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Home >> Learning >> e-Book on Photography Table of Contents Photography e-Book Chapter 19 - Digital Imaging Digital imaging is everywhere these days and it would be difficult for many of us to try and avoid it completely. Even shopping mall photo outlets are now using digital technology to scan film negatives before outputting to prints. Digital conjures up a debate amongst those traditionalists wanting to keep silver halide film as the standard bearer while others have abandoned film and gone wholly digital. Is there a right and wrong to this debate? No, because at this particular time there is room enough for film and digital users to stand beside each other, each having their own strengths and weaknesses to be exploited or avoided by an experienced photographer. However, even many film users find themselves drawn to digital technology and the ranks of the craftsmen still plying their skills in the traditional darkroom is dwindling. There are different ways to experience digital imaging or photography, so let us first look at it from the perspective of a film user. As I mentioned already, film users may be experiencing digital technology and not even know it. A typical consumer may drop off a roll of film at the local Walmart or shopping mall store and then come back in a little while to pick up the developed film and a bundle of 4x6 prints. The consumer may be wholly unaware that their roll of film was developed, scanned and then printed via a Fuji Frontier system, which is now available in many places. For photographers wanting more control of the editing and printing process, they can either work in a darkroom or move onto the digital darkroom and work with their film images on the computer. More and more film users are greatly enjoying the benefits of the digital darkroom and getting away from the foul smelling chemicals hidden away in a dark closet or spare bathroom. However, a means of digitizing their film images is still required before being able to edit the image. Film
Scanning Having a professional photo lab scan the film has the added benefit of having the lab’s technician do the grunt work of cleaning and spotting the scan for dust, the bane of a photographer working in both the traditional and digital darkroom. Unfortunately, high end scans at a pro lab can cost upwards of $100 per scan or more depending on how big a print you want. Although expensive at first, purchasing a film scanner can make much better financial sense in the long run from not having to pay large scanning fees. Photographers working primarily with 35mm format have an embarrassment of choices available to them. There are literally dozens of film scanners available on the market that run the range from low resolution to very high resolution with different feature sets and benefits such as Digital Ice, which works very effectively to counter dust on film. Prices vary from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars depending upon the quality desired from the scanner. Photographers working with larger format films such as 120 and 4x5 and larger have far fewer choices and the price of admission can become beyond the reach of many of these photographers. At present there are a few medium format film scanners that provide very high quality scans at prices that may be achievable even by the serious amateur. However, as good as these film scanners from Minolta, Nikon and Polaroid are, they are limited in format lengths and preclude the continuous scan of a panoramic size such as 6x12 or 6x17, typically maxing out at 6x9. This class of scanner is in the $5000 CAN range. For the large format photographer, there may still be a Polaroid film scanner able to handle 4x5 sheets but no other and even this Polaroid 4x5 scanner cost a very pretty penny of $10,000 CAN. There are other options available for film scanning, such as the very highly regarded Imacon scanners from Denmark, but this class of scanner can be priced like a decent mid-level car, such as a Toyota Corolla or even higher up. The benefit is that you could scan super large format film sheets up to 11x14 if you had the bank busting outlay for the top of the line Imacons. There a few professional photographers shooting film who have made the investment in an Imacon class film scanner because of the quality provided; however, even a lot of pros would be hard pressed to come up with the outlay needed for an Imacon or similar quality film scanner. Even fewer would be able to invest in a drum scanner for what is considered the ultimate in film scanning technology. If the average Imacon costs like a low-end Toyota, then a drum scanner costs like the average Acura.
Right now, the darling of the affordable flatbed scanners is the Epson Perfection 2450, which will soon be supplanted by the Epson Perfection 3200. The Epson 2450 costs under $700 CAN and more than a few users claim to be getting results that are more in keeping with the $5000 Nikon and Minolta film scanners. Whether true or not, the general consensus is that this unassuming flatbed scanner punches well above its weight and provides a quality that its asking price would not normally be associated with. I can only imagine what the new Perfection 3200 will be like, as I look to upgrade my own very cheap Epson Perfection 1200 flatbed scanner. Just keep in mind that when considering a flatbed scanner, if the unit does not already come with or integrates a transparency adapter into its design, you need to ensure that there is a transparency adapter available. A transparency adapter fits on top of the flatbed in place of the normal lid and provides a secondary light source required to scan film. Without it, a flatbed’s bottom integral CCD and light source is not strong enough to scan film. Newer flatbed scanners designed with film scanning in mind usually come with the transparency light source built in, as found in the Epson 2450. Digital
Capture There are three main ways of doing digital capture, so here we go.
