Solved! Digital cameras

qwerki

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Oct 25, 2009
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I'm a photographer from the "old school" who is a few years behind the
technology of the current millenium. But this old cur is learning digital media
at a reasonably fast clip. :pt1cable:
I am trying to sell all of my old Leica stuff so I can acquire a digital camera
that is not a toy. :pt1cable:
In the glory days of film, I did it all - large format architectural, small format
photojournalism and medium format portraiture. :pt1cable:
Now I'd like to set up a "digital darkroom" with some powerful computers and
appropriate software. :pt1cable:
I'd love to hear from those who use "high-end" digital cameras, and find out about the various price ranges of these machines. :pt1cable:

QWERKI
 
Solution
I aspire to get a "high-end" D-SLR myself someday. Right now I have an older "mid-level" D-SLR. I would suggest checking out the reviews on dpreview.com. They have very detailed reviews which tell you every feature available on the camera. Also, you can go to B&H Photo's website, bhpotovideo.com, to see what the current prices are on the different models. Adorama Camera, adorama.com, also has good prices.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 is the latest version available. If you have a computer with a dedicated video card, CS4 can take advantage of the video memory to help speed up processing time. I would also look into getting a monitor calibrator to get the best color consistency between what you see on the...

chillwolf

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Feb 2, 2004
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I grew up processing in a dark room built in my bathroom (parents hated it), joined a very much film based Navy as a combat/aerial photographer and was in the service during the digital crossover. I embraced digital easily but got a kick out of watching the old guys hold a digital camera and ponder where to put the film.

Setting up a digital dark room is fairly easy, you need a decent computer and if you want to go full out Adobe Photoshop is pretty much the standard photo editing software. After that a nice printer perhaps some monitor calibration tools, and a good scanner can never hurt.

Photoshop will run you $699 dollars from Adobe, but shop around or if you can get an education version you can find it cheaper.

We run Photoshop all the time on our laptops in the field so you don't need the worlds greatest computer. I just quickly glanced at Dell and you can pick up a good computer with monitor for 1300 bucks. I would stress shopping around and doing some research for your computer purchase. At a minimum for Photoshop I would recommend a i7-920 quadcore processor and 6gb of ram, you can get by with less but Photoshop loves ram and will take advantage of a quad core.

Our mobile kits consist of

Canon EOS-D1s Mark III
various lenses, flashes, a few HD handy cams, and enough batteries to power a small town.

Laptop wise we use HP Pavillion laptops with 6gb ram and a quad core, I do not remember the model number without going into the cage to look.

Standard Software:
Adobe Photoshop think we use CS3 right now. Photoshop comes with Adobe Bridge which is an awesome program for archiving and library management.
Also installed, Micorsoft Office, and we use Avid for video editing along with various other video manipulation tools for or high speed cameras.

If you go the Photoshop route and have never used it before I would highly highly recommend a Photoshop class from your local software trainer. At a minimum do the tutorials, Photoshop can be very intimidating it is one of those pieces of software that you always learn something new on no matter how long you have used it.

Hoped it helped a little.


PS. I miss my Leica M6 more than you an imagine I would love to have that camera back. Hold on to those sexy Leica's if at all possible. For that matter I miss the hell out of my Nikon F4, that camera and I chewed through some film in some really nasty locations.
 

CBaca

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Oct 21, 2009
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I aspire to get a "high-end" D-SLR myself someday. Right now I have an older "mid-level" D-SLR. I would suggest checking out the reviews on dpreview.com. They have very detailed reviews which tell you every feature available on the camera. Also, you can go to B&H Photo's website, bhpotovideo.com, to see what the current prices are on the different models. Adorama Camera, adorama.com, also has good prices.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 is the latest version available. If you have a computer with a dedicated video card, CS4 can take advantage of the video memory to help speed up processing time. I would also look into getting a monitor calibrator to get the best color consistency between what you see on the monitor and what see on your prints.

One last suggestion, check out the forums at popphoto.com. There are many people on there that can help you with any questions you have on D-SLRs.
 
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