Equipment

I had hopes when the iPad was first rumored. Having decided that there was really minimal work I could do with image files while on the road I though perhaps the iPad would provide me with everything I needed and I could leave the laptop behind. Alas, no such luck. With out the ability to connect USB drives there is really no way to transfer images from CF cards. To use it as a Tethered control/monitor it would need to actually be a iTablet. Alas, that's not even close to what the iPad is.

From a photographers perspective, the iPad is a portfolio tool, a web browser, a mediocre email tool, and a book reader. With a bluetooth keyboard - it would make a pretty good email/blogging tool, then so does the laptop. Sure it does all the other stuff that an iPhone does, if you get the 3G version. You can use it as a Nav tool, and in that regard it's pretty cool - but a good Nav app costs another $100 bucks. At the moment it's probably the best portfolio sharing tool available. All the other picture viewers are in my opinion, too small to be worth bothering with. Since the full screen is used during display and the navigation is the most intuitive ever (your basic page flipping motion), you can hand your iPad to someone interested in your work and let them flip though at their own pace.

How much memory is enough for one of these? Well that depends. Assuming you provide images that are zoom-able (say 4 times the screen size) saved as a very high quality jpg, your looking at 2Mb per image. So, 1000 images (which is way too many for a portfolio) is 2GB. Then you can store books - which very between 50KB and maybe 20MB or so, most novels are pretty small 100-400KB. A technical book like "CSS: The Missing Manual" is about 12MB. So lets say you have 100 Technical Books at about 20MB each, and 2000 Novels at about 500K, so there goes another 3-4 GB. So what would you need more than 16GB for? Well apps, and music are really the only other things. At this point you probably don't want to put music on it, since you can't play music and use the picture viewer or web browser or what ever, at the same time - you need to wait for iPhone OS 4 for that. You can get a Camera Kit, that will allow you to transfer images from and SD card or a Camera USB port to directly to the iPad but that's not something I'm likely to do - when I transfer images off my 4GB and 8GB CF cards - I always create a backup - so that means two external drives attached to my laptop. And I don't show unedited work, so what would be the point? Apparently if you have the Camera kit, it for some reason allows you to connect a bluetooth keyboard (I'm still unclear why this would be). That said, 16GB is really quite a bit of memory for one of these devices. Once OS4 is available, you might which you had more, if you have a sizable music collection (which I do) - but then again, I have iPods, and an iPhone so, I still don't need to put music on the iPad.

iPad vs Kindle - both have advantages, I think the iPad is much nicer to use, it handles virtually every ebook format in existence via various apps. But, the back lit screen is harder on the eyes than the Kindle's eInk and all but impossible to read in direct sunlight. The Kindle on the other hand get's easier to read with brighter light, and a nice sunny day is about as perfect as it gets. I might give up the Kindle but not until I've used the iPad for a while. The battery life is another issue, I use my Kindle a lot 2-4 hours a day sometimes more, and I charge it up about once a week, sometimes less. With the iPad I'm hoping I can use my iPhone car charger. Although I still need additional outlets for battery chargers (camera & flashlight) as well as a USB charger for my Geo Tracker.

A definite maybe.

Choosing camera gear for a long motorcycle ride as proved to be more challenging than I'd ever anticipated. There are a number of constraints that you don't have to deal with, when working from a car. The obvious considerations are volume and weight, what makes it harder is that I also needed to find a waterproof locking case that could survive serious rain, hail, road spray (all of the things that we bikers really love). The case also needed to provide vibration protection (foam insert) and hardest of all - it needed to fit on a fairly narrow space behind the saddle, where I have a maximum of 16 inches in width so I can still get the side bags open.

