ted_kostek

Looks like the smaller sensor size (1.6x mag factor) is going to be with us for a while yet. They even have two more lenses obviously aimed at the smaller sensor size.

I wish they would make a corporate annoucement about this we can decide whether we need to rethink our lens selection...

Lee,

The learning curve can be formidable, no doubt. Sometimes that is very frustrating. Once you develop some skills, though, it will start to become pretty rewarding. You'll find you have an astonishing ability to make subtle and detailed changes in contrast, doding&burning, etc.

What I'm trying to say is that there is something worthwhile at the top of the hill.

Leaving aside the issue of scanners for a moment, when you get a chance you should check out the program Picture Window as a possible substitute for PhotoShop. I can vouch for the ease of use of PW, whereas everything I've read about PS indicates it's a huge, powerful, sprawling program. PW does everything I've ever wanted to do with my photographs. PW is also under $100 for the Pro version.

I don't want to overload you with info, but be sure to check out the following sites (don't try to read it all at once, though):

-- Norman Koren

-- Luminous Landscape

-- scantips (by Wayne Fulton)

I read more about MF than I shoot, but with that caveat in mind you might consider one of the MF rangerfinders. Mamiya makes a 6x7, and there are Mamiya 6x6 available used. Fuji has a few 645 models, and Bronica has a 645.

I'm not sure you'll be able to do any tight head shots from these. Since they are light and don't have a mirror, they should be fairly easy to handhold.

How do you make your prints? It's possible you could get some improvement on that end of the quality chain and therefore may not need to step up to MF. The literature on chemical darkrooms is vast, and I don't know it myself. In the digital darkroom, there are various tricks to reduce grain and get extra sharpness (acutance).

If grain is the big problem, you also might consider digital. The general consensus is that 35mm film has an edge in resolution, but 6MP has much better "grain" (aka noise).

I'm glad to see that we did get a decent debate on the subject. For a while I was afraid it was going nowhere. It seems that everyone has some concerns about it, but many people are still interested enough to say "It's worth an experiment." I don't know where that leaves us exactly, other than getting the subject out in the open.

I doubt the elves have enough time to spare to implement a test zone. It can go on the "It would be nice if..." list.

Unfortunately, I don't understand the previous comment, so I can't respond on the issue of "gray goo."

I like the idea of a limited test of the wiki, I just don't quite know what would be a valid test, scope-wise. One article for a week? 10 for a week? 10 for 10 weeks? Bob suggested "Leica" as a topic; driving home I thought of "USM". It would be a major benefit to the whole photo world if there was a (somewhat) definitive description of USM. At least, I've never read one.

Wiki dynamics are pretty interesting. I have bunch of ideas rolling around in my head, but they aren't complete enough to pull out.

All I know is that right now we have some static content that needs updating and the Q&A forums update almost too fast (fun but wild and chaotic). The site contains vast amounts of useful information hidden in even more vast amounts of junk. Seems like some kind of modified wiki could harness the natural resource photo.net has (lots of people willing to write a little text at a time) to help address those problems.

I hope photo.net can figure out a way to use the idea.

There's some more interesting discussion of wiki's at

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorksNot.

They list out a bunch of potential problems and weaknesses of the wiki model, as well as some strengths.

Well, ok, I admit the "we" is not warranted, especially since I'm not even a paying member at this point. It seems more like a decision for the board of directors or whatever photo.net has. I just wanted to raise the question and see some back-and-forth on the subject.

Re: GIGO

Maybe there could be a three-tier system? Static stuff: well written, authoritative, accurate, easy to search; wiki stuff: evolving with less accuracy but pretty easy to search; Q&A forms: changing hourly with no quality control and tough to search.

The short version: Does it make sense to transition photo.net to a

wiki format?

If you are not familiar with the wiki concept, check out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

for an example. This link takes you to an on-line encyclopedia. The

encyclopedia is created, edited, and updated by netizens who log in

and write stuff. People fact check each other, etc.

It looks like this might be a pretty good balance between static

content, keeping current, and Q&A. There is some sort of overall

organization and structure, and it probably evolves slowly over

time. The actual information on the pages is able to evolve very

quickly.

If we transition to a wiki format, this would help solve

the "recurring question" problem, which often start with the

disclaimer, "I searched the archives, but couldn't find what I

needed" Very often the answer does exist, but not in an easy to

access format. You have to be willing to sift through large amounts

of back and forth conversation (sometimes including, "Do you live

near SF? We should meet for lunch.")

