invisibleflash

Been downsizing and cleaning up things. I finally found the lost SD card from a 2018 IR flash shoot at B&H in NYC. It got lost a short time after I shot it. As in...lost so fast I didn't have time to put it on the computer.

It was Christmas time and I was out doing some street photography on a Sunday afternoon in Manhattan. It started to rain. I was in the area, so I thought I'd step into B&H to give them some infrared radiation. I spent about 20 minutes looking around. Took 109 IR flash photos then left. All candid stuff.

I was in a rush to get back to Jersey City as I was leaving that night for Ohio. Being is a rush, the card got misplaced when I packed up. Glad I finally found it. My worst nightmare was finding the card after the data had degraded. You can't keep SD card data forever and not plug it is every few years to keep the data fresh. I was told they hold data for 10 years without a plug in. The longest I've gone is 5 -6 years without a plug in and data was still good on the SD card.

Nothing spectacular from the shoot. But it was interesting to do and sure beats standing in the rain!

Zir can also go in 'Burkas & Hijabs of New York' project. I like it when I get photos that are useful in other projects. More bang for the buck so to speak.

IR flash does not go too far. It is not the best thing for long distance shots. You benefit very little from available light unless you are getting tons of it. But if you were doing staged work you could set up a bunch of IR flashes for distance.

They got a room when leaving B&H for people to unbox and fondle their new gear. If it was a gun store people would want to unbox and start loading up! 

Still doing post work going through the photos. Lots of post work. These are all shot from the hip with zone focus and zone exposure. Consequently...lots and lots of PP!

RD-1 was what I started with when I moved to digi rangefinders. Could not afford a Leica back then. RD-1 was a very important camera in the evolution of digital cams. But maybe not if you are talking Leica.

Epson RD-1s 

Live within your budget and keep going.

Sell ads as well as advertise the forum. 

Was the old forum cheaper to run?

Still photographers don't think much about VS. But for cine's film users it is a big problem with acetate film stock.

The Vinegar Syndrome Files…5 Year Test Results – Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection – II (home.blog)

1 hour ago, John Seaman said:

The man behind the counter looks as if he would like to be somewhere else, he looks like a villain who escaped from an episode of Perry Mason.

Yes, concur.

Been very busy reorganizing all my workspace. I scanned this one from the Archive for you yesterday. Something you may like for your personal collection. From Glendale, CA. No date.

I sure wish I had taken some photos in the 1970's at my old camera store in L.A...Pan Pacific Camera. Never occurred to me. You just take them for granted. Then boom...one day they are gone.

Happy Holidays to all and thanks for everyone's participation at the forum!

On 12/12/2022 at 1:30 PM, digitaldog said:

First, its often hard to follow when some of the info provided isn't close to accurate. Enough said. 

Next, converting scans of negs positive isn't easy, never was dating back to the old 1990, Leaf scanner days. I've used and reviewed dozens upon dozens of film scanners including drum scanners costing as much as cars in the days. It is all about the software; some is far better than others. Inverting and removing the orange mask isn't trivial and the mask isn't consistent from shot to shot (exposure alone plays a role). 

At this point, the 'fix' is to find some software solution that works with modern scanners or after the scan (like maybe Lightroom Classic). 

SilverFast is pretty good if can drive your scanner with it.

NegativeLab is supposed to be a very good option (full disclosure, I've never used it, but those who use LR I respect, those that know what they are doing, have given it high marks and the hope is, such functionality will find it's way into LR/ACR 'natively' someday). You can try a demo:

https://www.negativelabpro.com 

I'd like to try it if they ever make a stand alone version. 

On 12/12/2022 at 3:09 PM, AlanKlein said:

Here are my settings after calibration completed.  I usually calibrate only when I'm to do some editing or scanning. 

Alan, every monitor is different. Everyone sees them differently.

Have you printed anything? Happy with the prints from your scans? 

On 12/11/2022 at 1:42 PM, AlanKlein said:

Before editing my scans, I set the NEC Spectraview II calibration software to calibrate my NEC monitor with the puck to sRGB.   I assume NEC program calibrates to appropriate standards for sRGB color gamut.  I'm happy with the colors and others can check my FLICKR site to see if they look OK with them.  

Here are my Velvia scans and edits both in medium format 6x7 and large format 4x5. 

 

Excellent job!