One of the problems with photography is that it requires gear - cameras, lenses, tripods, etc. I've recently made a rather significant change in gear. I'm selling my Ebony SV45Ti 4x5, and getting a different model the SW45 which doesn't fold up and has fewer movements and won't take some of my longer lenses. I'm also selling several of my lenses for 4x5. I also just purchased several new "used" lenses for the Contax 645 System. Why - because I finally broke down and bought a Phase One P45+ medium format digital back. This is a 40 mega pixel back (that's a lot by the way) that will work on both the Contax 645 and the Ebony SW45. The change in 4x5 is because wide angle on a 4x5 is actually telephoto on a digital back. My two most used lenses for 4x5 film where 90mm, 120 and 210mm. To get the same field of view with a digital back I need a 36, 48 and a 85. I prefer Schneider lenses so I'll end up with a 35mm, 47mm and 90mm, and maybe a 180. The SV doesn't like lenses like the 35 & 47 - the SW work fine with them - so a Different 4x5 Ebony Cameras

Why did I want to do this - I think mostly because I'm nuts but at least partly because of the amazing image quality these two cameras will provide as digital cameras. I'm giving up film - probably not all at once but mostly and soon. The work flow for film goes something like this:

B&W Film
1. Mix chemicals (1-3 hours)
2. Wait for chemicals to reach correct temp - overnight
3. Lay out development trays, fill with chemicals, bring developer to exactly 72 degrees and correct dilution from stock.
4. Load development tubes for 4x5 or drums for roll film. 5-10 min
5. Develop film 2 rolls or 6 sheets - about 30 minutes until they're hanging to dry - that's 6 sheets of film or 2 rolls of film
6. Repeat steps 4&5 for additional sheets. if more than 12 sheets total - clean and dry tubes about 1 hour
7. Dry film over night (cost about $3 per sheet)

Color Film
1. Go to darkroom and remove 4x5 film from ready loads or film holders and box for shipment
2. Package boxes and or rolls for shipment
3. Mail to processing lab
4. Wait for return - 2-5 days (cost about $6 per sheet total)

Any Film
1. Scan film - average 15 minutes per image
2. Clean scan in PhotoShop average 10 minutes - max 4 hours (pretty rare - only on a few older color transparencies)


Work flow for Digital
1. Insert FlashCard into reader - run Image Ingester

At this point the film and digital workflows merge. As you can see - I save a huge amount of time and money with digital - ok save money might not be accurate. The cost of the digital back is enormous - the current used market for these is about $16,000. I could have done a LOT of film with that money but the more I do the more time I lose in the workflow. Time I could spend in the field shooting more images, or marketing and selling images. So ultimately, the break even point for the digital back will be somewhere around 2000-2500 images. Then there is the psychological issue in the field - when working with the 4x5 - every time I press the shutter I'm thinking - there goes $6. Which as the effect of limiting experimentation, shooting multiple compositions, etc.

I'm almost out of the gear phase - if Phase One would just return my back with the adapter to fit the Contax 645AF I could start shooting again - it's been a month and I'm not happy about it. This back came with a fairly expensive "Value Added" warranty that was supposed to provide fast service and low down time - doesn't seem like I'm getting my money's worth on it.

As much as I think about camera gear, you'd think I actually enjoy experimenting/playing with gear. The truth is - I don't. It gives me a headache.

I wouldn't be thinking about it now except I've decided that I need to do more digital and less film. I love film, I love the 4x5 format - what I don't love is the cost / image - when I shoot color it's about $5.00 for each and every shot. B&W is cheaper for sure but still around $2.00 per shot. Then there's the idea of carrying a 4x5 and film holders on a motorcycle - doable but not that much fun. Plus I'd want a DSLR along anyway - which means 2 cameras which means even more space and weight. ARRRRRG. Then there's the airport travel thing - they say putting your film though the scanners won't hurt it but it will - I know - I had a lot of images from Scotland fogged because of airport security.

I'd planned on waiting until I could get a Medium format Digital back - say about 40-60 mega-pixels. Sadly, used a used P45+ (PhaseOne 39mega-pixel) back goes on ebay once every couple of months for between 15,000 and 20,000. I'm having a very hard time justifying that.

