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Post by Robin Hood on Oct 28, 2009 20:26:43 GMT -6
I know I am a bit more serious about photography than most of you, but this software is KICK ASS!! I had always used Photoshop for everything, that has changed...Lightroom2 is AMAZING!!! If you want to play with it for 30 days free, just go to Adobe's website and download it. Overall, I don't think the price ($299) isn't all that horrid for everything that this software does.
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Post by Robin Hood on Oct 28, 2009 20:27:50 GMT -6
BTW, there are some good videos of Lightroom2 in use here!
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Post by Chicago Jake on Oct 28, 2009 23:24:08 GMT -6
How about telling us what it does that is so amazing compared to Photoshop?
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Post by Irish Stu on Oct 29, 2009 13:14:36 GMT -6
I know I am a bit more serious about photography than most of you Are you? Simon
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Post by ♥ COVID-19♥ on Oct 29, 2009 13:19:38 GMT -6
Isn't it obvious?
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Post by Irish Stu on Oct 29, 2009 13:34:12 GMT -6
I suppose so.
Simon
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Post by ♥ COVID-19♥ on Oct 29, 2009 13:36:03 GMT -6
Please don't feel too b.a.d. -- I didn't think so, either.
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Post by Ardbeg... innit on Oct 29, 2009 14:36:23 GMT -6
I know I am a bit more serious about photography than most of you, but this software is KICK ASS!! Resume please
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Post by ♥ COVID-19♥ on Oct 29, 2009 14:44:48 GMT -6
Why do you want his résumé? Are you hiring photographers? Planning to do an entire layout of French Maid motif shoots, are we?
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Post by Ardbeg... innit on Oct 29, 2009 14:48:47 GMT -6
If he is the most serious here, who else should I use? I mean, if Marge Simpson can be on the cover of Playboy, maybe I can be featured on their review of the movie "The Men Who Stare at Goats"
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Post by Irish Stu on Oct 29, 2009 15:00:57 GMT -6
Please don't feel too b.a.d. That's easy for you to say, you don't have to live with the shame and embarrassment of having missed something so obvious. Simon
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Post by ♥ COVID-19♥ on Oct 29, 2009 15:14:42 GMT -6
To be quite honest, I missed it, too -- I just lacked your courage to speak up about it. "The Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome, I suppose.
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Post by Dan on Oct 29, 2009 15:19:45 GMT -6
Well, I thought it was a sequel to a movie I missed originally. Don't beat yourselves up too bad. (I am trying to type "bad" and it is inserting "dread". WTF???
Edited for spelling - dark outside - Tornado Watch in effect.
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Post by Dan on Oct 29, 2009 15:24:41 GMT -6
If you want to play with it for 30 days free, .....
WHAT!!!!!!!!...after 30 days we gotta pay to play now? WTF?
Overall, I don't think the price ($299) isn't all that horrid
You should really talk to my hooker...MUCH better rates.
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Post by ♥ COVID-19♥ on Oct 29, 2009 15:32:49 GMT -6
Yes, but the software doesn't make you wear a condom.
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Post by Dan on Oct 29, 2009 15:58:16 GMT -6
Ahhh...but does it clean you up and and turn off the lights when exiting? I SO hate post-climactic abends.
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Post by Robin Hood on Oct 29, 2009 18:30:02 GMT -6
I know I am a bit more serious about photography than most of you Are you? Simon I did assume I am the only one here that has studio lighting and is building a home studio...
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Post by Irish Stu on Oct 30, 2009 9:59:34 GMT -6
I can't speak for anyone else, but I've worked in graphic design for over 25 years, including running my own design company for the past ten. During that this time I have commissioned many photographers to undertake projects for me, whilst at the same time honing my own skills by learning what I can from them. My particular area of interest, as you will have seen from the pictures that I post here, are outdoor/scenery/documentary/capturing moments in time. Studio work and portraits etc hold no interest for me. Therefore, when a project comes along that requires pictures that are 'up my street' I will do the shoot myself, and many of my pictures have been used in marketing material including brochures, press adverts and websites that we have designed. And I of course earn a living from that. So I guess that kind of makes me serious too, but without the studio and lights.
Simon
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Post by Dan on Oct 30, 2009 17:50:05 GMT -6
I did assume I am the only one here that has studio lighting and is building a home studio... Been there...done that. Also had the darkroom..E6 and C41. Accurate within +/- 1/4 degree. Ex got it all though. Bitch.
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Post by ♥ COVID-19♥ on Oct 30, 2009 18:50:54 GMT -6
I did assume I am the only one here that has studio lighting and is building a home studio... I had one, but renovated it and turned it into a dungeon.
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Post by Ardbeg... innit on Oct 30, 2009 20:04:09 GMT -6
But who can tell the difference
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Post by ♥ COVID-19♥ on Oct 30, 2009 20:41:57 GMT -6
My interior decorator.
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Post by Robin Hood on Oct 31, 2009 0:16:33 GMT -6
I had no idea that some of you were that serious...I apologize. My main focus is portraiture and glamour. I shoot a TON of Senior Pictures....sigh...but they pay well.
In some ways I am glad I didn't get serious about photography until after digital came into the picture...don't get me wrong, I always had a good film camera around but didn't shoot near as much and the whole darkroom thing was only a dream for me. In a way I feel I missed out on some of the nuances that film allowed.
