Silverfast Bundle For Pro Photographers Who Use Film
A recent portrait of actress Ellen Page by Jeff Lipsky.Jeff Lipsky: Many reasons For one, I love shooting my film cameras. There is something special when shooting a portrait with my 4×5. I feel digital takes the pace and feel away. I still enjoy looking at a proof sheet with a good loupe. The editing process is easier and more tangible. Digital format has yet to reach the 6×7 format.
Film is more forgiving and has more range. I can flare and backlight images and still have information in the negative. Digitally it would be lost. I actually like being the first person to see and edit my film. To many times there is a crowd of people surrounding the monitor, no matter how hard I try to hide it.
I love working with 120 films. Changing a film back or reloading enables me to change things up and get more variations. Believe it or not, it’s still more economical for most editorial jobs.David Lauridsen: Film is beautiful. It has a depth to it and a painterly quality in the way it captures light and texture that digital just isn’t capable of capturing yet.
I shoot a lot of travel photography and like strong side light and backlight, which I think is the biggest weakness of digital. With film, I can expose for good shadow detail and just burn in the sky. With digital, the sky is just gone completely or if I expose for it then I end up with an image that is just much darker than I like. It’s recoverable to some degree in post, but it still doesn’t have that “lushness” that film has.Bryce Duffy: I still really love the aesthetic of film. I’m not saying it’s not possible to get very similar results with digital, it’s just that in 20 years of working with film stock and polaroid, and a long standing relationship with a lab, there’s so much that is going in to achieving the aesthetic that I’m after, and other peoples expertise as well. Switching to digital means that so much more of that falls back on the photographer. In a way you’re your own film manufacturer, your own lab, your own printer.
And I still really feel that there are certain lighting situations where film just “feels” more organic and digital can not replicate that as far as I’ve seen. Posted at 5:04 pm Film has that added depth and a singular beauty that digital hasn’t. I use digital for MOST jobs due to time and cost reasons. Most of my stuff headed for internet.The joy of film is using beautifully crafted cameras.Design and a joy to work with unlike the plastic glob of digital.
Sure film cameras don’t have all those features. So even pros go to the Green-Auto Button!The wonderful range of tones and colors.The contrast fighting built in! No melted foreheads a la digital.You can look at one’s slides from decades ago.Digital will not be like that!If NASA cannot read their early data, what chance do we have? Posted at 11:12 am I began with film, and after much work in digital, have nearly exclusively returned to film, not only for all the reasons shared by other professionals, but for the cameras themselves.In terms of my Leica system, for instance, I use an M2 from 1958, and Leitz lenses dating back to 1929. Why?There’s a certain quality and character of these old lenses that, in my view, can’t be reproduced by the modern digital age, at least, not “organically” produced without intensive use of post-processing software, which, for me, takes away the magic of photography, the instant of the image.
Posted at 11:43 am I shoot commercial work and mainly food photography for my restaurant clients.I feel digital just doesn’t have the depth or range of color that film has. Digital also falls apart at extreme enlargement a case in point: My 120 shots have been shown on the big screen in local theaters for one of my clients and holds up beautifully, I don’t think digital could boast the same results unless I spend thousands on a leaf back for my 4×5, which I certainly cannot justify.I also feel digital has the unfortunate capability of turning what would have been amateurs and hacks 20 years ago into pros.
After all just erase and re-shoot and if it still isn’t right after the tenth time you can just photo-chop it and voila a sellable image. I come from a background as a Navy photographer and we had to capture everything from plane crashes and crime scenes to re-enlistment ceremonies on film.And guess what if you didn’t get the shot or it was screwed up too damned bad.
Now obviously things like a plane crash you either get it or you don’t even with digital. But if you underexposed the award ceremony you only had so much you could do to fix it, so it better be right the first time!Finally the digital pro will never know the joy of working in a darkroom, flashing paper to bring out detail in the highlights or adding a 10% Potassium bromide solution to the developer to increase the warm tones in a BW print.Nor will they ever know how to color correct a print with CC filters (BTW you color correct for perfect whites, since it is a known entity, and everything else will usually fall into place).Film rules, digital just fools. Posted at 12:10 pm Sorry to post twice but some other points that are rarely discussed.1. Micro-filming in the US has almost exclusively returned to film due to the archival storage issues of digital. The cost and time involved in transferring all of the digital data to the newest storage media every so many years was prohibitive.2.
I can take a Matthew Brady glass plate and still enlarge it in my darkroom some 150 years later, what are they going to read that CD with in 150 years?3. I still have ALL of my film images and can print any of them at will, But have one computer crash without good backups and guess what.4. Most of us old pros can tell you in detail how the whole process works, from the silver halides in the film and paper to the chemical make-up of the developer and how to tweak the process because we understood the “technology”. Most digital phtogs can only give a very basic overview of how the whole digital thing works because of the technology involved.5.
The digital “workflow” model is false economy. When you consider that you must upgrade your cameras every few years, buy new computers, and the latest software. I still shoot with a Mamiya C3 twin lens from the ’60s, and the resolution of my image is based on the film not the camera, so I don’t need to buy a new 24 MP camera to stay competitive only new film. Posted at 11:02 am I do all my commissioned home & vacation portraits with Black & White Film. After it’s processed, I now also have a back up CD made. That CD is used also for me to personally make 6 – 12 enlarged digital proofs of various sizes for people to take home and try out on their walls. I also provide painters’ tapes for that.
