Self editing of Rail photography ?

cruikshank

New Member
I've been a pro photographer for 15 years, but it was all portrait work. I had a good sense for the good the bad and the ugly. I was forced to retire due to 4 back surgeries. Luckily I live very close to a major NS Junction in Reading PA, so I try to shoot alot of them and also old coal mines. My question is how much do you self edit, in oder to not clog your hard drive with useless pics. Do you keep only the wows. The ones that may be sellable, or do you hang onto more just in case. I'm shooting Digital with a Fuji S2, reviewing in ACDSEE and then do any PS work in PSCS. Thanks for any guidance. Dave
 

cruikshank

New Member
I due also, but for me a full card is 114 shots. I use continues drive as the train passes to have a better chance at a god shot. So when you shoot say 100 digital photos how many do you erase. I know the obvious of bad exposure, focus etc. Thanks, again. Dave
 

Marxed

Member
sorry in advance for blabbering on... i just read my posts and realized i hit on like twenty different topics... sorry :D

i'm camera crazy, i'll go though a pile of batteries and i save every photo, when i need more space on my hard drive i'll burn them to CD's...

i try to take good photos as opposed to crooked ones that need to be cropped... you get better results if you take the picture how you want, than taking it crooked and cropping..... even with my suite of tools for photo manipulation, i don't open photos up in any programs for editing, i'll just take the one i like and resize them with microsoft's powertoys image resize, its a right click/resize fuction that reduces the image size and automatically optimizes for sharing... i've found in this day and age, actually going into whatever photo program you use and resizing, optimizing, and cropping, just doesn't do as much good as it used to... people do horrible things to photos

...and i use photoshop CS2 for all my actual work on photos, it's magical, but a huge dent in the ordinary person's wallet!


i'm going to build some 3D models in lightwave, sometime in the future when i have free time, and i want to re-create some vintage marx, or so some sort of half virtual, half real photo mix..... i might also digitialize my platform into a 3D world, and try and run the trains on a bluescreen, and insert them into the digital platform...... i could do it today if i had the time... but i'm far from having that much free time!


... and this is a 3D model of a train, nothing you see in this photo is real, it's made from scratch, except for some of the textures of course! it's right out of Lightwave, with some finishing effects in Photoshop


most of my work in 3D isn't train related, and it's on my other computer, soo i havn't posted any of it here...


,
 

zedob

Member
I usually shoot full size best quality then hack them down to what I need. Probably not the best or most efficient way, but it works for me. I used to use acdsee for viewing, but then it crapped out on me and I have never been able to reload it again.???? For final work, I use Corel Photo-Paint, which works pretty well, but it's an older version and is probably outdated by today's standards.

I download the pics I want to cd and blast the totally unusable ones.

speaking of deleting....
 

MasonJar

It's not rocket surgery
I would trash anything that is not in focus, but not necessarily anything that is composed poorly or crooked, etc. It really depends on what you are trying to do.

For reference, almost every photo where you can see something will tell you something (at some point...;)). It is often very interesting to go back and look at what the photo is NOT of... what is in the background? the sky? what is the landscape like behind your subeject?

For "sale" quality - you only want the best of the best. A friend of mine was whittling down his collection of landscapes to start a "stock photo" company. We went through about 5000 colour slides, and he outright trashed 2000 of them. Another 2000 went in the second round, and he ended up with several hundred decent ones. Now a lot of the duplication was due to bracketing (shooting several different exposures of the same picture to get the best colour). He was looking at about 10% retention - not bad considering that he was going to be happy with a good shot from each roll of film (1 in 24 or <4%).

As for storage, I use a Mac with iPhoto, which can then burn "albums" or "rolls" to DVD or CD. I use Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to adjust the photos. Photoshop Elements has the functionality of the full Photoshop, but the functions are grouped to be more useful for photography, rather than any digital image. It came with the Canon digicam I use.

If you are considering selling your digital pictures, be sure that your colours on your monitor and printer are "in tune", so what you see is what you get (and is what you actually shot). I say this simply because I do not know ifyour professional experience includes digital or not. If yes, please disregard ;) :D

Andrew
 

Will_annand

Active Member
Andrew, you bring up a good point.