At this point in the game Mega-Pixels doesn't mean anything except print size - so at 180dpi.
PhaseOne: 7216x5412 pixels = 40x30 print
Nikon/Sony: 6048x4032 pixels = 33.5 x 22.4

With genuine fractals, depending on the image - this might go to 60x45 and 45x34 Yep big prints, and yes my printer will go that large. To go bigger will require stitching multiple images together. This will be the norm for panoramics.

Basically the options are:

Mamiya Medium Format with PhaseOne P45+ figure about 24k after I sell the Nikon gear
Nikon D3x 24 mega-pixel 8K + swapping 3 lenses so about 10K
Sony Alpha 900 + lenses & flash - about 4K after selling the Nikon Gear

Besides price there are a few reasons to pick the Sony over the Nikon - and a few to pick the Nikon over the Sony.
Sony Advantage
View Finder - best on any DSLR
Image Stabilization in Camera Body - works with ALL lenses.
Dust reduction on sensor
Weight & Size
Price.

Nikon Advantage
Can use Mirror Lockup and Auto Bracket at the same time. (very slightly sharper images but not well implemented on this camera )
Available Tilt/Shift lenses
Lower Digital Noise above 800 ISO


I think if I didn't have to sell 3 lenses and find replacements I might be more tempted to stick with the Nikon. As it is I can't see spending 6K more for the Nikon or 20K more for the medium format so I guess I've sort of decided - (guess I shouldn't have sold off my Minolta / Konica Minolta gear.

I’m looking at papers again, I’m not sure I started looking at papers because I was thinking about printers or I started thinking about printers because I was looking at paper – they’re sort of tied to each other – at least my current printer is (more than you really wanted to know, later). So why paper? Photographers are funny about paper – it ultimately IS the photograph – well that and the ink or emulsion – what’s funny is that most photographers that have spent time in a dark room doing B&W will only use Fiber based paper. RC (resin coated) papers feel like plastic – sort of waxy, slimy in the soup (developer). I really don’t like working with them. This is an emotional response to the tactile quality of the paper, and has no effect on the image quality. Interestingly this same emotional response has carried over into Digital with printer papers – most fine art printers use matte – why? Well it feels better for one – does it look better? Hmmm, well one of the things as printers we strive for in B&W printing is to maximize DMax – or more simply how black is black. Glossy papers always have a higher DMax than Matte papers so in theory we should be going for glossy. Well up until recently printers had some problems with glossy paper – a couple actually – first there was Bronzing – this is an effect that is really only visible when looking at the print from a sharp angle. At this angle various tones in the print seem to disappear and the result is sort of a bronze reflection. This is not something that happens to a print in a frame hanging on the wall, yet we avoid Glossy because until recently the bronzing was very noticeable – but not a problem with Matte papers. Then we have gloss differential, this occurs when the amount of ink that makes up the image is not consistent, areas that have little nor no ink (bright clouds, white detail in color prints, etc) have a different level of gloss from other areas, which makes the print look blotchy – almost like it has a fungus – yuck.

I’m considering a change of printers. The new Epson 3800/7800/9800 have for the most part solved the bronzing issue but not the gloss differential issue. The 7800 (24”) and 9800 (44”) printers also suffer from poor design – actually I’m not sure if the design is poor or it was designed to keep us poor but when you want to switch papers – wastes a lot of ink (more below).

