TR October Day 13

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I was torn between this and an infrared photo that I converted to black and white. Since the
previous pic of the day was practically monochrome I chose this instead, since it has a bit
more colour.

Paul
--
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"Paul Saunders" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
| Web page is now online; wildwales.fsnet.co.ukoctober13.htmlOpen ↗
|
| I was torn between this and an infrared photo that I converted to black and white. Since the
| previous pic of the day was practically monochrome I chose this instead, since it has a bit
| more colour.
|
| Paul

Hi Paul,

You've had a late night there! Another nice photo too. I've seen lots of other nice photos composed
like this - with submerged rocks in the foreground, but I can't seem to find an appropriate spot to
try it out (which is local). My local beaches are all sandy beaches and are totally featureless. :-(

By the way, I hope that isn't a washed out sky I see there (not from you, surely?)! ;o) ...but you
did say it was a cloudy and dull day...

Keep it up, you're just about half way through now. Also, out of 100 shots you take, how many would
you class as sellable? I've read about photographers who say they expect a few shots in a roll of
film to be great shots, so I just wondered how real people do!

Take care,

Ste

ste © said:

You've had a late night there! Another nice photo too. I've seen lots of other nice photos
composed like this - with submerged rocks in the foreground, but I can't seem to find an
appropriate spot to try it out (which is local). My local beaches are all sandy beaches and are
totally featureless. :-(

Aha! Now that needn't necessarily be a disadvantage. I was reading about this guy who loves taking
photos in the desert and what he likes best is the fact that it *is* so featureless. His argument
was that when he did find something of interest it really stood out, since there was nothing else
around to distract the eye or intrude into the picture. This idea has intrigued me too.

So why not wander around your featureless sandy beaches and look for something, anything! Could be a
pebble, a bit of seaweed, a bit of washed up wood, a sea shell, anything. Then try to compose it in
an interesting way. Use lighting and shadows to help with the composition. Try to get interesting
clouds in the background. Use a polariser. Use wide angle or telephoto to distort the perspective.

Lots of potential, you just have to find something interesting on the beach, or *make* it
interesting in the way you photograph it.

Quoted message said:

By the way, I hope that isn't a washed out sky I see there (not from you, surely?)! ;o) ...but you
did say it was a cloudy and dull day...

Nope, it was correctly exposed. In fact, I just had a look at the RAW file again to check the
histogram to be sure. No overexposure, it was a completely flat grey sky (although the exposure has
lightened it to practically white, it's not overexposed).

I could have pasted on an interesting sky, but that would have been cheating, wouldn't it? (May be
acceptable for some purposes, but these photos are a record of this month so that wouldn't be
appropriate.)

Quoted message said:

Keep it up, you're just about half way through now.

Only half way? I feel like giving up already... It's the general lack of sunshine that's uninspiring
me. I want to do some decent mountain walks, but I'm waiting for the right weather. May be here soon
though, I saw some blue sky this afternoon. No sunshine, but part of the sky was blue.

Quoted message said:

Also, out of 100 shots you take, how many would you class as sellable?

Difficult to say, because it depends on how you define sellable. There's a limit to how many shots
you could sell taken on the same day anyway, because many of them would be very similar, even if
they were all technically good enough to sell.

I used to estimate that I'd get one *good* shot out of every four, so nine or ten from one roll of
film, and one *very good* shot out of every ten, so four per roll, but in all depends on the quality
of the light and the scenery, so that can vary a lot. "Great" shots may only come along once in a
hundred, and "timeless classics" are even rarer.

Whether a shot is technically good is different to whether it's compositionally good, and even if a
shot is good that doesn't necessarily mean it's sellable, or vice versa. It all depends who you're
trying to sell to. For example, Threecliffs and Worms Head are the two most "sellable" scenes in the
Gower. Now I've got many excellent photographs of various crags and cliffs along isolated parts of
the coastline that most people have never seen, but are they sellable? To the tourist market,
probably not, since they are not recognisable features. But perhaps they could be included in a book
of the Gower. Then again, some may be sellable purely from an artistic point of view, but tourists
want photos of places they've been to.

Paul
--
The October Project 2003
wildwales.fsnet.co.ukoctober.htmlOpen ↗
wilderness-wales.co.ukwilderness-wales.co.ukOpen ↗
photosig.comuserphotosOpen ↗

"Paul Saunders" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
| ste © wrote:
|
| > You've had a late night there! Another nice photo too. I've seen lots of other nice photos
| > composed like this - with submerged rocks in the foreground, but I can't seem to find an
| > appropriate spot to try it out (which is local). My local beaches are all sandy beaches and are
| > totally featureless. :-(
|
| Aha! Now that needn't necessarily be a disadvantage. I was reading about this guy who loves taking
| photos in the desert and what he likes best is the fact that it *is* so featureless. His argument
| was that when he did find something of interest it really stood out, since there was nothing else
| around to distract the eye or intrude into the picture. This idea has intrigued me too.

It's a good idea for sure, and it's something that I've never tried to do. My eyes are always in
the air looking into the distance, so I'll have to keep them on the floor next time and see what I
can find...

| So why not wander around your featureless sandy beaches and look for something, anything! Could be
| a pebble, a bit of seaweed, a bit of washed up wood, a sea shell, anything. Then try to compose it
| in an interesting way. Use lighting and shadows to help with the composition. Try to get
| interesting clouds in the background. Use a polariser. Use wide angle or telephoto to distort the
| perspective.

Thanks for the ideas, I'll try them out next time I'm there.

| Lots of potential, you just have to find something interesting on the beach, or *make* it
| interesting in the way you photograph it.

