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 One of the things I enjoy is my daily read of the Consumerist website. In this piece - Do You Suffer From CLH? (Consumer Learned Helplessness), they write, in part: After getting shocked from every angle for so long, with credit cards' shrinking due dates, flagrant violations of our privacy, rebate scams as acceptable business models, and "it's company policy" as the magic wand to excuse it any time a company screws us, that we just lie down and accept it. So too, does this apply to photographers. (Continued after the Jump)
Thus, I've evolved the term from CLH to PLH, or, Photographer Learned Helplessness.
When your client, or a proposed client says things like:- You're the first photographer who's ever raised a question about our contract
- We require original receipts for all expenses
- Our contract is non-negotiable. We haven't modified it for anyone else, so we can't for you, sorry.
- Of course we own the reprint rights to the photos and article. We paid you for the assignment.
- We can't pay in 30 days. I know your contract that we signed says that, but we pay in 90 days.
- We can't promise adjacent photo credit, or that it will be accurate, but we'll do our best.
- We don't pay a digital processing fee. Don't do any processing, just burn the photos to a CD and send it to us. My assistant can pick out the photos and work on them.
Simply just laying down and accepting eggregious terms is what results from PLH. It's as if there are no clients out there who you think respect you, and so you just have to take whatever scraps and morsels of assignment work this client has.
Don't believe these things. I have drawers full of contracts from clients that counter the above. I have FedEx receipts from clients who paid in 30 days (and I have collected administrative fees for those who have not paid within 30 days). I have clients who respect me and what I bring to the table. Did they take time to become my regular clients? Sure. And I surely declined assignment offers where the deal did not show me the respect that a reasonable person should expect.
Avoid PLH. Don't accept deals you know are bad. Sometimes it's easier than others. But in the long run, it's what will sustain you.
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On Friday, an e-mail notice from long-time stock photography promoter Rohn Engh arrived in my inbox. Over the weekend, I finally got around to reading their issue - PhotoResearcher Newsletter, which includes a front page piece by noted attorney Joel Heckler. I read the piece. And, sadly, there's a number of erroneous conclusions in the piece. This is an example of how people come to conclusions that are not based upon a studied reading of the proposed legislation. (Continued after the Jump)
Hecker's first statement that jumps out as erroneous is that he writes:In March 2008, Congress revisited the issue with the filing of a 19 page bill in the Senate and a 20 page bill in the House of Representatives. These initial bills were substantially similar. Anyone who's read the bills will tell you that the House bill is considered the one with all the photo-centric considerations, and the Senate bill is considered the "clean" bill. All of the input by visual artists' groups (including ASMP and PPA) had an impact on the House version, allowing for "useful articles", and so forth. The Senate bill doesn't have all these accomodations. To suggest that they are "substantially similar" is inaccurate especially when ASMP is the only photo trade organization that supports the House's 5/8 version (PPA isn't supporting it, they are just not opposing it - there is a nuanced difference), and many outside of the photo industry are supporting the Senate version, but there isn't a photo group that is. That, in and of itself, should validate the notion that they are not "substantially similar."
Heckler goes on:The overriding concept of the 2008 bills is that a potential user of an Orphan Work must identify the Work, conduct a good faith diligent search for the copyright owner, and failing to find the owner, file a notice of use with the Copyright Office prior to using the Orphan Work. Unfortunately, this isn't accurate either. Just the House version of the bill has this as a "possible" final requirement. The Senate version does not include this. The American Library Association is fighting against this provision of the Senate version, so it could well be removed from the final version of the bill. But, to pluralize the word "bill" and suggest that both "bills" have this language is just not accurate.
There continue to be highly regarded and very public members of the photographic community that are suggesting things in the Orphan Works bill versions that just aren't there. Other notables are telling us these bills are going to pass, and that it's the best we can hope for, or else it will get worse next time. Heckler surely is a highly regarded and substantive contributor to our community. Unfortunately, his commentary and conclusions in this piece are, in several places, just inaccurate. And, where Heckler is accurate, his omission of multiple significant issues does much to minimize the sweeping changes that the proposed Orphan Works legislation seeks to make. Thus, many readers could be caused, as a result of his commentary that barely scratches the surface of these issues, to conclude that the proposed new law isn't such a big deal.
