Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/12/29

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Subject: Re: [Leica] digital photography - a BIG frustration
From: "JeffS" <segawa@netone.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 10:37:13 -0700

Alexander, I too am still getting a feel for how to judge which images are
most likely to scan well, and in particular, think I'll be avoiding images
where important details fall beyond, say, Zones III and VII. On my initial
batch of images, I do have some burnout of highlights and loss of shadow
detail, but rather than try to compensate for detail that doesn't exist on
the scan, I just left 'em alone.

Rather than buy an expensive scanner, I had my images transferred to
PhotoCD. I do not know how much it would cost to match the fidelity in the
home, but I presume it would not come cheap. I seem to recall hearing of
$6K, desktop-sized drum scanners, and these might be very desireable when
they hit the used market.

Is your computer monitor in good shape, and is it calibrated? Well-used
monitors lose brilliance. MacOS 8.5.1 has a revised Monitors & Sound control
panel which is very helpful. With Windows98, such software seems to be more
the domain of the video card or monitor maker-I expect to be fussing with
the Matrox Millenium G200 AGP video adaptor in the near future.

I don't know about Photoshop 5, but 4's brightness and contrast sliders are
crude tools--try the "Adjust" feature, which allows you to manipulate
shadows, highlights and midtones separately. If you can, start with a much
larger file than necessary, and work in 24- or 32-bits, only dispensing of
the excess at the very end. I use the ProJPEG plug-in by Boxtop Software
(www.boxtopsoft.com, I think). Good people-buy their products! ProJPEG is
very helpful in that it allows you to directly see the effects that varying
levels of compression will have on your image. Of all of the images on my
site, the one of the Japanese skyline was by far the most affected by
compression, so I used very little in the end. The expanse of sky really
degraded quickly otherwise!

I'd guesstimate that I spent 10 minutes tweaking each image.

Jeff Segawa
See my photography online at
http://www.netone.com/~segawa

- -----Original Message-----
From: Alexander <mediadyne@hol.gr>
>can someone tell me what is the purpose of using the best lenses, waking up
at odd hours, standing in the rain...etc... to get that super picture, when
at the end, if it is to be published digitaly (i.e. web) the results are
mediocre at best?