How do you 'normally' shoot and process (and organise, if you like) your photos, etc?

I always dial back in Brightness in LR because I underexpose, but I underexpose because the 300D had a tendency to blow out highlights (the 40D is better at this, I think) and also to get the best hand-held speed. I've just fallen into certain habits that may or may not improve the images.

Raw Nikon D700 into Lightroom 2, organization is all but nonexistent. Work with histogram, sharpening, vibrancy, etc..

I try and under-expose almost everything by 1-3 marks on the exposure meter or so, to avoid blowing out highlights.

in this aspect RAW is more forgiving than JPG - I believe Lightroom has a 'highlight recovery' option that works much better from RAW...

shooting: Olympus E-P1 with 20mm 1.7 pancake

I shoot aperture priority, and have the second dial set for exposure compensation. I use liveview with a real-time histogram, so I can see if I'm blowing highlights/underexposing and dial in compensation. if I have time to set up the shot (rare) I'll try to expose to the right.

I usually shoot at small apertures (4.0-8.0), aperture priority, to get a wider depth of field - this is partly to compensate for the slow-ish AF of the E-P1.

processing: Aperture 2

haven't used it in ages namely because of lack of support. I'm going to see if Apple rolls out any updates for their media event on Jan.26th - otherwise I've got a copy of Lightroom 3 beta that I'll grudgingly start using. in Aperture, I usually crush the blacks using the black point slider to get a more film-like look, and maybe a single click on the contrast slider. I'll also play around with the histogram a bit using the levels - you can approximate an s-curve if you change it into quarterpoint mods. otherwise, I'm not too fastidious about post-processing, and I suppose I need to really spend a couple of nights digging into all the options.

organization - I dump them into folders sorted by months (2009-01, 2009-02, etc.) and let Aperture take care of the rest. I'll go through a set and tag ones I like with a single star, then I'll display only single stars, go through those and tag ones I like better with two stars, etc.

working on starting a photoblog, but haven't found an all-in-one solution that I like yet. I tried animus3 but for the free accounts they do some compression which doesn't look great. Squarespace seems okay but they don't seem to have a good photoblog default setting..

as I've had enough of comedy shallow DOF, I think.

lol
i periodically have these epiphanies after fixations on dumb, my-first-slr, shit like slow shutter speed blurs or lens flare or whatever. i bought a bunch of 50 and 100 b/w films a while ago to try to progress from the instant-gratification stage of really digging super high contrast photocopy-aesthetic black/white, 3200 shots, and am moving into embracing midtones.

single point about organisation of film - i don't really do it, but since i lost a film i've always meant to: store your negatives separate from your prints. if you lose a set of prints then it sucks, losing a set of negatives you like is devastating.

GF1 with 20mm pancake, just switched to raw. Import to Lightroom, then fiddle with sliders for a few minutes without really knowing what I'm doing. I'm often shooting in dark rooms with bright sunlight coming in - eg: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukas/4269270963/ - so shots that could really benefit from decent post-processing. So far I've been underexposing so the LCD preview shows the contrast I want, but I should probably aim for correct exposure and then use postprocessing to get good blacks and whites while preserving detail in the subject.

Oh yes, the choosing side of it.

For a big shoot, like a social event - "X" for mark-for-deletion, "Pick" for come-back-to. Then Pam usually does a pass and marks her faves as "Red". There's a way in LR of then showing PICKs and/or REDs, and we go through and argue about "why didn't you like that one?" and "we don't need two identical shots like that", etc. Once we've agreed, we go through and "U" (clear the tag) the superfluous stuff. Then I work up in Develop what's left, Export at 100%-quality JPEG to a separate folder (with a big fat 30px black border, thanks to the LR/Mogrify plugin*, which Pam then insists I remove), drag 'em in to Flickr Uploadr, have second-thoughts about several, probably whittling it down further. Sounds like a faff but, seriously, it's 20x quicker than it was in the pre-LR days and not as time consuming as the actual act of adding tags/titles/descriptions on Flickr.

