was built using the colorchecker program. I think it looks a lot better though I think I see a lot of grain or digital noise in the image as well. Does this look like a good starting point for going into photoshop to yall?</p>

<p><img src="http://garysnaps.smugmug.com/Other/Pnetposts/Portra-160VC-Image/1226153853_b4XSy-M.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="392" /></p>

<p>I'm sure that I could adjust the settings but to be quite honest I'm not sure where to begin. I've been using mostly slide film scanned as image and saved as a digital negative so all my adjustments were in lightroom or photoshop. What I'm not sure of is if my exposure setting might be off or if there is a brightness setting that needs to be fiddled with. Or on the other hand maybe I need to spend quality time in photoshop I really don't know. </p>

<p>I have been having trouble scanning some portra negative film. I am using vuescan and a Canon 9000F. When vuescan is set to use negative film the scans come out pale with low saturation and poor colors, if set to scans an image of the red channel is greatly exaggerated. You can see this in the attached images. When vuescan is set to scan is a negative I am using the embedded profile for portra film. I'm not sure if the issue is related to vuescan doing a poor job correcting for the negative film or if there's something else going on what are your opinions? I've also attached a digital image taken under the same conditions to demonstrate that the issue was not lighting or bad settings. My reason for shooting the Colorchecker is that it would help me get a calibration setting for lightroom that I could as a good starting place for my images. <br>

<img src="http://garysnaps.smugmug.com/Other/Pnetposts/NIKON-D803482652DSC3027/1224910623_YCdmH-M.jpg" alt="" /><br>

ColoChecker Shot with D80<br>

<img src="http://garysnaps.smugmug.com/Other/Pnetposts/Portra-160VC-Image/1224902983_2StAF-M.jpg" alt="" width="295" height="450" /><br>

Portra 160VC Scanned as Image<br>

<img src="http://garysnaps.smugmug.com/Other/Pnetposts/113Scan-110319-0027/1224899044_jF9uL-M.jpg" alt="" /><br>

Portra 160VC Scanned as Negative</p>

<p>I'm wondering if it makes any difference in quality if I render a .PSD file into a JPEG using lightroom or photoshop. Currently I use Lightroom to edit the NEF file and then if needed export it to photoshop elements as a 16bit PSD, in photoshop the file is then converted to 8 bit (biggest drawback to elements I've found so far), after all my edits I review the file again in lightroom. In general I may then want to get a full quality jpeg for printing or the like. What I'm not sure of is if I would be better off flatening the image in photoshop and applying sharpening to it or just doing the sharpening in lightroom and exporting as a full quality jpeg from there. My gut tells me since they are from the same company it shouldn't make a difference but I know there are some subtle differences between these two programs. What does everyone think?</p>

<p>Ok this makes sense. Basically the lens over the CCD can't resolve more than 1700 DPI. For the sake of my understanding lets say that is 5 "lines" wide (9600/1700). When set to 9600 DPI I step one line (9600th of an inch) at a time and get the average of the 5 lines around where it should be rather than the one line I would get if everything were perfect. Thus the "smoother" color changes but no additional detail. After all I know there is detail not being pulled out as I can't see the grain as I can on my microscope :).</p>

<p>Ok so as I understand it what is happening here is as follows. If I had three pixels next to each other one white then one gray then one black scanning at a higher resolution say 5 pixels would simply result in two more shades of gray being "interpreted" as being between the white and black pixels regardless of if there were or not. is that right. And if so does that mean that scanning at at a higher resolution is really just adding as much detail as running something like genuine fractals on the image? That link mentions reducing file size without losing the real info in the scan how is that achieved?</p>

<p>If it would be better for me to post in a form different from TIFF please let me know I just figured that was the best way to give you the full image that I'm seeing without anything adjusting it. </p>

