Digital Photography and Computers

[dfreeman]

Digital Photography is a wonderful thing. It allows you to take you photographs and do the complex darkroom functions on a computer and get great results. 8)

Now I am sure that I will hear from some that this manupulation of image is wrong and bad. ;D This can be debated endlessly. For a good discussion on this subject, reference Jack and Sue Drafahl, "Digital Imaging for the Underwater Photographer", Amherst Media, 2002. This book covers this debate better than I can and provides a great reference for Digital image taking, editing and storage.

What I will try to do is show things that can be done with images and get some discussion going on picture techniques. Should spark a little debate and we may learn a few things.

Two areas that come up often is editing software and how to keep track of all of those pictures.

For editing I use Adobe Photoshop CS. Not cheap, ??? but it is powerful and the CS version is relatively user friendly, which was not true in the past. There are a number of one-step functions on this software that do a great job on digital photographs and underwater pictures in particular. If you want to try this software there is a 30-day free download of the full version from Adobe at their web site .

However, not all people are willing to get Photoshop CS. What have other users been working with?

I have a library of 8,000 pictures :o that I have taken since I went digital 2 years ago. About half are underwater pictures. This became a major storage and retreival issue. I have been using Adobe Photoshop Ablum to keep this all straight. This software has worked well for me. Anyone using any other software?

Lets hear some feedback.

Doug

[scubert]

I think the debate over digital vs film is just plain silly. That would be like people arguing that we should use silverplate instead of regular film because regular film is cheating, as the exposure times are so much faster.

The camera and the media are simply tools, some tools make jobs easier, but it's the skill of the photographer that is still needed to make the tools work properly.

The argument about 'digital darkrooms' and image manipulation being in some way 'dishonest' is a silly one for anybody that's ever spent time in a real film darkroom. If people think there is no manipulation of the image going on in 'real' darkrooms, they are truly clueless. The computer is again, just a tool that makes some of this work easier.

All that being said, here are a few of the things I use in my never-ending quest to take a picture that isn't of a fish's butt (and those of you who shoot underwater know what I'm talking about)
Olympus 4040Z camera in Oly PT-010 housing (this may change after last trips problems) >
Photoshop 5.0 as the primary editing tool.

I don't really have a specific system for cataloging my pix, I arrange them by trip for major stuff, and generally by theme for the everyday 1 shot here, 1 shot there kind of stuff. I also have a folder for images that have been re-sized for the internet.

Storage is currently on my 40gb harddrive, but I back everything up on 2 cds, one set handy and one set in a safe deposit box. Crashes happen fairly frequently on windows computers, and you wouldn't want to lose years worth of images in one quick (and horrible) second :o

[scubert]

To pick up where I left off on the B&W pix thread. This is one of the coolest things about digital over film. You can shoot in color all day, and pick out the stuff that you want in B&W. This is much more difficult to do with film. Making a B&W print from a color negative generally leads to very muddy, low contrast prints. It's also worlds easier to give the contrast a little 'push' with the variations tool in Photoshop. Rather than having to expose the print for longer and goof with various burn and dodge techniques, you can simply select the area you need and boost or reduce the highs or lows. This works very well with color too.

On a side note, computer darkrooms pollute a WHOLE lot less than real darkrooms. Pictures don't appear magically, they require LOTS of chemicals that you don't necessarily want absorbed into your skin, or in your drinking water either