The Party

[ozimax]

The Fuji XT-1/45mm combo never ceases to amaze me. Any light. Any subject. Grandson #1 had a birthday today.

Alex280515f by Ozimax, on Flickr

Alex280515b by Ozimax, on Flickr

Alex280515d by Ozimax, on Flickr

Harry280515b by Ozimax, on Flickr

[Matt. K]

Nice pics Ozzi. Imagine him looking at those in 50 years time! I've just been going through my family heirloom photographs and there are so few of them they are precious beyond value.

[ozimax]

Nice pics Ozzi. Imagine him looking at those in 50 years time! I've just been going through my family heirloom photographs and there are so few of them they are precious beyond value.

100% correct Matt. There's almost nothing of my family. I suppose film processing was expensive back in the day and we were dirt poor. Nowadays everyone has access to some form of photographic recording which is an amazing thing.

[gstark]

Nice pics Ozzi. Imagine him looking at those in 50 years time! I've just been going through my family heirloom photographs and there are so few of them they are precious beyond value.

100% correct Matt. There's almost nothing of my family. I suppose film processing was expensive back in the day and we were dirt poor. Nowadays everyone has access to some form of photographic recording which is an amazing thing.

Exactly.

But we need to ensure these images are preserved. Print them Save them. Multiple times, onto different media.

And in the cloud.

Love these ones; the use of the candle light adds a wonderful and warm feeling to these images.

[ozimax]

But we need to ensure these images are preserved. Print them Save them. Multiple times, onto different media.

And in the cloud.

Oh I get it. Print them in the clouds, sort of like a bat-signal...

[ozimax]

But we need to ensure these images are preserved. Print them Save them. Multiple times, onto different media.

Very correct here Gary. My archival system is many-fold, but chaotic. I do have multiple HDD back ups of all my photos, plus a single HDD stored offsite at mum's place in a Pelican case which I update several times a year. I've been reluctant to use the cloud at this stage for privacy reasons but maybe I will head down that road one day.

[zafra52]

They are fantastic, each one of them. Of course the above advice is correct. I also can relate to your comment on your family financial situation; we were the same.
When I was young my dad bought an Agfa 35mm film camera and I was always asking mum for money for film or for development (money in those days was scarce and a rare commodity). And as we were so many at home, having a dark room was out of the question. Many years later my family was glad I took photos of the family. Print them and share them around and document on their backs the date, location and occasion - memory is fragile as we get older, but technology is even more precarious.

[Aussie Dave]

Wonderful images Ozi, well done.

As for the merits of the Xt-1 and 45mm lens combo, whilst I'm sure it is great I wouldn't discount the huge contribution of the photographer's skill in these images.
The use of light and composition are what "really" make these images stand out over simple candid snapshots....things that the camera can't take credit for.

And whilst it is great that photography is so accessible to most people in 1st world countries there are many millions of people in the poorest regions that still cant afford even our outdated photographic gadgets - things that most of us here possibly take for granted without a second thought.

The downside of this accessability is that alot of people take photos with their phones etc and dont back them up properly (using Facebook/Instagram is not a valid backup), so come decades from now how many of those photographic memories will still be in their posession? Computers crash, phones get lost or stolen or fail, hard drives fail so the only real proven archival media to date is in print....which in the digital age becomes a miniscule percentage of images taken vs images printed.

Just of the members here, how many tens of thousands of digital images do we have in out catalogues (spread over various digital media) vs how many images of that catalogue have been printed (at any size)? I suspect for the majority you could count the percentage in single digits at best.
How many of us store all our RAW files as our backups, with the plan that we can hand them down to our next of kin? Will they know what to do with the RAW files when they receive them - or should we be saving JPEG copies also to give to them to make their lives easier (they may not have the passion for photography/editing images so may just want a "processed" copy of each image to view/print etc).

A while ago a family friend was mourning the loss of a family member who had been into photography and they wanted to display some of their images during the service....but no-one knew how to open/use the image files which were in RAW format.
I obtained a copy and made some JPEG copies for them to use which they were grateful for. This opened my eyes to what would happen with all my images when i'm gone (which are mainly in RAW format, though I do tend to make JPEG copies of all my "keepers").
Food for thought.

Apologies for the rant. And well done again Ozi, you are showing your skill with these images, not the quality of the camera

[ozimax]

Thanks Zaffs and Dave for the kind comments.

Dave you bring up a subject that I've been thinking about of late and that is the printing process. I have a superb professional printing business in Coffs Harbour. Ray lives about 1 minute's drive from my unit, and is a true pro. He handles most of my printing requirements and has done for years. (Occasionally I'll get some work done at Big W or whatever just to give away to friends. The quality is poor but the price is minimal.) However, I've been thinking of buying a reasonable quality printer to do some prints at home, just for the fun of it. I'm an illiterate when it comes to printing, and wouldn't want to spend a fortune.

