Digital cameras

[Cliptin]

A little OT but what are the dimentions of an A4 sheet?

 

[NRG = mc²]

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html

 

[honold]

ofoto is supposed to be the best consumer digital developer

 

[Adcadet]

ofoto is supposed to be the best consumer digital developer

This is what my fiance and I have come to conclude. Do you know of any formal reviews of Ofoto and other digital-to-print developers?

 

[honold]

no, just the accolades from countless prosumer photo enthusiast people i know (who shoot stuff like sporting events with slrs and $3000 digital cameras)

 

[Adcadet]

no, just the accolades from countless prosumer photo enthusiast people i know (who shoot stuff like sporting events with slrs and $3000 digital cameras)

whoa. Good enough for me!

 

[honold]

afaik they actually submit their stuff to ofoto in raw format, which is what ofoto prefers

 

[Adcadet]

afaik they actually submit their stuff to ofoto in raw format, which is what ofoto prefers

What do you mean by "raw format?"

 

[Mercutio]

That'd be TIFF or some other CF-eating format.

 

[honold]

That'd be TIFF or some other CF-eating format.

no, not even tiff.

'raw' format (supported on mid-to-high digital cameras) is the camera's image output in *RAW* format - not tiff, not jpg, not gif, not png, etc.

even a conversion to tiff requires a conversion (even with no compression). the most purist of purists don't like to rely on the camera's own conversion alogrithms, because they are (mostly) static. places like ofoto have custom-developed software converters which are up to their own standards, and can be modified. the only way to modify a camera's conversion would be to upgrade its firmware, if the conversion alogrithms are even stored there.

adobe announced a multi-manufacturer raw plugin for photoshop kind of recently, i believe i saw it on dpreview.com. (all manufacturers have different raw modes).

 

[Adcadet]

interesting info, honold. I take it the raw files tend to be pretty huge then?

 

[honold]

yes

 

[Cliptin]

no, just the accolades from countless prosumer photo enthusiast people i know (who shoot stuff like sporting events with slrs and $3000 digital cameras)

Wow. Infinite and uncountable. That's a lot of people.
:eekers:

 

[Dïscfärm]

The site (imaging-resource.com) seems to think that the rayovac recharger stinks... and is responsible for overheating batteries and sending them to their doom. While this is probably more related to 1 hour chargers in general and not so much to the rayovac, it is something to watch out for.

Quite possibly so (i.e. -- fast recharging). I use a large black Rayovac recharger unit to charge all of my NiCad, NiMH, and rechargeable alkaline batteries. Its price was pretty good when I bought it 2 years ago because it came bundled with a selection of rechargeable alkaline batteries (a Rayovac invention) that I use with all of my flashlights, portable A/V TV, bicycle lights, electric toothbrushes, etc. I can simultaneously charge 8-each AA NiMH batteries in this unit.

 

[Dïscfärm]

I always buy from http://www.thomas-distributing.com/index.htm

Me too.

A MAHA MH-C204F charger and 4 Powerex 1800 mAH AA NiMH Batteries.

It takes the diskman I listen to while running weeks to run down when using these batteries. (90 minutes per day)

Back a couple of years ago, when I needed to purchase several NiMH batteries for my Olympus, someone recommended Thomas Distributing (though I recall getting to their website via a different URL than thomas-distributing.com). I saw their prices and also noticed that they were out of what I needed. Just by chance when I was at a Walmart store, I checked their battery section and found that they had the very Quest 1650mAH (Quest was hot sh!t back then) that Thomas Distributing was selling -- and was out of -- for 30 cents LESS per battery.

 

[Dïscfärm]

interesting info, honold. I take it the raw files tend to be pretty huge then?

A so-called RAW format can vary quite a bit as to what the data actually is. Usually a RAW camera file is simply the camera's "machine" format without any lookup table applied by the DSP -- usually just verbatim pixels (hence, the term "raw"), though it may include some text strings with exposure and date/time data. In some cases, a camera's RAW format is nothing more than a headerless / trailerless TIFF in 8-bit or 12-bit per RGB.

Ofoto has been the standard for digital still camera photo processing for some time. But, there are also other products that can do specialised processing for digital still camera images such as Camera Bits' Quantum Mechanic Pro , which is an excellent tool for eliminating the hated "blue noise" as well as fringing effects in images.

http://www.camerabits.com/QM2.html

 

[time]

Ofoto has been the standard for digital still camera photo processing for some time.

I have no idea why you would give your hard-earned shots to someone else so they can apply an automatic arbitrary algorithm. That seems to be the criticism levelled at Ofoto that I found on the net. Surely you would want to retain some control?

But, there are also other products that can do specialised processing for digital still camera images such as Camera Bits' Quantum Mechanic Pro , which is an excellent tool for eliminating the hated "blue noise" as well as fringing effects in images.

At $189 (and $149 for a plugin for the D1), it would want to be excellent. Unfortunately, I'm prepared to bet that you can achieve similar or better results with other, cheaper products. Such as PictureMan.

More significantly, you should look to Nikon's own software first. The latest update includes "10 megapixel output mode for D1X NEF files, improved noise reduction and Automatic Vignette Control which can automatically counteract the effects of fall off at lens edges experienced with certain lenses at maximum aperture."

At $0.00, it might be a cheaper option.