Category Archives: Photography

Epson ET-8550 – troubleshooting

Epson ET8550

A period of no use sees issues.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

Having upgraded (meaning Adobe forced me to upgrade using a strategy of planned Mac hardware obsolescence) to the subscription version of Lightroom, I went to print a favorite image the other day and everything was wrong. The 13″ x 19″ print shot out in seconds and what little color there was in the printed image was completely wrong.

The problems were twofold.

First, Adobe managed to lose all my preferred printer settings on the upgrade to the latest version of Lightroom. In the print module LR switched to Print Job->Color Management->Managed by Printer. This is exactly wrong. What you want is for Lightroom to manage color, not the Epson printer. This permits use of the right paper profile for the printing paper used. It means you control – through Lightroom – color matching rather than having some unknown profile used by the Epson printer. Here’s what you want to see:



The color profile is the one for Canson Photogloss Premium RC paper.

You can check that LR is using this profile in the Print module by going to Printer->Printer Options->Color Matching, where you will see two options, neither selectable (both are greyed out) with ColorSync being the selected option, thus:



ColorSync is invoked by Lightroom.

Click ‘OK’ NOT ‘Cancel’ to make sure this setting remains undisturbed. Next, click on Print Settings and you should see:



Print Settings after dialing in the correct Paper Source, Media Type
and Print Quality. All three were incorrect.

Now in that same dialog box click on Advanced Color Settings. You should see:



Confirmation that the printer is NOT controlling color.

So now I had LR set up for the right paper, paper source and paper specific profile, but the print quality was still awful.

Going to the touch control panel of the Epson ET-8550 go to Maintenance->Print Head Nozzle check, load some 8.5″ x 11″ plain paper in the second tray, and run the check. Mine came out showing bad clogging of both the Magenta and Grey print heads, disclosed by jagged lines in the print out. After running the Maintenance->Print Head Cleaning process twice, again using the touch screen on the printer, I finally got continuous lines for all six heads, thus:



Six clean ink nozzles, designated by continuous lines in the print.

Finally I checked Settings->Printer Settings->Bidirectional and, sure enough, either dastardly Adobe or dastardly Epson had switched this setting to ‘Bidirectional->On’, which is sub-optimal for best print quality, if faster. I switched Bidirectional ‘Off’ and had at it with LR. A couple of minutes later a pristine 13″ x 19″ print was lying on my desk:



Perfect printing once more. Leica M10, 135mm f/4 Elmar at f/8 – as good as lenses get.

So a conspiracy of errors – Adobe’s poor ‘upgrade’ engineering and the printer’s recent lack of use resulting in clogged ink nozzles – is the sort of thing to expect in that most fragile of hardware devices, the ink jet printer. In conclusion, if your printer has not been used for a few months, run a nozzle check using plain paper before inserting costly photo paper.

Lightroom masking in v15

Lightroom, Photographs

Extraordinary.

I’m one of the crowd that detests Adobe’s subscription model for its many photography applications, having paid to own Lightroom many years ago only to find that Adobe made sure it refused to work on the Mac Mini M4, forcing me to ‘upgrade’ to the subscription version with its predatory pricing. So much for lifetime ownership.

However, giving credit where it’s due, the masking and highlight recovery capabilities of v15, the latest upgrade, are extraordinary. These are best illustrated by the image I took of Marion Campbell in 1977 in the Outer Hebrides island of Harris, off Scotland’s northwest coast.

Back in 2008 I wrote:

I have been trying to process this snap for thirty years. Every decade it gets better as processing technology improves. Oh! if only I had had a fill in flash with me. Anyway, I now have the burned out highlights largely recovered and some vestige of detail in that wonderful, craggy face.

And that effort was tortuous indeed, requiring much work in Photoshop.

Now, with Lightroom v15, the process has become an order of magnitude easier. A while back I had re-‘scanned’ my early Tri X film images using the Nikon D800 and a Micro Nikkor lens. Definition is as good as you will ever get from a film scan, and far faster than using a flat bed scanner with its mediocre results.

Still, the ‘scanned’ image does not look great. After importing the image into LR and straightening things up, with some added tweaks on the sliders I had a half decent image but one which still has horribly burned out highlights from the window behind Ms. Campbell’s head:



The unprocessed film scan from the D800.

Adobe claims that v15 of Lightroom uses AI – doesn’t everyone claim AI as the magic sauce today? – in helping with masking, so I had a go using the dropdown box which gives several masking options:



Masking options.

I chose ”Select Subject’ and LR did a great job of doing just that, allowing me to add contrast and vibrance to the face. Next I added another mask, this time choosing ‘Select Background’, which LR accurately did, and had at it with the Highlights slider, for a truly exceptional result. A third mask using the ‘Brush’ this time allowed me to paint in her blown out hair with another tweak on the Highlights slider and here is the result which took less time to do than to write about:



The final result.

