stevierose

<p>I think that his turnaround is pretty quick and his prices are lower than the other folks you are alluding to. That is why I have used him through the years (and the fact that he is local for me). I would suggest that you give him a call and describe what you need done. He can tell you turnaround time and price and you can judge for yourself. As I stated above, I think that he is very skilled and reasonable in pricing.</p>

<p>I called Dave today to ask him about lens repairs. He says he does all kinds of lens repairs and adjustments except for regrinding and re-coating them. He works on older mechanical lenses and newer automatic lenses in all formats. He also works on shutters, leaf shutters, etc.. He is happy to clean, lubricate, and calibrate and remove haze from old leica and other rangefinder lenses. Hope this helps!</p>

<p>@Barry- I will check with Dave about lens repairs and re-post.<br>

@Carl-Yes, I did post it in the community camera service section. I agree with you.</p>

<p>I think that really excellent camera repairmen are getting harder and harder to find. They are becoming a dying breed in the new digital/throw away world. I want to let you folks know about a really superb guy who doesn't have a web presence yet. First, the usual caveats: I have absolutely no financial ties or any other conflict of interest related to this guy. I am posting this because he is really superb, prices his repairs fairly, and probably could use more business given the state of the camera world now. I think it would benefit all of us if people like this stay in business.</p>

<p>The fellow's name is Dave Easterwood. His business is called "Dave's Camera Repair". He had a store front for a number of years in Westland, Michigan, but gave it up a year or so ago to save money. He now works out of his home in Chelsea, Michigan. His phone number is: 734-433-2640. His email address is: davescamera@earthlink.net</p>

<p>Dave has been repairing cameras for at least 30 years, and has 30 years worth of parts to show for it. He has old camera parts overflowing his basement into two outside storage units. He has done repairs and CLAs for me through the years on cameras such as: Leica M3, Minolta CLE, 70's era compact rangefinders (Olympus RC, RD, SP), Pentax MX, Olympus OM4t, etc.. He <em>does not charge for estimates</em> even if he has to take the whole camera apart and to test it. His charges for repairs are very fair. He is clearly a master at what he does and on many occasions has been able to fix my camera by cleaning a contact or re-soldering a connection rather than replacing a part. In other words, when it comes to repairs, he only does what he has to and does not do extra stuff to over charge you. He is happy to check out a camera on his instruments and if it looks OK, tell you so. If it is not worth repairing he will tell you so, and does not charge you. He is really terrific.</p>

<p>He is very comfortable with all cameras and loves to work on Leicas-screw mount through M8, as well as any rangefinder camera including medium format cameras. He is very good with all cameras, and loves older mechanical cameras. As mentioned, he has harvested parts for 30 years, and not infrequently can pull an old part out of his hat to fix a camera.</p>

<p>I hope that some of you will give him a try. He is the real deal.</p>

<p>These Mac vs. PC posts have been going on for as long as I have been a member of photo.net (over 10 years) and they are still completely unhelpful. We have 6 macs amongst the 5 members of my immediate family. I use PCs at work, and a very slick Aspire One 2.2 pound netbook running XP for when I travel. I am the former CIO of a very large cardiology practice with 400 or so employees spread througout SE Michigan.</p>

<p>There is no question that a well configured PC or Mac can handle photo work very well. You should try out both systems for more than a few minutes and see which one you are most comfortable with, and then buy that system. I am asked this question all of the time (Mac vs PC). What I tell people is that at home they are not going to have the tech support team that they are used to at work. So if their PC starts to crash or behave bizarrely, it is going to be a big pain in the butt for them unless: 1. They are pretty knowledgable about Windows and the problems that typically occur using Windows, or 2: They have a kid, or brother, or cousin who is a computer geek who can bail them out. My experience as a person who has been responsible for hundreds of Windows machines and all of our families Macs through the years is that Windows machines develop more frustrating problems more frequently than Macs do. Neither is perfect, however. If you have a Windows PC and are compulsive about performing all of the required updates as well as using effective anti-virus software you can stay out of trouble most of the time. But, some knowledge of how Windows works "under the hood" goes a long way. Macs seem to function more reliably on a day to day basis with less active intervention on the part of the user. I also think that adding peripherals is less frustrating and more seamless. Since most home users are mainly interested in email, internet, photos, movies, and Microsoft Office-I think they are usually happier with a Mac (in any case, they call me less with problems).</p>

