DIMW - Digital ImageMaker World

I’m excited. Over the last two days my Canon 350D that has been converted to infrared photography has arrived (see the first pictures with the converted infrared 350D here) and, today, my new HP Z3100 12-color 24″ wide printer has arrived. I have written elsewhere about my impressions of the Z-series printers from spending time with the development engineers in Barcelona (where HP develop their large format printers) but I have been looking forward to having my own here to test with my own images and to see what they are like to live with in day to day use.

I’ll be unpacking it tonight and getting into the testing of it probably over the weekend.

From Friday morning to Monday afternoon I was effectively off the Internet because of some stupid thing somebody at my ISP did (or rather their upstream connection out of Australia). It took some 10 hours on the phone over multiple calls and innumerable emails to solve the issue. The process illustrated some important things.

In my desperation to solve the problem I turned, as many would, to the wider community. In Australia there is this amazing web site called www.whirlpool.net.au. Whirlpool is a central site for finding out about broadband connections and has an active set of forums, including individual ones for the main ISPs. So I posted my problem there. They suggested using traceroute to see exactly what was happening to my attempts to access overseas web sites (only they were affected). These showed that international requests were getting lost somewhere in the ISPs system whereas local ones were not. I sent these to my ISP in emails and it was really these that started to get them thinking there was a real issue that was not to do with my computer. I also found a dialup Internet company that sold a block of hours (20) for a set price ($27). I signed up and thus could prove that with a different Internet connection I could access these same sites from the same computer that I could not using the broadband connection. This proved it was not something in my computer. I had also earlier used an Internet cafe to verify that the sites I was using as examples were up and working. Anyother key was finding out through the Whirlpool forums that for one of the sites I could not get to, others using the same ISP could not get to either. In other words I had to be a very active participant in diagnosing the fault and needed to do what I could to methodically eliminate possibilities.

So I guess the lesson from this is that you can’t be an uninformed user and expect your suppliers to do it all. They can, but it might take much longer than you would want it to be.

Last night I went to one of my standard camera test locations, a bridge that gives me an uninterrupted view of our central business district testing the Panasonic FZ50.

(more…)

It is close to spring downunder and thanks to global warming we have had little rain (really for this time of year). Despite this worrying state, the flowers are out and look great. I’ve been out and about as much as I could with a camera.

Here are a couple of the shots I took with my Canon 350D/Rebel XT on the weekend when I was out doing some more testing of the 5D. Overcast weather gave exposures on the 350D, with a Hoya R72 filter, of 8 seconds at f5.6 and 400ISO

(more…)

A Series of Articles About the Development of a Photography Business
- continued

It seems certain that any lexicon covering new terminologies introduced within the era of the personal computer would include the word ‘photoshopped’. And I’d estimate that a large proportion of the general public would feel comfortable using it, in order to categorize a photographic image which has been extensively and digitally edited using a PC. It’s often, for example, taken to describe either the inclusion or deletion of an extra figure or subject within a group portrait. While Adobe Systems’ Photoshop® software can indeed be used alone for such image reconstructions, there are nowadays other, alternative digital toolkits which can be applied equally well to such a task.

(more…)

A Series of Articles About the Development of a Photography Business
- continued

It’s pretty self-evident I guess that to be a new entrant in the business of selling photographic prints online, then a reliable and high quality printer is a fully primary requirement. I’ve long been a fan of the Epson Stylus Photo line of digital inkjet products - not just the printers themselves, but also of the media available directly from Epson as well as selected products from third-party suppliers.

(more…)

I got first light today with a Canon 5D camera and a Hoya R72 filter. One of the first shots is below. Forget about autoexposure in IR with the 5D. You need manual exposure.

Well, there have been a few interesting things lately.

Firstly, Pentax have announced a new 6MP camera with anti-shake technology (see the article on DIMi). This says two things. Firstly, that Pentax see 6MP as a suitable entry level camera resolution and, secondly, that they are pushing development of their cameras, which should mean they are going to stick around. Of course Konica-Minolta suffered the curse of the in-camera anti-shake technology and exited the industry, so let’s hope that doesn’t happen to Pentax. I think not, because they seem to have a more realistic idea of what to charge for their cameras.

Is 6MP a suitable size for an entry-level dSLR? Probably. When I compare the 8MP Canon 350D/Rebel XT with it’s older 6MP brethren you see a small increase in noise, or at least I do. The diffence in resolution is nice, but given most amateurs consider an 11×14 inch print large, I don’t think it makes a lot of difference. So perhaps 6MP is a great place to start. The pixel cells are larger, so the noise can be less and the sensitivity a bit higher. If you keep the sensors at 6MP the price can also come down, which is great.

So this is all probably good stuff.

The other interesting thing is that Canon are suspending (and probably permanently) development of new film cameras (see the Reuter’s article). This is a predicable development. Film is not going to go away any time soon (there are too many film cameras out there) but with all the interest and the bulk of sales now in digital you have to ask why invest more money in developing new cameras for a shrinking market.

I was out today testing a whole new lot of cameras. This is a shot taken with the Panasonic FZ30 and a Hoya R72 filter.