Op...I miss out all the time. But I do ok bringing some home too. 

I used a monitor and wireless keyboard with my HP laptop all the time. The monitor,  a few years ago, was like $100 at Walmart.

OP...I would generally agree with you.

I statred with film in the late 60's. I gave it up in early 2000's. I still work with a ton of film in the Archive. But for my personal work, I'm very happy with digital. 

An easy area of archival preservation to get into is documenting gallery and museum shows

An easy way to contribute material to the Internet Archive...or your blog...and preserve some history in the process.

Just saw this thread. Thanks!

Didn't know he died. I will download the video at the I.A. as soon as my upload to the I.A. is done. The internet here is too puny to do both. Always liked Klein's work. He was an early inspiration of mine.

Just because anything is online...it doesn't mean it will stay there. Even at the I.A. They had banned me and removed over 100,000 uploads of mine a few years ago.

Yes, one of the reasons I became an archivist...

Years ago, I was watching a video on photo galleries at lunch. I finished half of it, by lunchtime the next day...poof! YT had pulled the plug.

I watched a lot of Klein's films, but I could never find the Ali film.

It is kinda interesting that I don't like weddings, yet I have a huge collection of archival photos of vintage weddings / brides. I find them interesting as long as I don't have to go to them. I even have a category for nosegay, which is a small floral bouquet the bride used to carry to stifle smells.

That is interesting. Didn't know about that Archive. Trouble is you need to know info to get info.

I was scanning this morning. Found an unknown Diane Arbus photo of a topless gal standing outside with apron. Title was Waitress in a Nudist camp...or some such thing. Estimate was $60K - $80K. You find all kinda interesting things in these catalogs. Plus, it had some interesting historical backstory. Also, some carbro prints by Outerbridge. Just countless photo history in the catalogs.

I'd post some samples, but they don't like posting photos other photogs took here.

Scanning is not that big of a deal...but it is still a big deal. I use a sheetfed scanner. Even so, you have to look for lines in the scans and you can't scan big amounts of paper at once. If you get lines, you have to rescan the group. The paper is heavy and kind of a sticky, gloss paper. You can do maybe 20 - 25 pages at a time or they jam.

The last big job I did (a month ago) was scanning 27 issues of Sex to Sexty magazine. It was a matte paper and no problems with sticking paper. That was about 2500 pages. Luckily it was a half-ass, decent matte paper or the matte black ink transfers to the rollers and makes a mess of the scanner. In that case you have to flatbed scan. Still, there was some transfer with matte black ink to the rollers, even with the half-ass decent matte paper.

If I didn't have the sheetfed scanner that scans both sides at once and auto crops, I'd never do it. It would have to be something very special to flatbed scan 3500 pages.

...I have tons of high-quality digital collections of all sorts, if this one is not up anyone's alley for trading.

Large Sotheby's photograph auction catalog collection. Still scanning, but as rough estimate, the collection will be somewhere around 3500 pages and 24gb. Don't have collection handy, but will count # of catalogs and update later.

Scans are 600 dpi. Will trade digital collection for another interesting digital collection. Min res for trade is 300 dpi, preferable 600 dpi or more. Trade would be done with Blu-ray disc or thumbdrive. Catalogs cover late 1980's to early 2000s. Some have realized price sheets. Some catalogs from London and NYC.

I have a very wide ranges of interest for trades. I'm just not interested in text and prefer historical material. Your trade doesn't have to match scan for scan. The better it is, the smaller it can be. But any way you slice it, scanning +/- 3500 scans is a lot of work.

15 human years equals about 150 computer years. It's not just tired, it's senile and in the twilight of its days!

 

Whatever the current "state of the art" is, it's well out of date in 5 years or so, and almost totally obsolete after a decade or more. IDE disk interfaces, PCI slots, AGP slots, PS2 mice and keyboards, serial ports, floppy disks, parallel printer ports, Molex power connectors, CD ROMs, DVD-R and RW, Zip drives (remember them?) have all gone the way of the Dodo in the past 20 years or so. Even the venerable 15 pin VGA video connector is now being phased out.

 

Yes, at some point a component will fail and the whole machine stop working, but that's usually long after it should really have been replaced or updated anyway.

 

Current software is RAM, CPU power and disk-space greedy, and loading it on an old computer is a pretty surefire way to slow it to a crawl.

