hectorroldan

I would suggest trying with an iPad or similar tablet connected to a wireless printer. I will explain my reasons:

1. You can easily use it floating to shot the pics a every angle or position
2. Easy to use a tripod
3. Helps you to allow people to see themselves and select the pic they want
4. You can use it with the front camera (you on the back), or along a bluetooth trigger, so people can watch themselves as they smile and shoot
5. With an iPad you can easily use the icloud account to check the photos on another iPad or computer without compromising the shooting iPad

Photoboots are great, but I can totally understand what you mean regarding positioning the camera, the angle, lower angles, the wheelchairs, etc.

Portable lights

As most things in photography (and video), there are multiple approaches, pros and cons. It's true and constructive what's been mentioned here on learning to deal and manage natural light, but I would need to add some context, why?: sometimes natural light it's all you have and all you will have at some given moment. So the usual, move the subject, tweak your camera settings, move around the subject, etc. But sure there are lots of limitations.

In terms of portable lights, there are some great ones in the market, led light has evolved a lot and you can find something fitting your needs, from lights that you can mount on your camera, to ring lights and models with star shaped arrangements. Bouncers and alike are valid, very useful, not only to bounce light but to block other sources of light.

Here is where things get tricky because when you deal with light it's not just adding, it's also about blocking. I will cut it there because the specific begins to become general. BUT I can add a suggestion: check VIDEO lightning products and specially interview lightning. You will find lots of products and setups (including portable ones) that will take your production to the next level. I didn't find the same variety of tutorials or real life examples in photography, I found it in video and sure it helps with photo.

That's a nice Guatemalan portrait. I like the light there.

This is one of my major peeves! I'm both a musician and a photographer - I'm the house band leader at a local music club and have played major events in our region for the last 50 years. So I get hit up for music "favors" more often than photographic effort. We retired to a condo apartment a few years ago, and I was asked through my wife to play the guitar at a building event within weeks of moving in. She knows very well how I feel about this - I will not take a job from another musician (or photographer) by undercutting their price. If someone wants me, they have to want me enough to pay me what they'd pay anyone else for the same work. But for some strange reason she told the condo council president that I'd be glad to do it (!) without asking me.

 

She argued with me repeatedly that I should just be nice and play - so I went against my better judgment and did it. And since then, I've been asked to play 3 or 4 more such events and treated like hired help at each one. At the last one, I was asked to set up in the lobby, then moved into the social room, then shifted from one location to another - and I ended up playing in a corner behind the service bar while (as you so aptly put it) everybody else was eating and I was working free. I was not happy, and I expressed my concerns to both the council president and the treasurer.

 

Last week a notice went up on the bulletin boards about a spring party on March 15, at which we could "enjoy the music of" a local musician I've known for years. So I asked the council members if they were paying him - and, of course, they are. ;)

It's complicated. Many areas of work are filled with stories on how "they are actually doing you a favor getting you there for free for exposure" when that's not the case. Singers, musicians and bands are on top of the list.

explains "double-pass quadtone printing."

 

Has anybody made this work?

Old thread but worth replying, found it while searching for something different but key word related. Double pass printing sure takes your average printing to a new level but it's not easily doable on common Inkjets.

As mentioned above you can use specialized RIP software to modify how your printer behaves but there are limitations. You then would be able to control how much ink is used on the paper surface and how, this means not only total ink, but also the mix (the separation), using diff methods to generate blacks (that's basically black ink generation and UCR). But... you will rarely have a chance to control the waiting time (drying time), anyway some rip Sofware allow you this, and some printers also allow you this to some extent (specially Canon). AND... some canon printers can be "hacked" using modding software like iPTool to increase the drying time beyond what the default software allows you to do.

The previous has great impact on printing, really, because let's say you can only achieve a maximum total ink of 200 with software... then increasing dry time significantly, would perhaps allow you to reach 220 total ink. That's depending your printer and software.

Now true double pass... That's not possible unless you reinsert your page and that sucks (registration issues), but it's possible on flatbed printers. You can buy some neat models on the market or build your own, in that case you can check for tutorials using printers combined with arduino controls over the motors and flatbed. There is a russian guy who has a great tutorial on this using an Epson printer + arduino, double pass is possible for him on DTG (direct to garment).

I have played with all the mentioned above and got great results. The main difference between scenario #1 and #2 (flatbed) is... #1 you can put your paper there, print and forget, while flatbed printing means you can only print one page a the time, double pass, remove, place another, etc. That's really slow but really (and I mean really) increases the quality of your printing. I've been using 3 passes while printing high resolution images on wood, treated wood, and other treated materials (including paper). The amount of ink you can put there once the previous pass already dried is great. Sometimes you need to print differently (not the same print on every pass) and perform separations to get there, but yes, it's doable.