When I went to the beach a few days ago, I got this photo: sm9.co.ukbeach.jpgOpen ↗
It's nothing special, but it shows the area that I'm talking about. I took the photo low down on the
tripod. I should have got my wide angle converter out, but it's too late now. I'll go back on
another day and hope for a more dramatic sky, and I might even try a panorama, which could be
interesting.

| > By the way, I hope that isn't a washed out sky I see there (not from you, surely?)! ;o) ...but
| > you did say it was a cloudy and dull day...
|
| Nope, it was correctly exposed. In fact, I just had a look at the RAW file again to check the
| histogram to be sure. No overexposure, it was a completely flat grey sky (although the exposure
| has lightened it to practically white, it's not overexposed).

Yes, it did look overexposed, but as I know you check your histograms and are somewhat of a
perfectionist, I was sure there was another reason, and that's when I remembered you said it was a
dull day. ;o)

| I could have pasted on an interesting sky, but that would have been cheating, wouldn't it? (May be
| acceptable for some purposes, but these photos are a record of this month so that wouldn't be
| appropriate.)

That's up to you as they're your images, as long as you either say so, or don't deny it's a fake sky
if asked, then that's fine in my book.

| > Keep it up, you're just about half way through now.
|
| Only half way? I feel like giving up already... It's the general lack of sunshine that's
| uninspiring me. I want to do some decent mountain walks, but I'm waiting for the right weather.
| May be here soon though, I saw some blue sky this afternoon. No sunshine, but part of the sky
| was blue.

I hope you got something today! Hey, wait a minute, I'm still wait to see yesterday's image! :o)

| > Also, out of 100 shots you take, how many would you class as sellable?
|
| Difficult to say, because it depends on how you define sellable. There's a limit to how many shots
| you could sell taken on the same day anyway, because many of them would be very similar, even if
| they were all technically good enough to sell.

I guess I mean how many shots you'd put on your website to sell?

| I used to estimate that I'd get one *good* shot out of every four, so nine or ten from one roll of
| film, and one *very good* shot out of every ten, so four per roll, but in all depends on the
| quality of the light and the scenery, so that can vary a lot. "Great" shots may only come along
| once in a hundred, and "timeless classics" are even rarer.

In an archive of 30,000+, there must be plenty of timeless classics then! <jealous wink> ;o) </>

| Whether a shot is technically good is different to whether it's compositionally good, and even if
| a shot is good that doesn't necessarily mean it's sellable, or vice versa. It all depends who
| you're trying to sell to. For example, Threecliffs and Worms Head are the two most "sellable"
| scenes in the Gower. Now I've got many excellent photographs of various crags and cliffs along
| isolated parts of the coastline that most people have never seen, but are they sellable? To the
| tourist market, probably not, since they are not recognisable features. But perhaps they could be
| included in a book of the Gower. Then again, some may be sellable purely from an artistic point of
| view, but tourists want photos of places they've been to.

There's an idea, put together enough images for a book on that area! And who said you never had a
business brain? :o) I've read a few cases in photography magazines recently where people had
exhibitions of photos from just one area, and they even had a book too. Certainly an idea, and
certainly something which could be running in the background whilst you're doing other things, if
you're interested that is!

| Paul

Ste

ste © said:

When I went to the beach a few days ago, I got this photo: sm9.co.ukbeach.jpgOpen ↗

Oh, that's Swansea Bay, or is it Oxwich Bay, or maybe Whiteford, or Pembrey? We've got a lot of
those around here.

Quoted message said:

It's nothing special, but it shows the area that I'm talking about. I took the photo low down on
the tripod. I should have got my wide angle converter out, but it's too late now. I'll go back on
another day and hope for a more dramatic sky,

What you want to do is shoot into the sun. Find some nice wet ripples in the sand, aim toward the
sun so that the ripples are reflecting blinding sunlight, point the camera down at it (you may have
to use your hand as a lens hood to avoid flare from direct sunlight into the lens, then use a really
fast exposure, like maybe 1/1000 or 1/2000 of a second at f8. This will turn the sand almost black
and give a really dramatic picture. It's digital, so experiment with different speeds.

Quoted message said:

Yes, it did look overexposed, but as I know you check your histograms and are somewhat of a
perfectionist, I was sure there was another reason, and that's when I remembered you said it was a
dull day. ;o)

Well the sky in the Clyne photo *is* washed out, but I didn't think it mattered in that shot (and
couldn't do much about it anyway).

Quoted message said:

That's up to you as they're your images, as long as you either say so, or don't deny it's a fake
sky if asked, then that's fine in my book.

Okay, but not for these photos. Maybe I should paste the Cribarth sky onto the Mumbles shot? ;-)

Quoted message said:

I guess I mean how many shots you'd put on your website to sell?

Do you mean per trip, or in total? If the former, there's probably too many to put on there, and
it's all a question of selecting the right shots for the right market. And of course, a small number
of really good shots is far more impressive than large numbers of average ones (or even large
numbers of similar good shots).

Oh yeah, those numbers I gave you about "1 very good shot out of every 10". That was years ago based
on single shot film photography. I typically used to take 30-50 shots per day (50 on a very good
day), but now I'm taking far more, mainly because of the digital camera. I often take 30 shots on a
bad day now, and 60 or more on an average day. 100 or more is becoming common on good days.

The fact that my shots don't cost anything means that;

a) I can take multiple shots of the same scene to cover all the bases,
a.a. different exposures if I'm not sure of the best exposure (or to blend different shots later) or
different compositions if I'm not sure of the best way to compose it. This is particularly
useful in fast changing light. If I spend too long trying to get the perfect picture I may miss
it altogether, so I shoot a number of different possibilities and sort out the mess later (a
luxury I could rarely afford with film).

