Yearly Archives: 2008

Large prints on canvas

Printing

Up to 86″ a side!

I came across this site while looking for a large print service.

They certainly use the right printers and fade free inks as this excerpt from their FAQ states:

“What kind of equipment are you using to print on canvas?

Photogonia uses state of the art printers like HP DESIGNJET 5500 series and EPSON STYLUS PRO 9800. These large format printers deliver high quality print jobs that fit the high standards that Photogonia sets for our products.

What kind of Ink are you using?

PhotoGonia uses ONLY original factory Inks like HP 83 UV Ink Cartridges for our HP printers and 8-color Epson Ultra Chrome K3â„¢ Ink For our Epson printers. PhotoGonia doesn’t use refills, third party Ink or generic Ink. ”

A 40″ x 30″ ‘gallery wrap’ canvas (the printed edges are stretched over the frame) is $322.50, shipped. Not cheap, but the alternative of buying an ultra-wide carriage printer for one or two prints a year is hardly a viable choice. For that matter, unless you regularly make large prints, this sort of service makes sense for any photographer limited by the 13″ carriage width common on home ink jet printers.

Real Chicago

Book reviews

Book review.

One of the reasons I so like Chicago is that I have never had to visit it in the winter. Add the fact that is is the quintessential American city, has mid-west standards and values, not to mention America’s finest architecture, and you have a place well worth visiting. No one who has lived there could remotely think of New York, by contrast, as anything but a European city.

The title of this book says it all. Divided into decade chapters from the forties to the nineties, it comes as no surprise that the best work here is in the first two chapters. When you realize that five frames per second is discounted as slow in the world of modern DSLRs, think about the working stiff with his Crown Graphic and a couple of film holders. He generally had but one chance to capture the decisive moment, and you see lots of that in this book. Something about these old pictures speaks differently, too. Maybe its their dignity, grace and composition. They move you in the way modern photojournalism seldom does.

My remaindered copy cost all of $15 and I recommend you add this book to your photo library.

And if you think I have glossed over the decades of machine politics and corruption in America’s second city well, I learned everything I ever needed about Chicago’s law enforcement from the succinct words of the humorist P. G. Wodehouse. “At least when you buy a Chicago cop, they stay bought”. Honor and integrity. Got to love that in your local police force.

You can see my library of photography books by clicking here.

For a fabulous evocation of what the city must have been like in the early post war years, click here.

Ring flash

Technique

An awful lot to like.

The ring flash I have been using on the 5D with the 100mm Canon macro lens is proving to be a real joy. It’s pretty much set and forget. All I do is adjust ISO to procure an f/11 aperture with the camera on shutter priority and 1/200th (the fastest sync speed) and the circuitry in the flash takes care of balancing natural and artificial light. In use I simply leave the flash switched on all day – battery drain is only significant when recharging as opposed to maintaing a charged state. My current set of four alkaline AA batteries has lasted for some 16 hours and two hundred or so snaps, and shows no sign of dying.

F/11? That, I find, gives the best balance of definition and depth of field. Smaller apertures introduce diffraction and definition begins to fall – that’s physics, not Canon. Wider apertures at close distances result in very shallow depth of field – appropriate for plane, perpendicular surfaces only. ISO seems to end up in the range 100 to 400, which is the sweet spot for the 5D’s sensor. Nice!

Reflections of the tube in the ring flash can be an issue – though the sort seen here just enhances the sense of curves.

Occasionally, with reflective subjects, you get a nasty image of the flash tube reflected in the subject, like so:


Note reflections from the sun and the ring flash

I do not know whether the enhanced localised processing controls in Lightroom 2.0 could fix this – I”m still on 1.4.x and await 2.1, presumably suitably debugged. In the meanwhile, it’s back to that old dog Photoshop (Lightroom has a direct export and save function) and a few seconds with the Magic Eraser:


After using the Magic Eraser in PS CS2

That’s more like it. French Racing Blue never looked better. The wide brimmed individual on the left is none other than famed racing driver and backdrop man, Franklin Rudolph.

The King

Photographs

No, not Elvis.


Sensuous curves on the car driven by the greatest ever.
2002 F1 Ferrari. 5D, 100mm Macro, Ring Flash.

No sport enjoys such a rapid pace of technological change as motor racing so comparisons of drivers between generations is a pleasant diversion if not one based in objective measurements.

But few, I think, would disagree that Michael Schumacher was the greatest ever – sportsman, gamesman, competitor, professional.

One color works here – what else for a Ferrari?

Machismo

Photographs

It doesn’t get more macho than this.


Suspension detail on a pre-war Alfa Romeo racer. 5D, 100mm macro, ring flash, 1/200, f/11, ISO250.

My normal habit of underexposing by half a stop does wonders in preserving the dynamic range in the printed version. This has an almost Fritz Lang-like mechanistic intensity which greatly appeals to some part of my nature. The curves of the bodywork are easy on the eyes, too.

I find that f/11 gives you workable depth of field and the best definition. Smaller apertures do not show the Canon 100mm macro at its best. I simply change the ISO until f/11 is indicated.