(* - LR/Mogrify also good for interpolated resizing, when images need to be 16-bit TIFF, 5000px, etc for printed artwork)

I took about 240 pix at a big pre-Xmas dinner for the local kids and ended up with 69 on Flickr in a private set (standards are much lower for that kind of thing - most important thing is everyone's kids are featured; tagging in LR helps the selection process here); pre-LR, I used to run such sizeable uploads through a batch job in Photoshop Elements (resize 25%, autolevels) and just tell the interested parties that I could work up any individual pictures they liked. Rarely does anyone come back to you about a picture where their 4-y-o has sickly green skin but a lovely smile and say can you fix it, so it makes sense just to get them all as good as I can in LR (which really doesn't take long and I enjoy it). People usually ask for the originals on CD-R.

Do you not use the flickr exporter plugin? It has its downside of only exporting 6 at a time unless you pay but other than that it's quicker than manual export/upload, and you can pre-tag 'n' stuff.

Well, I've got it but currently I've disabled it - no way to put titles/descriptions on things as far as I could tell. I don't really like putting stuff on Flickr completely unannotated (as you'll get a "Oh, where did you get that?" or "Where was this taken?" comment while it's still sitting there as 20081229-IMG_3224). It does appeal to me (do you keep the exports on yr hard drive? Or just let the plugin delete them after uploading?), especially as it adds a metadata flag to stuff to show what you've uploaded.

LR3 will actually have Flickr export as an integrated option (under Publish Services); had a play with the Beta and still wasn't sure about the whole "am I deleting this from Flickr or am I just deleting this from here?" thing.

I don't keep the exports. Somewhat less than ideal, I suppose, if I lose all my LR data (as has happened in the past). I'll have a look at title/desc, ideally I suppose it would grab that from LR, I'm happy enough to do it after upload.

Didn't know about LR 3! when's that due?

April is official release, I think. You can download the Beta for free until then; it won't work with an v1 or v2 catalogue - you'll have to make a little subset of photos for it to play with in a new catalogue. It seems more geared toward the idea of managing yr published work as well as your "negatives" - so you can organise your exports too. I don't know if other sites will be added (Photobucket, Snapfish, etc). I've only got it at work and sort of gave up on it when I couldn't figure out how to import just a day's worth of photos off a memory card (the import dialog is quite different).

man i am still so lost in all this

so far been shooting raw, either on iAuto (just to get the hang of things) w/exposure bracketing or with aperture priority (which is what i shot on the Leica). in africa it was a-priority with lense wide open in low light/portraits, narrower for landscape, stopped up(?) to get faster shutter speeds when needed. once i get the hang of the GF-1, this is what i'll do

but like what is an s-curve?

it's an adjustment of the "tone curve" (often just labelled "curves" in the menu) that basically affects saturation, levels, and contrast all in one. the s-curve is the shape it makes when you lighten the highlights and darken the shadows to produce a more contrasty, film-like image. just play with it in photoshop etc, it's quite intuitive though not so easily described.

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:5WAGal4zEtyu5M%

damn there was supposed to be a picture of an s-curve in photoshop there.

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/images/photo-editing/layer-blend-modes/s-curve.gif

This is a really good introduction to using Curves.

thx dudes

also: is pshop better at doing this than LR?

i have this probably mistaken assumption that PS is best for, like, manipulation of ~reality~ while LR is better suited to processes that mimic film developing

The diff is that photoshop is a big bloated mess with more functions than anyone will ever need, all hidden away in obscure menus and with confusing interfaces. Lightroom gives you just what you need to work with photos, in an easily accessible and easy to use fashion.

Don't get me wrong I love PS, but I never ever used it for photos, it was just too cumbersome. As soon as I started with LR I was all over it. It gives you just what you need, right up front, also deals with file management etc, and the workflow is seamless.

CS4 will do everything Lightroom does via Camera RAW, you just don't get the photography-oriented sorting and all.

LR2/3 = film developing, basic darkroom manipulations, some use for advanced techniques
CS4 = film developing, basic darkroom manipulations, extensive dodging burning/image alteration. It's not just manipulation of reality.

