soboyle www.oboylephoto.co

Richard,

I went the route of printing my own books for a while, but could never find a satisfactory binding system that was cost effective. It's a labor intensive project putting together a book, and if your aim is to sell them at an affordable price, then you will want to find another way to go. Not to mention that your cost in ink & paper will be significant. If you goal is to produce some top quality books without regard to cost, then printing them yourself and finding a custom binder could be a good way to go, certainly the best way to maintain quality control.

Thanks Tom

Sharedink does good quality books, their binding is excellent, the printing is done with Iris offset press, 4 colors I believe, and the quality is good, not exceptional. Color matching being the biggest problem, not way off, but there is no profile, so you cant predict where the colors will go. If you going to print B&W, send RGB images anyway, because the grayscale just black printing is dreadful, better to have a slightly toned B&W than a thin awful neutral image I always say. I joined teh photographers program at sharedink, worth it, you get more disk space, and better choices on what papers you can print on.

I'm going to try Shutterfly for a cheap option, I'm sure quality will not be there, but the problem is that not many people will spring for a $125 book, which is what I have to sell the sharedink books for to make it worth the bother.

Looking for a place to get quality self published photo books printed.

I currently get my books printed at sharedink.com, their printing quality is

good, and the hard cover binding quality is excellent, but their pricing of

$59.95 for a 20 page book (printed both sides, so 40 full page images) is to

high. I'm looking to get quality hard cover books printed for about 1/2 that if

that is possible.

I see Shutterfly does offer a 20 page hard cover book for about $30, anyone

have any comments on quality? Other suggestions?

Any suggestion for Photo framers in the NYC/Brooklyn area?

Looking for quality and value.

Thanks

Thanks, just discoverd that while reading the ptlens users guide, no perspective distortion correction. Any other recommended products for correctiing perspective (aside from the nice TS lens)?

I find myself correcting images for perspective distortion quite

often lately, for example a shot tilted upward with a wide angle

lens - correcting to keep the vertical lines vertical.

I've been using photoshop CS2 lens distortion tool to make these

corrections, handy tool and does the job, but the images get a bit

soft, especially with major corrections. Any experience with PTLens,

seems like a good tool, but not sure if its any better than the

photoshop tool I already have.

Any recommendations for 3rd party batteries that do definitely work with the 5D charger? Perhaps my older ones are at the end of their life.

When I pop either of my 2 3rd party batteries into the 5D charger, it quickly goes thru the flashing red light sequences, then the red light stays lit, like its done charging. I've tried leaving it on the charger but it doesn't charge at all. To bad, because these 3rd party batteries have more capacity than the canon batteries.

Come to think of it, it was the 10D charger I was using to charge the 3rd party BP511 compatible batteries, not the 20D charger. There has been some change to the chargers over the last 3 generations, because it worked then, it doesnt now.

I have a few 1450 mAh li-ion batteries that I bought for my 20D, and

they recharged fine using the 20D battery charger. With the 5D

charger they will not charge, they indicate full charged by the

charger, but are in fact fully drained.

Anyone having a similar issue with the 5D charger?

I recommend a day trip out to Elephantina Island from Mumbai, nice trip, gives a different perspective of the massive city from the water, and the island is very nice with temples carved from th living rock. A couple photos here.

http://www.oboylephoto.com/india

The Maldives are gorgeous, but with limited photo ops above water, altho I could spend days just shooting the incredible colors of the water. I would make sure you are certified to scuba dive when you go, as some of the best imagery is under the waves.

A few shots from our visit some years ago.

http://www.oboylephoto.com/india/maldives1.htm

 

Recommend traveling light, I would just stick with digital myself, with something for backup just in case.