The new Canon and HP printers – the first real competition for Epson (Hoorah!) have 12 inks (ok why is that a good thing – ink is expensive???). I wish I could say – everyone seems really excited by this but the fact is – the color gamut (range of possible colors) is really not significantly better – you’ll see a difference but its mostly in how saturated various colors are – each printer seems to have it’s strong points and it’s week points. The new HP has a built in Photo Spectrometer – used for creating color profiles for various papers – these are what allow us to get a print that looks like what’s on the screen as far as color and tone – well as close as you can get given that screens are projected light (additive – more and more of each color approaches white) and prints are reflected (subtractive more and more color gets closer to black) Yeah they’re opposites so it’s a real trick to make them look the same, but the mind is an amazing tool. It also has a gloss enhancer – who’s sole purpose is eliminate gloss differential on glossy papers (ok so that means it’s really an 11 Ink system, vs Canon’s 12 Inks vs Epson’s 8 inks)

At this time I think the HP is probably THE printer, I expect that should last about 2 years max, maybe a bit less – until Epson responds – then Canon will make a comeback and Ahh Geez this is going to be just like the MegaPixle wars isn’t it? I can just see it – 16 ink printers – Actually if someone would make a printer that used something like the Cone K7 inks for B&W and the Cone Piezotone Inks for Sepia, and had 5-7 color inks and a gloss enhancer – well that would do EVERYTHING (yeah I’ll hold my breath) Actually Rolland makes a printer that’s not too far from that, you can get 4 cone inks and a set of color inks in the printer and it will only cost 25K OUCH.

Anyway, there are a few things that I’m trying to achieve.

1. Since most of my work is B&W I want the best B&W I can get, to that end I’m about to spend a few hundred dollars on test prints from Cone Editions in order to determine if I want to convert my existing printer into a B&W only Carbon Pigment Ink printer. What’s the difference? Currently all photo printers that use the manufacturers inks print B&W with some black (usually 2 or 3 shades) and color (a lot more magenta than you’d guess). The end result is that the image changes color slightly as the light changes (from day light, to tungsten, to – heaven forbid - fluorescent. This issue has become smaller and smaller as time goes on but – the fact remains that printers universally use magenta (and other colors) in the process of printing B&W I mention magenta specifically be cuase it has the greatest tendency to fade and shift eventually become more and more green. Is it a big problem? Not really – not enough to warrant a new printer, but it’s still a problem.

2. The second issue is one of long term costs and flexibility. My current printer, Epson 9600 gives me the ability to print either matte or glossy, but to switch between the two requires switching one of the ink cartridges – not too bad until you learn that when you do that they proceed to flush all of the ink cartridges resulting in a whopping $80.00 of ink that goes into the waste bin. Then you get to drop another $80.00 when you switch back – consequently I tried some glossy when I first got the printer then switched to Matte paper and never went back. Well now there’s some glossy paper on the market that looks pretty promising – no guarantee that I’ll use it but I wont know until I try it. Also I’ve been holding off on making digital negatives which are printed on a transparent or translucent sheet – definitely a “glossy” paper. I would then take these negatives into the darkroom and contact print them on regular photo paper. Resulting in a silver gelatin print – or perhaps a platinum/palladium darkroom print. The look is different than what you get off a printer – not better (well to some people it’s better).

Now just to complicate things Cone Editions is coming out with their K7 inks (7 shades (black thru very light grey) and John is working on a Selenium tone set that will for the first time be able to print on either matte or glossy paper. – Of course it’s not ready yet.

Then HP is offering a “trade in” – by supplying the serial number of my current printer I can get $1000 off the new printer – that’s a lot of money of course it means I’m buying a printer that may only get used for Color work (which is ok – I think….. but I don’t do that much color….. hmmm Yep nothing can be easy. There are all sorts of permutations on buying, keeping selling, etc none of them I can make a real decision on because the ink I think I want to use isn’t available yet, so where does that leave me? Confused mostly. Fortuanely HP has given me until the end of May to figure it out – except I don’t think the other inks will be ready ….

Just to put all this in perspective – you might be wondering why I don’t just buy the existing inks and give them a try … well to get a set to test with will cost about $600 for each set – so $600 for the Piesotone Carbon Selenium/ Carbon Sepia set. Another $600 for the K7 Selenium, plush flush cartridges – another couple hundred, probably a new drain tank – another hundred or so – yep adds up fast doesn’t it. Ahh the joys of having a really big printer – In hindsight I think maybe I should have limited myself to 24” – except the inks would still cost the same – I just wouldn’t waste as much switching them.

