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Why the Panasonic FX20? Why not the FX30.  I have been researching what I would like to get and so far the FX30 looks to be a great improvement over the FX20.

 
Ron said:
Why the Panasonic FX20? Why not the FX30.? I have been researching what I would like to get and so far the FX30 looks to be a great improvement over the FX20.

I guess I can't say anything except it was a mistake based upon lack of knowledge. I thought I had researched it well but after getting more education I would probably opt for a camera with RAW capability at a minimum. In addition, the FZ 30 has other good improvements. I don't recall but price may have been a factor but I doubt it - I'm an early adopter which by definition means higher prices paid.  ;D
 
Karl said:
Ron,
. . . always overexposed to maintain the shadow detail and give more color saturation. Like you said, if the detail isn't there to begin with, there's nothing you can do in the darkroom or in the software to create it. I don't think manipulation is cheating; photography is an art form and not a science, and you should be able to use whatever tools are at your disposal.

Congratulations!


Karl, seems to me the injunction is: expose for highlights, develop for shadows--or, was it the other way around. I haven't done film for years, and I can't recall this correctly.

Certainly in digital, there are many advocates for exposing with the histogram well to the right, but not clipped, since noise resides in the shadows and will become apparent as you lighten those shadows to reveal the detail.

Ciao,

Doug
 
Doug:

    Did you look at the image of one of my Photo Escapes that I posted at Jim's request?  After I get back from Quartzsite, I plan to start producing more of this work.

 
Hi Ron,

Yes, I've looked at all of the five that you have posted since December 13.

Of the first four, the one I like best is the flower studies.  Frankly I'd place that one ahead of the pic that won in the competition, but then what do I know about judging.

I also like the White Sands one--I seem to recall seeing one (or a few of those before) but I didn't think the images I recall were captured in 2005.  However, I seem to recall saying to you that I thought the White Sands pics would make stunning b/w images--and I still do.

As for the Photo Escapes--here my memory is telling me that you showed me a couple of those some time ago when I was asking you for more info on your framed work.  The picture of the "escape" that you posted I think works very well as a piece of art.  I can see you having those pieces handled very successfully by a good gallery.  Just recently a daughter-in-law sent me a series of this kind of "escape art" she had collected from a web site.  Many of these images were downright whimsical.  Unfortunately I no longer have those images on my HD, or her post to me, so I can't point you in that direction.

Ciao,

Doug




 
Doug,

Karl, seems to me the injunction is: expose for highlights, develop for shadows--or, was it the other way around. I haven't done film for years, and I can't recall this correctly.

No; you've got it right. The only problem is that, aside from b/w photography, you have little (if any) control over the development process of the film. It's all done by time and temperature and you don't see the results until it's done. Yes, you can expose a 200 ASA at 400 (or 800 or 1600) and 'push' process it, but you still don't see the results until it's beyond your control. And, Heaven forbid, you shoot one darkly lit subject at 800 and another normally lit subject at 200 on the same roll of film! Your best bet would be to process it as if the whole roll was shot at 600, and try to make up for the discrepancy during printing.

With a C41 negative film (Kodacolor, VPS pro, etc,), a greater exposure time would yield a denser negative with more color saturation overall. Color positive films like Kodachrome or Ektachrome are not very forgiving and exposure accuracy is very important. Negative films can be exposed +1, +2 or more overexposure with little bad effects, but differences in contrast ratio can have a dramatic effect. Kodacolor is a great all-around film, but has a much lower contrast ratio than VPS, and therefore cannot capture the same highlite and shadow detail that VPS can. Unfortunately, either underexposing or overexposing either film will (could) cause a loss of detail in either the highlight or shadow areas, therefore it is important to 'view' each frame and determine what's most important for it - the shadow, or the highlites, and expose accordingly. As you well know, it's extremely difficult to use dodge and burn techniques when printing color, so your 'in camera' decisions become that much more important.

It may be a while before digital photography resolution can match or surpass some of the fine-grain films we've used for years, but when they do - watch out! The ability to massage an individual pixel can conceivably produce photos of such quality and fidelity that they would border on the unbelievable. Kind of like what some people say about HD-tv compared to analog.

Just a few notes to all film photog's:

1) Keep your unused rolls of film in the FREEZER in sealed plastic bags! It will last way beyond it's expiration date with little effect on quality. When you want to use it, let them come up to room temperature BEFORE opening the bag to eliminate the possibility of moisture condensing on the film and ruining it.

2) If you shoot, say 10 pictures on a 20-exposure roll, don't wait too long to shoot the remaining exposures before processing. Once a frame on the film has been exposed, it starts to lose the image due to chemical reactions. A couple of weeks between shootings is not bad, but several months is to be avoided. Film is cheap; memories are not. :)i
 
Karl said:
Doug,

No; you've got it right. The only problem is that, aside from b/w photography, you have little (if any) control over the development process of the film. It's all done by time and temperature and you don't see the results until it's done.

Good to know that neuron fired correctly ;D.  When I was processing film, it was all b/w.  I did use colour film, mainly Kodachrome or Fujichrome--never did process any Kodacolour myself and used it only on rare occasions.

Ciao,

Doug
 
Thanks Betty.  Hope everyone enjoys them.  I feel blessed to be able to travel to these wonderful places and capture the beauty.

 
Doug:

    One comment related to exposing for the highlights and noise in the shadows.  With digital, you shoot two identical shots, on tripod without changing anything except exposure, and you can lay one on top of the other and then mask out what you don't want.  In other words, expose a shot for highlights to get all the texture and then expose another to get the detail in the dark areas.  Obviously it requires time and most likely a tablet to get it accurate.  It's very difficult to mask properly with the mouse.

 
Ron from Big D said:
Doug:

    One comment related to exposing for the highlights and noise in the shadows.  With digital, you shoot two identical shots, on tripod without changing anything except exposure, and you can lay one on top of the other and then mask out what you don't want.  In other words, expose a shot for highlights to get all the texture and then expose another to get the detail in the dark areas.  Obviously it requires time and most likely a tablet to get it accurate.  It's very difficult to mask properly with the mouse.

You are quite correct, Ron, in what you say.  If you shoot RAW there is an alternative: process the RAW image for bet highlights and save that, then reprocess the original RAW file for shadows and save that.  Then you use the layering / masking procedure to which you refer.

However, there is software that takes the hard work out of all of this, eg, Photomatix (this is not a misprint, it is matix and not matRix).  See:

http://www.hdrsoft.com/

I've got the free Photomatix Basic installed and have used it on occasion both with independently expposed images for highlights and shadows as well as images worked up from a single RAW file.

Ciao,

Doug
 

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