For example, that Cribarth cloud shot, I took about 10 of those with slightly different exposures
and slightly different compositions (and the clouds were changing while I was doing it). There's
nothing worse than taking just one shot and then realising you should have done it slightly
differently. But I did exactly that at Bracelet Bay, I took an infrared shot that was zoomed in one
notch too much (it was an accident).

Of course, if the light is stable and you have plenty of time then you can have the luxury of
setting up the tripod and fiddling about until you get the one "perfect" shot, but it's often handy
to have a few variations IMO. Sometimes what seems to be the best shot at the time is not the one I
choose later at home. Photos look different on the computer to how they do when you're out there
taking them.

b) It's quite common for me to shoot panoramas now, each of which consumes perhaps four to ten
shots. Really it's just one photograph, but the individual frames make it seem a lot more. Again
this is a luxury I rarely had with film.

Believe it or not, I've been taking panoramas on film since long before it was possible to join them
on a computer (although not very often). I think I first did it in 1985, overlapping the prints to
see the final result. It will be interesting to scan those and join them properly.

Quoted message said:

In an archive of 30,000+, there must be plenty of timeless classics then! <jealous wink> ;o) </>

A few yes... :-)

Quoted message said:

There's an idea, put together enough images for a book on that area! And who said you never had a
business brain? :o)

This is not exactly a new idea, I took photos with that in mind for many years. I already have
complete coverage of the Gower and the Beacons. Now that I finally have a pro quality scanner I
could scan and process the photos, write all the text, and even lay the whole thing out with
publishing software. But how best to get such a book published? Probably a bit expensive to do
it myself.

Paul
--
The October Project 2003
wildwales.fsnet.co.ukoctober.htmlOpen ↗
wilderness-wales.co.ukwilderness-wales.co.ukOpen ↗
photosig.comuserphotosOpen ↗

"Paul Saunders" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
| ste © wrote:
|
| > When I went to the beach a few days ago, I got this photo: sm9.co.ukbeach.jpgOpen ↗
|
| Oh, that's Swansea Bay, or is it Oxwich Bay, or maybe Whiteford, or Pembrey? We've got a lot of
| those around here.

It's Formby beach, not far from Southport. I can even see the Welsh hills from there on a clear day.

| > It's nothing special, but it shows the area that I'm talking about. I took the photo low down on
| > the tripod. I should have got my wide angle converter out, but it's too late now. I'll go back
| > on another day and hope for a more dramatic sky,
|
| What you want to do is shoot into the sun. Find some nice wet ripples in the sand, aim toward
| the sun so that the ripples are reflecting blinding sunlight, point the camera down at it (you
| may have to use your hand as a lens hood to avoid flare from direct sunlight into the lens,
| then use a really fast exposure, like maybe 1/1000 or 1/2000 of a second at f8. This will turn
| the sand almost black and give a really dramatic picture. It's digital, so experiment with
| different speeds.

Thanks for the ideas, I'll use them to win the uk.rec.walking photography competition for beaches
one day! ;o)

| > Yes, it did look overexposed, but as I know you check your histograms and are somewhat of a
| > perfectionist, I was sure there was another reason, and that's when I remembered you said it was
| > a dull day. ;o)
|
| Well the sky in the Clyne photo *is* washed out, but I didn't think it mattered in that shot (and
| couldn't do much about it anyway).

The sky in the Clyne photos *looks* more like a grey sky than in the other photo!

| > That's up to you as they're your images, as long as you either say so, or don't deny it's a fake
| > sky if asked, then that's fine in my book.
|
| Okay, but not for these photos. Maybe I should paste the Cribarth sky onto the Mumbles shot? ;-)

Would be interesting! :o) ...don't forget the blur tool to soften the join! ;o)

| > I guess I mean how many shots you'd put on your website to sell?
|
| Do you mean per trip, or in total? If the former, there's probably too many to put on there, and
| it's all a question of selecting the right shots for the right market. And of course, a small
| number of really good shots is far more impressive than large numbers of average ones (or even
| large numbers of similar good shots).

I meant in total, not per trip. But it doesn't matter - out of 35,000 photos, I'm sure you have
a LOT! :o)

I'll look forward to seeing some of your best photos on your website when you prepare a special
section for them, that's if you put them on your website.

| Oh yeah, those numbers I gave you about "1 very good shot out of every 10". That was years ago
| based on single shot film photography. I typically used to take 30-50 shots per day (50 on a
| very good day), but now I'm taking far more, mainly because of the digital camera. I often take
| 30 shots on a bad day now, and 60 or more on an average day. 100 or more is becoming common on
| good days.

I understand, people take more with digital and have more shots to freely experiment with, so they
do. Whereas on film, they might shoot less, but only the good ones.

| The fact that my shots don't cost anything means that;
|
| a) I can take multiple shots of the same scene to cover all the bases,
| e.g. different exposures if I'm not sure of the best exposure (or to blend different shots later)
| or different compositions if I'm not sure of the best way to compose it. This is particularly
| useful in fast changing light. If I spend too long trying to get the perfect picture I may
| miss it altogether, so I shoot a number of different possibilities and sort out the mess
| later (a luxury I could rarely afford with film).

Sure, I understand.

| For example, that Cribarth cloud shot, I took about 10 of those with slightly different exposures
| and slightly different compositions (and the clouds were changing while I was doing it). There's
| nothing worse than taking just one shot and then realising you should have done it slightly
| differently. But I did exactly that at Bracelet Bay, I took an infrared shot that was zoomed in
| one notch too much (it was an accident).