LR2/3 mirrors my darkroom methodology closely (I was never into heavy manipulation) so I pretty much never use PS.

read somewhere (dated 2007?) that a good LR workflow is

RAW master folder ---> tweak in LR ---convert---> TIFFs for PS manipulation folder ---> JPEG for export folder

if i'm not doing an photoshopping (probably) and am exporting directly to email or Flickr (got the plugin), do i need anything like this or can i just keep everything as RAW, tweak as needed, and then export on a case by case basis?

xp can someone give a quick dodge/burn explanation? i know i could look it up, but since you're all here...

like what does it mean literally (like pre-digital), and what does it mean now?

Dodging = making areas of a print lighter by covering them with a piece of opaque material when exposing the photographic paper in the darkroom; burning = the opposite, exposure to more light for longer to deepen the blacks. This used to be done with bits of card cut into the shape of the sky/a foreground lake/mountains/etc. I'll leave a better explanation to those who've actually done it!

With digital, you draw an outline or paint a mask onto that part of a digital image you wish to adjust (exposure or other parameters). People have been doing this for years in PS with layers and so forth; with v2.0 of Lightroom, the Adjustment Brush and Gradient Filter were introduced, giving you something like the same control. I think Aperture has this too. I'm not sure Camera Raw or Nikon's Capture NX do.

ahhhh

didn't realize that masking played into it, thought it was a point edit

Pretty much, yeah - you give the paper base exposure (say, ten seconds@f/16), then get out your tools (we never used specific masks - paper cut into circles or with holes in it to block out light from parts of the image, or to let them in) and expose for more time in certain parts, moving the tool constantly so that you don't get a sharp contrast line. Repeat until all areas of the image are dodged or burned as you wish, then develop and find out you fucked it up and have to start over. 'Twas seriously a major pain the ass.

There are dodge and burn brushes in PS (and LR, presumably), but they don't work very well.

LR's clone tool is fucking awesome and I wish it had existed when I was scanning film.

The adjustment brush in LR is pretty good actually. I couldn't stand it at first - my laptop was underpowered and entering that mode just made everything hang. Another 1GB of RAM sorted it out. It took until about v2.3 before all the kinks had been sorted out but it's a joy to use now.

Wish I could find an example that didn't involve posting a private photo from a kids' party but I can't...

what does it do?

It's a dodge and burn tool - you paint an area and change any of clarity/sharpness/brightness/contrast/exposure or even colour.

A rough and ready example - without adjustment:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4001/4189045016_a2da7f5a5f_m.jpg

Face/hat/body with brightness/contrast/clarity adjustments:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4001/4274688037_2b1c513412_m.jpg

Whoops - wrong way round! The one at the top has the local adjustments.

duuuuude

ruinin my productivity over here

Here's a more extreme example, within the realm of vanity...

Without:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2683/4275452314_b6f8f5b689.jpg

With:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3662/3379937991_a3396ec6ff.jpg

There's less need in general for dodging and burning with digital than with film.

In large format, you could vary exposure and development to ensure the full range of potential tones make it into the negative/print. (aka The Zone System - but I think most people who use that are aspies)
Shooting large amounts of 35mm, you'd have exposures that were off, or hot points within a single frame, or whatever - and you had to work extra hard in the darkroom to get even a usable image, much less an artistic one. I had one image that was taken in the tunnel of a baseball stadium, and so the amount of light between the end of the tunnel (where the action was) and the tunnel itself was massive. I had to burn in one section for two minutes, IIRC.

With histograms and gradients and such, it's hard not to get a RAW image looking decent with a minimum of labor (at the expense of making all your images look flat if you go overboard or don't think about your choices, obv).

in case you missed it on the ILE photoshop thread:

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/03/caf_in_ps.html

demo video of the new 'content aware' feature in upcoming photoshop.. it looks kind of amazing

deleting the road and replacing with desert is sort of terrifying

it's going to get a lot harder to tell from some of the pixels

Wait until they can do this with human faces. Like, not just cloning in crowd scenes, but plausible imaginary people.

i thought you meant like, eradicating the features of people's faces. which is totally how i would spend twilight hours using this software.

