Tony Rowlett

Excellent!

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Sixx">This is Nikki Sixx</a>, cofounder of the rock band Motley Crew.

I happened to find recently that he is quite the photography enthusiast, working mostly with Leica rangefinders. His work is pretty good and is <a href="http://nsixxfoto.tumblr.com/">worth a look</a>. Notice the cornucopia of equipment that he uses; good gosh!

I don't know why the shots made at wider apertures wouldn't show these cracks as well, though. I know that dust spots show up at both extremes, and, as Mukul points out, the lens aperture/focus wouldn't seem to matter. (I'm not sure about any of that, though!)

Yep, that's just what I'm doing, letting the printer be the color manager.

At one point I thought that because the black ink is running on the low side, maybe it's that. But I'm guessing that if an ink level gets too low, something will blurt out a message. It hasn't; and I'm only printing to 4x6.

Myself being uninvolved, my wife wanted a wireless printer to print from her iPhone/iPad, so she purchased a

cheap printer at Costco, an HP 6525 Photosmart printer. It's one of those "all-in-one" things, scan, fax, "web"

(whatever that is), etc. It has two trays, one on top for "photo" and one on bottom for regular "Letter" paper.

So I went ahead and plugged it in. Didn't use the accompanying CD, just told my Windows 7 64-bit computer to

recognize it and do its magic, and it did. Within only a couple minutes, I was printing from Lightroom 4 to it

using some old 4x6" Epson glossy that I had sitting around.

 

I was completely amazed at the results! I've printed probably 50 or more B&W RAW images and some color work. By

itself, it seems to do AOK! I never told it about color management (beyond telling Lightroom that all that's

done by the printer). At first I didn't tell it "Glossy," but after that everything was great.

 

I was particularly pleased with my black and white stuff, especially after not telling the computer much. Even

comparing the prints in different lighting situations, like between outdoors and incandescent lighting. (My more

serious set up that I am satisfied with is Colorbytes ImagePrint 9 and my Epson 2200 which gives me really nice

results, especially the black and white.)

 

Anyway, this morning, it all ended. The "wi-fi" connection somehow got lost and the message was for me to

reinstall the printer software, so I did. Now, no matter what settings I use, I can't get the same prints. With

the B&W prints, there is a definite "cast" to all the prints which is slightly on the green side. They are

definitely not black.

 

I remember absolutely no change in the setup. I told Lightroom "Glossy." I told the Windows (in the

"Properties" of the printer "HP Glossy Paper (or some such; doesn't have Epson paper as an option.) Even tried

"glossy post card."

 

What should I check?

Lately I've noticed that my sensor has been extremely dirty, having to "spot" out my photos containing large

expanses of sky, etc. using Lightroom. Having clearly understood that it is sort of dangerous to perform a

sensor cleaning on one's own using one of those kits that are widely available, I was dreading having to send my

Monochrom in somewhere to have it done professionally.

 

Well, I happened into a camera store and saw those various air-blower bubbles, and I ended up buying one of the

kind that looks like a little squatty rocket ship ($12 !) and decided to have a non-chemical go at it. I didn't

have much success yesterday when I tired it. The blower must have gotten a few of those nasty bits, but for the

most part, my sensor was still pretty dirty. Today I tried it again, making sure to first blow off the

surrounding dust surrounding the lens mount. Removed the lens, did some more blowing with the opening of the

camera facing down, then I "Examined" my sensor from the menu, again with the camera facing down, and fairly

forcefully jetted air, say, half a dozen quick "squeezes" with the thing, and then I quickly turned off the

camera and replaced the lens.

 

For a test shot, I intentionally over-exposed (around +1 stop) a mostly out-of-focus shot of a clear, off-white

wall (in my office), popped the shot into Lightroom, did a 1:1 exam, and I cannot find a single spot. I looked

several times. It appears to be perfectly clean now!

 

So, if you're dreading a sensor cleaning of your expensive Leica, go get one of those bubble air squirter things

and give it a go.

Congrats! Cool!

Brad, you are the total master at that. Love every single one of those.

I recall being criticized somewhat some years back for a phrase I liked to use: "rangefinder style photography."

I often find that there is a magic moment - a truly fleeting one - in which the subject realizes that his or her picture is about to be taken yet hasn't had the time to pose themselves. Now THAT'S a great moment to capture if you can!

This almost belongs in the "Casual Conversations" forum as your topic really isn't "Off Topic" to the site.

 

My story: The longer I take photos, the greater my interest in seeing the photos of other photographers, yours included. Many thanks for posting them.

Amway's LOC works wonders on things like this. It was the only thing out there that could remove the brake fluid from under my fingernails one time. It is biodegradable and mostly gentle. If you have some of that, I'd try that.