I just started building my studio this year because I am tired of getting rained out all the time, the studio will give me more flexibility. I was going to buy a set of Photogenic Lights, but after doing some research, I decided to buy a set of the Alien Bees instead...a WHOLE lot less cash and from everything that I have read about them is almost all positive. For the price of TWO of the Photogenics I can get FOUR of the Alien Bees with all the goodies (two softboxes, snoot, grids, stands, barndoors, and a set of gels...go figure). Granted the Photogenics are a "more" pro light...but from everything I have read...not by much.
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Post by Ardbeg... innit on Oct 31, 2009 6:38:34 GMT -6
My experience in photography is more of the scientific in nature. Early in grad school, almost 30 years ago now, I became very proficient with the ins and outs of the Hasselblad 70mm camera, the classic 500EL/M model with the oversized film magazine.
I got a Project Assistantship and for several years was responsible for taking the aerial photographs our programs research needed. In other words if I fucked up, a fellow students or professors research went to crap.
It wasnt just about taking the photos either, since they were taking very precise measurements off of the images, I had to expose a gray scale at each end of the film (to create very precise dLogE curves for each roll, and by interpolation between the beginning and end, for each exposure on the roll) in each cartridge used and allow enough extra film to not overexpose onto the gray scales.
I also had to load the film from the cartridge that it came in onto the spool that would go in the magazine and thread the film in the magazine. We used both natural color and color infrared film on most products, so I had no advantage of safe lights, everything had to be done in total darkness. Also I had to keep track of which film was in which magazines, because they required different filters (color IR film required a Wratten 9 filter to block out the incoming blue and UV light, the normal color film used just a UV filter).
For the most part that was not difficult, you just had to be well organized and patient, knock one thing on the floor or forget what you need for one step in the process, and you were really screwed if you needed to turn the lights on with a hundred feet of film stock sitting out on the table.
The difficult part was flying the missions, if they were particularly long. I had a couple missions that required swapping exposed film out and fresh film into magazines mid-mission. We had 6 film magazines, 3 each for the color and IR films. But sometimes the mission required more film than that. Which meant doing the swap out using a black bag in flight. Talk about sweating bricks. Not only having to unload the exposed magazine, canning it, and load new film into the magazine, doing everything by touch, but also under the time pressure and with the motions of a moving airplane.
No worse feeling than getting to a point where the pilot and a several hundred $/hour airplane are flying patterns waiting for the film magazine swap. Wait... yes there is. It never happened to me but I always lived in dread of the film not advancing after each exposure. Some of the early Hasselblad large capacity film magazines had a reputation of slipping on the take up reel. The film was held to it by a metal clip, and if too much film was in the loaded magazine or too much resistance from an improper loading, the resistance would cause the film to not advance after each exposure. I went against the manufacturers recommendation and taped the film to the take up spool as an insurance policy that it would advance (motor burn out was the trade off if it really jammed, I got lucky).
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Post by Ardbeg... innit on Oct 31, 2009 7:09:40 GMT -6
Of course, most of my career involves the interpretation (in stereo) of aerial photography for natural resource management. I dont take the photos anymore, I leave that to the professionals and their large format (9x9") cameras, but I do spend my days either looking at aerial photos, characterizing what I see on them by a classification scheme set up to requirements of the end user. Field verification of the interpretation, and then scanning the photos and using very precise measurements on my computer to remove locational errors due to relief displacement caused by the terrain, and finally mosaicing the photos into 6 mile by 6 mile blocks.
We are going to be forced into the digital world after the upcoming fiscal year (2010-11). Kodak announced last week that they were discontinuing production of large format aerial films. This is a real blow to us as the current generation of digital aerial cameras are grossly underpowered in terms of resolution capabilites unless you bring the airplane down so low that it will take 10-15 times as many frames to get the same information content as a single analogue film exposure. A real nightmare. It will also mean that I will have to convert to looking at the digital images in stereo on my computer monitor. Expensive software to do that... $10,000 give or take, but at least I have a year and a half until that changeover happens, save up the money and crawl up the learning curve.
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Post by innit Geezer on Oct 31, 2009 8:46:00 GMT -6
Very impressive Gordon -- and the thought of learning the new software seems daunting to me.
The closest I came to aerial photography was getting a reasonable snap-shot while joining the mile high club, wedged in a 757's bathroom on the way to Jamaica.
FWIW -- economy/snack/no meal
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Post by Ardbeg... innit on Oct 31, 2009 8:50:44 GMT -6
Thats where a good shoe cam is critical
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Post by Robin Hood on Oct 31, 2009 10:11:59 GMT -6
Wow...it would take one hell of a sensor to equal that of a 9x9...I never really thought about the large format stuff much with the advances of digital... I know there are some cameras out there that are pushing the 200MP range right now...but that still doesn't come close to a 9x9 negative.
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Post by Ardbeg... innit on Oct 31, 2009 10:29:05 GMT -6
No they dont! Microsoft is sort of out there on the forefront with their Ultracam which falls in that range. The CCD array for that is in the 100mmx60mm size (17300 x 11300 pixels), but to produce film quality at the same flying heights they are going to have to get well into the gigapixel range... then you have the massive storage requirements (like they arent bad enough already) because you cant use any sort of compression (the data integrity goes to shit if you do).
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Post by Chicago Jake on Oct 31, 2009 10:44:07 GMT -6
Very interesting story, Gordon. Thanks for sharing it. I think this is a good example of how photography is very different things to different people. Much like the old blind men and the elephants thing.
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