PMB

I never encountered DEC tapes with VAXen, only with PDPen. Our CS department had a PDP 11/34 but lacked the funding to purchase a proper O/S. One of the faculty was reading a Bell Labs Journal - a small blue, soft cover - which include an paper about the development of a new O/S that happened to run on PDP 11 systems. For the mere amount of $100 USD and a RK07 disk pack - which would be returned - one could have a copy of the work-in-progress. That is how we began with UNIX. A couple years later we git our for VAX 1//780 (and an early edition of BSD when it was ported to VAX) - we couldn't even afford a full MB of memory (yet).

Yeah, way off topic - I'll let it go for now.

Peter

Do you remember DEC tapes? Linear storage medium with a directory structure? They didn't hold a lot of information but it was fun watching them spin forward and backward seeking a specific block on the tape.

An then much much later DLT... another great evolution of tape storage.

Peter

I did not know that trick. Neat.

My introduction to programming was CS2601, a FOTRAN service course for non majors. Also my introduction to the KP29 which I used for a couple of assignments until I decided there must be a better way - I saw other people using teletype 33 and that looked more interesting. And so I moved from keypunch on IBM to teletype 33 on PDP 11/70 RSTS/E. And a crash course in timesharing, editing, file management, compiling, and linking loading .. and if lucky execution.

A couple summers later and I had a summer job in the medical school as a programmer. There was a matronly woman who was the keypunch operator and man, were her fingers quick. She worked off a large pad with a steel ruler if keep her place on the paper, and touch-typed to punch cards.

Here's the point of my post ... after she punched a set of cards she would then verify them using a verifier. This device amazed me. It appeared to be an exact copy of a KP29 (and maybe it was just a KP29 with a different setup, I don't know) but it did not actually punch holes in the card. The keypunch operator would load the freshly punched cards in the hopper and type them all again, hopefully without making any mistakes. And if a mistake had happened with the first punching, then a mark would be placed at that column on that card indication a verification mismatch. Wow. When I first saw this in action it blew my mind. What a concept.

Peter

I was told (I don't know whether it is true) that a reasonable substitute for hypo clearing agent is seawater. I spent a summer as a teenager back in '76 on a remote island without electricity, roads, or running water. And I rolled my own film (Ilford BW), shot, processed and contract printed in a dark closet of a 100 year old house. And I rinsed my film in sea water and then well water. I still have those negative somewhere in my basement. I took some out a couple years ago and they still have an image, they don't look as if there is any contamination on them, but I don't even suspect they are archival in any sense of the word.

Peter

If I may draw a comparison with ACR, which I believe uses the same processing (develop) engine as Lr, there is some degree of control. With ACR we have the Detail panel and can apply sharpening and NR (and suddenly now AI NR too!). That is the first line of attack. And then with masking we can apply localize sharpening and NR, albeit the controls and parameters are a bit different from the Detail panel. And the localized sharpening and NR are cumulative, so you can paint in more or less and layer up several applications.

While Adobe are not explicit in their documentation of the Detail panel as to the order in which NR and/or sharpening are applied, I think that there is a clear ordering between the Detail panel and the localized (masking) NR and/or sharpening.

Just my thoughts and opinions,
Peter

As I understand (and I may be wrong) most sharpening and noise reduction methods work to some degree at cross purposes. I say most because recent NR tools seem to be addressing this short coming. What I have read suggests that if possible you do not want to sharpen noise, so apply some NR before sharpening is desirable. And also if possible limit the sharpening to areas that need it, i.e. edges, and NR to areas that need it, i.e. smooth surfaces like skies. And there maybe more than one step in the workflow where NR or sharpening is required.

Peter

Sorry, I don't see anything. What are a lot of fun?

Peter

Yup, some of these Categories (? Forums) seem pretty sparse. I've been tracking a couple that have no, or little, active posting while the related Forum back in DPReview is still quite active. I guess (hopefully - not that I am hoping for the demise of DPReview) that traffic here will pick once DPReview is locked down. I'd just like to see every one settle down at a common site to get the best participation again.

