Digital photography, changing the world

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.

On 2004-11-21 20:05:53 +0100, Ellie C said:

Jeremy Henderson wrote:

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.

I know what you mean, but I still like the paper thing - not to put in
shoe boxes, but to put on the wall. Also, I just made a couple of
albums for presents for elderly parents. The quality of the printing is
actually pretty poor (thanks, Apple) but the albums are nice, and I
think (hope) they will be appreciated.

J;
--
Encrypted e-mail address. Click to mail me:
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Ellie C writes:

I'm mystified by printing them at all.

I print them for clients who want prints, and for a portfolio to carry
around, and that's about it. I've only printed about two dozen out of
10,000 or so photos.

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

In article , Jeremy Henderson
wrote:

On 2004-11-21 20:05:53 +0100, Ellie C said:

Jeremy Henderson wrote:

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.

I know what you mean, but I still like the paper thing - not to put in
shoe boxes, but to put on the wall. Also, I just made a couple of
albums for presents for elderly parents. The quality of the printing is
actually pretty poor (thanks, Apple) but the albums are nice,

Could you elaborate a bit, I'm considering similar.

How was the text quality
Should I really 'lighten' up photos
Cropping
Is 'Preview' accurate (layout)

Anything else ?

TIA

jay
Sun Nov 21, 2004




and I
think (hope) they will be appreciated.

J;

erilar wrote:
You mean most people who have computers don't HAVE printers? And if you
have a decent printer you already have made that investment. Buying
photo paper for it is far cheaper than paying someone to make prints for
you any day. And as for different sizes of paper: use scissors if you
can't afford a paper cutter. Talk about inept!!!

I've had computers since 1985, and often worked in the computer business,
and I've never owned a printer.

I can take my photos down the street to have them professionally printed for
about 15 cents each. I cannot imagine doing it cheaper at home.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 32 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
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.

Digital Photography is digital capture from the integrated circuit that
makes up the lens capture system Is not analog. There may be some ADC in
the capture for intensity, but it still comes down to digital. As to flat
panel displays, there were rear projection screens, not a flat panel as we
now consider them. Flat panel now is considered direct write to the screen,
either LCD or electron tube, with circuitry to compensate for the non curved
screen. The reason that very high resolution digital cameras were / are not
used for hand held recreational photography is the time and power to write
the flash memory card. The CCD lens system has for years allowed greater
pixel count, but if it takes 45 seconds to write the picture to the flash
card, then you either have to have a lot of RAM buffer in the camera or
reduce the time to write flash. Reduce time to flash write, is usually
accomplished by reducing pixel count. LEXAR media writes parallel streams
of data to the flash at one time, so that reduces write time. Commercially,
like baby picture studios, or people doing product display pictures, write
directly to disk storage. Allows huge files, and little time. They are not
taking a fast sequence of pictures, so time is not so critical and the PC
will buffer the picture. You end up with greater than 50 Mbytes files. As
to DLP for movies, you better go to one of the theaters than use DLP. Great
display. Reason all movie theaters do not use DLP is the question of who is
going to pay for the equipment. At about $100,000 per screen, big cost.
Adds no profit to the theater, but benefits the movie distributor in
distribution costs. Difference between a $6000 film cassette or a $2 DVD.
Or even electronic download to the theater. You can print high quality
prints at home, but not for 20 cents a print. Need diffusion printers, etc.
Retired engineer that did the systems.

There is simply no comparison between the picture on a TV screen and
from a projected slide, particularly from a lantern slide.
--
wf.

"Frank F. Matthews" wrote:

As long as you have a large screen TV you can just run your slide show
from the DVD using a CD disk with JPEG images.

On 2004-11-21 21:47:34 +0100, Go Fig said:

In article , Jeremy Henderson
wrote:
I know what you mean, but I still like the paper thing - not to put in
shoe boxes, but to put on the wall. Also, I just made a couple of
albums for presents for elderly parents. The quality of the printing is
actually pretty poor (thanks, Apple) but the albums are nice,

Could you elaborate a bit, I'm considering similar.
How was the text quality Should I really 'lighten' up photos
Cropping Is 'Preview' accurate (layout)

Anything else ?

TIA

I think what happens with the books is that instead of printing your
files directly, a PDF is made in your computer at lower resolution,
which is then uploaded to Apple. What I found was that the resulting
photos are not as high quality as if I'd had ordinary prints made. The
"darkness" and cropping were not an issue that I noticed, and the
preview was pretty accurate. The albums are nice - the print quality is
good - except that the images look a bit fuzzy - or maybe I'm being too
particular ...

I since discovered that ofoto do a similar product, but you upload the
image files - not as many options maybe - but if the image quality is
better I'd go with them. They are cheaper than Apple as well. Next time
I will try them.

HTH

J;

--
Encrypted e-mail address. Click to mail me:
http://cerbermail.com/?nKYh3qN4YG

Calif Bill writes:

Digital Photography is digital capture from the integrated circuit that
makes up the lens capture system Is not analog.

Digital photography is analog capture. ALL photography is analog
capture.

This is inevitable because all interfaces with the physical world are
analog interfaces. Film captures images by undergoing a chemical change
when light hits light-sensitive molecules in the emulsion. Electronic
sensors capture images by accumulating an electrical charge when
impinging light frees charge carriers in a photosite. In both cases,
the result is analog. There's nothing digital about it.

Digital is a concept, not a physical reality. Even "digital" storage
systems are in fact analog systems operated according to certain rules
that make them seem digital.

There may be some ADC in the capture for intensity, but it still
comes down to digital.

No, it comes down to analog, and any photographer who doesn't understand
this is destined for misunderstanding and disappointment.

There's a reason why NASA has traditionally called them "electronic
still cameras": the reason is that they are not digital.

As to flat panel displays, there were rear projection screens, not
a flat panel as we now consider them.

No, they were actual flat panels. In fact, they were plasma displays,
like today's flat-panel big-screen television sets. The first plasma
flat-panel displays were created around 1964.

The reason that very high resolution digital cameras were / are not
used for hand held recreational photography is the time and power to write
the flash memory card.

The reason is that the reject rate for extremely high resolution,
large-surface CCDs is too high. The CCD must be large to reduce noise,
but a large, 30-megapixel CCD is simply not economical to produce today.
The massive CCDs used in telescopes may cause several million dollars
_each_ to produce.

As to DLP for movies, you better go to one of the theaters than use DLP.

Done. They have a long way to go.

Reason all movie theaters do not use DLP is the question of who is
going to pay for the equipment.

A lot of directors don't like digital displays, with good reason. It's
best not to look at them too closely, or you'll see why.

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

But then again, back when I used to do serious dark room work it was all
contact printing from B/W negatives, no need for any processing like
that.
--
wf.

Mxsmanic wrote:

Frank F. Matthews writes:

Then again with digital you can do the processing at home and use the
lab to put the image on paper. All of the processing you describe can
be done before you sent the resulting images off for printing.

Exactly.

And if you know the parameters of the lab's printing system, and you
tell them to print the file exactly as-is, you can get prints that are
as identical to the image on your screen as technology will allow. It's
very impressive. No more unpleasant surprises when printing.