scott_jones2

In follow up to my July 5, 2008 post, I have received word back from the Better Business Bureau of New York that all

attempts to contact Focus Magazine by telephone and letter have been unsuccessful. They have told me that

they are therefore downgrading Focus Magazine's rating to "unsatifactory".

 

I eventually received issue #16, several months late, but have never received the issue #14 which Mr. Spivak

personally promised to send me.

 

Weird. Great magazine. Poorest business I have ever dealt with. An FTC complaint still remains a choice for those

who wish to pursue it.

This may help:

 

Better Business Bureau Serving Metropolitan New York

(New York, NY)

257 Park Avenue South

New York, NY 10010-7384

Phone: (212)533-6200

Fax: (212)477-4912

Email: inquiry@newyork.bbb.org

Web: http://www.newyork.bbb.org

Has online ability to submit complaints

 

and

 

FTC (Federal Trade Commission) consumer complaint process

https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

Followup on my May 28, 2008 post above. David finally contacted me by email because of my post here and not from specifically answering any emails I had sent (which were never answered). He said he would send me issue #14 right away. Never arrived and all followup emails except one continue to be unanswered even when using the email address that he used to email me (so I know that it is a working email address).

 

Issue #16 has not arrived as of today.

 

I have given up and consider my subscription a complete loss.

 

Perhaps more issues of my subscription will show up; God only knows if and when....

 

Buyer beware.

All emails have gone unanswered.

 

Still waiting for issue #16.

 

Never received issue #14

I am looking for advice on photoshop teachers for workshops for advanced

photoshop work. I have made the switch to digital and know Photoshop CS2 quite

well and print color and B/W on my Epson R2400.

 

I am looking to make the next step in expertise for image handling and

printing. I had taken the John Sexton workshops in traditional darkroom work

and found them to be the best workshops I have ever taken and they made a huge

difference in my work as well as being a great experience.

 

I am looking for the equivalent in the digital domaine and my main concern is

with excellent, prepared, linear teachng skills. Some have mentioned George

deWolfe, otheres Jeff Schewe.

 

Who has the best teaching skills out there in your opinion?

 

Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

Scott

These comments are all helpful so far. Wojtek, I too am interested in your further comments on your set up and equipment. Also can you direct us to some pictures that you have been taking with this gear? Are the dog pictures in your Photo.net portfolio done this way?

 

Scott

Greetings,

 

Can members discuss with me the practicality of using one or two

Canon 580ex's as home studio lights for still life work and perhaps

some portrait work. Or are these units just not powerful enough?

 

I would probably want to use at least one with a softbox, but don't

know if a softbox would cut the light so much on these units that

they would be just too dim.

 

If you feel that they can be used, where to I look for softboxes and

umbrellas and extras for this type of a set up? Is there equipment

designed for using these types of flashes?

 

Or should I just get some simple studio lighting? I own one 580ex

already, but nothing else.

 

Thanks for helping me see the pros and cons.

 

Scott

Thanks NK Guy, that link you gave was really helpful. I will be getting the more expensive Canon product after reading that. Thanks for your help!

 

Scott

Greetings:

 

I am getting ready to purchase a new 5D and am picking my

accessories. I plan on using mirror lockup fairly frequently and

know that I can use the 2 sec auto timer, but am considering the

above noted "cable release" Can users give me feedback as to whether

they like this device, if it works well, or any other comments about

it. Thanks in advance.

 

Scott

Canon 10D with mirror lock up. My exposure times were very long and perhaps there was some camera shake even with the tripod. I will try some more shots today. I appreciate your ongoing comments!

Thank you. Those were two excellent responses and helped me understand. I adjusted the position of the tripod to make the field of view equivalent for the two shots, so the change in exposure must have been due to the aforementioned "bellows factor" if I can use a term from my large format experience. The two pictures looked essentially identical when viewed in PS.

 

Lstly I was quite surprised that when viewed at 100%, there seemed to be no difference at all in sharpness between the two lenses after very careful viewing. I didn't expect this and thought there would be a noticeable increased sharpness in the 100mm macro.

