Re: Very experienced photog Switching to digital... but CLUELESS - Jon T 11:42:11 05/04/04 (0)
 Re: Very experienced photog Switching to digital... but CLUELESS - Impoverished Audiophile 10:01:10 05/04/04 (1)
 I was going to suggest just that. - Dmitry 22:43:51 05/12/04 (0)

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 Re: Very experienced photog Switching to digital... but CLUELESS - Jon T 11:42:11 05/04/04 (0)
 Re: Very experienced photog Switching to digital... but CLUELESS - Impoverished Audiophile 10:01:10 05/04/04 (1)
 I was going to suggest just that. - Dmitry 22:43:51 05/12/04 (0)
 Your expectations? - Ding 11:57:05 05/03/04 (5)
 BTW everyone should listen to this guy !!! but things are not that bleak - Joe M 13:09:06 05/03/04 (4)
 Not bleak.... - Ding-Dong 14:08:48 05/03/04 (3)
 Many thanks for the replies..... - Impoverished Audiophile 15:37:59 05/03/04 (2)
 Re: Many thanks for the replies..... - Deckers1 17:50:24 05/18/04 (1)
 Oh yeah, and . . . . - Deckers1 17:54:19 05/18/04 (0)
 Well as a former newsphoto editor I could offer a few workable sugestions. - Joe M 07:16:57 05/03/04 (0)

For cameras read the reviews at ... www.dpreview.com

Nikon Coolpix - 5700 or 5400
Canon G5 powershot
Olympus- C8080, or C5060, 5050
Sony Cybershot DSC F717 or F828

I'm moving on before this all crashes.

At 170 dpi in the final print - there's really not much detail. Carefully increasing resolution in software (manufacturing data) gives more sharpness but no more detail. Certain colors and surfaces take on a "plastic" look (to me). The fun thing about photos is the amount of detail you can get when compared to other graphic arts such as painting or print making. Rezzed up digital doesn't have detail - but it will have sharpness.

You don't get that tactile feel with a small sensor at 5-6 megapixels. Sharpness yes, detail no. So many people get excited about the sharpness that they just blow off (or excuse) the lack of detail. In 8x10 prints the results look good. Take that up to 12x15 and the images start falling apart. You really need a minimum of 240 dpi. If you can get 300 dpi - the prints look even better. So, take the long side of the image sensor (pixels) and divide it out over the long side of the print - you'll see rather quickly how all those megapixels get stretched out over the print.

I haven't played with the new 8 megapixel "prosumer" cameras, but the tests I have seen show a lot of noise when the ISO is boosted much over 200.

As for image manipulation, editing, sizing, etc., there are several programs that can do that, but the king of the hill, and still best, is Photoshop. In my opinion, although it is expensive, there is no substitute for the flexibility and capability of the program. There are a ton of plug-ins for it (small add-on programs) that enhance and extend the capabilities. I use FocalBlade for sharpening and Neat Image for noise reduction. Both are inexpensive and really help with the final image.

You can learn Photoshop by buying books and trial and error. Once you understand the basic capabilities, you can pretty much get the final image you want by looking up certain functions in books. Scott Kelby's books are really good as he collects tips and tricks from other Photoshop experts and puts them into his books in an easily accessible manner. Start with "The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers." This will give you a lot to look at and learn about Photoshop. My advice is to buy it BEFORE you commit to digital photography to see if a computer "lightroom" is amenable to your personality and working style.

Then you get to printing. Dye based printers make nice prints on glossy paper that fade rather rapidly unless oversprayed with a protectorant. Pigment base printers (like the Epson 2200, 4000, 7600, 9600) make archival prints on matte paper that look fine. Put pigment ink on glossy paper and you get "gloss differential." Heavily inked areas look matte from the pigment ink sitting on the surface while other areas of the print look glossy. There aren't enough "U's" in the word ugly to describe the look.

Lastly, if you don't have your system calibrated/profiled - you won't get consistent results. This means you have to calibrate your monitor and profile the printer. Once you do that, you will truly have WYSIWYG. Look at Monaco "Easy Color," or the ColorVision products to see the hardware/software you need for calibration and profiling.

If you want to do black and white, that's a whole different bag-o-worms. If you switch out the inks to a monochrome inkset you can get stunning results. If you want to print B+W with a standard color inkset, you need a raster image proccesor (RIP) software program like ImagePrint from ColorByte. Manufacturer printer drivers are notoriously bad at ink management for black and white printing. ImagePrint has a specific B&W ink management portion to make prints with the color inkset. As a side benefit, the ImagePrint RIP has a lot of built-in paper profiles saving you the trouble of having to profile the printer.

Change over to digital - sure, just pull out your wallet & start buying things. You'll have to realize that if you want to make the prints yourself, there's a whole lot more to it than just owning a computer and printer.

It's only when you dive into the pool of major enlargements, that more of everything starts to come into play.

More Megs, more pixels more $$$. Bigger Printers,cameras, space for all this.

Basically you'll get out , what you're willing to put forth.