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I've been trying to get worked up and excited about the $12M verdict that everyone is so excited about (Carolyn Wright's Posting - Photographer Gets $12 Million Verdict!!! , 6/21/08), but much of me can't. I've been thinking about this for the past few days. First, the part of me that can - yes, anytime someone is punished for the theft of someone else's intellectual property, and the reason that the win occurs is because of the proper business practices (i.e. copyright registration in this case), I am happy for them. (Continued after the Jump)
That said, here are a few sobering facts. The McDonalds $3M hot coffee incident (and no, I'm not referring to the GTA Hot Coffee incident) was quietly slashed by more than two-thirds, and further, settled, in the end, for reportedly much less than that. The $5B fine against Exxon for their oil spill ended up being much much less, in the end. (to read more, go here for both).
Thus, I expect that a $12M verdict will find it's way to a much much smaller number. Either through bankruptcy, an appeal, or some other meandering loophole.
Carolyn Wright does an excellent job of laying out how the whole thing went down on her blog, and it's worth a read. I get excited when I read about things like Chase Jarvis making headway in a battle with K2 (JARVIS V. K2, 6/26/2007), and other cases where the party doing the wrong-doing turns up. Sadly, this is not the case. The party didn't show up. Didn't respond. It was like the ball players for the scheduled weekly game didn't turn up and thus the tick in the win column was by default, and the referee called a forfeit.
Now, photographers might find themselves with up against the use of a $12M verdict for 7 images as being an example by those looking to diminish the value of copyright as to just how bad the current state of copyright is, and why wholesale reform needs to take place, with more images available for pennies on the dollar, or no pennies at all.
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 With great thanks to Rob Haggart over at A Photo Editor for bringing to the fore PixChannel, with so many great features about photographers. What this reminded me of was the work and efforts of David Snyder, in the same vein, but with a plus. Snyder, interviewed for ABC's Nightline here about his style, worked with Jonathan Torgovnik on Bollywood Dreams, several from David Alan Harvey, among them Hip Hop Planet, Karen Ballard in The Girl Who Shot Saddam, Brooks Kraft for Behind the Scenes at the White House, Carol Guzy's Saved From the Streets, and Melina Mara's Women in the U.S. Senate. There are dozens of others, all available at The Photography Channel. (Comments, if any, after the Jump)
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 Recently, there's been a great deal of discussion about working for free over at the SportsShooter website - ( Working for free, Working for Free - Part 2, Unpaid spreading like the Flu, When is it ok to work for free) , and over at the Photo District News forums - This industry sucks with low ball photographers. We were also critical of doing so with Cal Sports Media (Speculative Photography - The SPEC-agency's Mentality, 10/23/07) on the subject. Appeals abound even on Craigslist - HELP! If you have access to a favorite sport; or " Compensation will be a commemorative t-shirt and a ticket to the banquet..." and they go on and on. I hear a great deal from photographers who are asked to work for free, or whom were replaced by someone willing to work for photo credit, and paying to shoot something (by way of paying un-reimbursed expenses associated with the no fee shoot). Re-enter US Presswire. We were critical of their contract and business dealings ( US Presswire - Introduction, 7/27/07) last Summer. Now, it looks as if they're running into problems with getting enough free photographers to work for them. Here's the letter, which went out from Bob Rosato, Founder, President, and owner of US Presswire: (Continued after the Jump)
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Greetings to all-
I mentioned to you all in a previous email we have several new deals in the hopper. Some of these deals and some we want to work on require us as an
organization to have enough day to day coverage to package for those deals.
In the fall, many photographers will come back and be ready for football coverage. We are in need of more day to day baseball coverage. But some
have not committed to shooting much if any baseball or other events in the respective areas.
What this will ultimately cause is us not to have teams credential us for playoffs, or possibly the following year. We don’t need to cover every game
every day, but we need more. If we bring in new people who are committed to shooting baseball and other events, then come time for football both college and pro, we have to give them consideration in areas where photographers are shooting very little if at all.