It would be easy to think the printer COULD reload the paper (turn in reverse) and begin printing again for a double pass, but the physics of such movements and parts are not as precise as using encoders (DTG) printing as mentioned above.

I expect people who go to war probably appreciate Peace more than the rest of us.

I wrote a long post (not posted) but I'm not sure if you are interested on looking into this, your comment got my attention due to involvement with the topic (I never been to war but I know people who were there, diff ranks), what I know is not something coming from "someone told me", my work got me involved and later researched a bit more. To me it's been surprising what people who went to war think in general or how war affects their ETHICS and their opinions about it in general in modern society. What I know from first hand is difficult to translate so if I drop a short comment it would make no sense, if I leave the long post it would be boring and would appear off topic right away.

Surprisingly enough, a lot of people who have been to war and battle have split and diverse opinions, from supporting peace to supporting war because it's the only way to get some things done. But we are talking about ethics, and sometimes people have to do questionable things to achieve a higher positive result for a lot of people, it sounds so generic but it's complex, but that's the deep and practical involvement of ethics in life: things that sometimes don't make sense but will do in the long term. Some people experience interesting changes as rejecting war but then finding themselves wanting to go to battle and improve as soldiers (some people in the past were forced to enlist and that's some of their experience).

I will leave it here, related to ethics: the most surprising (to me) testimonial from people who went to war is how they value friendship and brotherhood, even to the point of missing war and not missing it, but valuing and needing what came with it, the brotherhood. Some will tell you themselves they rather go back to war than live in this "civil" society, specially when people can have the most terrible behavior because it's cool, you could find comments alike from veterans who think lots of youngsters don't deserve the country they live in. There are tints of PTSD and institutionalization (it's when people lost the ability to live outside certain environment with rules). Hearing about people who gave orders to do some questionable things (well, it's war, people get killed) to achieve a better good for large groups of people is shocking, and hearing people coming from war suddenly one day feeling comfortable talking about the many things they value from war and are absent in the civil society is... shocking, and it makes you see how this civil society takes place lacking ethics.

Something also involved with what I posted here, + ethics is... we don't have to agree with things in order to make sense or to be true. This means "I don't personally think it makes sense that you go to war and then you enjoy it and want to go back", it's not my opinion, it's what I learned from people who were there and said it themselves, it's also on conferences, on testimonials, on books, and even a matter of study, not my opinion. Same with ethics.

Besides knowing that pushing your hand into someone’s face without warning is no way to start or have a dialogue..... his ethical responsibility should begin

Your post is filled with lots of valuable DETAILED and specific points worth discussing or expanding. It's easy to find discussions about ethics trying to over simplify things and that's related to what I mention on most of this discussions are kinda repetitive (that's fine, but it lacks depth), but you bring something else, something that I find valuable. In general these kind of situations involve looking in depth the interactions, sometimes a kind intervention with respect addressing the photographer makes everything better, even opening doors to talk, have an interesting and educative conversation and learn. Sometimes we have to go back and the photographer has to do this to open up the options with the person involved or crossing the street. Culture and past experiences mean a lot in this scenario.

This appeared on the news, and life is surprising because a couple of years later I had the chance to hear the story from the tour guide himself. This affected him so much he entered a huge depression making his drinking problems worse, he was such... such a nice guy. Fair to say he never recovered. Added to what I'm sharing, I visited some isolated places in the "forest", specially caves and surprisingly some people were watching, just watching. Language can be a barrier there. Years later I was explained by a cave explorer if I knew X place, I said I didn't want to explore it, and I he proceeded to explain, there: people watch you and then follow you, if you do something they don't like (you might step on something or shot a pic of a sacred place that looks like stone to you) they will beat the shit out of you. This is very common, NO, there are no signs, and talking is a waste of time: language is a barrier.

As the confrontation unfolded I did find out the reason for his aggression. I believe he was one of the owners of the property & buildings that my camera was focused on. He thought he was protecting the property... setting aside legalities that's gray. He assumed I had nefarious plans for the site. also grayish. I later heard there had been some protesting of the proposed future of the property. more gray in context.

It de-escalated only after I considered his story. Then the man said he would call the police and I rested against a car and said 'ok va bene' (all right)

Same thing happened to me, the guy wasn't nice at all and so I immaturely reacted in defense. I was shooting the top of a door, public place, they complained about me shooting the art inside that was private (but in public), they behaved badly but this is not about me, it's about your story and the basic similarities: there is a lot of confusion in the moment and talking politely would have helped, won't you agree? but sometimes people start a fire.

