Re: [Leica] Digital musings

[Mike Stone <mike.stone1@virgin.net>]

drodgers@nextlink.com wrote:

> 
> I'd like to hear "if" and "how" other Leica users have incorporated digital
> processing, and if things (materials they use) have changed a little or a
> lot.
> 
> Dave


For some of my work things have changed a lot with advent of the
Coolscan and Epson combo. I have a financial PR company as one of my
clients and they recently approached me with 4 projects for companies
who were about to float and who all needed pictures shot and turned
round within the same week. Having already been achieving good results
with the 1270 printer I spoke to some of my press friends who all
recommended the coolscan III as the best 35mm scanner in terms of
price/performance. I picked one up on the Saturday, spent the weekend
playing with it and on the Monday embarked on the first of the PR jobs
with Leicas loaded with Kodak 800 Portra as opposed to my usual stock of
choice E100SW.

By the end of the week I had shot 3 more jobs and had delivered 1 hour
happy snaps to the client as proofs for all of them, from these they had
ordered some 20 scans which had been wired to various newspapers and
ordered 140  10" x 8" prints all printed on the Epson 1270 on Premium
Glossy Photo Paper.

Result, one very happy client, all the stories had got national press
exposure and they were knocked out by the fact that I was turning print
orders round over night and that they could get a CD of images for
archiving.

For me the experience has been enlightening, firstly as to the quality
of output that I was able to achieve with this digital workflow, the
Epson prints were indistinguishable from a C-type, and from the fact
that the scanner had paid for itself within a week.

I still think that reversal film will rule the roost for my magazine and
annual report work but the neg film/scanner/Epson has certainly won me
over for fast turnaround PR jobs.

On another track one of my photographer friends has just invested in a
Heidleberg pre press scanner, all £ 8500.00 of it and the the results he
has been getting for me out of that from medium format are phenomenal,
that is probably for another time or list but I will happily rave about
this one privately if any one is interested.

Mike Stone