 

Hmmmmm.....

Hello there:

 

I am testing the 100/2.8 macro against my 28-135 IS for sharpness

and am considering purchasing the macro. But when I tested these

lenses I discovered something strange (to me). When I set the 28-135

to 100mm, the field of view was very different from the 100mm macro.

Also the matrix meter reading was quite difeerent needing about

double the exposure time for the macro with the f-stop held constant.

 

Now there is probably something very basic here that I don't

understand. Can someone educate me? TIA

 

Scott

All helpfull so far. Do you have any experience with the luniQuest type device which is one of those attach-on soft bouncers or any of those wild looking softbox type affairs?

<p>Greetings:</p>

 

<p>I am having a great time with my new 580ex flash when I can

bounce. I would like some guidance on what to use if I cannot bounce

and want to use more diffused light. I have seen the LumiQuest

devices and the Sto-fen device. Can the members please give me some

advice of what type of device to use and why when not having a good

bounce situation? Thanks in advance!</p>

 

<p>Scott</p>

 

<p><a href="http://www.scottjonesphoto.com"

target="_blank">ScottJonesPhoto.com</a></p>

As I have gotten older (50) and have noticed more hand shake, I have found IS invaluable especially in a walk around lens when I might be moving fast. It really is remarkable. So I will be replacing my 28-135 IS with the new 25-105 IS and moving up from the 10D to the 5D.

Greetings,

 

<p>I have a basic monitor question. I am doing more and more inkjet

printing now and much less darkroom work.</p>

 

<p>In the past I was always told that CRTs were far supreior to LCDs

for digital photography (color and B&W for me). However I am

wondering if that is still so. I would love to clear off my desk

from my big behemoth CRT and get either one or two LCDs perhaps 17

0r 19 inchers. In the past I was not happy with the rendering of

text or motion on LCDs but this was a long time ago that I looked at

this. My latest issue of PC World highly recommends the top grade

DELL or NEC LCD monitors.</p>

 

<p>I am using a PC with XP Home, fast processor and 1.5 GB RAM and

have an anolog and digital out for monitors. Presently I am using a

very old Compaq 17" (color calibrated with Monoco). I print on my

R2400 printer</p>

 

<p>Question is: Are LCDs now ecellent for color calibrated work (I

would use my MOnaco)? Is the old bias toward CRTs a thing of the

past? Are these brands sufficient for high quality work?</p>

 

<p>Thanks for bringing me up to date on what works well!</p>

 

Scott

<p><a href="http://www.scottjonesphoto.com"

target="_blank">ScottJonesPhoto.com</a></p>

Greetings!

I am considering switching from my current Manfrotto 3401B legs

(Aluminum) to the 055MF3 carbon fiber 3 segment set that looks to be

the same heft as my current set.

 

Can any users give me soem impressions of this leg set before I

purchase?

 

Thanks

Greetings:

 

I would love you all to critique my digital image filing plan. Am I

on the right track here? If you have any helpful critisisms, could

you please suggest alternate steps and why you think that is better.

Thanks in advance for your help. I am anxious to set up a

reproduceable system to handle my file naming/saving.

 

I use Portfolio 7 for cataloging, and do all my correcting/editing

in Photoshop CS on a Windows XP platform. My Monitor is calibrated

with Monaco OptixXR. My plan is as follows:

 

Save all original files and make them "read only" so that I can't

accidently screw them up.

 

Any files that I open and edit will be duplicated and saved in PSD

format with all layers intact and no sharpening applied yet. I will

append the letter "e" to designate "edited".

 

Any files that I go on to print will be duplicated from the "e"

file, resized, flattened, and sharpened for the appropriate output

goal and saved as a jpeg if for web use or a Tiff if for my printer

(currently Epson R800 and waiting for the larger format version that

is coming). I will append the size of the print (eg 8x10) or the web

size (eg 400H) to the file name to be able to identify this file's

purpose at a later date.

 

Sound good? I want to start off with good habits from the beginning.