What if YOU are someone important? or worked for someone important? would things change? Ohhh, would that be related to ethics? that's interesting. Would the action would be the same but somehow people would show double standards? that's... some interesting ethics discussion because it pushes us to look deeper.

I went to visit X place having art paintings. The lady reacted very badly when I approached (to ask permission and introduce myself), the camera got her attention and I CAN UNDERSTAND THAT. She was rude, yes, her point: she didn't want pictures of the paintings becase then people copy them, in fact she had to deal with painters copying their work in the past. I wasn't the same inexperienced photographer back then so I was patient, listed and explained: "may I?" I represent X newspaper (the largest in the region) and I came here for XX and ZZ. She didn't want the pictures exposed but interesting enough, representing the newspaper I was allowed to. Funny huh? her paintings would reach thousands of people if published, but she was ok with it. I made the call and decided not to include the pictures in the publication, but if you look at it closely, it's contradicting.

Funny thing: I've been to places where the same thing takes, place, and somehow people shot with their phones and NOBODY SAID ANYTHING, even if there was a sign saying FORBIDDEN and the guards were telling everyone not to. The thing about discussing ethics is... just like your post, it involves long, detailed information to really, really understand what's going on and what happened, intentions aside. But that's too long and rarely happens. I find your post interesting.

During my involvement with news reporters and photographers from that newspaper (and TV, etc), things changed a lot. Some forced courses were boring because it was all about the same, but some were very interesting because casual situations got more about ethics than what appeared to be. There is a difference (regarding teaching and learning) when it comes to case studies VS anecdotes and arguments. The thing is, long detailed descriptions of the situations are in fact required.

One common thing in such discussions was the right to know, the right to inform, private property and the shocking but simple: you/we don't own what you/we see. It's like WIFI, just because it reaches my home, doesn't mean I can use it. Coming back to the war comment... many ugly things happened in wars and people are not often able to understand it. As years go by and we walk far away from wars, things loose their meaning and it's easier to criticize and attack things that were in fact needed, or at least impossible to avoid. That's something difficult to discuss but it has lots of potential to educate about ethics.

Equipment does matter, particularly for birds and wildlife. Since rejoined the photography world in 2007, the prices and quality of equipment, needed for serious entry into the bird photography world have improved dramatically. It's now practical to buy a point-and-shoot camera that allows seriously good bird shots. 600mm is now becoming the norm, even for budget based bodies and lenses.

 

Keep at it and keep improving. Here's my more successful shots from the last 12-years:

 

Interestingness All-time

Yes, it matters and yes the prices have changed a lot. I'm taking some slow steps in this matter, been among nature most my life but in this specific scenarios (birds), never actually engaged on shooting pics, regardless of how many I came across in the open.

In time I might grow more passionate and invest on some gear.

Great pictures BTW, thanks for sharing.

Hey, I usually use my iPhone for for photographing. Most often, I process photos on my smartphone using Lightroom or VSCO, but I wanted to ask you if you know any good apps for working with photos so that their quality doesn't deteriorate?

Could you share some specifics on what you need to fix, improve or remove from your pictures? desired results? I worked for years on the digital room sort of saying managing pictures from diff depts, photographers and my own, there were patterns emerging, and then it's easy to come up with automated solutions, sometimes the recurring patterns appear due to:

• Your own gear (smartphone), and things could improve by using a filter or whatever (depending the case: diff solution) and it's worth discussing
  
• Other times there are repetitive things to edit/improve due to specific limitations of the gear
  
• Specific desired results in terms of contrast or sharpness
  
• etc.
  

Diff people = diff methods, but at least from my experience, the less you need to edit, the better, specially if you are in some digital workflow because you would be doing the same over and over with diff pictures. In terms of images deteriorating, it's better to stay away from quality loss formats such as jpg. RAW would be a nice solution, or TIFF if raw is not possible.

Just saying... as an example: nice pictures, thanks for sharing because they might bring some light into the matter, I don't know the details or the story of the images you posted, but there are traces of artifacts. Some by the JPG compression but some due to what appears to me it's a sharpen filter. It could be improved working with the original using unsharp mask with some specific settings instead of the usual sharp filter. If you want to go deeper you could use some smart blur and layers to build a better image, this is done in Photoshop. When it comes to using the iPad or smartphone my experience is somehow limited because... while I played with it a few years ago, I found limitations, things I couldn't do there but I could on my desktop or laptop, like what I mentioned here and using LAB. I stopped playing with those apps (iOS) a while ago, I don't know how much they evolved. There is a big universe of options regarding having a small tablet (Windows) with Photoshop in it and some automated actions. In case you are interested, you could setup iCloud on your Windows device to access your automatically updated pictures (shot with your iPhone) and just a few clicks on full Photoshop will do magic.

