Digital photography, changing the world

writes:

and because the customer gets it, isn't recycled.

But it isn't discarded, either, so recycling isn't necessary. The paper
used in books at the library isn't being recycled, either.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

Mxsmanic wrote in message . ..
PTRAVEL writes:

If you want high-quality prints, the answer today is the same as it always
was: go to a professional lab, or do it yourself.

True if the highest quality is necessary. But today's cheapo prints
from neighborhood photo shops are dramatically superior to what was
available even a few years ago, mainly due to the advent of digital
printing systems like the Fuji Frontier. The Frontier and its software
can extract usable, attractive images from anything. I've even tested
this by deliberately almost ruining a roll of film (bad exposures), and
then asking a lab to print the roll with automatic adjustment. Every
photo came out acceptable. In the olden days of analog minilabs, most
of the prints would have been useless.

I think, though, it probably comes down to why people are taking
pictures in the first place. People who want casual keepsakes go to
minilabs. I'll take your word for it that the Fuji Frontier is a
dramatic step up -- I don't know that I've ever seen any prints from
one. I do know that the "snapshots" I've seen taken by my friends
vary (from a technical quality perspective) from ugh to okay, but just
okay. Okay is okay for keepsakes. I also want keepsakes, but I
aspire to higher quality -- mine go on a wall or in a frame. Though I
may shoot 1000s of pictures, I'll frame only 3 or 4 and have long ago
given up making albums out of the others. My friends who see my
photos almost always comment on the vivid color, the composition that
results from careful cropping, the atmosphere (which results from
careful manipulation of the levels), etc.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with minilab printing, either
digital or chemical. I was responding only to the assertion that
there's no reason to print digital pictures at home.

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

erilar writes:

You mean most people who have computers don't HAVE printers?

Yes. This is especially true if you're talking about printers suitable
for printing photos.

And if you have a decent printer you already have made that
investment.

A photo printer is a separate and expensive investment, and it still
won't match what you can get from a lab.

My printer prints good quality prints; It's just slower that way.

Buying photo paper for it is far cheaper than paying someone
to make prints for you any day.

No, it's not.

I've been there, and I've done all this. A lab is cheaper and faster
and gives better results than a home printer, even a good home printer.

And as for different sizes of paper: use scissors if you
can't afford a paper cutter. Talk about inept!!!

With the current price of photo paper, every snip costs you a fortune.

? I print an 8X10 sheet full and THEN cut them apart after i print them.

We're working at cross purposes here, I think. I don't hang big prints
on my wall. I put fairly small ones into an album. At this size I find
no significant difference between the ones in this album and the ones in
earlier albums where I had to physically cut and paste the more
expensive commercial prints on pages for the album.

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument
is that reason doesn't count. Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo

In article 1gnlkhn.1b2peiw6k3z7kN%this_address_is_for_spam@y ahoo.com,
(chancellor of the duchy of besses
o' th' barn) wrote:

erilar wrote:

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn writes:

I've tried tweaking different settings, touching up the images-
just
doesn't look very good in comparison to the original print.

Successful scanning and printing of film images requires quite a bit
of
practice.

I guess I've jsut been playing with graphics on my Mac for too long to
see a problem here.

I've been playing with graphics (and scanning) on my Mac for quite a
while too. No doubt, if I played a little bit more, I'd get better
results than I currently do, but I don't have that time. It still makes
me think that for the average user, it's just not worth it, and you'll
getter results by far by ordering prints instead. However, marketing
does give the average consumer the impression that they can all do it at
home, with professional results.


Well, different people have different kinds of play. Instead of
complicated computer games, I play with graphics. 8-)

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument
is that reason doesn't count. Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

erilar writes:

I guess I've jsut been playing with graphics on my Mac for too long to
see a problem here.

How much scanning and printing do you do?

None for a living. Rather a lot after each foreign trip. It goes in fits
and starts. But I've been doing it for several years. I used to do my
printing in a darkroom, and rather too much of it, as that WAS
associated with making a living. Feeding the images straight into the
computer, composing pages full of them, and printing them is pure play.