 

Thanks

These answers are really helping. My test image was of objects specifically in the far blue and far green ranges. I picked objects of all kinds. I was amazed that there really was no real visible difference. I am beginning to think that all this talk about the differences between the two spaces is just so much techno-talk. I am now wondering if it really is important in any way to set up my Photoshop CS color preferences to "convert to AdobeRGB" and perhaps just keep everything in sRGB. Theoretically my Epson R800 printer has a gamut larger than sRGB, so maybe the AdobeRGB color space on the computer is a reasonable thing to do....

 

Cheers

Greetings:

 

Well I have been doing a lot of testing on my Canon 10D with the

AdobeRGB setting both with jpeg shooting and RAW shooting. I have

done numerous comparisons with bright colored object collections to

really test the gamut of colors capturable. I have done soft

proofing of each picture to my usual paper and printer profile. I

have also checked the "out of gamut" feature in Photoshop CS. For

the life of me I cannot see any significant differences between the

captures using sRGB vs Adobe RGB settings of this camera even though

the AdobeRGB setting is touted as being able to capture a wider

color gamut.

 

Can any of the forum members give me some feedback about this issue

and whether they have seen any differences. If there really aren't,

then it seems silly to even bother with the AdobeRGB setting.

 

Thanks in advance for any insight you can spare...

Greetings:

 

I have gotten fairly into digital now and am accumulating lots of

files and I want to set up a sensible working habit for handling my

files. I shoot a Canon 10D, use Portfolio 7 for cataloging, and do

all my correcting/editing in Photoshop CS on a Windows XP platform.

My Monitor is calibrated with Monaco. My plan is as follows:

 

Save all original files either as RAW or Jpeg depending on how I

shot them and make them "read only" so that I can't accidently screw

them up.

 

Any files that I open and edit will be duplicated and saved in PSD

format with all layers intact and no sharpening applied yet. I will

append the letter "e" to designate "edited".

 

Any files that I go on to print will be duplicated from the "e"

file, resized, flattened, and sharpened for the appropriate output

goal and saved as a jpeg if for web use or a Tiff if for my printer

(Epson R800). I will append the size of the print (eg 8x10) or the

web size (eg 400H) to the file name to be able to identify this

file's purpose at a later date.

 

Am I on the right track here? If you have any helpful critisisms,

could you please suggest alternate steps and why you think that is

better. Thanks in advance for your help. I am anxious to set up a

reproduceable system to handle my file naming/saving.

absolutely, I am very thankful for the other comments!

 

Scott

wow, the seventh answer addressed the question. Thanks for that! Yes, an odd method, but the results that I have seen are really good and the ability to build in "tone", very handy. Here is a link that compares the different methods of conversion, some mentioned above, for anyone who wants to look into this further.

 

http://www.designbyfire.com/000100.html

 

Scott

I have never heard this. Do you have a source or are other members able to make a comment???

 

Scott

Good Morning:

 

I am asking some questions about a specific Photoshop color to B&W

conversion technique. There are a few aspects of the technique that

I wonder why they are done. The technique works very well and is

noted below. My questions about it follow the technique summary:

 

-Convert color image to lab mode.

 

-Select only Lightness channel and convert to grayscale.

 

-Ctrl+click thumbnail in the channel mixer or layer palette to load

a selection.

 

-invert the selection and convert to RGB.

 

-Create a solid color adjustment layer and fill with neutral or

other toned color and set blending mode to "multiply".

 

-Adjust contrast and opacity of the fill layer as needed.

 

-Print

 

This technique is touted by many professionals and at the Epson

Print Academies. Here are my questions:

 

The Ctrl+click on the thumbnail part of this technique mystifies me.

When I do it, it seems that some random selection shows up in the

picture. Why is this step done, how does Photoshop pick this

seemingly random selection, and why do I have to invert it?

 

Secondly, why is this fill layer used instead of just staying with

the lightness channel? I understand that choosing a color lets you

tone the print to any color, but it also appears that this fill

layer has some special properties which add to the success of the

conversion.

 

Lastly, why is the "multiply" blending mode used?

 

Thanks for any help you can give me on understanding what is going

on in this very successful technique.

 

Scott