Another issue that might be addressed by this format is keeping the

information current. New film emulsions could be added to the static

page, printer information, etc. We have something sort of similar

with the ability to add comments to the bottom of a page, but, like

many threads, those could often use some judicious editing.

I'm probably talking about a mamoth project to actually do it, but

right now I think we should talk about whether it's a worthy idea.

We can worry about whether it's feasible to implement if we decide

it's a good idea.

Pick up a copy of "Finite and Infinite Games" by James Carse. It's short, and it addresses this question directly, although that's not the main focus. Carse argues that each new school of painting saw the implicit assumptions of the previous schools. Thus, they were able to look at world differently, even though they were looking at the same physical objects.

One example of this happening was the shift from the pictoralists and their gauzy photograhs to the f64'ers and maximum sharpness.

There's a cool quote by some famous person to the effect that real art consists in viewing what everyone has viewed and seeing what no one has seen.

You posed your question in terms of technical advances: BW vs color; chemistry; electronics. What I'm talking about here has got absolutely zero (zip, nada, nothing) to do with technology and everything to do with vision. Michelangelo, Vermeer, Monet, and Picasso had access to roughly equivalent technology, but they painted in completely different styles and each made major contributions to the medium of painting.

Ansel Adams provides an example of reaching art through craftsmanship, but there are other paths. HCB, for example, was much more intetested in getting a good photograph than in making a perfect negative. Supposedly, Weston would take lots of light readings, then sort of throw them away.

My problem, as I've said a few times previously, is that I know where I can get technology, vision continues to elude me...

Mike Johnston has written on cropping in his SMP column before it was picked up by photo.net. On Oct 27, 2002 (available on the Luminous Landscape), he says:

"If the subject of a picture is too cleanly isolated, too efficiently cropped, it makes me feel existentially antsy. I feel it makes me look like a guy who doesn't know or isn't willing to acknowledge that the frame excludes a great deal and that the world outside of the frame is a hodgepodge, the picture merely a choice view plucked from the continual visual drone of the mundane, the banal, and the ordinary."

To my mind, it's clearly absurd to say you should never crop. Some excellent examples have been given regarding different format aspect ratios and limitations of your lenses. Notwithstanding Mike's free standing paragraph denouncing cropping, I suspect he would agree.

Where he has a problem, IMO, is the uninformed suggestion to crop almost for the sake of cropping. If you want to improve photographs, there are many other things to work on first. And I think we all agree that you should ideally crop as much as possible in the camera.

If you always find yourself whacking off huge chunks of your photos after exposure, something is amiss. You may need a different focal length, or format. Or maybe you need to learn to see better.

Problem is, I know where to buy a new lens, but I'm having a hell of a hard time learning to see...

"Amateur" here is a relative term. The person-on-the-street doesn't shoot slides at all. Lots of serious amateurs shoot slides for several reasons, including the beautiful results.

Several factors help make slides more beautiful than prints.

The brightness range of a slide (darkest black to brightest highlight) is much larger than the brightness range of a print. The colors are often more subtle and more saturated. Overall, there's a strong "snap" in a slide than a print. Finally, 100 speed slide film has very low grain.

Another big bonus, and the clincher that's pushing me to slides over prints, is they are easier to archive. I'm to a point where I sometimes shoot 100+ shots in a weekend. Working with all the prints and then associating them with the appropriate neg is a pain. The slides are prettier, take up less space, and you can read the original. I can put about 40 slides on the small light table I scrounged from the trash at work. Print film doesn't have the snap, takes more space for prints+negs, I can't read the neg, and about 20 or so prints covers my whole kitchen table.

There are a few problems with slides, though. You can't pass them around the office. True, a slide show is very impressive, but prints are still easier to share, IMO. Slides have narrow exposure latitude, meaning some photos are not going to come out well on slides but neg film would be fine. Finally, the dark shadows are tough to scan w/ normal equipment.

So, lots of serious amateurs use slide film. Turns out there's not that much difference between pro and amateur films. Stuff like shelf life, roll-to-roll consistency, etc are all tweaked a bit differently. A pro might be shooting lipstick or something. The photo on the box better be the *exact* same shade as the product in the box. I only care if my flowers are colorful and pretty, not if the shade is a spot-on match. Hence, I save a few bucks and buy the cheap stuff. The pro can't afford to mess around; for them, those few dollars are the insurance, and cheap insurance at that.