If any of you have questions about this, you need to get with me or Dan. But we need to be more aggressive with our coverage overall. We’d rather
have your help to do this in our MLB cities, but if we cant accomplish the goal with you, we have to look elsewhere for help and the will jeopardize
football credentials come fall because we are not going to over saturate any area and we’ll only get so many passes. Our relationship with the NFL and
the schools has improved over the years and we expect bigger things this year.
Everyone in the MLB markets needs to step it up a bit so we can continue to put packages together for sales potential as well as the deals we have in
place. Once again, I assure you we are working long and hard hours to resolve issues and we need your help as well.
I cannot emphasize how strong our placement in the market is becoming and the pending deals we have going on will excite everyone once they are
closed. I need to hear from you.
Thanks for everything!
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At what point does the fun of shooting a professional sports game from the sidelines wear off? After the last free hotdog/soda voucher? When you realize you've paid $200 in parking in recent months and not even seen $50 as your portion of sales? When your image that ran in X publication just included the "Photo: US Presswire" and not your name, so you couldn't brag about it to your friends? When the sales you "received" were reversed as they were actually part of a promotional deal with the publication to try to get them to sign a deal?
It seems, from the USPW letter, that there are a lot of fans of football. Why might this be? Perhaps for the weekend/evening games, allowing for a "day job" during the week to subsidize the weekend warrior-photographer thing? Perhaps it's that there are 4 pre-season games and about 16 other games, from August through December, as compared to about 162 for baseball during their season. That means it's probably pretty hard to get someone to work for free for 81 days a year, on top of their day job! (as if 1/2 of the games are at home). And this doesn't even take into consideration all the other sporting events - college/etc, they no doubt want you to cover as well.
The hook is that if you put in your time - "If we bring in new people who are committed to shooting baseball and other events, then come time for football both college and pro, we have to give them consideration in areas where photographers are shooting very little if at all." then the rub is this -- your time shooting for free a sport which you've previously not been interested in, will give you priority for the few football games you actually are interested in. Then he goes on to say "if we cant accomplish the goal with you, we have to look elsewhere for help and the will jeopardize football credentials come fall because we are not going to over saturate any area." So, if you won't work for free now, we'll find someone who will, and then they'll get first priority for the free press credentials for football.
Between Major League Baseball, and Major League Football, covering these sporting events for free, for the purpose of getting a credential is just not a wise move. Instead, if USPW provided a guarantee for every game covered, of, say $400, plus they covered the expenses, that would begin to be reasonable. This way, they guaranteed you $400, and if your images earned less than that FROM THAT GAME, you still kept the money for your efforts. If you earned more than the $400, you still got your share. This is a common pricing structure for Time/Warner properties, like Time magazine, so it's surely not foreign to someone on staff at another Time/Warner property - Sports Illustrated - Bob Rosato - who also wrote this e-mail as a part of his role with USPW - Owner, President, and founder.
It's one thing to shoot for peanuts when you're a stay-at-home-mom making photos while your child naps, or you file your images from your vacation with a microstock house for a few bucks of spending money down the line, but to commit days and days worth of work with little hope of compensation is just going to wear thin sooner rather than later.
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 A funny thing happened on the way to a client meeting today. I had just departed my office when the phone rang. A longtime client that I hadn't heard from in years. He'd found my images of Tim Russert in the Digital Railroad marketplace, where I had forgotten I had released them after a magazine cover assignment two years ago. Along with those were images of Tim and his son Luke, at a launch party for an endeavor Luke was involved in. The client wanted to know if I had any other images I hadn't put up. " Yes, I do", I said. The client said " well, we're closing the book in an hour, can we see them?" (Continued after the Jump)
"Sure" I responded, wheeling around an intersection three blocks from my house. I knew I had about 10 minutes of buffer in my trip downtown if I was to make that meeting. I quickly located the images on my local server, using PhotoMechanic, uploaded 45 images to my archive, and sent the group of images direct to the client (and submitted the additional images to the Marketplace!). I hopped back into the truck and made my meeting on-time.
Along the way, I called the client. "Did you get the shots?"
"Yes", came the response. "I'll let you know which one the editor chose in about an hour, we are able to download them directly, I see."
Cha-ching! There's about five months worth of Digital Railroad's monthly charge covered, with one image license. And, I booked the downtown client to boot!