IF you are interested on some of what I mentioned improving the images, I recommend you take a look at the wonderful work of Dan Margulis. Apart of different techniques, on most of his work he insist on AVOIDING the loss of detail, preserving it and enhance it.

I think you're painting with a broad and vague brush. If you have an issue with what someone has said in this thread, quote it and respond to it. Be specific in your critique. Otherwise, your accusations are incomprehensible to me.

That's the same as saying "be clear on how you pointed a gun at me"

what gun? pointing when? your posts sounds off topic and trying to find offense or issues where there are none.

I said and I repeat: once someone has participated on enough discussions about ethics, specially with philosophy applied OR philosophy training (that's different), it's easy to see patterns repeat over and over. The training means watching carefully the arguments and how people apply them, and that's very... very repetitive. Usually, talking about education, it serves little purpose because once those patterns emerge, the real topics are not being discussed, instead it's just the same mechanics over and over.

About predictable I mean (and you can see this over and over), nudity, sex, religion, gender, expo...

/ you sound like wanting attention, like it or not, deal with it, but don't build arguments about accusations, perhaps you are just unable to see what I mean and that's all. I will not reply again.

Wanted to bring attention to another matter in terms of ethical photographers, and that's unrealistic places.

While traveling and managing a travel website always tried to capture realistic views, that includes scale, enough to say: I know the places.

The thing is with the boom of the internet lots of websites (including big corporate ones) featuring touristic destinations, but when you see the pictures... hey that's not fair, looks awesome!!! but when people arrive they wonder "hey, this is it?, so small!!" and that's because lots of people want to make the most out of a picture even if it ends up being unrealistic, altering completely the sense of scale. The practical consequences of this... is people travel great distances only to come back disappointed. I received several honest and sad comments about this on one of my websites (issue not caused by me). Sure, some people look amazing but are an absolute rip off, all because people want to gain followers and post the most unrealistic pics.

I think a lot would be better about the world if we didn't think of beauty as the superficial prettiness we've come to assume. What if a pretty girl and a pretty sunset and smooth skin and a particularly-shaped nose and the most ideally-composed and technically sharp and purified photo turned out not to be so beautiful? Where would we find beauty then?

 

Look deeper.

 

Ethics may follow.

In numbers, in patterns, in trends: people like to talk about extreme or heroic situations. That's why most discussions about this are so predictable, and most people love double standards, sometimes people don't know how to discuss matters to detect and expose the double standards people live by, but when they learn, it's easier.

I worked at a large newspaper (in fact the largest in my region) and whenever a crime took place (let's say a murder), they would include the exact address showing the pics of the place, BUT if the crime took place at a bank, food chain restaurant, etc (in short: big business or specially a customer who pays advertising), the news would only include a mention of "a finance organization" or "food place" with no pictures, far away pictures, or cleverly covered logos and names. This kind of things were up to "editorial" decisions, not the photographer, they would choose among the available pictures. And I witnessed situations where they said nothing, posted nothing and asked the personal to keep their mouth shut. But yes, from time to time we all had to attend conferences and discussions about ethics, that was... terrible a joke because of what we managed to see month after month.

About beauty, yes. There have been interesting research about beauty in diff regions showing pictures of what some consider pretty, and interesting enough some people react "too thin, too weak" to the things we consider pretty. A multi episode documentary taking place in England (I don't remember if it was the BBC) picked several participants among men and women and followed eating and training to see how they changed. The "experts" explained and predicted the outcomes. It was interesting.

I'm... going off topic... on that documentary the experts explained that most of the results that we considered beauty were useless in nature becase those people had very low fat reserves, and they would be the first to die during a crisis, while average people would have more resources and backup to survive hunger or illnesses.

Ethics is a popular topic.

 

In the film era I don't think anyone mentioned ethics very much. But nowadays, some busybody wants to you to live life on their terms. When it comes to professional news work / photojournalism, then sure, have a code of ethics. But if...

The thing is: most discussions about moral and ethics quickly (almost regardless of the context) fall on the same repetitive patterns of critical exposure, life threatening situations, privacy invasion, under-age situations, sex, "the so called right to know" at te expenses of other people, etc. It's so repetitive once you have seen 10 of them, the rest is just the same over and over, nothing new. And honestly those discussions are EASY, not to say obvious.