The point
and shoot class of camera can certainly produce some stunning images
within appropriate print sizes and the all-in-one design eliminates
the dust problems faced by digital SLR (D-SLR) users; however, there
are limitations to the design that users need to be aware of.
The Digital SLR
There are some drawbacks to the D-SLR, which can also apply to digital in general:
The
Digital Capture Back (image courtesy of Creo) The original digital backs required a tethered operation in order for them to work, tethered meaning being directly connected to a computer. This is because most digital backs do not have storage capability thus requiring an external device to facilitate the capture review and storage of the file, i.e. the tethered computer. Another reason for their lack of use in the field is because these digital backs were/are slow in operation and their relative delicacy really made them suited to an indoor studio environment. Oh yes, I suppose I should mention that most of these digital backs cost like a Toyota Camry, a fine upscale sedan (sorry for all the car analogies). Spending $30,000 CAN for a top-notch digital back would not be unheard of, even today with the greater choices available on the market. Despite these disadvantages and horrendous costs, digital backs are found in more and more commercial studios and even wedding and portrait studios too thanks to the immediacy that digital provides and the very high quality offered by these digital backs. Until recently when 35mm based D-SLRs finally came with full-size digital chips (24mm x 36mm), the large capture chips were wholly the domain of the digital capture back. The larger chips allowed for large, high quality print capability and photographers were finding their productivity to be so improved, they could take on more business and recoup the high cost of the digital back. Plus, they no longer had film and processing expenses to deal with. Time moves on though and Kodak has led the way with the next generation digital back. A few years ago when I dreamt of the ideal digital back for my Bronica medium format cameras, I wished for a self-contained back that was little larger than the existing film backs. It would have its own power source to allow it to be taken into the field and it would have its own storage capabilities so that tethered operation would just be a quaint memory. The original Kodak DCS Pro Back provided all that I asked for and Kodak has continued to refine the back to mate to individual camera bodies, such as the Mamiya 645AF, Contax 645 and the new Hasselblad H1. The newer DCS Pro backs have a much more elegant power pack and they even seem a bit more svelte than the original DCS Pro Back. Very delicious, very stuff of wet dreams, and depressingly, still very expensive at around $20,000 CAN. For those with only slightly less cash to spare but still wanting to utilize a medium format system with digital capture, CMOS technology offers the path of the future. Cheaper and less fussy to manufacture than the CCD devices used in most digital backs and D-SLRs, CMOS still offers very high quality imaging as attested to by Canon users who are now enjoying the benefits of the EOS 1Ds. CMOS even appears in digital backs too, specifically, the backs made by Leaf, a division of Creo Systems Inc. Still not cheap but cheaper than their competitors such as Phase One and Leaf has just recently introduced their Volare back, which is a self-contained back similar to the Kodak DCS Pro back. Should make for a very competitive arena once the Leaf product becomes more well known and widespread. There other variations on the digital capture method such as scanning backs, but the three of digital point and shoot, D-SLR, and digital backs are the primary means of creating an image wholly within the digital domain. Whether this method of digital imaging or still using film and then scanning instead works best for you is a personal choice based upon what you have invested and what you need now. Types of Digital Capture Bayer
Pattern (image courtesy of Kodak) As can be seen in the example, red and green lines alternate with blue and green lines. This means that 50 percent of the photo detectors are filtered for the color green with only 25 percent filtered for red and blue. In order to obtain a full color value for each primary color, interpolation is required, in essence, the camera must guess at the value of corresponding pixels. The interpolation required by the Bayer pattern CCD can cause artifacts in the image and the common approach to reducing these artifacts is to use an anti-aliasing filter in front of the CCD. This filter reduces the artifacts at the cost of ultimate sharpness and is one of the reasons why many digital capture files need generous sharpening in the editing stage. CCD
and CMOS Complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) are relatively new to the quality digital scene with Canon being the primary champion of this type of capture chip. At first CMOS was pooh-poohed by those championing CCD, as a cheap and less qualitative alternative. CMOS is indeed cheaper and easier to produce compared to CCD devices; however, as Canon has proven first with the D30 and then the D60 and now the 1Ds, CMOS is capable of excellent image quality. CMOS devices have less charge going through them helping to alleviate the dust problem suffered by users of CCD cameras. CMOS is also known to be very noise free; however, the CCD device is actually supposed to even more noise free than CMOS, it is actually the in-camera software processing of the CMOS image that produces the very clean images. CMOS devices also have their digital to analog processing done on the same chip whereas the CCD requires an additional chip for this conversion. This can help produce more compact digital products utilizing CMOS devices. Canon is no longer the only game in town with regard to CMOS devices with Kodak introducing their DCS Pro 14n and Leaf having digital capture backs based on CMOS devices too. Additionally, the vaunted Foveon X3 device is actually a modified CMOS chip.