And people wonder why I spend weeks and months thinking about these things…. You know I’d much rather just go take some more pictures.

I've almost completed my conversion from Windows/PC to OS X/Mac. I really had two goals in mind when I did this change. First it was taking forever to open and save files in Photoshop CS2. I work with large files - they start out at about 460Mb and as I work on them in Photoshop they reach and sometimes exceed 3Gb. Adobe recommends that you have at least 5 times the image size in available memory for best performance. On a windows machine I maxed at 2GB and CS2 could only use part of that say 1.6G, which seems like a lot bit it's not. The second issue is with Windows is the way it does Disk I/O - when it's writing or reading from the Hard Disk - it seems to have a hard time doing anything else. So it would literally take 15-20 Minutes to read in a file I'd been working on - and 20-30 minutes to save it. I suspect that there was some other firmware problem associated with the SATA disk controllers on my ASUS motherboard but I'd updated all the firmware several times and the problem persisted, adding a separate SATA controller didn't help either. So the only way I was going to fix this was new hardware.

Configuring a system for backups.

I worked for a company that did Management Information Systems (fancy fraise for accounting, inventory and order entry software) one of our clients was a law firm and everyone there was required to keep track of everything they spent time on. The accountant got the time sheets and entered them into the system, when the started doing this we set up a routine where everyone would backup their work on a regular basis. The accountant got the first sheets as was looking at them mumbling - backing up, backing up - doesn't anyone around here go forward?

The trick to backups is to make them more or less painless. Decide how much work your willing to redo when you have a disk failure - not IF - WHEN! If you ok with having to redo 1 days worth then backup everyday - if you think you can afford to redo a week then backup weekly. When automated system - I recommend you let the machine do it every night.

I'm currently running a MacPro with 2x 3Ghz Dual-Core Intel processors, 8GB of ram which OS X will handle and XP / Vista wont (well except Vista 64 but that's a whole other can of worms) It has 2 on board 500GB drives the first has the OS, applications and Data. The second is a backup of the first. I'll eventually switch this around so that Users (my data and documents) is on the second drive and backed up to the first, and the OS+Apps are on the first backed up to the second - should give a small performance gain since this machine can write to all of the disks at the same time. I also installed (2) 70Gb Raptors - these are 10,000 RPM drives - very fast and they do nothing but provide scratch disk space for Photoshop. For image storage I added a Burly 5 Bay, external SATA II array that I've set up as two Raid 0 arrays - I then use backup software to sync the two so I have a full backup - They're not mirrored. The downside to mirroring is that if you break a file on one - you've broken it on both so you still need a backup. The 5th bay is used as a hot swap "external" drive for doing backups of the laptop, and of the images for Off Site storage. Yep, that's 3, well actually 4 copies of all of my images one of which is stored off site. In case you hadn't guessed - backups are that important. Especially if you work from a digital camera - because once you erase that CF card the only copy of your work is on a hard drive that is going to fail at some point – Guaranteed, it WILL FAIL. Is all this expensive - yep - but not as expensive as having to redo all the scanning and Photoshop work - or the permanent and complete loss of digital captures.

A minor Disappointment - CS3 Bata only allows you to use 3G of ram for Photoshop (why they picked that number is beyond me but they did). On the upside that leaves 5G for the OS, Lightroom, iView Media 3 Pro, FlexColor (scanner software), Bridge, Email, and Web browser. I’m still struggling with some printer driver issues and I’ve not yet installed ImagePrint – probably today, but so far everything is working pretty well. A few minor glitches here and there, but I’ll get them smoothed out soon. Moving email turned out to be a pain – I finally purchased a $10.00 application that did the trick.

So did it solve my issues? Yes! It now takes under a minute to read or save a large file, and the operations that used to take a long time in Photoshop I almost don't even notice anymore.