Does anyone here have experience with say the Canon Pro100 (or similarly specced printers) around the $500-$600 mark?

Thanks.

[zafra52]

Dear Ozi

Personally, I would not advise anyone to buy a colour printer to print their own photos unless that person would want to be in total control and money were not an issue e.g. you want to print your own photos to enter competitions. Good quality printers are expensive and their ink cartridges even more. So when you add up the printer, ink and good quality photographic paper you realise it is not a cheap exercise. Also, despite what they tell you about the duration of the ink and paper my experience is that the colours and pictures fade. After lots of frustration and many cartridges and paper purchases, I came to realise that taking my JPGs and TIFFs to Harvey Normans, Big W, Officeworks and the like resulted in reasonable good prints (equally or better than mine) of my pictures some of which were printed in mags for a fraction of the cost and they are still alive and well; while their home job counterparts are long gone. Of course, if I had to print and frame a picture for an exhibition/competition I would then consider having the job done professionally, but it is quite unlikely as I am not to those photographic standards yet.

I now got a cannot colour printer that it only needs a hard look or a tough word to get one of each six cartridges empty/ dry and refuses to work till you replace it at $25 each and so I am considering to buy a black laser scanner for my odd document printing and put my old printer in the rubbish bin. When I was working I had graphic designer colleagues teaching and they had a magnificent couple of commercial ink jet printers to print large A4, A3 and much larger sizes of photos and posters, but they were constantly running out of paper and ink. I believe each printer were between $35,000 and $70,000; while the material costs of running them was also one of their biggest expenses and the source of endless arguments with management.

Moral of the story, do your home work and maths before buying a printer to print your own photos and consider alternatives. I'm sorry if I went a bit too long.

[Aussie Dave]

Good post Zafra - and I agree. It is hard to compare the costs between printing at home vs printing by a lab (be it a pro lab or the likes of BigW/HN etc).

Considering you already have a rapport with a pro lab minutes away from you I'd be taking advantage of that if I could.
Perhaps they could offer slightly better pricing if you became a regular?

It is also worth noting that wherever you have your prints done, if you want them to look their best you will need to calibrate your PC monitor/settings so what you see on your screen resembles how the photos appear once printed by your chosen lab. This is one plus to a pro lab, who consistently keep their machines calibrated, where some labs like BigW etc can be lax at doing so, resulting in one print job being fine and the next having colours slightly off. Perhaps no biggie if you're printing a few 6x4's for friends but not so great if you're doing an enlargement you want to hang in your house (and look at every single day).

And I ALWAYS resize my images to the exact pixel dimension required for printing when saving to JPEG before taking them to the lab. I prefer to use Lightroom or Photoshop to achieve this instead of letting the machine at the lab do it for me - but I am a control freak!
To do so you simply need to use this formula:
required length of print (in inches) x DPI being printed = pixel dimension for length of image
required width of print (in inches) x DPI being printed = pixel dimension for width of image

So, a 6" x 4" image printed at 300dpi (the standard dpi setting used) would result in:
6 x 300 = 1800 pixels in length
4 x 300 = 1200 pixels in width
So when you resize your RAW image, you select 300DPI and then choose 1800 length and 1200 width and you have a perfectly sized image, ready for printing at 6"x4" size @ 300dpi.

If you end up printing a 30" x 20" at 200dpi the same formula applies.

I used to print images at home (a long time ago) but ink is so expensive and seems like it gets used faster than fuel in a car, so I never do my own prints at home anymore (unless it is a one-off thing that I need immediately for some reason - kids projects for school etc. The printer we have now we purchased because JB HiFi had it on special and it was cheaper to buy the whole printer (which came with ink) than it was to replace all the colours of my previous printer, which was the reason we'd gone to JB in the first place. Ridiculous how the entire printer could be cheaper than replacing just the ink tanks.

Dave

[ozimax]

Considering you already have a rapport with a pro lab minutes away from you I'd be taking advantage of that if I could.
Perhaps they could offer slightly better pricing if you became a regular?

Thanks Dave & Zaffs for the input. Thankfully I have a good rapport with my pro printer and already get excellent pricing. My thinking out loud was mainly from a fun point of view, much like making one's own frames instead of buying them from a shop. However, the cost factor is always (at least in my book) the biggest thing to consider so I will most probably keep with the status quo and have my local pro do the big stuff.

Thanks again.

Ozi