Nice diving shots BTW. I'm not a diver, not even a swimmer, but I can appreciate your work - keep them coming,

Peter

Thanks. Yes I have seen, and briefly used a lightbox. Our woodturners guild like to post samples of members projects on Facebook and so one guy at our meetings uses a small portable light box and a couple fixed "hot" (?) lights. The one you pointed to is 35 by 35 by 35, maybe just a tad bigger than the one he uses. The lights he uses do not have enough lumens for what I want. My brief use was one meeting he was away and he asked me to handle the photography for him and he lent me his light box. So the little experience I had there let me see what I liked or didn't like about light boxes. They are limited in space so if we had a bigger item or maybe a set of several items (for one picture) the box could become crowded and lighting then suffered a bit. But definitely along the lines of what I was considering.

An example of one I took, lacking any experience.

[]

Thanks,
Peter

EDIT: the picture I posted disappeared for some reason that I don't understand.

Thanks. I think I found him. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef1ammJiPE0
That's a bizarre camera he is using. He mounts it on a tripod and then types on the keyboard. I wonder if there is any shaking. There are a couple other videos there as well that I will check out.

Peter

Ah, yes. Another learning curve. I spend too much time reading and not enough time trying.

Maybe my backyard will do. Lots of trees, and sun when it shines. Once the snow is gone.

Thanks,
Peter

Thanks. I'll bookmark that site and check it out.

Peter

Kind of like "Cheer up, things could be worse. So I cheered up, and sure enough things got worse."? Or maybe "Ignorance is bliss"?

Jim, you've written a lot there. I don't know how to interpret it. I was trying be encouraging to Alex. Did you take exception to my response? You quoted some of it. I try to expand my knowledge, but I'm not as fast as I used to be and I find I can get lost in reading and (trying) to learn and I end up missing the point - not enough doing, not enough practice, not putting that reading to use. I need to spend more time acquiring experience.

Anyway I don't want a long banter - I just didn't get the point of your reply. sorry.

Peter

Hi Alex.

I am not any kind of expert - photography is a hobby and a life long learning journey for me. I have dabbled with Photoshop since CS3. I shoot raw (Nikon NEF files) and so I use ACR for the demosaicing step, and for all the basic adjustments like WB, contrast, saturation etc. Anything that needs more complex masking or layers or compositing I go to Photoshop. And I do perform some degree of capture sharpening in ACR. I used to find ACR a good starting point for global adjustments, but since Lightroom came on the scene and Adobe has converged both ACR and the Lightroom develop function, they have also greatly enhanced the abilities of local adjustments in both - so much so that I find I am doing more in ACR and less in Photoshop. Layers are big reason I still go to Photoshop, and plugins like the DXO Nik collections too.

I think (just my opinion) that there are no hard and fast rules. If you find a workflow that produces the results you like, and with repeatable success, then do what you do and enjoy the process and the results.

Peter

I have mostly shot landscapes. I take my camera outdoors and shoot what I see. But occasionally I need to take pictures of inanimate objects, tabletop, and I try to use either natural lighting from a window and/or a flash. I'm also a hobby woodworker and like to photograph my woodworking projects when they are complete. I am not satisfied with my results to date taking such pictures, and I feel like inadequate lighting is a large part of my frustration. I basically don't know anything about adapting the light conditions to what I want or need. Beyond a simple flash unit, that I use so rarely that I have to go back to square one each time, I have no lighting equipment.

So where do I begin? Are there any good sites or books to start with? That would help me understand photographic lighting? The range of equipment - even the terminology is strange to me. I'd like to try using multiple flashes off camera, but I don't even know how they might be supported (stands? mini-tripod?).

All of my interest is non-professional. I am a retired hobbyist.

Thanks,
Peter

I am trying to keep an open mind, to give it chance and get acquainted with this new site. I'd really like it to take off and at least approximate what we had with DPReview, the forums that is. But man, I'm struggling. And I didn't even realize until I had cause to visit another forum - the one for Macrium Reflect support, which is also community driven - and then it hit me. So much easier to create and follow a thread there.

Hope things improve here. And thanks to everyone for taking the time and effort.

Peter

Maybe here...