So finally, 48 years later, I have the displayed image which, until now, has resided in my mind’s eye.

Why, I’m almost feeling good about that Adobe subscription ….

Adobe +50%

Lightroom

Yes, a 50% price rise!

The crooks at Adobe are at it again.



50% price hike.

The rest of the letter goes on in tedious detail about how Adobe is the greatest public benefactor since Social Security and generally claiming sainthood. It’s so puke worthy I am not publishing it here.

When I was using my Mac Pro I had ‘lifetime’ ownership Lightroom for a single purchase. When security enhancements – which Apple refused to apply to that fabulous machine (shock news!) – ceased to be available I had no option but to upgrade to a modern Mac Mini M4. Naturally, Adobe saw to it that my Lightroom ‘owned’ application ceased working at the same time, forcing me to sign up to their $9.99 monthly subscription.

I passed on Photoshop, buying a lifetime ownership of Affinity – and that looks like it’s about to adopt a subscription model soon as well. Affinity does most things Photoshop can, though there’s a bit of a learning curve involved.

I write ‘forcing me’ as I have yet to find an application which competently combines LR’s excellent processing and cataloging features, but now I will get serious about doing some research of alternatives.

Meanwhile I have signed up for one year with the crooks at Adobe at the existing $10 monthly rate, and earnestly hope this is the last time I ever pay them:



Artcise NB36 ball head

Cameras

A remarkable value.

When I documented Carmel’s gorgeous Christmas windows with the monster Nikon D3x body and the exceptional resolving power of the 35mm f/1.4 Sigma Art lens in 2014 I uses a Sirui ball and socket head on my ancient but sturdy Linhof tripod. On completion of that project I sold the Sirui as I do not do landscape photography and in the studio strobes permit the camera to be hand held rather than mounted on a clunky tripod.

Recently I have again developed a hankering for some more night time photography and needed a competent ball and socket head to mount on my old Bogen/Manfrotto 3016 monopod. While old it has only three sections, meaning just two levers to undo and tighten, and is made of light alloy. Even 1/15 second exposures with the monopod are sharp for the device removes any possibility of vertical motion, the bugbear of sharp images. The 3016 is readily found on eBay for $30 or so and is recommended without reservations. If the locking levers loosen with age they are easily adjusted and a monopod is a great deal easier to use than a tripod. It’s also a handy weapon when on the wrong side of the tracks ….

My tool of choice for nighttime street snaps is the Leica M10. Not a fast to use camera by modern standards, no AF or IBIS, but it’s a small package, inconspicuous and comes with fast lenses, my street favorites being Canon’s 35/2 and 50/1.4 offerings.

The Artcise NB36 ball head comes with two Arca Swiss QR plates to attach to the base of your camera(s). The female socket is 3/8″ so a small adapter is required if your tripod or monopod uses a 1/4″ size screw.

The head has no fewer than three spirit levels if that’s your thing, two in the top plate and one in the knob which fastens the QR plate. Good luck seeing these at night.

But the real appeal of the Artcise head is the price, which is under $20! It’s a remarkable value for a device which is nicely made, all operations are smooth and the weight capacity is a claimed hefty 33lbs. Not as much as the Sirui’s but hardly a limitation with modern 35mm and digital cameras. None of the three knobs can be fully unscrewed/removed/lost, a nice piece of engineering design. And at $18.70 it’s a keeper as the resale value is precisely zero.

Highly recommended, and some nighttime pictures from the Leica M10 should be available soon.



As delivered. The Arca plate has anti-slip rubber on the side which abuts the camera’s baseplate.


Attached to the M10. Because of Leica’s slavish devotion to a dated removable baseplate, the Arca Swiss style plate must be removed to swap the battery or storage card. The plate may clear the battery door on the M11 if mounted transversely – I don’t know. not having an M11 (I wish!)


Mounted on the Bogen/Manfrotto 3016 monopod.

The Savoring books

Book reviews, Cooking

Gorgeous and tasty.

For an index of all my book reviews click here.



My small collection.

Take a magnum opus like Julia Child’s ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’ and you have every recipe imaginable from that land of culinary genius. Yet the books are as boring and as poorly presented as it gets. There are no photographs, a handful of poorly rendered pencil sketches passes for illustration, the fonts are dated and ugly and, well, the whole thing smacks of a well prepared meal thrown on a paper plate in higgledy piggledy fashion.

And that is very much not the case with these wonderful books from Williams-Sonoma, mostly published in the first five years of the millennium and now sadly out of print. I got mine from Abe Books, lightly used, for pennies on the dollar. Each boasts not one but two photographers – one for the locales, the other for the food and the photography is, without exception, gorgeous. And these are not just cookery books, for each recipe comes with historical detail explaining provenance and subtleties. Highly recommended not just for cooks aspiring to emulate the best in Western European cuisine but for lovers of great photography everywhere.