This approach allows each layer to capture the full amount of color information and no interpolation is required, thus artifacts are either greatly reduced or non-existent. It is a very promising technology that many would love to see used by more digital camera makers. At present only Sigma offers a D-SLR with the Foveon X3 chip, but a rumour is out that another brand will offer a 10 megapixel D-SLR in Spring of 2003. From reviewing the tests at other websites about the Sigma SD-9 D-SLR, this 3 MP camera equals the resolution and quality of a 6 MP camera, so you can imagine what the potential a 10 MP camera with a Foveon sensor will be like. The Digital Darkroom Once we have a digital image to work on, we then open up the image file via a computer system and begin any edits we may wish to do. The computer system is the heart of the digital darkroom and it pays to have it set-up right. Before proceeding, I’ll make some brief comments about the Mac versus PC debate and state that I am a PC user and have been since my early university days (realizing that an electric typewriter I had in first year was not going to survive for the rest of my student years). I have very limited experience with Mac systems, but given their widespread praise, I believe that the Mac is a formidable digital darkroom system with Photoshop. However, since upgrading the Windows OS to 2000 and now XP Pro on a Pentium 4, I have few qualms about the PC not being suitable for the task. The cost of setting up top-notch systems from either system is going to be high, but I think the edge goes to the PC with a greater ability to upgrade and customize a system to your liking. Where the PC likely still lags behind the Mac is not really processing power (my P4 runs plenty fast thank you) but with color management. Mac’s Colorsync provides the ability to sync all your devices from scanners, to monitors to printers effortlessly whereas I’m still a bit in the dark about how Windows XP handles color management via its ICM 2.0 (it apparently is suppose to be similar to Mac Colorsync). Lastly and specifically to Nikon users, Nikon software apparently runs much faster and smoother on PC systems than on Macs and from the grumblings I’ve read from Mac users, it would seem that Nikon did a band-aid job of creating Mac versions of their Nikonview and Nikoncapture applications until very recently. The problem was significant enough for some users to switch from Mac to PC to improve their workflow, something to think about if you're a Nikon D-SLR user with Nikoncapture (or even Bibble) software. So, further comments about the computer system are going be all PC based, which is just an indication of my limited experience with Macs. Computer
Anatomy
The
Monitor
The good monitors come in two different flavors, the Sony Trinitron type and the Mitsubishi Diamond type. Both types are popular amongst other monitor brands for re-badging as their own and either type should do well for photo editing purposes. From what I could gather, the Mitsubishi Diamond is actually a tweaked version of the Sony Trinitron tube technology, but Mitsubishi have advanced the design further and have kept the price very competitive compared to similar Trinitron products. No matter which type of monitor you choose, select a model that has a true flat screen to minimize distortion. I recall my first experience with a flat screen Trinitron at work a few years ago having always used non-flat CRT monitors in the past and thinking that the Trinitron was itself distorted. The crispness was such that my own 17-inch MAG monitor, which was a great monitor for its time, was soft in comparison. This leads us nicely to the next topic about monitor size. When I bought my 17-inch MAG in 1995, it cost a princely sum of $900 CAN. That same monitor now would cost no more than a couple of hundred dollars, although I still consider the MAG to be superior to all current budget monitors despite its age. I bought the MAG around the time that 17-inch monitors were becoming the standard and realizing this I was actually ahead of the pack for a short while. Today, the 19-inch monitor is the standard size and this is what I feel is the appropriate size to go with; however, if the budget allows then I do recommend getting as