The Holy Grail

Unbelieveable - what can I say - chuffed to bits. Having spent ages trying to get prints that match what I see on screen (often too dark or too vivid, too magenta etc) I have at last sorted it all out.

Previously I have been using a Colormunki Photo alongside my Epson R2880 and Sony Vaio Laptop. Yes I hear you shouting out there that if I had gone Mac none of this would have taken so long. I am indeed "Mac-curious", "Mac-smitten" indeed but as long as this laptop is working I struggle to justify a new OS etc. Anyhoo I was calibrating the printer to the screen with the Colormunki Photo but inevitably the laprop screen was seriously letting me down. If for example I set a brightness level when setting up the profile - the monitor could not hold that one bit.

So the solution? Just bought a Eizo CG243W from the Focus on Imaging show. Saved a few hundred quid to boot.

Lots of things changing at once however - upgraded to LR4 (with soft proofing capabilities) and have just this evening installed a Fotospeed CIS. Loving LR4 (had the beta) and cannot tell the difference (I printed some shots out with the original Epson cartidges to compare against) with Fotospeed's inks.

Have spent a while working out the workflow and in essence whether to calibrate with the Colormunki software or the ColorNavigator - have gone with Colornav in the first instance but if I need to create my own ICC profiles for papers that I cannot get one for then I will revert to Xrite's option. Good to have choices although I must admit this can be a little overwhelming at first.

Hope that might help crystallise someone else's decision making and of course if you want to know my exact settings please just ask.

Cheers

DrF

Hasselblad H3D-II 31

Ah the joys of new toys!

Have had this for a little over a week now and have done a couple of portraits for the family but today was the first chance to see how it handled against my usual 5dII.

I was shooting in a warehouse that has no power and is very dusty so I was not able to shoot tethered. As a consequence I had to use the rear screen rather more than I would have liked. Having read lots about how poor the screens on these digital backs are I can now confirm this to be true. Ok for composition but really shonky when coming to checking focus. I was ready for the narrow depth of field but would this manage with a moving/jumping dancer?

I shot mostly over f11 and as it was pretty cold and the warehouse is very close to home we all bundled back for lunch - a posh pee and coffee! Loading the images onto the laptop I could not have been happier with the results - all in focus - the continuous AF worked very well in addition to the focus and recompose. So do I feel I should have gone with the H4D - absolutely not. I picked this camera up at an absolute bargain price and am truly happy. The extra dynamic range is very noticeable and I did not miss the 5DII/85 f1.2 combo one bit.

All in all a happy man

DrF