<p>For photography work, however, I don't like iMacs. Unfortunately, Jobs and company have gone to all glossy screens on their laptops and iMacs. I think those screens are pretty awful for sensitive photo work because of excessive reflections. Because of this I use a matte screen Apple Cinema display for PS work at home. The trouble is that Apple has gutted the middle part of their desktop line. If you don't want the integrated iMac (all of which now have the shiny screens) your only choices are the Mac mini, or the very expensive (and powerful) Mac towers. I chose the Mini, because it runs PS just fine for my needs and drives the Cinema Display fine for PS work. I also can buy 5-6 Mac Minis for the price of the tower. I think that Apple is mistaken in their market strategy of assuming that all "consumers" will want the iMac and all "pros" will want and will pay for the expensive towers. There are lots of us who want the choice of a separate monitor and would like to have a more expandable computer. I hope that they will realize this soon, and once again sell moderately priced towers. In any case, if you do color sensitive photo work or if reflections really bother you, be sure you actually work on an iMac before you buy it.</p>

I realize that this question has been asked and answered often over the years, but I don't see any recent

discussions of this over the last 2 years or so.

 

I have decided (for several reasons) to dig out my 35 mm gear and adopt a hybrid approach again for

awhile. I would like to shoot 35mm C41 color film, have it developed locally, and then do my own high rez

scans on the "keepers". I have a Minolta Dimage 5400 II film scanner as well as both Silverfast and Vuescan

software on a Mac based computer system.

 

Since I last did this 5 years ago some films have disappeared and a few new ones have come out. I would

like your opinion as to which C41 films in ISO 100, 400, and 800 would fit this workflow the best?

 

Thanks!

 

Steve

The most knowledgeable people about digital BW printing can be found on the Yahoo Group

"Digital BW, The Print". Paul Roark also contributes to that group. Go to the Yahoo page and

click on "Groups" and then find that group.

Another vote for SuperDuper. It works flawlessly.

If CS3 is universal that means it will run on both PowerPC and Intel macs in native mode. If it

is running in native mode it won't need to run in emulation, they are mutually exclusive. At

this point it would be foolish for Adobe to release a version of photoshop that will only run

on intel macs. They are in the business of selling as many packages of PS that they can. Why

would they limit their customer base by doing that? The native intel version will undoubtedly

run faster than the native PowerPC version because the newer Intel machines have faster

CPUs. However, I can't see them forcing you to buy a new mac to run their software at this

point. In a few years, perhaps.

I have used both camera systems. I think if you love the Mamiya 6 as much as you say you

should go out and buy another Mamiya 6 system. It has been out of production for quite

awhile and I think it has already absorbed most of the depreciation it is going to due to the

emergence of digitial photography. What that means is that you can buy a Mamiya 6 system

now, use it for as long as it pleases you, and if the Leica Digital M (or any other digital

rangefinder that comes along in the future) gets to the point that you can afford it and it

fulfills your needs then sell the Mamiya 6 system and buy the new system. I think you would

lose very little financially doing this so long as you buy the Mamiya in good shape and take

good care of it. I have done this sort of thing for years with high quality used equipment.

Is anyone using thenew 24 inch iMac Intel Core Duo machine for photoediting and PS work? How is the

quality of the monitor for this application? Any issues (besides the usual) with monitor profiling/

calibration?

This <a href="http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/exhibitions/bresson/bougival_lock.html"> print</a> is hanging on my wall. It has a strong emotional appeal to me. I was lucky enough to buy it a few years ago.

I would agree that this post is completely irrelevant.

>Does anyone know of a B&W photographer who has published a sophisticated manual for B&W in photoshop?

 

So far this does not exist, and I have looked at them all. However, I am optimistic about the new book that George DeWolfe has written that is due out the next few weeks. Plug his name into Amazon and the book should pop up. George has taught many workshops on this subject, so I am hopeful his book will prove helpful. Or you can take one of his workshops.

At the moment I don't believe there are any good books on this. I have bought or read most of the books that are presently available. There is a new book coming out soon by George DeWolfe that I am quite optimistic about. George has taught advanced workshops on this subject for Cone Workshops and others and has a wealth of personal experience in this area. Plug his name into Amazon and the book should pop up.