large as you can afford without compromising on the quality required to do the job. I'm looking to buy a Sony 21-inch monitor that will cost about the same as what the MAG cost me 7 years ago. Spending good money on a monitor is the way to go because it is likely the longest lasting piece of computer gear you’ll invest in. Since 1995 when I bought my original Pentium 120 with the MAG monitor, I have upgraded the CPU to a Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III to the current Pentium 4 along with all the guts inside of those CPUs, all the while still using the original MAG monitor. In case you’re wondering, no I’m not rich and stupid to go through so many computer upgrades, I just happen to have contacts in the computer industry that have allowed me to upgrade so often at very minimal cost to myself. The CRT is still the current standard for professional graphical and photo editing purposes; however, flat panel screens are gaining in popularity thanks to decreasing prices and increasing quality. Is a flat panel worthy of consideration? Yes, if you’re willing to spend the money. I went through this tough choice myself before deciding on getting another CRT monitor. I did the pragmatic thing and went for the product that would give me the biggest bang for the buck and as of this writing (early 2003) the CRT still leads the way. It use to be that the flat panel screen was laughed at by serious photo and graphics editors because of the particular characteristics of such viewing devices. Anyone with experience using elderly laptop computers will know of these characteristics, which were a very narrow field of view for optimum quality, a washed out view if one was not directly centered in the sweet spot and poor handling of gradations of tone. Flat panels became much better when TFT technology was utilized and in addition to addressing the field of view problems, now a bit of indirect light on the screen would not lead to a wash out either. However, even TFT flat panels still were not considered good enough for critical editing applications.
Now does one really need to become a Mac user and have to pay $6000 CAN for the latest 24-inch Cinema Screen? No, as there are other PC compatible flat screens available that could also be used for high quality photo editing. Eizo is one name that comes to mind, being a Japanese made product and surprisingly, the Korean Samsung is another that may offer good flat panel products. A more familiar name is Viewsonic and as long as you use one of their flat panels with MVA technology then the quality could also be very good too. Note though that I have no personal experience with any of these products other than salivating over the Mac Cinema Screen in store demos, I’m just passing along what I have gathered from my travails over the Internet. One thing I can tell you with great fact is that a high quality flat panel is not cheap and the difference in cost from one size to the next is considerably more than with CRT monitors. For photo editing you would not want to go smaller than a 17-inch flat panel; however if you were to look at the next size up of 18 inches, you will have to pay a near 50 percent increase in price to get that little bit of extra viewing space. The last I looked, an average quality 18-inch flat panel was still near $2000 CAN. Now, granted that 18-inch flat panel is going to provide a similar amount of viewing space (or even more) as a 19-inch CRT, but at nearly four-times the cost of that good CRT. However, the benefits of a flat panel are very attractive.
It is your money therefore your choice as to which type of viewing device you want, a CRT or a flat panel. Whichever you decide on just ensure that you’ve invested in a good product because as I mentioned earlier on, it is likely to be the longest lasting computer product you buy. Software The king of the photo editing applications is Photoshop. Since the early 1990s when Photoshop first appeared, the software application has become the professional standard that all other photo-editing suites are compared to. When you read the digital editing tips offered in magazines or websites, almost all the time, they use Photoshop as the default-editing package, such is the predominance and preeminence of Photoshop.
