Speaking personally, of course. And anyway, only nearly.
Way back when the Epson 2100/2200 was the exciting new printer Colorbyte’s ImagePrint software was that rare magical combination of being both Easy and Best. I originally bought into it in order to defeat the Epson routine that, after hours of daily struggle, turned your magenta monochrome prints green (remember that stuff was so bad that Epson USA left it out of the box). It worked. It came with a zillion paper profiles for the newly enthusiastic printer. It was easy. It was streets ahead of anything else that the home printer could achieve in monochrome and it was up there with the best for colour.
Sure it was expensive, and the company was never the easiest to deal with (having to return a piece of hardware to another continent to allow the licence on a piece of software to be updated scores poorly as a customer service wheeze. For heaven’s sake, nobody suggest it to Adobe), but I valued my time, and the drag-and-go printing ease was the bees pyjamas.
Time moves on and even Epson’s printer drivers improved. Printers became more flexible for monochrome printing with more shades of grey. QuadTone RIP upped the ante by providing excellent outcomes for $50 shareware. Photoshop’s printer dialogue got substantially better. I learned more about printing and colour management. Bespoke paper profiles got a lot cheaper. Paper manufacturers wised up to the profile thing and gave away profiles that were no longer poor jokes.
When I was last printing regularly I was of the opinion that ImagePrint still scored very highly on easy, but no longer had the edge on good. In fact I recall QuadTone RIP coming out ahead in one back to back test. And as I had settled on a very few papers that I wished to print on regularly, the question of getting some bespoke profiles done was an open one.
Skip over my 18 month break and start up the printer again. Great…don’t need to remember how to do this…just drag-and-go. Hey look. Prints!
Unfortunately a need to update and upgrade a few things meant that I triggered a $300 plus dollar bill just to keep ImagePrint working with the current Mac operating system.
If I used the multi image layout options I might consider the price one worth paying, but for simple prints…no way. ImagePrint is still the easiest, but the gap has got a lot smaller. For monochrome I don’t think it is still the best. For colour I’m undecided, but I doubt that it will beat a decent custom profile.
I’m in the process of re-furbishing an older computer with the right operating system on it to keep ImagePrint running for a while longer yet. But I’m thinking that it won’t be needed for long.
I commented about the launch of the E-P1 that I thought that digital cameras had matured. My recent exploration of the current state of inkjet printing suggests that that has matured also.
Doug Plummer’s post today is a lovely illustration of one of the big dilemmas photographers face: choose the best option or choose the easiest option. This applies from everything from the jpeg versus raw decision, through the processing software that we use (see Doug’s post) and on to the printing method that we use (my next post).
And yes, I know that these decisions are, on the whole, range decisions not binary decisions, but stick with me for a bit…
Doug has come across a great example of where the workflow that makes sense produces images that suck. For him workflow is more important than for me. He produces gigabytes of data to my tens of megabytes. But regardless of the particulars of his problem, the general case is one to keep in mind.
Which is what I’ve spent much of this last week trying to do. I’ve been attempting to nudge a little way along the path to easy without giving up too much of the best. I’ve updated stuff, evaluated stuff, and tried to find what integrates well with what. I’ve tried to sort through my chaotic file structure and back-up policies. I’ve moved, copied and improved. And I’ve been struck down by a hard disk failure. Bugger.
At the moment nothing is lost because the disk was in a Raid 5 set up. However, until the rebuild is done, I can’t be sure that nothing is lost. The rebuild waits for a disk to arrive. Don’t expect any more pictures to be posted anytime soon. I’ll have to rely on my wit and literary skills for a while.
(As an aside, this Mac Pro is the most unreliable computer that I’ve ever owned. This is my fourth significant call upon the AppleCare service. It is also the only computer that I’ve ever taken out this sort of extended warranty cover on. Clearly something tapped on my shoulder when I opened that box).
The more that I (you, we, photographers) have to manually manage files the more likely it is that we won’t do it well. I know I have duplicate names, illogical file structures and orphan data. And, dammit, I was trying to sort it out.
The explosion of technology in photography has created lots of choices for us to make, but none of these choices are neutral. Deciding on an Adobe workflow means giving up the potential benefits of all the other suppliers out there. Introducing an out-of-workflow product means having to manually manage the interaction of the products.
I could write up my workflow, but apart from the fact it would be boring to read, it would also make it painfully clear quite how Harry Tate the whole thing is. I strongly suspect (even leaving aside the potential for knock on problems caused by the disk failure) that I’ll have to revisit my decisions about workflow frequently over the coming months. Now that I’ve understood quite how accidental my current flow is I doubt that I’ll resist trying to fix it.
There are now over 180 finishers to SoFoBoMo09. Absolutely phenomenal.
View the completed books.
From an article in The Economist about the 2009 Basel Art Fair.
Getting hard numbers on how much business was done was more difficult. “Everything is anecdotal,” said Marc Spiegler, the fair’s co-director, who admits that he gathers his best market intelligence from informal conversations at the Kunsthalle beer garden. Connoisseurs revel in the art market’s illegibility. “Knowledge and effort are rewarded,” explains John Smith, an art collector and director of Bain & Company, a management consultancy. “The art market is one of the last bastions of inefficiency and that’s what makes it so fascinating.”
We knew that, right? But nice to have it spelled out.
A trio of links to David Farkas’ blog…lenses in use, even if only briefly:
Noctilux 50mm f0.95
Super Elmar 18mm f3.8
Summilux 24mm f1.4
These lenses are seriously expensive. It is fun to see them being used for casual snapshots.
Remember, though, that the camera is a reduced frame camera, so not all the comments about corners and vignetting will apply to a film Leica. Some of the writing is applicable to all uses though:
The old Noctilux had vignetting, softness wide-open, and a pesky blue fringe that could creep up on you. Part of the look of the lens comes from the fact that Dr. Mandler didn’t correct for the blue spectrum of light. So, especially on B&W, the image seems to glow. I know a lot of people really love this. It just was never my taste. If I have to stop down to f/2 to get a sharp picture, what’s the point?
All in all I was impressed with the new Noctilux 50mm f/0.95 ASPH. It maintains the creamy dreaminess of the old, while improving on contrast, vignetting, sharpness, and color accuracy (no blue fringe). As you stop it down, the Noctilux approaches the look of the Summilux 50mm f/1.4 ASPH. Best of both worlds? Maybe. For me, I still prefer the 50 Lux ASPH, but there is no mistaking the look of the Noct.
Even if the author’s other role, as a Leica retailer, leads to some amusing conclusions:
The 18’s huge DOF makes it a great “point-and-shoot” lens. Really a lot of fun to shoot.
There can’t be many people in the world to have handled all of these lenses outside of a showroom. Well worth the visit.
