Picture Stories by Stephen Alvarez

Printing in the digital age

In Paris I had 50 photos of this lemur printed for a NG advertising event and now at home I've had some big (6+ feet long) prints made. Printing has been on my mind a lot lately. 

Whether I'm are using a professional lab or my office printer there are a couple of color management tricks I use to get the best results possible.

preparing Paris presentation, no files... dropbox to the rescue

I've agreed to do a presentation for NGM's Parisian advertisers this coming week. So here I am sitting in Paris and I can't find all the image files I need. It is the weekend, there is no one in my office back in Tennessee, no one at the office in Washington. What do I do?

Well, I logged onto my desktop machine in TN using screen sharing, found the right images, resized them remotely and then saved them into a Dropbox folder. They appear almost instantly on my laptop drive in Paris. Now I can put them into the keynote address just as easily as if I was still in my office.

If you aren't using Dropbox, you should give it a try. 

-Stephen Alvarez

Paris

Any experience with the Drobo Elite?

I have to upgrade storage soon, does anyone have any experience with the Drobo elite Storage Array?

What I am carrying, making life easier on assignment

Not a sexy picture I know but what a photographer carries on assignment and how he (or she) carries it is critically important. This is a quick shot of today's lighting equipment. An elinchrom ranger quadra pack, 2 heads, cords, radios, canon 580 EXII and a coollights 256 led light with a battery back all fit comfortably into a Pelican 1510 case. 

The 1510 is great ($156 here). Its a roller case and I use it to bring my cameras onto the plane (it fits in the overhead bin). In Paris out come the cameras and in go a day's lights.

Ok time to wake up the writer and head to a Nazi bunker.

Have a great weekend.

-Stephen Alvarez

Paris

 

Dropbox online backup

I just signed up for Dropbox. It is a free way to back up and share important files across distance and computers. 

-Stephen Alvarez

Magic Lantern, taking the plunge with the 5D MK II

Ok I just took the plunge and loaded Magic Lantern into one of my 5d MK II's. I don't have a field mixer. So I am just running the sound through my Zoom H4n and back into the camera with a double male mini phone plug. Initial test?

Its awesome. 

I'll shoot a little with it this weekend and see how it works.

-Stephen Alvarez

Zoom h4n recorder field update -Sound Machines continued-

Zoom H4n Update

Back in September I compared the Sony PCM D50 and the Zoom H4n field recorders (here). At the time I’d had the Zoom about a week, was impressed with the features and audio quality but couldn’t speak to its reliability in the field.

Well after a hard trip to Uganda/Sudan I have to say its performance in the field is stellar. I’m listening to the audio now. The quality is very good and most importantly the recorder survived the abuse. 

The recorder is just the right size. It fits in the outside pocket of a Domke F2 bag. It is always handy.

Canon 7D wish list

 Canon is coming out with a new aps sized camera the 7D. There are few of them floating around now -I have heard that Lauren Greenfield was testing one last week.

The camera builds on the success of the wildly popular video functions found in the 5D MK II. Most impressively you will now be able to change frame rates 24p, 25p, 30p (all at 1080HD) and get this 50p and 60p (but only in 720HD). Wow very cool!

If this is like most canon products the hardware is by now set but the firmware is still being tweaked so let me tell Canon what is on my firmware wish list:

1 fix the 5D MK II's achilles heel, it wretched, wretched sound recording. It doesn't need a new sound card just let me set the levels manually, I'll use my own  preamp. 

2 give me a live histogram while recording. With the 5d mk II I can't tell if the video is properly exposed while shooting. Just looking good in the viewfinder isn't good enough give me a histogram. There is a work around -shoot a short clip of the scene then when viewing in the viewfinder hit the info button for a histogram- but a live one would be much better.

While I like what the majic lantern guys are doing (here) I'd like to see these 2 little things taken care of at Canon.

preorder the camera here

-Stephen Alvarez

field recorders: Sony vs Zoom

Sound, as a photographer there was a time not too long ago when I didn’t think at all about sound. But now, I have to think about it a lot. Publishing on the web means putting sound as well as images on the screen. The new dimension means adding new machines. Here are 2 field recorders that I like the Sony PCM-D50 (about $460 ) and the Zoom H4n (about $300 ). Both are small, and light weight, both of them can make stunning field recordings, both take AA batteries and are easy to use.

First things first, I have used the Sony for a year and used the ZOOM for about a week.  So lets start with the Sony:

Printing, why is it so hard?

Inkjet printers have gotten fantastic. I use an Epson Pro 3800 in my office and it is a stunning machine. Rich colors, and  great set of media to print on. 

But printing -consistently- is hard. Why?

In short it is because too many things want to manage our color. Photoshop does, color-sync does, Epson does. And if we let them we'll get great results once bad results the next time. That makes it very hard to adjust your prints.

So how to get good, consistent, results?