Adobe has continued to evolve Photoshop to maintain its industry lead and relevance by making it more functional and powerful to handle whatever photographers and editors can throw at it. Soon, Photoshop will even be able to handle the RAW image files that are created by digital cameras instead of needing a separate RAW converter, as is the case now. Photoshop is not cheap at about $900 CAN for the full package with continuous upgrades every couple of years to the newest version; however, it is money well spent if the digital darkroom is going to be your main means of working on your images. Just as you would not use regular grade gasoline in your Porsche, neither should you be using regular grade software for your expensive computer system. However, realizing that $900 is a bit much for many of us, Adobe comes to the rescue with Photoshop Elements, which is a stripped down version of the full Photoshop and provides enough of the editing power to satisfy many at a much more palatable cost of about $150 CAN. Photoshop Elements is far superior to previous Adobe products, which were so stripped down and so Disneyified for the mass consumer, as to be wholly useless for the serious photo editor (Photo Deluxe, Photoshop LE). Now Photoshop is not the only game in town with other products available at varying costs too. Corel has a couple of software suites that may be of interest and JASC’s Paintshop Pro is regarded as being a good editor for the money. There are a few other minor editors on the market, but Adobe has such a stranglehold that it would be a good long-term investment to buy into either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. One of the benefits of buying Photoshop Elements first is the ability to upgrade to a full version of Photoshop if and when you decide the cost is warranted. So, now you have the photo editor application, but you’ve got hundreds of images you have to sort through, what to do. There are a number of applications available to help you sort through the images you will have created and edited. Some are quite complex because they utilize a real database application in its core, such as Cumulus while others were developed by professional photographers tired of not having the right product available on the market. Professional wildlife photographer Moose Peterson worked with David Cardinal to create DigitalPro to handle and sort the many digital images that a professional photographer would create. Other products such as ACDSee provide fast processing of thumbnail views of images in a given folder on the hard drive and allow for some basic editing of the image such as rotation and renaming. If you’ve ever had to wait through Windows XP trying to generate thumbnail images of JPEGs through Windows Explorer, you will greatly appreciate a third party product cutting through JPEGs like a hot knife through butter. Curiously, though Windows XP has no speed problems handling compression-free image files such as TIFFs, Adobe PSD, or RAW files.
Use and experience will determine which products work best for your needs. I haven’t found a need for a third party cataloguing application for my images. I have worked out my own system of sorting through images by subject matter and then sorting them through folders based upon the size of a CD-R. Once enough material has gathered in a particular disk folder, the contents are burned to a CD-R and a label is marked with the contents and the date range of the images. Family images are always kept together and burned to CD-R separately whereas my personal photography may be sorted by subject matter or event or whatever is appropriate. Again, once enough material has gathered in a folder approaching 700 MB, a CD-R will be burned for safekeeping. My system works for me, but then I am not terribly prolific in creating new images all the time. If I did generate many thousands of images per month as some photographer do then it is likely I would need a third party application to help me sort through all the images. A printing application would also be a good investment for providing more flexibility in printing than what is provide for with your primary editing suite. Qimage Pro is a popular and quite effective printing software that also happens to do some RAW file conversion too. It allows you to set a number of different printing options from the size of the image to its layout within the limitations of the print size. You can print multiples of the same images on one sheet or print different images for each space allowed. Very effective and not particularly expensive at $40 US.
Another alternative is Roxio Photosuite (formerly MGI Photosuite). This piece of software also has a variety of printing options; however, they are less flexible than Qimage Pro. If you like crafts and doing your own cards and such, Photosuite may work out for you. There are a number of border and framing options available as well, but keep in mind that you’re restricted to either letter or A4 sized prints (or at least my two-year old version is).
One last word on software for the digital darkroom, if this computer system is also used to connect to the Internet, especially via broadband connection such as ADSL or cable modem, you MUST install a firewall to protect you from hackers using automated port detection software. Hackers finding an used port through your system can hack in easily and you would never even know it without the firewall set-up. A firewall is even more critical than a virus protection package; however I highly recommend you get both with Norton Professional Internet Security providing everything you need in one package. The
Printer Even just a cursory amount of research into a suitable home printer is going to come up with one brand over and over again, Epson. Epson has dominated the photo inkjet printer market and continues to advance the technology to provide the capability of producing stunning image quality that is fully photographic and not as some close facsimile of a traditional photo. Other companies are approaching the quality that Epson has, notably Canon and Hewlett Packard; however neither offers the longevity that Epson has developed with their archival inks. Epson has also lowered the prices of their very large format printers compared to their previous versions, which just helps to solidify the market share and lead enjoyed by Epson. It use to be that Epson’s 7000 series printers cost $10,000 CAN but now the latest 7600 printer can be bought for $6000 CAN, a remarkable reduction in price given the short time span between the 7600 and the predecessor 7500. Most users are not going to need a 24-inch wide printer such as the 7600 and thankfully Epson makes a 13-inch wide printer using the same Ultra Brite inks as the 7600 in the 2200 desktop model for much less (around $1000 CAN). You can consider the 2200 to be a merging of two different Epson printers. The 2200 does not have the ultra long print life feature of the Epson 2000 and its pigment based inks and neither does it quite have as wide a gamut as the Epson 1280 printer with its dye based inks. However, the 2200 straddles the middle ground very nicely to provide print life up to 75 years on Archival Matte paper while having better colors and far less problems with metamerism (shifting of colors depending upon what kind light the print is viewed under) than the old 2000 model. If inkjet printing is for you, investing in a printer with individual ink cartridges is the way to go because certain colors are used much faster than others and with the older style printers using one large color cartridge, much ink can be wasted. You would also want to ensure that the printer brand you select has a good range of papers to use. Although there are many different brands of paper available, my experience has been that Epson papers work best with my Epson 1270 printer and that the Epson papers are of very good quality for a photo finish and weight. This would also apply to Canon or Hewlett Packard printer owners and their same brand papers will work best with their printers. One caveat about inkjet printers to note is that you should be modestly prolific in your use of them. Ink cartridges usually have a finite lifespan in which colors will be accurate after opening the sealed package. Printer heads can also become clogged if not used for long periods of time.
