[chris_make]

November 28, 2007 at 5:36 pm

im really reluctant to sell the camera, its so beautifully made and has all the movements etc you could ever need. it just isnt right for me as ill be doing mostly outdoor landscape and environmental portraiture.

The 8 x 10 is for a specific project that needs contact printing onto vellum (dont ask) but for 4×5 i need something that i can travel with, like a master technika or an ebony SV45U. if money were no object . . .

[chris_make]

November 27, 2007 at 8:22 pm

NP. no i cant afford to buy it until i sell the Technikardan, if you know of any other forums etc i could list it on that would be really useful.

[chris_make]

October 10, 2007 at 9:20 am

we have two new imacs in work and they are pretty good, we can edit a few streams of uncompressed SD (about 27Mb/s) in realtime, ive not used them for photoshop work but if they can handle uncompressed video then i think they should be ok, the really important thing is getting shedloads of RAM installed, 4GB will give you a massive performance boost over the standard 1GB, and you dont have to buy it from apple you can get it from memory websites for much cheaper and its all industry approved stuff (kingston etc), and they save you on a monitor however if you are serious about colour calibration or if you are doing colour critical work for press or whatever then forget it you will need a mac pro and a good calibrated monitor, Lacie or Benq or something like that, the apple monitors are too contrasty.

[chris_make]

October 5, 2007 at 4:08 pm

i work in the post-production industry and i work on both macs and pc’s. i cannot recommend the mac enough.
pc’s are a pain in the arse, macs just work, i know its a cliche but its true. i still have a g4 i bought 7 years ago and it still boots up faster than your standard home use pc and it can handle web browsing in multiple windows, downloading bittorrents listening to music and editing photos in hotoshop all at the same time, and its never had a virus (they dont really exist on macs).
the software that is bundled with the mac is much better than what you get with windows, ilife is a pretty comprehensive mac version of office, but most people still prefer office if only because of familiarity.
as for hardware while the mac’s specs are generally lower than pc they are usually built with better components and gain performance in other areas (higher front side bus, more reliable and longer-lasting components generally)
i would recommend a minimum of 2gb of RAM on any machine if you are working in photoshop with RAW images but 1GB is probably sufficient for smaller files(-100MB)
thats my opinion anyway :)

[chris_make]

October 5, 2007 at 10:28 am

jessops are a nightmare, i had slides printed in there before and they printed them back to front, out of focus and about a stop and a half too dark. i would avoid them completely. you could try elser crawford on the lisburn road 9032 6999, he does laser printing but it will be expensive

[chris_make]

October 5, 2007 at 10:19 am

have a look at this link
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V750/page_1.htm

its a fairly indepth review and compares the epson to the nikon and some other dedicated film scanners.
the labs will be using a drum scanner which will give you much sharper, cleaner and higher resolution images (although 70mb is less than 4800dpi for a 35mm slide).
i seen a flexlight (hasselblads drum scanner) going on ebay for ?1500, they retail at ?15,000 new.
with everyone moving to digital, now is a great time to get into film as everything is going cheap :)

[chris_make]

July 17, 2007 at 3:42 pm

There is a nikon f1.2 MF AIS discontinued now, probably over ?350 second hand, i have the 1.4 MF and i love it, amazing sharpness, beautiful DOF, zoom’s just arent the same for portraits :)

[chris_make]

July 12, 2007 at 8:05 pm

if you can get one an f100 would be my choice (i use a really old beat up f601 which still works fine for me) its basically an f5 without the weight and a few of the more esoteric features, id recommend a few prime lenses, i have a 50mm f1.4 MF and its never off my camera, perfect for portraits and you can get them for pretty cheap if you look around :lol:

[chris_make]

July 12, 2007 at 7:56 pm

wet printing will give you better quality results but if you get the right scanner then you can get excellent results as well.
there are so many variables for both as well, like the quality of your enlarger lens or the max dpi of ur scanner, id say if you want to exhibit then go the traditional route but for digital archive then i would prefer scanning negs (you can make scans with more pixel info than hallides on the negative with a ?350 scanner these days). i use the epson v700 and its fabulous for colour neg, B&W and reversal, i tend to do as much level/curve tweaking as i can before i make the scan as once you pick a certain balance then its unreversable in photoshop, but you can just re-scan i suppose :)

[chris_make]

July 12, 2007 at 3:50 pm

i own an epson v700 and it can produce images of almost as good quality as a nikon coolscan 9000, check out this for a review

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V700/page_1.htm

and its a fraction of the cost