Based on reading I've done recently, lighting is the real key here, with film being somewhat secondary. For example by using a some side lighting you can bring some extra definition to the shapes of the people's faces and fill in some shadows. I don't mean to use only side lighting, but to get a little extra light from the side in addition to your main light source.

You said your budget is pretty low, so I assume you won't be buying any lights for a studio. You might be able to make good use of a big pieces of white cardboard or foam board. At a local craft store I can get sheets of that for about the cost of a roll of pro grade slide film. Prop it up on the side or have an assistant hold it, and some light will bounce onto the sides of people's faces. Maybe one on each side. You'll need to experiment. Hopefully, it will be enough to bring more definition to the faces.

I've messed around a bit with some little still lifes, and I've found that I can add almost a stop to the shadows using this technique. In your case, however, you might not be able to get the reflector quite close enough for such a pronounced effect.

You can get a bit of golden glow by painting with some gold colored paint or foil.

There are also professional reflectors designed for exactly this purpose.

I'm familiar with the rough rule of thumb for 35mm that says to hand

hold your shutter speed should be the inverse of your focal length or

faster. Thus, to get a sharp photo using a 50mm lens, you should use

1/60 sec or faster.

Is there a corresponding guide for MF?

Granted, for max sharpness you should always use a tripod, but for

spontaneous street shooting, this isn't always reasonable.

Seems like the amount of blur you can tolerate should be related to

the amount of magnification. Thus larger prints require sharper

images. Likewise, larger negs (slides), requiring less magnification

for a given print size, do not need to be quite as sharp.

What kind of rule of thumb do people usually employ? I assume this

will vary with camera, too. An SLR will require a faster shutter

speed than a TLR or rangefinder.

Thanks in advance.

Lex,

Re: your plug

I like the composition and the colors, but what gives with the background? Strange looking bokeh.

I'd like to shed a little light on the 300 dpi number. When people have studied the question "What is the smallest detail the eye can see," they typically come up with about a 300 dpi number. Obviously, this will vary with your eyesight and how close you hold the photo. The standard assumption is a 10" viewing distance, I believe. Thus, it is not surprising that most people settle on a number in the 250-350 dpi range.

Now, for your printer to create a single dot at the 300 dpi size of say, pale green, it must mix together many dots of much smaller size. Your naked eye cannot see the smaller dot structure (dither pattern), and they get smeared together into a single dot of pale green. The individual dots of ink are the ones at the very tiny size (2880, 1440, whatever). Thus, those numbers have more to do with the ability to create subtle gradations in colors, and not so much to do with sharpness.

There's really no benefit in sending more than about 300 dpi files to your printer, even though the printer is actually making a lot of much smaller dots.

Hope that helps.

The standard wisdom is that telephotos are best for portraits. You stand "far" away from your subjects, then use the lens to get close. This has the effect of flattening features and is generally considered flattering. Hence the many suggestions of telephoto lenses: 85, 100, 135.

Now factor in the 1.6x factor of your 10D. 50mm -> 80mm, 85 -> 136. This partially explains why people are suggesting 50's (they become telephoto on the 10D). Another part is that 50's (for reasons beyond me) are usually fast and sharp and cheap and light-weight. It's usually very hard to get that 4-way combo.

Finally, many portraits are shot @ about f4. It keeps the background fuzzy, but the whole face sharp. By using a lens with bigger max apeture, you stop down several stops to get there while on a zoom you might start @ f4. For technical reasons I don't understand, lenses are sharpest when stopped down from maximum apeture. That zoom won't achieve max sharpness till f8 or f11, but then the background starts to come into the depth of field. Hence a fast lens helps even if you don't feel you need the wide apertures per se.

Now, you have the focal length covered with your telephoto zoom, therefore the issue is not getting the right length. The issue is getting high image quality at the length.

With that theory in mind, some suggestions:

50mm/f1.8: ~$80, very light, sharp; "normal" on film, short tele on 10D

85mm/f1.8: ~$350, light, sharp; short tele on film, mid tele on 10D

I just noticed all the test shots were taken wide open, always the worst case for a lens. What happens if you stop down? I've read that the 85 is best about f4.

If it goes away, then I would say it's a lens issue. Whether it's CA or flare or whatever is less important than knowing it comes from something in the lens.

I'm also intrigued by how much sharper the 24 looks. The magnification is strange (24 looks bigger than 85). Is that because the camera moved closer to the subject?