But, when you talk about ethics and morals, and go deep in philosophy or values, in the sense of what comes before the other thing (cause and effect, and small seeds causing a global effect) then things get interesting.

Consider magazines, beauty. How easy models and photographers can approach beauty from a non practical and also unrealistic angle. Even the readers of that magazine will fail to see the issues of trying to match an artificial set of beauty, or better said: unrealistic because probably the only thing untouched in the picture is the chair or the glasses, everything else has been altered. Is that ethical? what are the long term effects specially on teens?

Consider weddings. In the past people might use excess of make up and extensive photo shoots to end up appearing "great" even if that image wouldn't even resemble the look of the natural person, to the point of being unrecognizable. That's past, today there are amazing tools in make up and digital fixing that bring this to another level, not to mention people INSISTING to the photographer they want to look just like the artificial person they produce with their own cell phones apps and filters. Is that ethical?

My wife is a lawyer... we often discuss the sad news of "missing person". Most times if it's a man, the person looks the same on every picture and also in real life. When it's about a woman... even a teenager... you can see a set of 5 pictures and she looks like a total different person on each picture, not to mention IMPOSSIBLE TO RECOGNIZE IN PERSON, but hey, those are the pictures available, nobody is thinking "hey take a pic as you are in case you go missing", the result is you can walk next to that woman and fail to recognize her, this is more evident in some regions than others. Is that ethical?

What about parents? sometimes you see "missing person" and the woman in the picture looks like a stripper, only for your surprise you find out she is under age, sometimes 15 years old and you wonder "how is this little girl taking pictures like that?", I've seen some internet discussions where people say "oh poor girl, but she looks like a $lut".

My point here is the same as someone way older than me said during one of these discussions: it's about people, it's not exactly about professions but people being ethical or not. Once you start thinking about it, it makes sense. This can be added to the expectations and values from the people themselves (regardless of the photographer). Many clients will refuse a session of "ethical pictures", remember many business are not ethical and so people want to do unethical stuff to stay relevant.

Thanks! Reading up, it looks like i might be safer sticking with resolutions that multiply easily into the maximum optical resolution of the scanner. I think the v600 has a max resolution of 6400dpi, so 800 might be a good one to play with. Slightly higher than the recommended 600. I just went through my photos and of the ones i'm concerned with scanning prints, they are 95% black and white (or sepia tones) from the 40s-50s and mostly smaller than 3x5. (I've got a lot of 2x3 and 2x2 with a couple of passport photo size) The ones smaller than 3x5 are the ones i'm most interested in scanning at a higher resolution.

Yes. But then again you have to play with it. Just one example: one of the scanners I have does a great job but the speed is great and the same from 100 to 300 dpi. From 400 to 600 it's a different speed,and from 600 and above it's way different and slow. I prefer 300 for multi purpose, average and big originals. 400 is good for me on most cases, and above that... rarely used. The experience is way different with other scanners where 300 dpi doesn't get me the same clear quality as with this one. That's what I point out to play with the scanners because having the chance of playing with diff models and brands allowed me to discover how different and fast some models work on certain resolutions.

You also have to explore the scanning options, some scanners allow you to turn off the post processing ("noise" reduction, color enhance, etc) and you can do that for yourself speeding up the process.

I also read that, with a higher resolution, I could run into an issue with paper texture. Fortunately, most of the textured prints I have are 4x6 or larger. The tiny ones are mostly glossy b&w prints.

 

-James

True.

I didn't mention this before but it might be useful. If you can afford it, explore your options around buying an specific scanner, new or 2nd hand for prints. You can find stuff like the ScanJet Pro 4500 being really fast (and other models alike). And you can also find better options (that won't need to pull your originals under a roller the same way as the ScanJet) such as the Epson DS-510 WorkForce.

Mine is something like this: Kodak ScanMate i1120 (

So, basically, other than storage space and time to do the actual scan, is there any downside to scanning at 1200dpi vs 600? The streamlining will save time and storage space is not an issue.

This applies for multiple possible answers. Basically you will have to play with it and see the results. Many scanners don't really have native resolution in levels. Some resolutions are purely interpolated so it's not worth wasting your time. Other scanners work amazingly great and fast on certain resolutions (they seem optimized for that) and using the highest resolution serves no higher purpose.

Testing might bring some surprises depending on your gear, brand, model. So if you are lucky, let's say you want 1,200dpi... perhaps you might find surprising results using 800/1000 vs 1200 with some practical improvements on speed and quality.