 On another note - It's been a full 10 days for me, and one thing that came over the transom that excited me, but that I've not yet written about, is that Digital Railroad has broadly adopted the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS) for image licensing. They were already using it in a limited capacity, but it's now an integral part of their licensing process. (Digital Railroad Expands Its Use of PLUS Licensing Standards, 6/5/08)
 I can't stress enough the importance of everyone playing by the same rule-book, and using the same dictionary. That is what PLUS is. PLUS is free to photographers to use. So to for designers who can specify the PLUS Pack they want (i.e. all commercial use, book cover, book inside, and so forth), and you know what you're licensing, and there's no confusion.
Using PLUS is so easy, ( to quote the Lenox Financial guy from his ads) "it's the biggest no brainer in the history of Earth." I am pleased to see Digital Railroad taking a leading role and joining in with the many other organizations that are bringing clarity to the Tower of Babel that was image licensing.
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 So, how many times have you seen a stupid handshake photo? How many times can you look at a goldfish in a bowl on white seamless and want to hurl? Where's the variety? The creativity? The unique perspective? To solve this creative malaise, Photoshelter is teaming up with Adorama, Nikon, and Apple with their version of "America 24/7" called " Shoot! The Day", which, considering the possibility of it's success, is aptly titled to handle "Shoot! The Day II", all the way through to MMVII, if they're so inclined. It's as if we're going from Before Quality Content (B.Q.C.) To After Quality Content (A.Q.C.), so, let's just shorten it to B.C. and A.C. As if we're in an extended period of Tribulation prior to the big day, July 20th is the rapture where all will descend, worldwide, cameras in hand, in response to the siren songs of over 700 photo buyers, editors, and art directors who report, through extensive research done by Photoshelter, that the repetitive imagery that photo buyers are seeing has them, well, seeing red. (Continued after the Jump)
Unlike the iStockPhoto - iStockalpyse (The iStockalypse, 8/30/07), where photographers gather, and create images that will sell for pennies on the dollar, likely not covering their cabfare to the event (let alone airfare if they flew), Photoshelter's photographers have a high probability of earning back the cost of their efforts, and there's no modified fee-split for images resulting from this event, but significant underwriting and promotion from the Photoshelter folks.
Further, this ain't no "shooting spec" roundup either. Shooting spec is when you have a prospective client who should be paying an assignment fee for work they need, but instead, farm it out on spec. That scheme died with OnRequest's attempt (OnRequest - Realizing the Obvious, 7/12/07), just doesn't work, and I've written about before (Just Say "No", Just So Oversimplified, 2/16/07|| Spec Comparative to Salary, 7/7/07). This ain't that. One of my agencies, back in the day, had a list of images that they didn't have, and they put it out to the photographers they represented, once a month. It wasn't a "shoot this on spec for this client" list, since that request had not been filled, and the deadline was past. it was a "this request came in, or has come in more than once, and each time we have no images to fulfill it. We're guessing that if you produce it, we can license it to a future client" list. Here, Photoshelter has gathered a collection of top-notch photo editors and buyers, and are taking concrete action based upon their feedback.
So, for all you stock photographers out there producing prosaic imagery, recall the sentiment from an early Indiana Jones, who said "only the penitent shall pass". Go, be penitent, renounce the sins of paltry photography, and produce great imagery. I sense that this is one STD you may want to catch.
For more information, visit Shoot! The Day, over at PhotoShelter.