Do you think that taking to many more photos on digital will make you a lazy photographer and you'll
start to pick up bad habits?

| Of course, if the light is stable and you have plenty of time then you can have the luxury of
| setting up the tripod and fiddling about until you get the one "perfect" shot, but it's often
| handy to have a few variations IMO. Sometimes what seems to be the best shot at the time is not
| the one I choose later at home. Photos look different on the computer to how they do when you're
| out there taking them.
|
| b) It's quite common for me to shoot panoramas now, each of which consumes perhaps four to ten
| shots. Really it's just one photograph, but the individual frames make it seem a lot more.
| Again this is a luxury I rarely had with film.
|
| Believe it or not, I've been taking panoramas on film since long before it was possible to join
| them on a computer (although not very often). I think I first did it in 1985, overlapping the
| prints to see the final result. It will be interesting to scan those and join them properly.

Were the panoramas any good with film? As good as doing it digitally? (Idoubt it, but I'm sure
you're going to tell me it was!) :o)

| > In an archive of 30,000+, there must be plenty of timeless classics then! <jealous wink> ;o) </>
|
| A few yes... :-)
|
| > There's an idea, put together enough images for a book on that area! And who said you never had
| > a business brain? :o)
|
| This is not exactly a new idea, I took photos with that in mind for many years. I already have
| complete coverage of the Gower and the Beacons. Now that I finally have a pro quality scanner I
| could scan and process the photos, write all the text, and even lay the whole thing out with
| publishing software. But how best to get such a book published? Probably a bit expensive to do
| it myself.

You wouldn't do it yourself I wouldn't think, but you'd tout your ideas to local publishers and take
it from there? If you're interested, you should contact someone who has done a similar book and see
what they did. I think I read in one of my magazines about someone who did something like this in
Devon? Something like Devon Moods, or Cornish Moods, or something along that line.

| Paul

Ste

ste © said:

It's Formby beach, not far from Southport. I can even see the Welsh hills from there on a
clear day.

So do you live up that way?

Quoted message said:

The sky in the Clyne photos *looks* more like a grey sky than in the other photo!

Really? I think in the Mumbles shot the sky is ever so slightly darker, an "off-white" rather than a
pure white.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Maybe I should paste the Cribarth sky onto the Mumbles shot? ;-)

Would be interesting! :o) ...don't forget the blur tool to soften the join! ;o)

I've just tried but it's nearly impossible to get a good join. The problem is that the Cribarth sky
is really dark (with black silhouetted land) and the Mumbles shot has an almost white sky, with very
light land. The brightness levels are too different. A much lighter sky would be needed to get a
believable join.

Quoted message said:

I meant in total, not per trip. But it doesn't matter - out of 35,000 photos, I'm sure you have a
LOT! :o)

Yeah, probably too many to put on my site.

Quoted message said:

I'll look forward to seeing some of your best photos on your website when you prepare a special
section for them, that's if you put them on your website.

Yep, once I get it sorted. Especially now that I have this new scanner.

Quoted message said:

I understand, people take more with digital and have more shots to freely experiment with, so they
do. Whereas on film, they might shoot less, but only the good ones.

Yeah, pretty much. I take more with digital but I don't end up with more good photos, so the
percentage is less. The advantage is that I can take multiple shots of the same good scene, with
slight variations in composition, exposure etc. This gives me more choice later. In fact, just
yesterday I shot the same scene four times and only the last one was correctly focused.

Galen Rowell was sometimes known to use an entire roll of film on one shot if it was particularly
important. On his first assignment for National Geographic he used 90 rolls of film in three days,
and they were amazed that he got so many good photographs with "so few rolls of film".

Quoted message said:

Do you think that taking to many more photos on digital will make you a lazy photographer and
you'll start to pick up bad habits?

No, I think that being lazy will cause that. Just because I'm taking more shots doesn't mean that
I'm putting less effort into each one. If I took ten "snaps" of a scene I'd probably end up with no
good photographs at all. It's all a question of discipline. Taking a good photograph requires that
everything is right at the moment you press the shutter - exposure, composition, focusing, keeping
the camera steady, etc. If I take multiple shots I have to take the same care over every one, or
there's no point. The multiple shots aren't random, I use specific variations that I feel are
necessary to cover all the options.

However, I do agree that digital can tend to make you "snap-happy". There was one sunrise where I
took far too many digital shots. In retrospect, I might have been better off changing my position or
thinking more carefully about the composition of each shot. It was this that made me think about
becoming more disciplined with multiple shots.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Believe it or not, I've been taking panoramas on film since long before it was possible to join
them on a computer (although not very often). I think I first did it in 1985, overlapping the
prints to see the final result. It will be interesting to scan those and join them properly.

Were the panoramas any good with film? As good as doing it digitally? (Idoubt it, but I'm sure
you're going to tell me it was!) :o)

No. I've always had trouble stitching film panoramas and I find it much easier with digital for some
reason, probably because I use a bigger overlap. Taking a panorama is pretty expensive with film,
and even more so with a large overlap, so I tended to keep my overlaps very small, which in
retrospect was a mistake.

Paul
--
The October Project 2003
wildwales.fsnet.co.ukoctober.htmlOpen ↗
wilderness-wales.co.ukwilderness-wales.co.ukOpen ↗
photosig.comuserphotosOpen ↗

"Paul Saunders" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
| ste © wrote:
|
| > It's Formby beach, not far from Southport. I can even see the Welsh hills from there on a
| > clear day.
|
| So do you live up that way?