As said before, we had some time to play with diff models back in the day.

The bozo in the video holds the larger CPL filter the wrong way round in the first 'demonstration'!

 

I think he corrects it later, but why not edit out the false start?

 

Youtube videos - about as reliable as a bus timetable.

Yes, but I pointed out the Vivitar comment regarding that YT vid. Not every CPL works the same way (price, quality). Some comparisons are available on the web.

To me, the ones that work best, fully polarizing... are those coming from LCD screens (B/W) and then the ones from color screens such as laptops or tablets. I have extracted some in the past (electronics hobbies and projects), those filters need to block light effectively to provide full black on the screen. Some are not so powerful leaving weak black or some sort of dark gray. The problem with those things, to create custom polarizing filters is the glue. When removing the layer, it ends covered with sticky surface and blurry, very blurry loosing the transparency it used to have. Some methods to extract those filters work better than others but damage the layer, the one preserving it keeps more glue. At the moment haven't found any product in my area that works perfectly at removing it. Some other polarizing options such as glasses (I have tried) do not block all the light but it's more due to the price/quality.

I've played around with several options because in my country... polarizing filters are at the moment very rare if not impossible to find. The store where bought this one had only two, in two separate cities. It's impossible to find polarizing sheets to play around, buying online works but increases the price and I'm not very good at waiting 2 weeks for that. Sometimes when I travel I do bring a list of stuff to buy. Sadly photo gear stores changed a lot in my country in recent years, the one keeping a bit of specialized stuff in this angle is Nikon but terrible website you never know what they have and the sellers have little training, and the prices are high.

In the past when film was the thing you could find lots of brands and variety of filters on almost every photographic store. Those were good days.

It's good to see another budding bird photographer joining the ranks. I'm not familiar with the HX1. For these subjects, I think that the RX10 would be a much better body. I have no idea of your budget, but a used model from 2017 and later would be a substantial move up. Of course, the "right body" won't solve all problems, so there's much to learn, if you'd like to get deeper into these subjects. Always feel free to ask.

Yes, birds are awesome and the whole experience of photographing them is neat, but sometimes quite difficult.

I'm enjoying the HX1, nice camera. The RX10 looks great, less zoom but more resolution. The viewfinder does wonders for me (both models have it). Yes there is a lot to learn, my time doing bird photography is very short, did a few tries in the past with other cameras and a remote controlled Canon, but little luck. The zoom is helping me a lot too at present time.

It's funny and I don't fully know the reasons why, but while I've had budgets for other kinds of cameras I often buy below what I could afford keeping the features I want. This happened even when I was fully working in this field. I try to keep at least two cameras, one for detailed indoor work and another for battle outdoors, funny enough I tend to fall in love with the battle one (even having less features).

Thank dcstep, very kind, I will be around posting and also asking from time to time.

Looking for some advice on a workflow for a large scanning project i'm up against.

Ben involved on that before, as a reference: setting it up, creating the workflow, feeding the system, organizing/tagging and also creating a custom solution from zero (software) for picture cataloging and documents.

Reading your initial descriptions I didn't see a clear direction but I'm familiar with this kind of job. Being practical and thinking long term, my advice to you goes as follows:

- Ideally a flatbed scanner with slide adapter. This way you can scan printed pictures and also the slides in batches. I wouldn't engage on "one by one", it becomes a pain eventually. SOME old scanners and some new ones come with a nice feature detecting the individual prints and slides from the whole scan, meaning you can scan once and get 10 or 12 individual scans right away. I don't remember specific models but yes we had some of those at some work places. At home/office found that some Canon scanners and some Brother multi function printers had this feature, but no slide scanning. We had two slide scanners at the office in the past that could take care of 6 (as I remember) slides at once, but finding specific equipment (old one) is difficult unless you navigate on online ads, people sell all sort of stuff there.

Before you engage on a common discussion about quality and how the distance of the slide adapters affects whatever, try to stay realistic and practical, most of the pictures won't ever get printed again, most will end up on digital devices as phones, tvs, etc.

- Try to set at least 3 automated fixes. I wouldn't look for more, try to figure 3 scripts (photoshop or whatever program you enjoy) to fix the pictures in batches, remove dust, enhance color, CROP and sharpen a bit (in that order). You can use photoshop for that, or XNVIEW (way better for this kind of job if you ask me) and you can also create custom scripts with more advanced tools like immagemagick, that's too much for this project.