Some people are saying it looks like purple fringing from small sensor CCD's, but if that's the explaination, then why only on the 85? Vladimir posted several other scans from different lenses, and the other ones didn't show much purple fringing at all. I suppose it's possible for the lens and scanner to be interacting, it seems unlikely.

I have the 85/1.8. I've never noticed anything like this, but I've also never looked. I haven't taken that many photos with it, either. The ones I have taken are portraits, and didn't have any of the super-aggressive highlight-shadow transitions from the test shot.

I'm afraid that right now I can't be much help, but do want to emphasize that this test really is pretty aggressive. I'm not sure it's indicative of realistic usage. Even so, I'd be annoyed about finding such a nasty surprise.

Best of luck. Keep shooting.

Are you referring to the color fringing all around the letters on the box?

I thought CA showed up worst at frame edges and had one color on one side and another color on the other side. What I'm seeing, however, is sort of a constant halo. That halo is at an edge: bright highlight to a dark shadow w/ a sharp boundary. Seems more like some lens flare.

Take my comments w/ grain of salt (or silver), however, since I'm still learning all this lens stuff.

I've been playing with making digital panoramas. The first few have

been really cool, but the seams are only so-so. I've read that I can

get better software, better hardware (pano heads, high dollar

lenses), and improve my technique (tripod, stop down, etc).

I'm looking for the most improvement for the least money. Using my

tripod vs handholding is obviously going to help a lot and it's

free. Similarly, stopping down the lens is free.

Will using a longer lens help make seams better via reduced parallax

What about using a prime vs using a zoom? Should be sharper and I am

more likely to give an accurate estimate of the focal length, which

should help the software. I already own an 85mm lens, so this one is

also free.

Other freebies?

Using these, should I get the seams "nearly" invisible, or will there

still be ghosting and blur?

I think is a great question, but I don't have anything like an answer. A previous poster made the observation that most things which try to hard become insipid, and I agree with that. The problem for me is figuring out where that line is. For example, based solely on the descriptions, the sunflower example is borderline, but the girl by the window example is too cliche.

It seems to me that this question is related to how you work. Do you go looking to illustrate a specific idea, or do you shoot first and only later discover what you've recorded? Or something in the middle?

I like the idea put forward by one of the other posters that a title can provide a context or twist on the photo, much like the title of a book or essay. However, I agree with the idea of the original poster that sometimes a title is used as an attempt to make up for bad photography.

In my freshman writing class, we were required to put titles on all our essays. A good title can be very effective, at least in that medium.

Interesting question, interesting responses. I hope I added some value.

A question was asked about the technical reasons why HP inks don't work on some Epson papers. A partial answer can be found on page 13 of the photo-i interactive review of the HP7960. Frames or something prevent me from having the complete link, but this will get you to their home page:

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/

They describe some of how the papers work. Based on this information, and knowing Epson papers are designed for pigments not dyes, I speculate the Epson paper is not swellable. Therefore, the ink doesn't adhere well to the surface.

I'm sure there's much more information available, but this is what I know.

Norman Koren has developed a set of lens test charts. They are not the USAF charts. Norman threw out all the theory and developed his own charts from scratch. They are available in pdf.

Go to

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF5.html

tmk

Over on the Luminous Landscape Michael Reichman has a review of the

new 8MP Canon SLR. I was most impressed by what he *didn't* discuss

much: image quality. In an addendum, he wrote:

"People shouldn't look for some dramatic change in this area. The

real story with this camera is the shooting performance, not the

image quality � which is terrific."

It seems that image quality is levelling off. Sure, there are nits

to pick about this one vs that one, but it seems that the worst of

the digital tsunami may be past us. Having made digital capture so

good, the newest models are beginning to differentiate and to compete

on issues other than image quality. From now on, change won't be

torrential, only fast.

Responses?

A common complaint in reviews of digicams is that it takes the camera

too long to write RAW files while writing JPEGs is faster. Given

that RAW files require no processing whereas JPEGs must first be

compressed then saved, why does it take longer for the RAW?

The only thing I can think of is that the rate limiting step is the

writing process, and since JPEGs are smaller the time to convert +

write is still smaller than the time to write the larger RAW file.

Except, is it true that RAWs are bigger? They should only have 1/3

the data anyway, right? Only 1 color at each pixel vs 3 at each

pixel in a JPEG.