There are a few caveats about dye-sub printers though:
There are not any more options available to the digital darkroom editor wanting an affordable printer beyond the inkjet or the dye-sub. The best professional printers are probably those made by Cymbolic Sciences, known as the Lightjet printer, which uses lasers to create an image on actual photographic paper, such as Fuji Crystal Archive. Given the several hundred thousand dollars needed to purchase one, this is not likely to be an option for even the wealthiest photographer. A more affordable printer using similar technology would be the Fujix (Fuji) Pictrography printer. More affordable is relative though since the cheapest Pictrography printer is around $6,500 CAN with the larger 13x19 inch capable printer being nearly $16,000 CAN. However, the cost is low enough for some professional photographers and editors to invest in one for their printing needs. Some notes here on proper print care to ensure the maximum benefit from whichever type of printer you choose. All prints, even those from professional labs will suffer from fading and color shift if improperly displayed. The print should be protected by plastic archival sleeves if stored in an album or properly framed if displayed on a wall or shelf. This means using a matte to provide a space between the print and the glass or plastic surface of the frame. The framed print should also not be displayed in direct sunlight, as UV will work to fade the print despite the framing. Related to print care is the issue with some inkjet prints of color shifts and out-gassing. Epson 1270 and 1280 printers use dye-based ink and the prints produced by these printers is very good; however, a number of users worldwide have experienced problems with their prints shifting to orange after some time. The orange shift has been identified as the cyan ink oxidizing and allowing the other colors to become dominant, creating an orange cast. The choice of papers made a large difference with the glossy papers being the worse culprits; however, even those using matte papers suffered orange shift problems. There have been many discussions on printer lists trying to isolate the exact cause of this orange shift as some users experienced it almost immediately while others have never seen it. Framing a print before it has fully dried can cause out-gassing. This particular problem seems to have become a more topical issue with the introduction of Epson’s Ultrabrite inks and their latest generation of printers. It is not a problem that only afflicts Epson, as prints from other brands can also suffer from out-gassing if not dried fully. The telltale sign of out-gassing is a fogging of the glass surface of the frame and if touched, would feel a bit oily. Unlike the dye-based inks, which had super fast drying capabilities, certain photo papers (glossy or semi-gloss types) do not absorb archival inks as quickly and it could even take several weeks before the print is dry enough for framing. Epson has recommended that a clean sheet of paper be placed on top of a drying print for 24-hours to help absorb the excess ink and for a very ink-heavy print, to do so again for another 24-hour period. Color
Calibration and Color Management As with all things related to the digital darkroom you can spend several thousands of dollars on such calibration packages, but unless you actually work for a graphics house that will buy the package for you, why be stupid about it? Spend only what you need to obtain a good profile. If you happen to be one of the few editors using a flat panel screen, well you’re going to spend a bit more money because the calibration spyders capable of handling a flat panel cost more. If you are in the majority with a CRT and plan to use a CRT well into the future then you can save a hundred or more on a CRT-only spyder. There are several products available on the market, but the one that seems to pop up everywhere as being very good for the money is the Colorvision spyder with the companion OptiCal software. The flat panel capable spyder and software package will run you about $500 CAN whereas the CRT version is just over $300 CAN. You can even go cheaper with the more basic PhotoCal software package and this would be fine for a basic digital darkroom; however, if you’re really serious about the digital darkroom, the OptiCal software is the way to go with its finer controls and variables available to the user. If you’re really on a budget and cannot afford a spyder then you need to at least use the Adobe Gamma feature that comes with Photoshop. Once Photoshop has been installed on a PC, you can access Adobe Gamma through the Control Panel (older versions of Photoshop had access directly from Photoshop). Follow the step-by-step procedures to calibrate your monitor and at the end, you will at least have something that is better than nothing. Adobe Gamma can get you close to matching what your prints will look like, but not exact. Since I am not a professional photographer with very stringent needs for exact color matching in my prints, I wasn’t overly concerned when certain colors on print did not match with what I saw on the monitor when I had nothing better