- Define and select a fixed size. Really, forget about scanning at max res and keeping max res files. Scan at the maximum resolution you can, yes, but crop and resize to a practical size, let's say 2048 max horizontal or vertical. I would stay with TIFF and JPG as second option.

- Focus on scanning and archiving, THEN feeding a system. We used different tools for diff cases (and budgets), I don't remember all the names like portfolio or cumulus, you can get some of those for cheap or even for free. I wouldn't use online tools for this.

- Why not online. For long term don't trust online platforms, specially free ones. Many went out of business, that's why. The first catalog I was involved with happened 1999 approx, the last one (for a corporation) around 2007. Many promising solutions we found and research at the moment, no longer exist. That's why, go offline, choose a software that allows you to run offline.

- Folders, tags. Try to forget about folders and organizing things right away, just focus on feeding the system and THEN later sort and catalog the images using TAGS, define a limited but practical set of tags like 12 max and that's it, the software will do the rest.

If you ask me, after working on that several times, the most time consuming task is cataloging and tagging the images (or feeding the descriptions if that's the case), the rest is easy.

Good luck.

I use my phone more than my camera.

I use my truck more than my bike.

I enjoy my camera more than my phone, my bike more than my truck.

To everything there is a season......

True.

I remember some situations where using a cell phone (high end) mounted on a multi axis gimbal stabilizer had and unplanned positive effect on the audience, compared to a traditional camera filming video. The conclusion was among many, "oh they only have their photo cameras using the video recording function", regardless of the resolution or stabilization of such cameras, so the gimbal and smartphone won the battle those days.

As the thread grows, originating from a question about opinions on the market, I'm growing more on reminding the audience that the business also involves "general image" over the clients, such an old phenomenon still has effects today.

I monitored a very interesting discussion during a seminar on marketing last week: quite bright and experienced people, discussing various marketing conduits and their relationships to one and the other.

 

One point made was that studies reveal a tendency for particular age groups to get "stuck" in (or 'on') one particular medium, usually predicated by the age that group,was and the type of use that age group had with that medium, when that medium was 'where it was at'.

 

The take away lesson was to know 'where it is at' for your Prospects: and not to fall into the trap of assuming that is always the latest medium.

 

WW

I've seen this too among publishers (website and content builders). There are interesting discussions (but long...) about how in the past it was "the desktop computer" and traditional media like radio. Then it became extra work in terms of "now post on your website, also on FB, don't forget twitter, linkedin, etc etc" and you could add like 4 or 8 depending on your region or market. This is related to the topic as being part of social communications, targets and business. It's... a lot of work, and studying the demographics (analytics when one actually has a website and strategies) sure means a hell of a lot more work, also understanding how people move from one group to another (if they do so), then... or better said: now, you have to add consuming the data on mobile, cellphones and not so much on desktop. I would understand this not being easy to relate when one only thinks about photography. Back to the point: many content creators (and business operators) had to choose and limit their efforts on networks or social groups because it is just too much work trying to stay relevant on several at once.

This also includes what you used to generate the content "X camera" = oh such a dinosaur. It's amazing.

You know, the watermarks are always important in these "online" times.

Thank you all for the comments, I'm updating the thread with some results. The problem has been solved. As we can see on YT (some examples), some CPL work better than others, this one had weak effects regarding the Sony Camera, but the other (smaller) polarizing filter was working pretty well (but has diff diameter, that's why I couldn't keep using that one). Besides this particular CPL not being as strong (effective), there was an issue with the simple rotation of the lens inside the filter, that was it, as simple as that. I was scratching my head because there was a place where "it worked" at night around 30% of how it should work but it didn't work the same the next day (angle was different). It wasn't noticeable until I tried rotating the filter having the camera in front of me while having a fingerprint reflection barely rotating. Disassembled the filter, cleaned, etc put everything together again, free rotation now.

Anyway... (in general) as mentioned there are some filters that don't show as strong effects as others. It's shown here:

Some cameras have a quarter-wave bi-refringent...

I was curious about something like that (but I didn't know as much as you about the topic), all I knew is some materials like cellophane can have effects on light altering the polarization, but that doesn't mean if used directly it would polarize light having the same effect as a polarizing filter. I played around with that in the past when I read the news about it. Your comment was very informative. Thanks.

I thought about this some more, and can't figure out how anything other than another polariser, internal to the camera, would prevent a CPL from working.