We just came back from 10 days on the cape. What other folks said about the traffic is right on. Your best finding an area you like and staying local rather than fighting traffic all day. We spent the week in Brewster and liked it a lot, and suprisingly some of the bay side beaches are excellent for swimming if you time the high tides right (its mud flats at low tide), my favorite beach was Paines creek, where there is a tidal inlet that makes for great swimming leading up to and away from high tide, lots of folks floating around on inflatable rafts and the like. The sunsets are spectacular here and on up to Rock Harbor. Good kayaking possibilities on the bay side, great tidal marshes and inlets that make for some great paddling (just dont make the mistake I did and show up at dawn without checking the tide charts, there wasnt any water to paddle on when I arrived because it was low tide). We stayed on a kettle pond, a small piece of paradise on the cape, from our deck overlooking the pond we couldnt see another house in site, it was like being in the adirondacks rather than the cape.

Photo possibilities really are around the great light at dawn and dusk, I got some nice minimal shots of the grass and sand dunes and beach in nice light, there isnt much else to shoot.

Great Alaskan Holidays is one of the bigger agency, I havent used them but almost did last year until we had to cancel our trip. They were good to deal with, they seem to come well recommended, and their pricing was competative. It is who I would use if I were to plan another trip. Be advised that you need to book a long time ahead to secure a rv for the summer season. Early spring and late fall are easier.

If anyone is interested, I have a 2200 for sale, $275. Have a look at the classifieds under Digital Imaging. I also have 28 ink carts for sale as well.

I've had 2 profiles done recently with Dry Creek, most recently about 3 weeks ago, Ethan has been very responsive and I received the profiles within days of sending them out. My impression is that dry creek is a very professional operation.

If your doing photo work on a laptop, then the screen quality should be of primary concern. The dell ultra sharp screens are pretty decent, and other have been happy with the sony screens.

Canon's wide lenses are the weak point in their lineup. In my testing the 17-40 was sharper than the 16-35, by quite a margin. On the other hand, it is one stop faster, and if you need the speed, then its the only way to go. For my part I returned the 16-35 and bought a arm load of other sharper lenses for the same price (50 1.4, 85 1.8, 10-22).

Has anyone tried to calibrate the sony screens? Do they calibrate well, or hold it for any time? I'll have to go have a look at the Sony X Brite screens and see how they hold up compaired to the Dell Ultrasharp.

Unfortunately I only have windows software to load, so a Mac will not work. Does anyone know Adobes stance on loading a photoshop license on both home and laptop machines?

My first computer was a Mac, and I was always impressed with their hardware, and I really like the sounds of OSX, the killer for me is not wanting to drop cash on mac versions of all the software I own. Otherwise a powerbook would be on the top of my list.

I need to pick up a laptop, it will be a second computer at home as

well as a travel computer that will get quite a bit of use as a

photo editing machine. Looking for suggestions on laptops with

screens that are good enough for editing, and ones that will hold

calibration reasonably well. I work on a desktop Dell ultrasharp at

work for CAD work, and I am impressed with its resolution, not sure

how it holds up for calibration but the image sharpness is

impressive. I think Dell only sells this on their tank sized

laptops, does anyone else make a similar screen for a smaller sized

laptop, 14-15 inch? Any of Toshibas or HP screens up to the task?

My ideal machine would be a 14 inch screen with ultrasharp, UXGA, 80

gigs, centrino processor, 1 gig ram.

I havent use the TS-E lenses, but your results are in line with my experience with the 24 2.8 and the 16-35, my 17-40 beat them both so they both went back. The 16-35 is just way overpriced in my view, if it were a few hundred $ less it might be worth the edge softness as a trade off for the speed. I'm much happier with the 10-22, 50 1.4 and 85 1.8, all of which I got for the same price as the 16-35.

It seems that the 16-35 has widely varied ratings from owners, and I suspect that there may be differences between copies of this lens.

Take a day trip to the Dry Tortugas if you want a beautiful site to photograph, well worth the time and expense getting there.

Some shots from a trip last year.

 

<a href="http://www.oboylephoto.com/florida/index.htm">http://www.oboylephoto.com/florida

</a>

I sent the Canon 24 2.8 back because it was softer than my 17-40 zoom. Thats one of my requirements for a prime, its got to beat a zoom or its not a keeper, even if it is faster.

Jen, how is the start up time of the 350D? One of the reasons I went to the 20D from the 10D and Rebel was the 2 second delay when the camera was switched on. I'm considering the 350 as a backup body and the one to grab for street shooting.