than Adobe Gamma. Now with a more capable digital darkroom set-up I am becoming more critical in how accurate my prints look. You can take calibration to a system-wide level by including the scanner, digital camera and printer into the equation via their ICC profiles (International Color Consortium). Mac users benefit here from a seamless integration of the various devices connected to the computer. The latest versions of Windows will also apply the stock ICC profile for each device connected to the computer through the ICM 2.0 software, but you will need to check the “Color Management” of each device under “Properties” to ensure that Windows has recognized the ICC profile. Taking calibration to the extreme would mean doing a number of technical tests of each device and creating custom profiles for each. For a scanner that means scanning a known test target that conforms to IT8 standards, such as the Kodak Q-60 test target to create a profile based upon how the scanner scans the target. For a printer, the very critical would create a custom profile for each type of paper that would be used for output. However, most users would likely be satisfied enough with the stock profiles that come with each device because to become very serious about system calibration can cost more than your whole computer system is worth. Related to all this and what Microsoft cryptically refers to as “rendering” is the color management or space that your images have. No digital image is going to be able to hold all the color information available in nature; however, using the appropriate color space will extract as much as possible. Converting the image to different color spaces will alter how certain colors may be rendered or even not rendered at all. The accepted standard is Adobe RGB (1998) if your output is for printing purposes through a desktop printer, as this provides a decently wide color gamut for your images. It has also become the professional standard used by most critical users. However, if your images are to be posted to the Internet, it would be better to convert to the sRGB color space because of the way colors are rendered by that type and because sRGB has become the Internet standard for color rendition. Additionally, there are CMYK spaces used by the professional pre-press industry, but that is not something one is likely ever going to have anything to do with from a home digital darkroom perspective. Using the wrong color profile for your image for a given application (print or Internet) can create muted colors and a very drab look to the image that may be very far from what was expected. Also, Fuji Frontier processing and printing machines apparently work best when a digital image is tagged with the sRGB color space, so while I would recommend working with Adobe RGB (1998) for all of your own digital darkroom work, be wary of what external output devices require for best results. The
“room” in Digital Darkroom Not everyone can create a digital darkroom from scratch, but there are some who can and have taken it to very stringent standards by covering up their windows and taping them down so to eliminate all daylight coming in. Doors are closed to the rest of the house so that no stray light comes in to create any unwanted distractions or reflections on the monitor either and light sources in the room are calibrated to the same color temperature, usually 5500 degrees Kelvin. For many of us the digital darkroom is just whatever space is available in an already full house and we make the best of it despite having to compromise. Keep the blinds or curtains closed when editing an image and try to orient the monitor so that no window or door reflections can be seen during the day. Keep the ambient lighting subdued and if you can, look into buying daylight calibrated florescent light bulbs to replace the incandescent bulbs. Not as warm in tone but cheaper with less heat in the long run and more accurate to view your prints and compare them to what is seen on the monitor. Concluding
Comments Film cameras are becoming loss leaders for the camera makers nowadays with little to no growth and more likely on a downward trend. All the action is happening in the digital realm and just as film point and shoot cameras were the bread and butter of most camera brands, digital point and shoots will become the major source of revenue for those companies. Camera companies have heard the whisper in their field of dreams and that whisper says “build digital and they will come”. It does not mean that film is dead anytime soon, not even close, but that is because of the already installed base of millions of film cameras that have already been produced and are out in the worldwide market. There is little market for high-end prestige cameras such as the Nikon F5 or Canon EOS 1v because the professionals that use to buy them are now using Nikon D1H and D1X or EOS 1D bodies. Well to do amateurs that copied what the pros do are similarly buying D-SLRs. The not so well to do are also chomping at the bit to enter into the digital realm and when that first D-SLR becomes available for about $1000 US, I think that is when the damn will burst and we can sweep away the legacy