Yes, a few miles away from Formby, not far from Aintree, do you know the area at all?

| > The sky in the Clyne photos *looks* more like a grey sky than in the other photo!
|
| Really? I think in the Mumbles shot the sky is ever so slightly darker, an "off-white" rather than
| a pure white.

I've checked the two images in Photoshop, and you're right, the Mumbles shot is a bit darker. But as
the Mumbles shot has such a large area of sky in the shot (compared to the Clyne photo), then that's
why it was more noticeable to me. As I look through at the sky through the branches of the Clyne
photo, it just doesn't look as white to me, even though it is! :o)

| >> Maybe I should paste the Cribarth sky onto the Mumbles shot? ;-)
| >
| > Would be interesting! :o) ...don't forget the blur tool to soften the join! ;o)
|
| I've just tried but it's nearly impossible to get a good join. The problem is that the Cribarth
| sky is really dark (with black silhouetted land) and the Mumbles shot has an almost white sky,
| with very light land. The brightness levels are too different. A much lighter sky would be needed
| to get a believable join.

Yes, the sky has an effect on the whole image, and using dramatically different coloured skies just
dosn't look right as it affects the colours of everything in the image. Plus, in the Mumbles shot,
you'd also have to include some sort of reflection in the water... a job that's far too complicated
to be worth bothering doing.

| > I meant in total, not per trip. But it doesn't matter - out of 35,000 photos, I'm sure you have
| > a LOT! :o)
|
| Yeah, probably too many to put on my site.
|
| > I'll look forward to seeing some of your best photos on your website when you prepare a special
| > section for them, that's if you put them on your website.
|
| Yep, once I get it sorted. Especially now that I have this new scanner.

Good good, how is the scanner by the way? As good as you hoped?

| > I understand, people take more with digital and have more shots to freely experiment with, so
| > they do. Whereas on film, they might shoot less, but only the good ones.
|
| Yeah, pretty much. I take more with digital but I don't end up with more good photos, so the
| percentage is less. The advantage is that I can take multiple shots of the same good scene, with
| slight variations in composition, exposure etc. This gives me more choice later. In fact, just
| yesterday I shot the same scene four times and only the last one was correctly focused.

Yes, I understand.

| Galen Rowell was sometimes known to use an entire roll of film on one shot if it was particularly
| important. On his first assignment for National Geographic he used 90 rolls of film in three days,
| and they were amazed that he got so many good photographs with "so few rolls of film".

I'd never heard of him, but I just looked on his mountainlight.com website, and some of those images
are amazing. But some of them look fake and digitally altered! Check out his Fine Art Prints
section, then the Galen's Classics section.

| > Do you think that taking to many more photos on digital will make you a lazy photographer and
| > you'll start to pick up bad habits?
|
| No, I think that being lazy will cause that. Just because I'm taking more shots doesn't mean that
| I'm putting less effort into each one. If I took ten "snaps" of a scene I'd probably end up with
| no good photographs at all. It's all a question of discipline. Taking a good photograph requires
| that everything is right at the moment you press the shutter - exposure, composition, focusing,
| keeping the camera steady, etc. If I take multiple shots I have to take the same care over every
| one, or there's no point. The multiple shots aren't random, I use specific variations that I feel
| are necessary to cover all the options.

That's it, I'm trying to take more care over my shots recently, but I still get back home and think
"why didn't I change that?" or "why didn't I move that twig out the way?" It's amazing what I'm
missing at the time... :-(

| However, I do agree that digital can tend to make you "snap-happy". There was one sunrise where I
| took far too many digital shots. In retrospect, I might have been better off changing my position
| or thinking more carefully about the composition of each shot. It was this that made me think
| about becoming more disciplined with multiple shots.

I'm trying not to be snap-happy, but that's because I find it a pain in the [censored] to go through loads
of images that look the same on my PC! But I must admit to being a lazy photographer, but I'm
realising that quality is not quantity, unless I'm strategically shooting like you sometimes do, by
varying compositions or expsures.

| >> Believe it or not, I've been taking panoramas on film since long before it was possible to join
| >> them on a computer (although not very often). I think I first did it in 1985, overlapping the
| >> prints to see the final result. It will be interesting to scan those and join them properly.
| >
| > Were the panoramas any good with film? As good as doing it digitally? (Idoubt it, but I'm sure
| > you're going to tell me it was!) :o)
|
| No. I've always had trouble stitching film panoramas and I find it much easier with digital for
| some reason, probably because I use a bigger overlap. Taking a panorama is pretty expensive with
| film, and even more so with a large overlap, so I tended to keep my overlaps very small, which in
| retrospect was a mistake.

Oh well, you're having more success with digital panoramas at least! ;o)

| Paul

Ste

ste © said:

Yes, a few miles away from Formby, not far from Aintree, do you know the area at all?

Nope.

Quoted message said:

Good good, how is the scanner by the way? As good as you hoped?

Oh yes, very impressed. It took me a long time to get it installed, XP refused to install it for
quite a long time.

Only first impressions at the moment - the resolution is excellent - approx 5400 x 3600 pixels per
scan, that's roughly 20 megapixels! Seems pretty sharp too on a good slide, but I'll have to make
more careful comparisons with my other scanner. Noise is virtually non-existent, black looks almost
completely black, so shadow detail is superb, that's what you get with 14 bits per channel.

Digital ICE works great. Even on some horrendously marked old slides, normal ICE gets rid of the
marks *almost* completely with no softening whatsoever. Using the fine setting gets rid of
everything, but makes the image slightly soft - although whether the difference would be noticeable
on a print at such a high resolution I don't know yet.