 

Things move on, and you have to accept that pretty much - to paraphrase - "A computer is just for Christmas, not for life".

 

Incidentally, the main cause of component failure is heat, possibly caused by a build-up of dust on fans. This also makes a fan noisy. So a periodic vacuum-clean of any vents is a good idea. Perhaps with an annual removal of any easily accessed panels and a good manual dusting of the innards.

 

FWIW, I just built a new system only a month ago. I would have stuck with Win 7, but driver support is now almost non-existent. I loaded Win 10 + Classic Shell instead, and so far the transition has been pretty painless; with much the same 'look & feel' as Win 7. Win 11? Not for me, thanks MS. Some people prize data security over a 24/7 Internet connection, and I have a smartphone for that.

Yes, I've been using a household fan to blow air into mine. As I look at the vent holes, they have dust showing. It blows out tremendous heat. You can feel it as you walk by. Looks like they are pushing liquid cooled computers a lot. I'd like to stick with fans. Just don't like having to use a house fan.

It really isn't that difficult to put a computer together from components. Motherboard, CPU, memory and disk(s) plus box and PSU. The whole lot can be assembled in about 30 minutes. Probably the most difficult bits to source are the screws to hold the MB and HDD in place.

 

Be prepared to faint at the cost of a powerful CPU these days though. You're probably looking at a minimum spend of £500 / $700 for the parts alone. But then you're getting the performance of a supercomputer from 10 years ago..... crippled by the Bloatware of today unfortunately.

 

Linux is entirely Open Source. There are no secrets to its working. It's just a bit reliant on silly phrases used in the CLI and necessary for accessing the repository of apps. Once you're back in the GUI, it's pretty straightforward.

It is hard trying to figure out what works with what. Everything is not fungible.

 

 

 

Kodak (Mexico?) Inkjet Paper Deterioration

See yellowing edge of paper compared to white paper. The entire sheet of Kodak paper has yellow blotchiness. The edge is the easiest way to see the yellowing in a photo. If you have a laptop or unbalanced monitor, you may not be able to see the yellowing. This was Kodak's cheapest paper at the time. From what I recall, the paper was made in Mexico.

Paper shown here is 10 years old, stored under normal household conditions. It started to show yellowing about 3 to 4 years ago. All of the rest of this Kodak paper shows the same yellowing. It is hard to get a good photo or scan of the yellowing, but it is easily detected by looking at it under 5,000k lighting.

A couple of other major photo paper makers also suffered from yellowing of their cheapest brand of inkjet paper. I didn't record the maker's names. I didn't purchase this paper to print on. I didn't purchase this paper to do archival testing. All these papers were purchased to use as interleaf while printing artist books with an inkjet printer.

Unless interleaf was used while printing, the pages would transfer freshly printed ink to the page stacked on it. This was a big problem when using matte black ink, but not a problem with gloss black ink. RC gloss or RC semi-gloss inkjet paper worked best as interleaf as it did not accept any ink transference on the RC coated verso of the paper.

There is this rule that applies to all of PN:

 

Any image you post should be your own work. If you want to reference an image shot by someone else, please link to it rather than post the image itself.

 

So that means I can't just copy and paste someone else's work. And that rule is 100% right and good. The only two ways to show someone else's work are:

 

1. Paste a URL

 

2. Embed the image from the host site

 

In this thread about a Sears store in California, I did the latter. Which is exactly the same thing that you would do if you were embedding a video. I was accused of violating copyright law, which is obviously illogical, because we are allowed to post video links as often as we like. I have never been accused of violating copyright law when I post video links.

 

Users of Flickr agree to that site's terms of service, too, which means other sites are allowed to embed their images for editorial purposes.

 

Also, the photo sin question is under the CC licence, although that is merely a detail.

 

The moderators on the Casual Conversations forum have made an error. No other platform or service that I know of enforces rules that are stricter than American copyright laws. Even YouTube, which is notoriously censorious about subject matter, has more balanced rules about the use of other people's content. In fact in some ways they are more relaxed.

 

I also request a formal acknowledgment that I did not violate copyright laws.

 

Thank you.

That is the oddball thing about this forum. Discussing others work comes under 'fair use.' There are a lot of posts I don't send in here for that very reason.

Able to login OK but unable to do much! I'm always a slow learner when it comes to new software so I'm probably not the best person to comment.

That is a comment...as in ease of use.