I find sometimes that what I am seeing on the screen looks great, but when it is printed out, the colours are slightly "off".

Could you point me in the direction of the necessary information to calibrate the monitor to my printer?

Specs:

Epson R300 Photo/CD/DVD printer.
Acer 17" CRT model AC713 (I wish I could have afforded an LCD, but my old Viewsonic gave out at an inoppertune time).
 

MasonJar

It's not rocket surgery
Will,

The information you need should come with your monitor and/or printer. Since I have an iMac with built in screen, the options come up in the screen preferences. I think the Windows equivalent is right click on the desktop, then properties, but that is just basic settings. You may have to look for some sort of utility program that came with the monitor. Google should turn up some information on the generalities of calibrating (e.g. why do it, and generally what to expect). Try also the monitor manufacturer's web site.

Andrew
 

Marxed

Member
Will_annand said:
Andrew, you bring up a good point.

I find sometimes that what I am seeing on the screen looks great, but when it is printed out, the colours are slightly "off".

Could you point me in the direction of the necessary information to calibrate the monitor to my printer?

Specs:

Epson R300 Photo/CD/DVD printer.
Acer 17" CRT model AC713 (I wish I could have afforded an LCD, but my old Viewsonic gave out at an inoppertune time).



printers print in CMYK colors and monitors work in RGB... also monitors light images from the rear; print outs are solid images that you see from the light reflected off the paper, from a source infront of or above the picture...... basically what i'm saying is that they are two totally different things... what i learned to do when drawing illustrations, is that its best to work with CMYK and print color swatches out soo you'll know how your image will print...


calibrating your monitor will most likely correct your colors on your monitor, but most likely isn't going calibrate it to match your printer.... i print from a thousand dollar printer and do my work on a flatscreen monitor and i've spent good amounts of time working on projects, only to print them to see that what printed looks has stuff that didn't appear on my monitor, or looked different on my monitor


i would however suggest playing with different types of photo papers, and your printer settings for optimal output. also run your printer's calibration device
 

cruikshank

New Member
Marxed said:
.. i print from a thousand dollar printer and do my work on a flatscreen monitor and i've spent good amounts of time working on projects, only to print them to see that what printed looks has stuff that didn't appear on my monitor, or looked different on my monitor


i would however suggest playing with different types of photo papers, and your printer settings for optimal output. also run your printer's calibration device

Curious what Printer your using. I'm in the market for one.

Also i big step is properly calibrating your monitor. I use a 19" sony flatscreen CRT. I calibrate it with a Colorvision Spyder calibrating Puck and software. I paid $150 for mine, but they now sell one for right around $100. I've got it to the point if I tell my Lab, H&H in Kansas, or the local walmart to just print it, no color correction, what I see is What I get. If they come back looking funny from walmart, they usually fess up and say, we changed the paper and didn't take the time to calibrate our Fuji Printer.

Like was said though for Inkjets with different types of paper be it matt/ gloss/ or fine art, you generally need the specs for that paper with your printer. Dave
 

Marxed

Member
cruikshank said:
Curious what Printer your using. I'm in the market for one.

Also i big step is properly calibrating your monitor. I use a 19" sony flatscreen CRT. I calibrate it with a Colorvision Spyder calibrating Puck and software. I paid $150 for mine, but they now sell one for right around $100. I've got it to the point if I tell my Lab, H&H in Kansas, or the local walmart to just print it, no color correction, what I see is What I get. If they come back looking funny from walmart, they usually fess up and say, we changed the paper and didn't take the time to calibrate our Fuji Printer.

Like was said though for Inkjets with different types of paper be it matt/ gloss/ or fine art, you generally need the specs for that paper with your printer. Dave



it's one of the bigger HP printers, forget the model for sure... just under a year old.... i believe it was like $999.... it does automatic double sided printing, will print nice and fast... etc... and with ink, it has five cartriages, C, M, Y, K, and B... all five cost like as much as the printer... and it weighs about 70LBS without paper...

if your going to mass produce print media, it's great, it prints everything.... but since your looking for quailty, i would reccommend checking out HP's website and looking at something like the HP Photosmart 8700 Printer
 
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