I haven’t given up windows all together there’s still some software that doesn’t run on OS X and there’s some software that I don’t want to pay for again just to move it to the Mac.

Another Baby has been added to the family! After much (too much) research I finally decided to get a new DSLR. It narrowed down to Canon or Nikon pretty quickly, while there are a number of good cameras the Nikon D2Xs and Canon 1Ds Mk II are really the cream of the crop. The reasons to go Canon are numerous, BIG 16.7Mp sensor, fantastic lenses, rock solid body, fast auto focus - all in all a top notch camera. So why did I pick the Nikon? I wanted a professional grade, weather sealed camera which left the two above, after comparing image quality between the two I decided that while the Canon was slightly better - I could get the Nikon D2Xs, 17-55mm f/2.8, 70-200 VR f/2.8 and 100mm Macro for just a bit more than the Canon 1Ds Mk II body alone. And perhaps more importantly, I like the ergonomics of the Nikon better. I love the LARGE histograms as compared to the tiny histogram on the Canon. Finally, my 70-200 is equivalent to a 105-300 and it has a bigger depth of field than the Canon with the same framing.

So what did I give up? It seems a bit slower on focus than the Canons, it's only 12.4 Mp vs. 16.7 Mp, and I can't go quite as wide as the Canon. On the other hand - I still do most of my work with the Ebony 4x5 so if I really need the resolution - I've got it and then some. The Canon is cleaner at high ISO but with Noise Ninja or Neat Image I really think the noise thing is overstated - people have either never used fast film or have forgotten how grainy it was.

If I were strictly a DSLR person, I'd have gone with the Canon. I can get used to the ergonomics, and I can hope that Canon listens to the critics and does something with their UI. Neither choice is wrong - you just need to understand how you’re going to use the camera to make the right choice

I use several different cameras for various reasons, large format for landscape, 35mm, DSLR and 645 for handheld shots - mostly street candid, DSLR for macro work. I seem to have a knack for picking equipment that will become obsolete or no longer available.

Zone VI who created my first large format camera is all but gone. It was purchased by Calumet and they've killed off everything but accessories for the camera. Gone are the Zone VI enlargers, tripods, meters, chemicals, electronics, even the cameras. I’m sorry to say this is not an unusual thing when a big company buys a small company. I understand the lure of selling to a big company for that quick major cash out. What I don’t understand is why these bigger companies bother, when ultimately after a period as short as weeks and as long as a few years, they destroy what they bought. Is it just to get rid of competition?

Bronica was purchased by Tamaron and is no longer produced, so I have this nice 645 range finder with 2 lenses and no hope of ever seeing the system expand. I probably should have know better than to buy a film camera any time in the last 5 years, but I’m a romantic at heart and I kind of like film.

Minolta was purchased by Konica who put out a couple cameras then sold it to Sony who has just release the Sony α (alpha). Technically I guess the Minolta isn't gone it's just polymorphed into Sony as the lenses are all compatible. On the up side - it appears that Sony may pursue this camera, although I doubt that we'll see a Pro or Semi Pro model. It seems to be based on the Konica-Minolta 5D, which is to my mind, unfortunate as the ergonomics and build of the 7D were much nicer. They do have some very nice lenses, including some new lenses developed by Carl Zeiss. It's believed to be based on the same sensor as the current Nikon cameras. There is some discussion that the digital noise level is higher which given the several thousand dollar price difference is not a big surprise. It’s difficult to say where Sony will take this. In any case - I'm thinking about switching to Canon - I think they're big enough that my purchasing a camera shouldn't put them out of business.

The only camera I currently own that's still has a company behind it is my Ebony 4x5. I expect Ebony to stick around for a while, as it is currently considered one of, if not the best 4x5 field camera. My lenses for 4x5 are Schneider and Nikkor both exceptional companies, so I'm probably safe there (nock on wood).

If you have a company you’d like to see go out of business let me know and I’ll buy something from them – (just kidding).