Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/12/07
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Doug, with all respect... BS...... The average user uses D76 1:1 if he is sophisticated, and straight if he is not. The esoteric user tries Pyrocat HD in ( I forget, some other chemical....) But it is not the esoteric user that buys a M8.... It is your average every day Doctor, Lawyer or Indian Chief.... someone with financial assets to spend $5K on a digital camera to take pictures of Little Dora Sue..... ( Pink party dress and all.... ) You can always find someone who tries out some weird combination of chemistry ( I read about a guy that developed his film in coffee.....) and got a result. So what? ... Would you like to try out Vitamin C ( basis of Xtol) or Pyro ( around for roughly 100 years)......? I have heard of both used ... But SW changes faster than known chemistry changes... If you try to keep up with the technology advances, you will get mired down in trying stuff instead of making images.... and isn't that what the camera is all about Making Images? What Tina is doing is fine for Tina.... But I personally have no intention of going through 7 different SW programs and their ( 2 to the 7th or 128) combinations to find a mix that makes my M-whatever work like it is advertised. And I bet that even in the LUG, there are fewer than a handful that want to go through as much trouble as she already has..... Never mind that EACH of these programs costs money, and takes time to try out.....and will be around and supported for some indeterminate time. Mind you, Tina has not yet found the magic bullet to equal what another camera has shown is possible.... Let me say all of this some other way.... In RAW files, the data form each pixel is measured and recorded. If you view those pixels, you get an accurate rendition of what the sensor saw. Why is ANY SW tweaking necessary? Where do the original pixels go? Where do the new pixels come from? Why does program X not give the same results as program Y? I don't need this grief to take images....and most users don't want it either. The point is to make it easy for the user, the AVERAGE user. To get results like the factory claims are possible. Factory SW and no tweaks. If that does not work to the factory optimum, then the factory is missing the boat, and the users will gravitate away..... Canon or Nikon win.... AA used the film and developers that were supplied to him by his sponsors. These included Dupont, Kodak, Polaroid, and Ansco. He was a practical man that put his family first.... food on the table. Rant off..... Frank Filippone red735i@earthlink.net I think what we're seeing here is that with film lots of the poorer combinations of emulsions and development have already been tried and rejected; the process has been tested and results analyzed enough over the decades that there's already a vast body of knowledge to draw on. Digital image processing is still relatively new and with each new camera we're back at the bottom of its learning curve, just like with a new film or developer. > ... given all the different possibilities, how do you find the "best" workflow for > each? Try all the combinations out? This is exactly what Adams and many others did for film/exposure/development, and what Tina is now doing with the 5D and M8.