It’s a good marriage of film and digital and the best use I’ve found for my printer which disappoints in much of B/W printing from scanned negatives.I, otherwise, use digital “for fun” and am also selling those as fine art prints. Thanks for this discussion – a new client recently commented on how much she enjoyed the “slow process”! She also brought along some home made candy.
Posted at 10:24 pm First of all, I am not a pro and by most reasonable measures I am not at all qualified to comment.I prefer to shoot 4X5 inch negative color. I let the lab process the neg, but I make the print. What I think happens is that when one works with certain tools, the brain adapts to make best use of that tool and avoids using the tool when the tool would not work out that well for the given situation.What I state is purely opinion and is not based on any real study. I have noticed that ‘thinking’ improves photos. For example, should I find an interesting looking chair and I take the effort to refinish it, while I am doing the painting, I am thinking on how to use the chair. So, this long contemplating often does somehow seem to cause improved results.Every tool has limitations and it is useful to avoid those limitations — or take advantage of them.So far as the cost of film and digital, since I make few images, film is actually quite cost effective. Yes, one can manipulate digital in ways that are not realistically possible with film: just try to bend the sensitometry curves with film.Yes, glass plates were flatter than plastic film.Getting information about which photo product to buy is not easy.
I wound up with medium format and 4X5 inch film, shooting negatives, mostly in color.I subscribe to several photo magazines and have decided that I must actually see the ‘real’ results to form an opinion.No guarantee that this is free of typos.
First let me say that I'm not pointing fingers at either side of thisissue. With that said, let me try and explain what seems to happened.I have a P4 3 Ghz system that I had recently built.
The OS and s/w Iuse is:Win2000 Pro w/SP4Epson Scan v2.6A (from Epson 4990 Pro s/w bundle)Silverfast Ai6 v6.2.2r3 (also from bundle)Epson R320 printer s/w (v??)Photoshop 7.0Focal Blade sharpening plug-inTest Strip pluginAll of the photo editing/scanning/printing software had been loadedand seemed to be working as expected with no error messages orabnormal outputs. I was in the process of experimenting with settingup the color management for all the devices.Since I had just reloaded Silverfast from the original Cd from the4990 s/w bundle, SF6 notified me of an available update (v6.4.3r9)which I reviewed and decided it was benefical for my 4990 scanner.After downloading the new update and loading it, I now get an errormessage whenever I either open Photoshop or use Epson Scan in anymode (plugin or TWAIN).The error message states that the file 'DICELib.dll' cannot belocated in the path. Clicking the OK button closes the error messagebox and then the selected application continues to load normally. Ihave tested the PS7 ACQUIRE using Epson Scan and Epson Scanstandalone in TWAIN mode and both ways seem to work after the errormessage has been displayed and closed. I cannot locate theDICELib.dll file anywhere nor can I find it on any of the install CDsfor the different applications. It is probably in one of the datalibs used in instal and I haven't dug through all of those YET!What I find confusing is that loading Silverfast update shouldcorrupt the Epson Scan s/w. I could undeerstand if it corrupted SFitself or if it caused the scanner to quit working altogether.
Theupdated SF seems to work correctly except again when using it via PS7I get the error msg when PS7 is opened.Has anyone seen anything like this or similar? I really don't want tohave to totally rebuild this hard disk again as I just finished thatlast week.
Ideas anyone?Also please don't suggest I run out and get Vuescan to cure all mywoes. I have tried it and it seems like a decent product but I havethe software listed above and I know it DID work. And yes I realizethat the 4990 isn't in the same caliber as a drum scanner, yada,yada, yada.all of us lowly flatbed scanner owners have heard ittoo many times. I also don't plan on running out and buying anotherscanner for film as this one does what I want just fine (or it willas soon as I get it working again)ThanksGene. Hi Gene,Unfortunately, the missing dice.dll file is a common complaint over on the Silverfast forums. It has occurred time and again with various Silverfast updates (just do a search and you'll see what I mean.) Lasersoft really does produce some fine software, but all of that hard work is forgotten when customers experience such frequent bugs and inconveniences like this whenever they update. Silverfast really should have caught that one.
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Anyway, to solve the problem, I believe others in the forum have contacted Lasersoft tech support and they then emailed them the missing file. You could also try rolling back to the previous version. Let me know if you want me to email it to you, I have the same scanner (you'll have to use your own serial number, of course).This is precisely why I never update my Silverfast software until most of the complaints in the forum have been resolved. I usually stay a version or two behind on purpose. I wandered over to the Silverfast website on chance and looked for info on the missing file.
Silverfast Bundle For Pro Photographers Who Use Film In Hindi
I could not believe the number of entries related to this problem and how long it seems to been a problem. Anyway I downloaded the DICELib.dll file and will load it on the photo pc as soon as I get home tonight. I guess I was just totally puzzled and didn't think to check on the Silverfast forums even though I did contact their customer support.
Seems like that might be a waste of time too given the number of complaints I saw on that topic there.I would like to send a bit of praise to Epson. At least they repsonded within a few hours and told me the same thing that Zee said about the missing DLL being from Lasersoft and not Epson. Nice to see a quick repsonse to a customer problem even if it wasn't the company's problem.I consider this topic closed. This has got to be the fastest I have ever solved a problem via a posting. I'm spoiled nowGene.