I came upon this friendly bunch of snappers on Keighly train station a couple of years ago. They were all carrying some of the most modern and advanced digital SLRs. I quickly calculated that they had about £10K of equipment between them. They were from a local camera club and on a club day out on a vintage railway. I felt a little humbled by their equipment. They told me that this was the retirement game. First thing you do on retiring is to go out an buy the most obscenely expensive camera you can!
What to spend your cash on?
I mention this group because they illustrate something of a dilemma that faces all amateur photographers as they look to step up their game.
People might not agree with me. but I’m not sure that upgrading your camera is necessarily the best way of spending your cash.
It is true that a modern 12 megapixel SLR will produce remarkable images, but then so will many 6 megapixel SLRs. I can produce very sharp 16 by 12 prints from my Nikon D70 and I’m not sure I really need anything bigger than that. I’m not the only person who thinks this. Look around the web and you’ll find many pro photographers who enjoy using their smaller, 6 meg cameras for all of their leisure shots.
Now, of course, people are right to upgrade. I’m looking to upgrade myself later in the year. But, depending on the software you use, you might get greater value from concentrating on the processing side of your equipment.
If you want good images and good prints you really need to be able to process them carefully. This might mean expensive software. It almost certainly means calibrating your monitor effectively.
Many of the emails I received about the Photo Project surprised me. People were using more expensive processing software than I envisaged, or they were considering going up market. But when software such as Photoshop, Aperture and Lightroom costs so much , how on earth do you go about deciding what to invest in?
But before I move on just a few words of support for those of you who don’t want to spend a fortune.
A budget System
It is still possible to develop a reasonable processing, and workflow, system with affordable software. I reckon you need something to index your collection with and something to process your images with. And you might find that you can get away with the same piece of software.
Adobe Photoshop Elements will allow you to both catalogue and process your images. Photoshop CS4 also does the same things. Elements, though, will cost you about £55 (Amazon) while the full version will cost you £550 from the same site!
There are other alternatives. Expression Media (now a Microsoft product) is a pretty good indexing/library product and has some useful processing tools, although a little more basic. This is a better indexing tool and you pay the price for it. A full version will cost just a little under £200.
Apple users, though, are the really lucky ones. Each new Mac comes with the iLife suite which includes the iPhoto application. Each year this gets more and more powerful. The package incorporates both processing tools and indexing tools.
In reality iPhoto really caters for the casual home snapper and you would probably want to explore one of the products above, all of which are available for Apple’s OSX operating system.
So, you might not need — or even want — to spend more. But if you really want to get the most out of your processing there are other options and I’ll talk about them in this short series of add-ons to the Photo Project.
Calibrating Your Monitor
Whether you are working at the cheaper or the most expensive end of things you will need to calibrate your monitor. Computer monitors do not represent the colour scheme of your camera or your software. For example, new monitors often have a tint pre-set which is far too blue — because this looks great in the store!
Without monitor calibration you are working in the dark. It doesn’t matter how expensive your camera is, or your software is If you are processing your images you simply won’t be able to see an accurate representation (on the screen) of what you will see when the print comes back from the printing company.
So, I’ll start with calibration. I’ll then move on to look at high end processing software. I know we’ve touched on this before, but it is worth a more detailed look. Finally, I’ll look at some of the specialist print companies that are out there that will really help you do justice to your favourite shots when you want to hang them on the wall. Oh, and before we go I’ll also look at some of the sites that now allow you to share your images with others.
Reader’s Comments