It must be equipped with the quietest shutter on the planet. The review here on photo.net was what led me to buy mine around the same time as Alex.

Brian, many thanks for doing that.

Ray, I actually agree with you. Quite frankly, the Monochrom is a ridiculous overkill. In my view, the majority of the finest/most interesting photographs ever made with a "35mm" camera lack the majority of the Monochrom's characteristics, resolution, noise, blah blah. Don't get me wrong, it is a great camera and it's really interesting to use, but the ability to pixel peep the scratches of a bolt-head or lug nut on the tire of a truck 100 yards away is ... unnecessary!

 

Funny thing, too, is I get all worked up about working in black-and-white for awhile as an experiment, when, at the same time, I see in influx of some of the most wonderful street photography taken in color which made me second-guess myself.... is that some karma or what? :-) Some of the sites that I have been looking at:

 

http://www.mattstuart.com/

 

http://nickturpin.com/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chiogonzalezphoto/

I'm guessing that the actual level of noise is deceiving. There is probably as much noise with the Monochrom at a given ISO as there is with the M9, it's just that the Monochrom's noise is so much easier to deal with in good programs that handle noise reduction well, like Dfine and Lightroom. It truly is like film grain, even at high ISO.

 

For the Monochrom, even without the use of the color channel sliders, I'm loving Lightroom more and more each time I use it.

That's cool, Arthur, it never dawned on me to use lens filters on the M8 in B&W mode. I will try that some time. Nice picture, by the way.

 

On the Monochrom's distinct advantages, I'd say a major one is its high-ISO performance which is outstanding. The beauty there is that you can set it on Auto-ISO, lowest speed: 1/60th or 1/125th, highest ISO= 6400 or 8000 or even 10,000, and zone focus to your hearts content and get sharp pictures.

THAT lens will show what ANY Leica can do! :-) (But you're definitely correct)

We have tons of ravens in Anchorage (indeed, Alaska) in the winter time. Even in Fairbanks when it is 50 below or colder, they are out. And you can hear them from farther away in the ice fog, and it is an eerie, strange, swallowing sound that is indescribable.

 

Edgar Allan Poe would have dug Anchorage.

that was a planned shot. i saw him perched on top of that car and i knew he was going to jet. relatively fast shutter

caught him. thanks!

50 f/2 'cron. (and/or 35 f/2 'cron).

That's pretty remarkable, Nozar. Thanks for contributing.

Last night we had dinner company and so I put the Monochrom on my own version of "Snapshot Mode" :-) by downsizing its resolution to 4.5 MB JPEG Fine (!), and by mounting my Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 Super Wide-Heliar Aspherical. I knew that the shots of the evening would not require 35 MB uncompressed (extracted from camera) on my hard drive, and a little funky angle of view for these times could be fun.

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There is no downsizing of the .DNG format, so when you do this, you have to put up with some in-camera processing of the .JPG file type. For my purposes that was fine.

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This is fairly close to a 100% crop of a picture I took of Mimi's silverware drawer. You might notice that her Chinese spoons are more prominent. (The next drawer is full of chop sticks!) The data follows. Make sure to view at highest res ("View all sizes"). Note that I increased the "Blacks" slider to +10 (this lessens the blacks and makes them a bit lighter). This is an ISO 2500 picture, with standard in-camera sharpening and no noise reduction that I am aware of. The Lightroom adjustments are fairly mild, the whites being shot up a bit more than the rest so I could bring out the whiteness of her spoons:

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Monochrom #5559 (jpg) 4.5 MB JPEG Fine<br>

Approx 100% crop<br>

Standard sharpening (in-camera)<br>

No sharpening or noise reduction in Lightroom<br>

ISO 2500<br>

1/60th<br>

Aperture: Not wide open<br>

--<br>

Lightroom 4 Adjustments<br>

Exposure: +.24<br>

Contrast: +14<br>

Highlights: +16<br>

Shadows: 0<br>

Whites: +36<br>

Blacks: +10<br>

Relative contrast control is sure easy when starting with a color image, that is for sure. So far I'm learning that to obtain the best in skin tones for Caucasians, one need place a light yellow or orange filter on the lens of a Monochrom, otherwise the skin tones come up a tad dark (at least sometimes, depending on lighting). I'm not sure if this is a huge deal, but I think that is where having the full color range in your M9 is more convenient. It may be the pay-off for the higher apparent resolution. Time will tell for me, as I have not shot that many pictures of people yet, but of the several, they sure look good with just adjusting things like contrast, whites, shadows, blacks, etc.

 

I worried about this, because it was only recently that I began learning about using Hue/Saturation/Luminance (HSL) treatment in Lightroom. What an excellent and rich tool to use for B&W conversions from a color image.