Digital ROC (restoration of colour) looks terrible! But I probably don't know how to use it
properly yet.

Digital GEM (Grain reduction) seems to work quite well. I chose a horribly grainy 400 ASA slide and
it got rid of most of the grain, but left some artefacts behind. It softened the image a bit but not
as much as Neat Image. I tried Neat Image on the same picture and it removed all the grain, but it
also removed most of the detail too! A more detail friendly removal didn't remove so much grain, but
to be fair, I haven't learnt how to use Neat Image most effectively yet. It's difficult to reach any
conclusions without making some test prints. The differences look very obvious at 1:1 on screen, but
how they'd look in a print at 300dpi remains to be seen. Those artefacts I mentioned may not be
noticeable.

The software is good and I may end up using it in preference to VueScan. Scans are quick (38 secs
for a full size scan, 80 secs for a full size scan with ICE). The negative adapter is fiddly and
didn't work properly last night. The alternative is to put the negs into the neg holder and then
into the slide adapter, but the neg holder isn't terribly well designed either. The optional bulk
slide feeder (up to 50 slides) may be worth buying.

Finally, a full size 20MP scan in 14 bits per channel mode is a massive 120 megabytes! That's only 5
photos on a CD! It's not going to take me long to fill up my 240 gig of hard drive space with scans
that big! I need a scanning strategy!

I think that all scans for non-commercial use should probably be reduced to 6MP (3072 x 2048) and
saved as Max quality jpegs, otherwise I'll run out of space in no time.

Quoted message said:

I'd never heard of him,

Best photographer in the world IMO, he was my main inspiration back in 1986. He died in a plane
crash last year.

Quoted message said:

but I just looked on his mountainlight.com website, and some of those images are amazing.

Yep.

Quoted message said:

But some of them look fake and digitally altered!

Nope! Galen Rowell was totally against digital manipulation and took pride in producing digital
prints (in recent years) that exactly matched the original transparencies. His skill was in taking
photographs that looked like that at the instant he pressed the shutter. To that end he made
extensive use of various graduated neutral density filters (a habit I adopted too) and also a
polariser of course. The photos in his book "Mountain Light" (which I strongly recommend) looked
every bit as sensational back in 1986 as the photos on his website do now, and I'm pretty sure he
wasn't using Photoshop 7 seventeen years ago.

In recent times my photographic philosophy has changed. I used to follow Galen's ideal of creating
a great image inside the camera, so the moment the shutter was pressed, the photo was finished. But
now I've altered my working methods to take advantage of digital processing techniques, often
taking photos that look bad straight from the camera, but which can be transformed into what I want
later. This isn't cheating IMO, it's just a different method of acheiving the same end result.
Instead of using grads when I take the photo, I now use layer masking later. Same effect, but with
more control.

Galen however preferred to stick to his original photographic principles, creating the effects in
camera, and not making digital adjustments later. I did find this a little strange, and slightly
hypocritical. He took pride in his photos not being digitally manipulated, and yet he clearly
manipulated the original scene when taking a photograph. For many people, traditional photographic
manipulations are perfectly acceptable, yet digital manipulations are unacceptable.

Quoted message said:

Check out his Fine Art Prints section, then the Galen's Classics section.

Already have.

Quoted message said:

That's it, I'm trying to take more care over my shots recently, but I still get back home and
think "why didn't I change that?" or "why didn't I move that twig out the way?" It's amazing what
I'm missing at the time... :-(

It is surprising, isn't it? I really like using the LCD to compose a photograph, but because of all
the clutter on the LCD, I often don't compose it perfectly. After I take a shot I look at it on the
LCD and often see things that I didn't notice a few seconds earlier, which seems very strange, but
it happens repeatedly. Which is one reason why I often delete a shot and take it again.

Even stranger, when I get home I see things on the computer screen that I didn't see on the LCD,
probably because the computer screen is so much bigger I can see finer details that I previously
missed. I'm regularly amazed by how often my compositions don't look so good when I see them on the
computer later, even though I could clearly see them on the LCD at the time.

What surprises me the most though, is that my digital compositions are often slightly flawed,
whereas my film compositions usually aren't. Maybe it's just because I'm not fully used to using the
LCD as a compositional medium yet, or maybe there's something special about looking through a
viewfinder on an SLR, but I consistently get better compositions on film. Can't wait to get a
"proper" digital camera so I can start looking through the viewfinder again, and focusing properly.

Quoted message said:

I'm trying not to be snap-happy, but that's because I find it a pain in the [censored] to go through
loads of images that look the same on my PC!

You can say that again.

Quoted message said:

But I must admit to being a lazy photographer, but I'm realising that quality is not quantity,

No. To some extent the more photos you take, the greater the percentage chance of getting a good
shot, but if you persistently point the camera at [censored] subjects in [censored] light with [censored]
compositions, you'll just end up with a big pile of [censored].

The real trick IMO, is to learn to recognise the photo opportunities that will result in the best
shots, which may not necessarily be what you *want* to photograph. Galen explained this (in his book
"Mountain Light"😉 as learning to see how the camera sees. The camera doesn't see the world in the
same way that we do - what looks good to us may not necessarily make a good photograph. You have to
understand things like dynamic range, colour temperature and so on, so as to be able to visualise
how the camera will render a scene. Obviously a digital camera is very helpful in this respect, with
it's instant feedback, but the small LCD means that you can miss details, and you don't see the full
range of brightness values in the way that you do on a computer monitor.

Paul
--
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Paul Saunders said:

ste © said:

Yes, a few miles away from Formby, not far from Aintree, do you know the area at all?