That would be pretty cool too but I have this nightmarish idea that, for CS6, Adobe are building an online database of passport images of dead people that a PS user can access with a "fill human content" option.

Soon Photoshop will already know what everything looks like without you having to take a picture.

online database of passport images of dead people

you're just throwing away awesome sounding new technologies here

adobe photoshop cs6ixth sense

doesn't gimp already do content aware stuff?

Does anyone here use DxO Optics Pro? Downloaded a trial version last night (the FilmPack too, but I haven't tried that yet) and it's pretty extraordinary. Certainly shows up the non-flatness of my 28mm; kinda makes me want to stick with the 50mm for single-subject portraits for a while! If would probably slow me down to the point of never putting another image on Flickr, but it is tempting to build DxO into the workflow - particularly for wide-angle stuff which has obvious distortions.

Nick: did you take those 15mm fisheye shots in Raw by any chance? If so, could you send me one so I could have a play with it on DxO? (Although it's supposed to work on JPGs too, it doesn't seem to be able to correct lens anomalies unless you give it the Raw).

I use PTLens which is similar

The main thing that struck me about it was, seeing that DxO have gone to the trouble of building profiles for most DSLR/lens combinations out there - is it such a necessity for pros to have L-grade (or whatever Nikon's equivalent is) lenses? When you can take a pic with a mid-price prime and then eliminate all CA, sharpen all the way to corners, wipe out distortion, improve contrast, etc? With just a single click too.

yeah it is pretty amazing tech - I'm glad lens correction is built into the m43 standard so they can build smaller lenses overall

if they continue cramming pixels into these sensors though you'll probably still need high quality lenses just to match the resolving power of the sensors :/

more talk about processing please! returning to aperture after about half a year off and I've forgotten everything ;_;

for some reason shooting in raw means i no longer need to do the usual exposure and contrast/curve tweaks that i used to. not as much, anyway.

what's the refurb price? i believe epson also sells refurbs from their website.

dunno what the difference is but the price difference seems minimal! neither are 'new' - the v500 was released in 2003

how much film do you have to scan? I spent a year scanning negs for a paper, and the thought now makes me shudder; it's so laborious to get really good results. Next time I have a load of scanning I'll just get a lab to do it, I think.

i know nothing of film scanning but was looking into getting one and i guess some ppl find lab scans to be subpar?

Yeh, I think they are as well. There's a real trade off to be made, and it depends what you're doing. I mean, if you get your own scanner, and some compressed air, and hoover the place thoroughly, and get white gloves, and calibrate everything, and spend a fair amount of time post-processing everything, you can get some really stunning results from scanning film.

But that one shot takes hours, so if you're trying to get your entire neg archive into the computer, taking to the lab and quickly tweaking each scan is massively better than the alternative of putting them into a box and waiting until you retire so you can get around to it.

with a v700 it takes about 1 hour to do a roll of 38-39

What's the quality like? We used to have one that would do a 38 roll in about 20 minutes, but the results needed a lot of work

I've settled on scanning as a quick 'n' dirty way of getting negs digitized. I toyed around with the idea of getting a dedicated 35mm for getting a high quality version of negs that I really like. but I decided to set up a darkroom instead. if your main goal is to show on the web, I think scanning with default options and cooking your files a little afterwards in post is fine...

maybe if I had a decent printer...

the v700 is great for b&w - I wasn't so hot on it for color negs or slides, though. the konica-minolta dual iv dedicated I had, oh, about 6-7 years ago? was noticeably better for color. otoh, I never messed around with the settings for scanning color. people use vuescan with great results from the v700, or so I hear.

there is no question that scanning can be tedious. I do remember that one of the nikons had an attachment that would let you scan a whole strip of film, up to 36 frames, at once.

otoh a v700 is nice in that it does 24 at once - you set it, surf ILX, do other things, and replace the negs when done.

unfortunately the v700 I had always seemed to be on the verge of mechanical failure and a trip to the warranty shop did not fix things. I'd probably think twice about buying it again for fear of bearing shipping costs in the event of a warranty claim.

