Re: [Leica] Beauty of the digital darkroom

[Martin Howard <mvh@media.mit.edu>]

On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, Mark E Davison wrote:

> One thing I must admit: the digital approach requires quite an outlay of
> money and learning. The monetary investment is particularly painful, because
> the technology is unstable, and the useful economic life of the equipment is
> probably 2 to 3 years.

I find myself living out of a suitcase currently, which means that I cannot
have a darkroom (and I was never that proficient in one anyway).  So, I
shoot on film with Leicas and then put up webpages with digitized images.

Why is this relevant?  Well, I'm also a postgrad student, which means that I
have no money ;)  Digital doesn't have to be *that* expensive, if you're
willing to invest a little time.

I use a commercial scanning service to scan 35mm Ilford XP-2 Super onto
Kodak Photo CDs.  That way, I can get wide exposure lattitude, good film,
consistent processing and high quality scanning, without having to buy lots
of darkroom equipment, chemicals or scanning hardware.  Two other advantages
are that (a) those people do this for a living and are a hell of a lot
better at scanning that I am, (b) when technology improves, *they* but the
new equipment, not me.

Costs: Processing film is about $4 per 35mm roll.  Scanning is about $1.50
per frame, if I recall correctly.  CDs are $10 and you get about 100 images
per CD.

For image cleanup/editing/manipulation I use the GNU Image Manipulation
Program (The GIMP).  This is freeware that exists for many platforms and is
at least as powerful as Adobe's Photoshop, but has the added advantage that
since it's freeware (source code is freely available), there are 1000s 
of people working on plugins, upgrades and improvements, rather than the 10s
of people that Adobe can have on Photoshop.

I work at at a university, so I use their computer hardware after working
hours, which means I have access to pretty good Unix and Mac machines, so I
don't have to buy a computer.  But even if you don't, a second-hand PC
computer is comparatively cheap (compared to Leica bodies and glass), the
Linux operating system is freeware and GIMP is also freeware.  Just make
sure you have plenty of RAM, but memory is cheap.

So, with an investment in time and learning, you can do high (technical)
quality digital darkroom work without a large monetary investment.

For a peek at the results, see:

   http://www.media.mit.edu/~mvh/boston/html/boston.html

Clicking on any image will bring up a large version without the text, and
you can then use the arrows to move back-and-forth among the images.

Technical details at:

  http://www.media.mit.edu/~mvh/boston/html/techinfo.html


M.

- -- 
Martin Howard                                 (__)                 (__)
Visiting Scholar at MIT Media Lab |           (oo)                 (OO)
fax: +1-617-253-8874              |    /-------\/       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
email: mvh@media.mit.edu          |   /|     ||
www: http://mvhoward.i.am/        | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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