Nope.

Quoted message said:

Good good, how is the scanner by the way? As good as you hoped?

Oh yes, very impressed. It took me a long time to get it installed, XP refused to install it for
quite a long time.

Hi Paul

What's the make and model of your scanner? I'm really interested in your comments on digital ICE - I
had assumed that some softening would be produced, and got a model which does not have it (Acer
2720S). All I could afford at the time, but perhaps I should have saved up ..

Pat

Pat Bennett From Cheshire in the UK www.cheshirewildlife.co.uk

Paul Saunders said:

Finally, a full size 20MP scan in 14 bits per channel mode is a massive 120 megabytes! That's only
5 photos on a CD! It's not going to take me long to fill up my 240 gig of hard drive space with
scans that big! I need a scanning strategy!

Or maybe consider a writeable DVD (10 times as big as a CD) ? The LG GSA-4040 B got a reasonable
review in one of the PC mags. It records to DVD ROM as well as both types of RW (+ & -) as well as
DVD-RAM so you don't have to play "guess the format that'll survive in the long-term"
:-) Price around 150 ish.

--
Boo

Paul Saunders said:

Finally, a full size 20MP scan in 14 bits per channel mode is a massive 120 megabytes! That's only
5 photos on a CD! It's not going to take me long to fill up my 240 gig of hard drive space with
scans that big! I need a scanning strategy!

This reminds me of an old story (possibly true, possibly not) of a consultant brought in to tame a
mega computerisation project under consideration by the GLC (Greater London Council), involving bulk
scanning of years and years of accumulated documents, with associated colossal disk space
requirements and money. (This was in the days when 1Gb cost a king's ransom.) Boiled down, it went
like this:

Consultant: Do you have any data processing to do on these files ? GLC: No, we just want to look at
them. Consultant: Put them on micro-fiche then.

You could consider the space requirements of 5 slides or negatives versus a CDR !! It might make
more sense to catalogue your originals on CD or hard disk, possibly with a reasonable resolution
scan suitable for screen viewing or transmission to potential clients (?), but keep the film for use
later when actually needed.

--
John Mail john rather than nospam...

Pat Bennett said:

What's the make and model of your scanner?

It's the Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED (also called the LS 4000 ED)

To quote their website:

"The professional choice for high resolution, high performance film scanning. 4000 dpi with fast
IEEE 1395 interface and 14 bit A/D the LS 4000ED 35mm film scanner is compatible with a variety of
accessories designed to increase productivity for the busy photographic business. ICE3 restores
damaged archive material, the Scanner Nikkor lens features 3 ED glass elements."

The guide price is £1,299.99. Best price I could find on the net was £919, but I got it from Jessops
for just £899 - Bargain! (I think their current price is £999 but they knocked £100 off for me.)

Here's a review; imaging-resource.comL40A.HTMOpen ↗

Quoted message said:

I'm really interested in your comments on digital ICE - I had assumed that some softening would be
produced,

So did I, although I speculated that since 4000dpi is a sufficiently high resolution that many
photos would not have that amount of detail in them, perhaps the softening effect of ICE would have
less effect than the difference between scanner res and actual res, resulting in no perceptible
difference.

For example, let's say that a slide contains 3,500 dpi of actual detail (this can vary depending on
the quality of film, lens, tripod stability etc.) and the softening effect is say 200 dpi (just a
wild guess). That would created an effective scan res of 3,800 dpi, which would not affect the
sharpness of the scan of that particular picture.

Whether that theory is correct I have no idea, but my first tests do indicate that sharpness is not
affected on the normal setting, but is affected on the fine setting. I'd need to do further tests.
At the moment I don't know what the limit of my lens resolutions are, and whether I could see the
difference. I shall have to take some test photos with different lenses.

Quoted message said:

and got a model which does not have it (Acer 2720S). All I could afford at the time, but perhaps I
should have saved up ..

I've wanted this scanner for a very long time. I'm glad I waited.

I'll post a few examples shortly.

By the way, I have received your email.

Paul
--
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John Laird said:

You could consider the space requirements of 5 slides or negatives versus a CDR !!

Scary isn't it?

Quoted message said:

It might make more sense to catalogue your originals on CD or hard disk, possibly with a
reasonable resolution scan suitable for screen viewing or transmission to potential clients (?),
but keep the film for use later when actually needed.

Well that wouldn't actually work, because a big part of the process for me now is the digital post
processing, which can take some time. It would make no sense to do all that work for a small pic and
then have to repeat it when the pic was needed (even if I could repeat it exactly, which I probably
couldn't).

After scanning a photo, I post process in Photoshop (adjusting levels & curves, colour balancing,
applying layer and contrast masks if necessary, also noise reduction and sharpening) to create the
final "master" image, which will be used for printing. I must store this master image somewhere, at
full size and top quality (TIFF or PSD probably). It will be reduced from 16 bit to 8 bit, which
will shrink the file size to only 60 meg per photo, and I could use compressed TIFFs which would
reduce the size a little more, so I might be able to fit 15 or so onto one CD.

But it would only be worth doing the above for images that I actively intend to sell, so I wouldn't
need to scan large quantities of pics just yet.

For all other images, which are important to me but which I don't intend to sell, I think it's best
to shrink them (after processing) to 3072 x 2048 (Photo CD size - 6MP) then save as high quality
jpegs. That should be good enough for personal use, even for printing, and wouldn't take up much
space at all.

Even then, I'll only scan the best shots in my collection, certainly not all of them, there's too
many. Besides, have you seen how much the bulk slide feeder costs? I saw it on sale for £450 on one
site, that's half the cost of the scanner! I think I'll stick to scanning one at a time thanks.