The following is not exactly related to what caused the issue here but, as a bonus there is an interesting effect using 3 polarizing filters. Supposedly, one filter would cancel the light in some directions allowing only one, and then the second filter would cancel the other angle leaving a black result, yes, but when a third polarizing filter is used... something strange happens. This explanation of Polarizing filters and the Bell's Theorem is quite interesting:

Definitely interesting. I also was a bit skeptical about the need for CPLs and never found any problem with my old D200 and old regular polarizers. No doubt they can mess up metering or focus or something on some cameras, but the problem might not be as bad as people think.

Nice, in my case I never imagined some would not be as effective as others (quality), or facing a rotation problem as I did, simple, easy to solve, but confusing until I realized what was happening. Regarding CPL, I never used them in the past due to a wide variety of reasons, but at some point faced situations when removing reflections was actually desirable.

Hi, I have a really, really hard time believing this really happens. In my experience the usual thing when someone thinks their polarizer "doesn't work" is that they don't clearly understand the photographic "conditions" in play, so are mistaken about where it SHOULD work.

 

Here's a test I occasionally suggest to people to "test" their polarizer. If you have a flat screen (LCD) monitor, point your camera at it and rotate the polarizer. If you can make the screen black-out completely this proves that the polarizer is working.

 

Or hold a second polarizer in front of the first, then rotate one of the polarizer. Again, the ability to black-out proves that both polarizers are working. There is an issue when using two polarizers, however, if a circular polarizer is involved. The side with the "quarter-wave plate" is not allowed to face the other polarizer; this cancels one of the polarizer effects and they won't be able to black-out. So you have to be careful doing this test. As a note, the quarter-wave plate is on the side of a polarizing filter that normally faces the camera.

Yes, but solved, posted above. About the polarizing experiments, as mentioned there are very interesting effects depending different materials, the posted videos might bring some interesting light to the matter.

At the end of the day: the filter was fixed, now rotating, working fine. Thanks for the help.

It sounds like “instagrammers with smartphones” were and, perhaps, are going to be a force in your life.

 

Best I can do is recommend the 1952 MGM musical Singin’ in the Rain, about talkies taking over the silent film era. It may not help your business, but at least you’ll have a relaxing evening and get to see three delightful Hollywood stars dance on the ceiling.

 

Anyway, it’s a reminder that time marches on while history keeps repeating itself. Sometimes, if you can’t beat ‘em you join ‘em and sometimes you make a last stand.

In some circles, clients have some sort of magical thinking (unrealistic arguments not related to the outcome). Music will always do a great job relaxing the stressful moments. And yes, history repeats itself.

Instagram? How old school. TikTok is where it’s at.

That's part of the interesting phenomenon, to some hype means quality or being able to deliver a project.

I got a 16g SDHC card and it works fine. The other 16g I initially tried/failed was not SDHC. I don't know about using a cpl with this camera. Mine is not threaded to accept any add ons. Maybe a person could hand hold a filter in front of the lens..??

Thanks. Will keep researching.

Possibly 16g is too much for the camera. I can report that I have the DSC-HX1 with 8g, no problem, yet I'm unable to find specifics on maximum size accepted on the camera, sounds like this could be the case. I also have one adapter (Memory stick to Micro SD) but haven't tried a card that size (16g), BTW yes, you can use those adapters to use Micro SD cards instead of Memory Stick).

BTW, just a question, will appreciate if you can give me some help. Do you happen to have a CPL (Polarizer) filter? does it work with your Sony Cybershot DSC-HX5??

My CPL filter and my Sony DSC-HX1 doesn't get along, it produces zero polarize effect. Already tried backwards. Situation described here:

Polarizing filter not working - Sony Cybershot DSC-HX1

Ok this is weird, will appreciate any info or suggestions.

I have two polarizing filters that do work pretty fine. I have tested them with my cameras and smartphones. So, if I take shots at windows or flat surfaces producing reflections, the use of those filters removes them given they are rotated to the right angle. Nice, no problem. Polarizing filters work one way and not the other, meaning you have to put then on the camera on some specific direction, otherwise it will not work.

Well, the big filter doesn't do anything on my Cybershot DSC-HX1. It does it's magic on EVERY other device with a camera except the Sony Cybershot. Already tried using it backwards and nothing happens. That's weird, never seen anything like it.

I disassembled a small calculator to remove the polarizing film in order to perform some tests, it's a little bit dark but it works. So this filter does work on EVERY device, including the Sony DSC-HX1. How can this camera be immune to the CPL filter built for cameras? I don't get it.

Today I will visit some stores to see if I can find CPL filters that they let me actually TRY on that camera. Sadly in my region stores with that kind of filters are very rare and difficult to find. If anyone could contribute with an explanation I will appreciate it. Already searched the web but found no clue on why this is happening.