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument
is that reason doesn't count. Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

erilar writes:

Well, that is if the newbies don't know much about computers and
printers either... I've had a digital camera for a few months now, I
get great prints, and I can fit them together to make a neat page for
my
foto album as well rather than physically cutting and pasting. Of
course, I know how to use both computer and printer and I buy the
right
paper.

When you scan film, you discover just how far digital still has to go.


I've never scanned film, just fed it into an enlarger, exposed the
paper, ran same through developer, stop bath, and fixer, washed it,
dried it, trimmed it, pasted it on to pages for a yearbook.....

And I shot the film with a real camera in the first place. I've been
resisting digital cameras for some time because they couldn't do some
things real cameras can. The one I finally bought still can't take a
fast picture, but the "instant gratification" factor is nice,
particularly since I can check and retake the picture if necessary.


Note: "real camera" for many years = NON-automatic anything beyond a
built-in light meter I could ignore if I pleased. Before that I didn't
even have a built-in light meter.

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument
is that reason doesn't count. Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo

writes:

The resolution need for printing purposes 25 years ago was
comparatively low.

It was the same as it is today. For 150-line screens, you need about
300 dpi, which for a full A4 page from a 35-mm slide uncropped means
about 2400 dpi for the film scan.

Computerised printing is a very different thing from high resolution
scanning of negatives.

Computerized printing requires high-resolution scanning of negatives,
and indeed that was the original impetus for film scanning.

They have? Where were they? I don't recall VDUs being in common use 40
years ago.

I didn't say "in common use," but they certainly existed. CDC's Plato
system was famous for them.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

writes:

because you over snip, your statement that silver is recycled
disappeared some time ago. The fact is some that some silver is
recycled and some is lost. Silver is a finite resource paper isn't.

So is silicon, boron, gallium, arsenic, and a long list of other
elements necessary to fabricate chips and electronic gadgets.

Silver is 100 times more plentiful than gold, and gold is required in
every chip made.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

erilar writes:

I've never scanned film ...

Two posts earlier you said you did.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

Jeremy Henderson wrote:

On 2004-11-20 06:20:47 +0100, Mxsmanic said:

poldy writes:

Like millions of other Americans, Julie Berry got a digital camera
this year. What the 35-year-old stay-at-home mom does with the
pictures is the subject of the next big battle over the future of
photography.

After snapping shots of her 2-year-old daughter, Ginger, Ms. Berry
printed them out in her study -- and was disappointed. "The photos
just didn't have great color or great resolution," she says. "I just
thought: 'Oh well, I guess we have to buy a better printer.' "

A few weeks later, Ms. Berry had more luck at the digital printing
kiosk at the CVS Corp. pharmacy near her home in Mansfield, Mass. On
her first try, Ms. Berry produced 30 digital prints for 29 cents a
pop in less than half an hour. Now, she's a convert. "It's easy and
it's very reasonably priced," she says, "especially considering I
don't want to spend time and money and run out to buy a new printer."


Newbies in digital photography rapidly discover that the only way to get
nice prints is to take the digital photos to a lab. So-called digital
cameras only simplify the taking of pictures; they do not provide better
pictures, and they certainly do not make it possible to replace photo
labs for getting quality prints.


Whoa! Mixi in "Talking sense" Shock Horror!

In fact I am mystied by the idea of printing your photos at home - you
have to buy a printer, mess with inks, buy special paper in a variety of
sizes, experiment with setting up the parameters, and wait for the thing
to print out. Then you have a print that will probably fade rapidly in
sunlight.

The alternative is to upload your photos to a photo service and next day
pick up your gleaming prints from their store (I recommend Photo Service
in Frogland - which I tried out at Mixi's suggestion). Infinitely better
idea.

J;

I'm mystified by printing them at all. I have thousands of digital
photos but I've probably only printed about a dozen. For me the best
part of digital photography is you don't need photo albums and boxes to
store lots of things yo never look at. I look through my digital photos
frequently. I haven't opened an album of printed photos in years.