<p>9600 DPI</p>

<p>4800 DPI</p>

<p>2400 DPI only the P from the word Presto</p>

<p> I’m a little confused as to if the higher resolutions my scanner can produce are doing any good or just adding to file size. To try this out I started running 48 bit (16 per channel) scans from 600 to 4800 DPI. I then evaluated the same physical area of the film to the same size on screen, not 100% for each scan but rather so that the “P” filled my viewing area. My thought was that once I stopped obtaining additional improvements in the area I would call that my top scan resolution and not bother losing space and scan time going higher. From some reviews I read I expected to top out around 2400 DPI, this also seemed consistent with the many “MP of film” posts I have found here and elsewhere. However, to my eye it seems that there is more information to be obtained in the “smoothness” of the letter curve and this is where I was mostly finding differences. I do feel that the cement texture is mostly captured and don’t believe there is anymore to pull out there. To confirm my feeling about more smoothness to be had I checked the image out under a 100X Lupe (read very nice microscope) and would say that what I’m seeing on screen is not everything that I’m seeing in the slide. <br>

Tech Details: Canon 900F scanner, shot on a Nikon F5 with 35mm lens, Astia Film, Vuescan for software, the images are straight out of the scanner, saved as .dng imported into elements (no changes in camera RAW) cropped down to the P and saved as full qual TIFFs so I wouldn't lose bit depth.<br>

What do you think? Is there anything extra in these higher resolutions or am I seeing nothing more than an upressing program would give me? Where would you call the upper resolution limit of this scanner? Personally I doubt that this little scanner is giving me a 121MP images (ok technically it is but you know what I mean). </p>

<p>Ok true no one has ever said the F5 was a simple lightweight cam. I guess my point truely was that body and batteries only the F5 weighs about half the RB and plenty of people would be happy carrying two of them all day. I'll agree that its the addition of a tripod that makes medium format a pain to carry. I use a bit of climbing "string" and a carabiner to snap it to my think tank bag. </p>

<p>Just a quick note on the weight of the RB as I have been looking hard at them as well. When trying one in a shop with one of the larger zoom lenses I did not find the weight to be horrible and even had delusions of hand holding that were note entirely busted. I just weighed my Nikon F5 with a 70-300 and flash/film and it came in a bit over 6 pounds which is more than the weight Mamiya quotes for the RB67 Pro SD with 127 lens and the 120 back. I would consider what I weighed with the minimum carry setup for that camera (I wasn't including extra lenses, spare batteries, more than the film already in the cam etc). When I was looking to buy the only real concern I had was the number of backs I would want to carry as well as fitting everything into a shoulder bag I already owned.</p>

<p>I just did the exercise myself and have the Canon 9000F sitting on my desk now. I can't remember where it was but I found a scanner review site that claimed they were getting slightly better useable resolution of the canon. I think I have so issues with focus on the film (my skills or the scanner I can't tell yet) Also I believe the canon is slightly newer than epson's offereings. Mine shipped with Elements 8 not the newer elements 9</p>

<p>I just got a normal 3.5mm mono to 1/4 mono cable to use in the setup and the old studio strobe fire rate has certainly gone up it seems. When I tried hooking up a cable splitter so that both the strobe and SB28 would be triggered from a single PC connection to the camera I got an interesting result. the SB28 will fire while the strobe does not. Any idea why this would be happening? I'm thinking that it's possible that due to different sync voltages the SB28 triggering is preventing the strobe from working but I'm clueless. Any thoughts?</p>

<p>As far as filters for the night stuff I found in my own tests that a even a high end filter on my 35 F2.0 lens added massive flare and ghosting in my opinion. What I did to test this was simple. Point your camera at a recessed ceiling light in a dimly lit room and start shooting away. Be sure to place the light in different areas of the frame and even outside the frame. Shoot at various f stops and ISOs, I also played with way under exposing the light to way blowing it out. As I said after doing this myself I tossed the filter for this one lens as I didn't consider the flare and ghost risk worth the physical protection the filter provided. I did grab the cheap lens hood to make up for some of that protection. I gotta say though it's your call as to the value of your post processing time vs the potential loss of a few hundred dollar lens (assuming worst case outcome).<br>

To add flash off camera you may just be able to walk along the side of the train manually popping a small strobe. I've seen it done for high end car shoots but that was in a completely dark warehouse. <br>

By the way I gotta tell you the shoot looks great to me.</p>

<p>After playing with the setup some more it seems that the problem is in my studio strobe rather than the sync cable. When hooked up to my SB-28 I got 100% fire rate. I'm thinking that the problem is if any piece of the audio equipment converts between stereo and mono as it shorts the tip and sleeve. Once I get hold of a 3.5 mono to 1/4 mono male cables I"ll be able to test more. I'll keep everyone up to date on it. </p>