I agree with Jeff, however, Genuine Fractals has been taken over by a new and different company called On One Software. I don't know if their customer service is any better as I have no tried it yet.

Actually, my Photoshop CS2 (Mac) came with 2 disks, one is the application and one is in fact a "Total Training" 60 minute Photoshop tutorial. So the answer is, yes it does come with a tutorial. The disk is quite good but very basic introduction. Total Training does sell complete photoshop tutorial courses on DVD however. I concur with the Scott Kelby recommendation but would also suggest "Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One" by Deke McClelland which is a great introduction to PS and includes over 2 hours of Total Training video on a DVD.

I agree with Karl. At the Cone workshops they suggest brushing the paper before printing to decrease flaking. It works for me.

This was discussed <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00DHBI">here</a>

I think that any lab with a LightJet printer should be able to do this for you.

If your goal is to scan then I see no advantage to shooting traditional BW film. I also would not use slide film. Use C41 process color negative film which will give you the latitude and speed of negative film and the choice of either color or BW output. It is not difficult to simulate the grain patterns of various BW films digitally if that is what you want.

"Other than a few small real prints in the first room, most of the prints looked to be modern A3'ish prints from scans - perfect in tonality and uniformly good image quality, resulting in no way to differentiate a 1932 image from a 1990's image."

 

Were these signed prints? I would be very surprised if the prints were from scans or digitally printed. I own an HCB print, and I have never seen an HCB print on exhibit that was not traditionally printed. He certainly never signed any during his lifetime that I am aware of.

I am sure that others will provide you with info about software and storage. With a collection of that size you will need a decent image catalogue and database program. There are many good ones out there such as Portfolio or ACDSee for the PC or iView Pro for the Mac. The most important task is coming up with a filing scheme that you can use consistently and makes sense to you, so that you can retrieve what you want later. All of these programs have the ability to generate web galleries that you can then export to your web site.

 

The digital files will be easy. With these programs all you have to do is drop the folder of images on the program and it imports them and generates thumbnails. Then you need to file them according to whatever scheme you come up with. The negatives and slides will take a very LONG time for you to scan. These scanners advertise 20-30 second scan times, but once you turn on digital ICE (to remove dust and scratches) or other automatic features in the scanning software the scan time can stretch out to several minutes per image. That is not counting the time it will take you to so a basic dusting and insert the film strips or slides into the scanner, and it is assuming that you use all of the auto settings on the scanner instead of tweaking the scans for each image. Most scanners accept carriers that hold one film strip or 4-6 slides at a time which means you will have to be present to keep feeding the machine. Some scanners (I believe the Nikon is one) have optional bulk slide feeders that will allow you to feed batches of 50 slides or so at a time into the scanner. You can save scanning time by: 1. Prescreening your slides/negs and only scanning the real "keepers", 2. Turning off ICE and other features (but then you will have to do a lot of "dust busting" later), and 3. Scanning at the lowest resolution you think you will eventually need (2400 PPI instead of 5000 PPI). However, if you are committed to scanning all 5000 negs/slides and you can be very efficient (say 2 minutes per image) thats 10,000 minutes for your collection not counting categorizing and labeling the images! A daunting task that I have also just started. I am also interested in hearing from those who have successfully converted a large collection to digital files.

If you get the R3a and wear glasses be aware that the eye relief is not great. I had an R3a for a short while and it was great with a 50 mm lens mounted. However, I could not see all of the 40 mm framelines with my glasses on, and since I like using 40mm this made it unappealing for me. So, if you wear glasses and like shooting with a 50 mm lens then the R3a is for you. But the R3a with a 40 mm lense and glasses is not a good combo.

Jeff Spirer said "I can't understand why anyone other than a camera designer would care

about the sensor type. Cameras do what they do as a system. Either a camera does what

you want or it doesn't."

 

I agree with you Jeff. What I want is a compact digital camera that can produce fairly low

noise images at ISO 400 and 800 equivalent settings similar to the images produced by

the Canon DSLR cameras. I (apparently) mistakenly assumed that this was a property of

the CMOS sensors they use. I don't care about the sensor type, I care about the image

qualtiy the camera produces.