But hey, it's all good.

In fact, if you take your time, and setup a profiled system, color fidelity and reproduction issues are the last thing on your mind as you work on an image because you have confidence that your system WILL absolutely reproduce what you see on your screen.

But even with that there are subtlties. For example, with a certain paper it might take up to 24 hours after printing before the image has "stabilized" (quit changing). Profile a test target on the paper immediately after printing it, and final images will only look 90% as good as a print from a profile where you've waited the full 24 hours before reading the test target image.

Then there is contrast gain. Some papers gain contrast slightly from what is seen on the raster image. One might think of this as the difference between viewing a transparency on a light box and seeing a print. The difference being the CRT image is transmitted light and the print is reflected light. Or, another example is in making a wet darkroom B&W print, where one must use experience with image making to account for "dry down."

Likewise, with digital ink jet printing, one must expirement a bit, and gain some experience in how a print changes between the CRT image and the final print. Not huge changes, not color shifts, but those little "extra tweaks" that give the image an added dimension in aesthetic appeal.

The point being that just like standard wet darkroom based photography - you must match your technical choices and technique with your aesthetic intent.

Unlike a digital camera, though, scanned files are BIG: a 4000dpi scanner will produce a 24MP file, which can easily print at 12x18 and will even make a decent 20x30. Scanned film will be grainier than digital capture, and there are some quality losses in the scanning process, so a 24MP scan won't look as good as, say, a 22MP shot from one of the new $20,000 medium format digital backs, but it will still make really nice large prints. I have an older Nikon scanner than can only do 2800dpi, which gives a 12MP scan, and the 12x18's I've made from scans of 35mm Fuji Provia look fantastic: tack sharp, good detail, and almost invisible grain.

Plus, even a 4000dpi scan isn't getting everything possible off the film. With fine grained slide films, you can sometimes extract additional detail all the way up to 8000dpi. With a digital camera, your shots are stuck forever at 6-8MP. With a film scanner, in 10 years you can always rescan your best shots with the latest technology and make even better prints.

Since you're doing all of the darkroom manipulations digitally, you can just send your film out to a reputable pro lab for processing and not have to worry about local yahoos scratching your film or making lousy prints. And you can keep using the same cameras and films that you've become comfortable with and avoid the digital camera upgrade treadmill.

The main disadvantage of scanning is the time it requires. A 4000dpi scan of a single frame can take 2-10 minutes depending on the scanner and scan settings. A few of the higher end scanners have batch feeders that allow you drop in 40 slides and let them scan overnight. Also, scanned images are almost always "rough" right out of the scanner and require more work in Photoshop to get color and contrast dialed in than a file from a digital camera would. Also, you'll need lots of hard disk space: a 4000dpi 16 bit scan of a 35mm slide requires about 144MB.

A good film scanner for 35mm costs between $600-1000 -- Nikon and Minolta make the best ones (I lied, Imacons are the best, but they start at $5k). A medium format scanner is a lot more: figure at least $2000 for the Nikon LS-9000. Add in a $250 monitor calibration Spyder, and you're still less than most DSLR bodies. Also, scanners are a much more mature technology, so unlike DLSRs, your scanner won't be obsolete in six months.

As for prints, don't bother with inkjets. There are several online printers (I've used epixel.com and I've heard good things about mpix.com). You submit your fully edited image file to them and they'll make you a chemical print on real photo paper. Prices are about $2-3 for an 8x10. If you price the consumables cost (ink, paper, etc) for inkjets, you'll find that it's about the same, and the chemical prints are real photos, not inkjet prints. Local labs that have Fuji Frontier, Noritsu, or Agfa minilabs can usually do the same thing. If you take it locally, be sure to insist that they do "no corrections" on your prints, so that they don't screw up the color and contrast you set in photoshop.

Finally, color management isn't anything to be scared of. Once you get the right hardware, it takes 10 minutes to profile your screen and you're pretty much good to go. If you forgo the inkjet printer and use either mail order or local labs for your printing, you can get a color target file from www.drycreekphoto.com, have it printed at your preferred lab, and then send the print to Dry Creek. They'll build a profile for the printer and post it on their website. It usually takes 4-6 weeks for them to create the profile, but it's a free service they offer to the photography community, so I can't complain. Once you get your preferred lab profiled and your screen calibrated, you can use Photoshop soft proofing to get a very good rendering of what the final print will look like.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions. I can send you sample images I've scanned from slides, too, if you're interested.

-Jon

But my friend and I needed a good digital camera for photos that might be needed for Court presentations. We descided on the Fuji SLR 7000. Not as pricey as the Canon, but nice enough for around $500-$700. Know for court, we often need 10X12's to show detail of damages without a magnifying glass. Judges can't see well after reading all day, and it helps.

My mother has Photoshop for her Mac. I am not that impressed with the need for all the tiny and slow changes it allows over the standard software bundled with the camera's. You could easily be satisfied with the results after getting used to your printer's "style". But get a nice printer now, and an excellant camera later. You'll be glad for it all later as you grow into the technique.