hmmm

all this is making me a little skeptical of getting a scanner/working in film

I use a V500 now which performs admirably in that it never returns a preview scan full of rubbish (which my v700 always did)

but yeah, there aren't many advances being made in the field of film scanning. most of the scanners we have now are from 5-10 years ago.

if the bottom on the film market really falls out, maybe I'll be able to pick up a norita or other lab scanner for cheap. ^_^

I mean, noritsu

gbx you can get a plus-tek which is a dedicated film scanner, offers really high quality scans from what I've seen. I think chinavision has one. downside is you can only scan one strip of 6 at a time before you have to change holders, I think. and it's slow.

you may also need to invest money in quality scanning software like vuescan, which is about $70. film is expensive! :[

i think i had a copy of vuescan that i deleted :(

Yeah I use a Plustek, which I like quite a bit, but it is indeed very slow. My trick is: I looove scanning negatives. it's like taking pictures, part 2. But also I a.) save so much money now and b.) don't have to worry about blown out highlights, oversharpening etc. from lab scans.
I do notice more color noise than I used to get from the lab. I don't know if that's because they pumped everything through extreme color noise reduction (in addition to the contrast boosting and insane sharpening) or if it's an actual technical downside to the scanner I'm using. I mean grain on color film is kind of "color noise" so it makes sense.

can you post an example of your color noise?

My portfolio has no coherence whatsoever.

― Michael Jones, Monday, September 12, 2011 10:20 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

outrageous lies!

The image:
http://www.altairnouveau.com/scaled.jpg

And the noise:
http://www.altairnouveau.com/fullsize.jpg

The noise sample is unprocessed. Usually I will do a little bit of chromatic noise reduction on each image when processing it (no "real" noise reduction though).

been a while since I went chroma-hunting but that doesn't look too bad at all

Guess that's what I was figuring. Like I say it's hard to compare to lab scans since they do so much EXTREME processing to begin with.

That looks like chroma noise on the scanner sensor - Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw could take care of that pretty easily without degrading the image.

so ......................
a V500 is what i should get in terms of negative scanning, right?

for convenience, yeah, but if you don't scan that often maybe getting a 35mm dedicated would be better?

oh yeah for a dirt cheap one that produces decent results, a v500 is pretty good

i'm gonna be scanning like ... all the time, i think. i've been developing a lot over the last while & just checked my bank balance, & ... :/
i found one for a price i'm okay with, anyhow, so will probably go for it. i just want like ... pretty okay scans, for the most part. colour is the thing i'm fussy about, grain or detail barely really registering. ty for the guidance.

am belatedly looking forward to learning this stuff. it feels like a tangent from the whole consideration of what photos even are, what they look like, trying to work out what you're striving for with a digital image.

I have a V500 and it does the job just fine, usually less saturated than the basic lab scans but also less murky and with more detail. One or two shots in particular where I'd totally passed over the lab scan, but the V500 actually brought out an image. On the flip side, there's maybe a handful (at most) of images where I've not been able to recreate the colours of the lab scan.

I rarely use 120 film so I'm tempted to move on to a dedicated 35mm scanner, but it's probably unnecessary for now.

curled negatives

oh god

lol how long have they been curled for

I do the reverse curl and keep em in a canister for a day or two

i got a few sets of prints & a few sets of negatives back from the lab today, & they all came in the same envelope; those that were on the outside are curled, my god it is terrible; i've been trying to scan them by slamming the scanner lid down like a malcontent pianist. i'm trying to just get some reference scans so i can pick a few things to get printed, so i'm not even starting to worry about colours (bluish) or tones on the b/w stuff (blown out). this is basically my terrifying entrance to the world of negative scanning, the idea i am now the guy responsible for all of this process-ing is p harrowing.

reverse curl tip much appreciated btw

the more gentle way is to sleeve them and put them in between two giant pieces of lead granite

yeah. they're sleeved (the complicated folding of which feels like part of the cause/effect thing) & i'll find something to put them in between (currently, for the transport home: in the new & conveniently scaled charles burns book). it really feels like a whole other thing to be dealing with the delicacy of negatives, anyway. like i want to buy gloves; i feel so klutzy when i have the instinct to paw away dust. are you guys all like antiquers, with glasses perched on the edge of your nose & airbrushes within reach on your solid pine desks & mickey mouse gloves worn as soon as one enters the controlled environs in which photo handling takes place?