of film for the serious amateur crowd. And we are very close to that time now that we have D-SLR cameras rivaling 35mm quality for under $2000 US. If you are interested in digital imaging, these are very exciting times to be in, but if you’re still into shooting film, these times are still great for you too. Scanners are so capable and can be so affordable that most anyone with an inclination to can afford one; however I do recommend buying at least a Nikon Coolscan IV quality scanner if film is still your primary medium. No matter which method you prefer for creating a digital image, the ability to print your own work after you have done your own custom editing is intoxicatingly liberating from worrying about that lab is going to do with your film or image file. Printing at home can be fully the equal of the results from a professional lab, you just need to have the desire to learn and then enjoy the fruits of your labour. The learning curve can be steep, the cost high, and the time required can be immense; however, many people would never go back to the traditional darkroom after experiencing what can be accomplished in the digital environment. It isn’t for everyone and indeed one will be spending plenty of time in front of the computer editing the images, but then we had to do that with the hundreds of slides or prints that came back from a large shoot too, except on a light table with a headache inducing loupe. I much prefer the digital realm than the old one based on film. Welcome to the brave new world and this ends the e-Book on Photography. Thanks for reading! |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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Photographers with the financial means will purchase their own film
scanners and printers (typically a good inkjet) to facilitate the
digital darkroom, whereas those without the good chunk of change required
to purchase a good film scanner can still have their film scanned
at a professional photo lab.
Many
medium and large format photographers compromise on the scanning of
these larger pieces of film with a flatbed scanner. Now before going
further, we should acknowledge that there are flatbed scanners out
there that make the Imacons look cheap and can rival drum scans in
quality, but this is not the type of flatbed scanner I’m talking about.
Digital
Point and Shoot
This
is where all the action is for serious photographers who want to
be able to buy into high quality digital without re-mortgaging the
house, as would be needed with our last look at digital capture
(later on in this report).
Once
upon a time the high-end digital photographer worked only in the studio
to produce high quality digital images. This was because their digital
capture devices required so much ancillary equipment to work that
taking the kit into the field or location would have been a logistical
headache. These digital capture devices had a passing resemblance
to medium format film backs, of which most of these digital capture
backs were used in placed of. However, it would not be uncommon to
see them attached to large format cameras in order for the photographer
to take advantage of the movements offered by such cameras.
This
is the predominate method of digital capture, named after the Kodak
scientist who invented it. The Bayer pattern is a single layer of
pixels or photo detectors arranged into an RGB color scheme as seen
in the example image at right.
Do
not go for the Costco monitor special that will get you a 17 inch
monitor for a couple of hundred dollars. You are going to have a cathode
ray tube (CRT) screen that is going to bulge out which will lead to
distortion in the monitor’s field of view. Cheap monitors also lack
the crispness needed for serious editing and likely will cause eyestrain
compared to a decent monitor, as you need to have your eyes closer
to the screen to try resolve the details you think are in the image. Image courtesy of Sony>> 
This
was likely the prevalent attitude until Apple introduced their astounding
Cinema Screen flat panel products, which are incredible with an incredible
price tag to match. Now, flat panel technology was good enough that
serious photo editing could be done with none of the detrimental characteristics
of the old flat panel screens. Image courtesy of Apple>>
Printing
at home has never been easier nor has the quality ever been better
for the digital darkroom enthusiast. It is indeed a remarkable time
we live in when affordable inkjet printers can rival the quality offered
by professional labs and indeed some professional labs utilize inkjet
printers which differ only in the size of print offered vis a vis
the home inkjet printer.
Another
printing option is the dye-sublimation (dye-sub) printer that uses
colored rolls of ribbons instead of ink to create an image on paper
using thermal heat technology. The print quality from a dye-sub printer
is quite excellent and offers a quality that may better inkjet printers
in terms of smoother tonality and gradations. The dye-sub process
can also be archival too, rivaling the Epson 2200 for print life.
Some printers will also laminate the print to provide even more durability. Image courtesy of Kodak>>