Paul
--
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Paul Saunders said:

John Laird said:

You could consider the space requirements of 5 slides or negatives versus a CDR !!

Scary isn't it?

:-)

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

It might make more sense to catalogue your originals on CD or hard disk, possibly with a
reasonable resolution scan suitable for screen viewing or transmission to potential clients (?),
but keep the film for use later when actually needed.

Well that wouldn't actually work, because a big part of the process for me now is the digital post
processing, which can take some time. It would make no sense to do all that work for a small pic
and then have to repeat it when the pic was needed (even if I could repeat it exactly, which I
probably couldn't).

Quoted message said:

(snipped)

Presumably you would be expecting to fully process and preserve (at the highest quality levels) only
a matter of hundreds of photos, rather than the thousands you actually own. Even at 12Mpixel TIFF
levels, that should be workable. And when you factor in your time, even only getting 5 or 6 on a CD
at 30p/time starts to look not unreasonable. I think I would avoid going to DVD format unless you
think storage space is going to be a real problem. CDROM will probably remain a preferred format.

No doubt you have a far better handle on your target market or personal needs, but I seem to recall
reading that even top-quality magazine printing did not need more than 300dpi. That sounds like a
6Mp image for a full page
A4. Scaling up my own camera, that would be about 4Mb at its SHQ setting, but digital artifacts may
still be visible. Is it necessary to go to full TIFF especially when you have control over jpeg
quality ? Obviously if you are going to print up A2 size...

--
John Mail john rather than nospam...

On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 12:03:34 +0100, "Paul Saunders"
<[email hidden]> wrote:

(You should take most of my remarks as examples of the blind leading the
20:20 sighted, of course...)

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I think I would avoid going to DVD format unless you think storage space is going to be a real
problem. CDROM will probably remain a preferred format.

You reckon? I'm not so sure, I think space requirements will keep going up and people will
need more.

Probably just me (and many others) confused twixt DVD-ROM, -RAM, -R, -RW, +RW, +R, you name it. -R
seems to be the best choice. But with the cost differential both on drives and media, if you have a
CD writer already you may as well stick to it. A spindle of 100 disks will run you a whole 20 quid !

Predicting media and drive lifetimes is a pretty inexact science. I have a couple of hundred vinyl
albums that are currently giving me a bit of a headache ;-)

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Obviously if you are going to print up A2 size...

I plan to sell prints of my photos at up to 18" x 12", which is the largest my printer can produce
(on A3+ paper - 19" x 13"😉. At 300dpi that would mean an image of 5400 x 3600 pixels, which
coincidentally is exactly what my scanner produces.

Good luck. As a one-decent-shot-a-year amateur, my opinion may not be worth much, but I am enjoying
your October project and the resulting images. Please don't extend it into November, though, we
really could do with some rain and it's clearly your fault...

--
John Mail john rather than nospam...

John Laird said:

Predicting media and drive lifetimes is a pretty inexact science. I have a couple of hundred vinyl
albums that are currently giving me a bit of a headache ;-)

Heavy metal fan eh? :-)
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

Phil Cook said:

John Laird said:

Predicting media and drive lifetimes is a pretty inexact science. I have a couple of hundred vinyl
albums that are currently giving me a bit of a headache ;-)

Heavy metal fan eh? :-)

Hardly. But I will confess a fondness for digging out "Made in Japan" and sticking the headphones on
at 11 (that's on the volume scale and a time of night).

No, the problem is that I had a reasonable investment in Mini-Disc, but lost the in-car player both
after a break-in and getting a replacement car with CD instead. Copying albums to CD would make more
sense, but there are issues with physical locality of hi-fi and pc, whether to get involved with
track editing, scratch and click removal, dynamic range enhancing, etc etc.

--
John Mail john rather than nospam...

John Laird said:

Presumably you would be expecting to fully process and preserve (at the highest quality levels)
only a matter of hundreds of photos, rather than the thousands you actually own.

Yeah, probably at least 500, maybe as much as a thousand or two, I don't know yet. Even if I only
scan 5% of my collection at the highest quality, that's nearly 2000 photos. I'll just concentrate on
the cream of the crop for now though.

Quoted message said:

Even at 12Mpixel TIFF levels, that should be workable.

I'm getting 20MP scans though. :-)

Quoted message said:

And when you factor in your time, even only getting 5 or 6 on a CD at 30p/time starts to look not
unreasonable.

True.

Quoted message said:

I think I would avoid going to DVD format unless you think storage space is going to be a real
problem. CDROM will probably remain a preferred format.

You reckon? I'm not so sure, I think space requirements will keep going up and people will
need more.

Quoted message said:

No doubt you have a far better handle on your target market or personal needs, but I seem to
recall reading that even top-quality magazine printing did not need more than 300dpi.

300dpi is the default printing resolution I'm using.

Quoted message said:

That sounds like a 6Mp image for a full page A4.

True, but I need bigger than A4.

Quoted message said:

Scaling up my own camera, that would be about 4Mb at its SHQ setting, but digital artifacts may
still be visible. Is it necessary to go to full TIFF especially when you have control over jpeg
quality ?

Yes, I want to store all my pro-quality images as TIFFs. That's what publishers expect.

Quoted message said:

Obviously if you are going to print up A2 size...

I plan to sell prints of my photos at up to 18" x 12", which is the largest my printer can produce
(on A3+ paper - 19" x 13"😉. At 300dpi that would mean an image of 5400 x 3600 pixels, which
coincidentally is exactly what my scanner produces.

Paul
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