I don't wear gloves I handle them by the sprocket holes

You also have to be sure your monitor is adjusted properly. The differences you state, sound like light-temperature variances from location to location.

Once you learn the temperature of natural light (or even flash pics which most flashes correct for temperature variances), then it'll be easier for you to correct them.

If you have no idea what I mean by "temperature of light", then I can't help you any further.

cool new photo rabbit-holes to go down

looking at filmstrips is really awesome btw

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-vTpsx3Bpv8k/UMmT5pY0pOI/AAAAAAAAAMc/fBRfklMt8gk/s912/2.jpg

Sandy destroyed my favorite photo developer (at least I doubt he'll be coming back) so I tried a new $3/roll place and they just *wrecked* my negatives. they came back unsleeved in a cardboard box and the chemicals must have been waaay off because the negs are super faint.
good thing I'm on a scanning hiatus atm

also reverse curl is all you need. the day I get negatives back they can be hard to scan, but within a couple days they generally lie pretty flat.

it sucks trying to find a quality developer in my ridiculous price range!

there's a place near me in Chinatown off of Bowery that does develop only for 3.75, haven't tried them yet tho

http://www.yelp.com/biz/yardley-photo-studio-new-york#query:photo

this is the place? what's kinda funny is that when I was going through my parents negs from the 80s I'm pretty sure they got some of them developed at the exact same place

they also do 120 and 220 for relatively cheap too

nb: don't know how the quality is

hmm, might have to give it a shot. I saw a place on Mulberry, next to Columbus park that I might have to try also.
it's tough though, you really have no idea how well a place will do until you get the results back.
my disappointing rolls came from the place at Lafayette and Walker fyi

i totally have enough ~concerns~ & #feelings about negative scanning to start a Help Schlump Scan thread, but i just wanted to ask a really general question to help me figure out the initial fumbling i'm doing. i've been scanning a little with my v500, am working through a couple of rolls of superia, & it's really interesting, just seeing how ""naturally"" dark & light some images are, & how malleable they & their colours are from the point they're on screen. something i think i only just realised is that part of what's significant about colours in a photograph isn't necessarily just tones, but the relationship of tones - & so adjusting all of them at the same time can preserve some of the relationships & i guess moods of the palette, or i guess isolating or adjusting one band of colour could change the dynamic.

anyway: to anyone who scans, what do you do wrt the 'passes' function, or the option to multiply expose? it seemed so smart to me, the idea that repeat scans & a combined image would limit the effect of deficiencies of the scan, but in reality i've kinda just ended up with some blurry or grainy images. it's weird. scanning is going okay but i'm still wrestling with it, & trying out different settings to limit weirdly upfront grain:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-4wylsfa_wFs/UN1TqsjN2EI/AAAAAAAAAbs/69jdrlij3xA/s700/1538.jpg

I don't bother with multiple passes, because it adds soooo much time, and provides only a marginal improvement when I can even notice one.

ha, thank you. i had got into a rhhythm of starting scanning & then going to do the washing up or something, now scanning quickly is winning out. i'm trying the multiple exposure thing at the moment (it's one ... bright scan & one dim scan, or something), it's going okay. the noise is eventually soothing.

advice on scanning polaroids? they look deep and interestingly colored to my eyes but the scans look washed out and boring unless saturation is cranked up and then they look okay but not as appealing as the original.

looking forward to your replies,
dylan

dylannn - forgive me if this seems obvious but it sounds like the issue might be flatness more than desaturation? maybe bump contrast just a bit and/or futz with darkening the darks and lightening the lights specifically? i've been shifting to using lightroom for futzing with scanned prints (family photos) as much as for working with RAW files and the same toolkit translates very well ime. little s-curve, little vibrance, gets closer maybe. but i honestly haven't fucked with polaroid much at all and am eager to rescan the very few i do have on flickr that were done terribly ten years ago.