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A review of Day 3, and the overall 2008 Festival of the Photograph - "Look3", which took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. A link to all the videos is after the jump. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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An interview with photographers Steve Winter and Bill Frakes about their use of Apple's Aperture program to manage their images and Apple's involvement in the 2008 Festival of the Photograph, in Charlottsville, Virginia. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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An interview with Mike Sheras of Canon about their printers and contributions to Yourspace and Canon's involvement in the 2008 Festival of the Photograph, in Charlottsville, Virginia. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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(Additional videos after the Jump)
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An interview with Scott McKiernan at the 2008 Festival of the Photograph, in Charlottsville, Virginia. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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A look at the Yourspace, Canon, and Apple space where photographers may bring their own prints or have Canon print them, to display. In addition, space set aside for Apple for hands-on classroom presentations of their Aperture program were all well received. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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An interview with Paula Bronstein about her return from covering the Chinese earthquake disaster, at the 2008 Festival of the Photograph. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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A wrapup of the second day of the Festival of the Photograph, in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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An interview with Festival of the Photograph Master of Ceremonies Vincent J. Musi, and Jean-Francois Leroy, Founder and Director of 'Visa Pour l'Image', held each year in Perpignan France. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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An interview with photographer David Alan Harvey about the Festival of the Photograph and his emerging photographers program. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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Featured photographer Mary Ellen Mark talks about her work, and being at the Festival in this interview. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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Michael "Nick" Nichols, co-founder of the Festival of the Photograph discusses the origins of the Festival, last year's inaugural event, and how the event has evolved this year, and his plans for coming years. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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The images that annotate and bring to life the downtown area of Charlottesville are one of the most amazing visual presentations I have seen. This report gives you a tempting taste of the imagery that is everywhere. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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Here's a brief look at the Festival's amazing offerings on day 1, as well as a few thoughts from attendees and luminaries. Hit the jump for interviews with William Albert Allard, Jamie Rose, Allison Shelley, and Sarah Voisin. (Additional videos after the Jump)
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 We're headed to the Festival of the Photograph for the next few days, and hope to file video reports and interviews from there. Back in February ( Festival of the Photograph 2008, 2/5/08) we reported on it's 2008 lineup, and certainly found the 2007 inaugural Festival to be invigorating ( Showing the Love, 6/11/07). If you're in the area, head on over to Charlottesville, Virginia for The Festival of the Photograph, running through this Saturday night. If you're not, we'll bring you some of the highlights. (Comments, if any, after the Jump)
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For the past 9 years, I have been engaged in the painstaking process of converting analog images to digital. We've scanned, outsourced, and otherwise processed negatives and slides, from 35mm to 4x5, even a few 6cmx17cm panoramic transparencies. Over time, lt's been a major project. We certainly have been happy with the turnkey results from JaincoTech ( Jaincotech, 11/14/07). Yet, with tens of thousands of individual images we wanted to convert, we've looked internally for images that we wanted to scan ourselves. For several years now, we've used our Nikon LS-8000 scanner. The results it's produced have been great, and in a very automated fashion, albeit limited to 5 35mm slides per tray. Our early tests yielded banding and solarization, which, once we did some research (Luminous Landscape's review, and Bigger Is Sometimes Better article), we learned that those limitations could be overcome by using the multi-pass feature of the scanner (sometimes called the Superfine mode), something that wasn't a problem on the LS-9000 scanner, which addressed that known problem. This scanner yields a 120mb 16bit (I think it's actually 14bit, but who's counting), and delivers as it's baseline file a TIF. The image information in that TIF is deep, so we can go back and correct the digital image after the scanner's auto-exposure/auto-focus efforts. Yet, the serious downside to this process has been that each scan takes about 4 minutes to accomplish. How to make things faster, and more efficient? (Continued after the Jump)
With the arrival of our Nikon D3 and Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III camera last December (Nikon vs. Canon - Introduction), we revisited our options. The Canon has as it's file size from it's chip, an image comparable in pixels to the LS-8000. Again, a 60+ mb file, with a substantial bit depth. Surely, the D3 would produce amazing results too, but we're testing the Mark III because it's native file size is comparable to our scanner. Further, you may well not need a 60mb native file - instead, a 36mb native file is probably perfectly fine, and easily up-sizable to whatever size you'd need. This isn't about Canon vs. Nikon, both work for this project. Next, we began looking into macro lenses. Across the board, the 65mm 1:1 macro lens was reported to be the sharpest, albeit the most expensive, at about $865 or so for my Canon camera (Luminous Landscape's review, here). One downside of the lens though, is that if you wanted a "film-sourced" black border (i.e. capturing the film area outside of the image area), a 1:1 lens is slightly problematic.  Since almost all my images are mounted slides, this isn't an issue for me, but if you wanted to be able to pull back 1 to 2 mm to capture that film area, you might choose a different lens. However, I can see the rounded corners of the slide mounts I am copying, and since I am not un-mounting slides to digitize them, this lens is just the right choice for me. (note the corner, viewed here as a 100% view, shows even the rough edge of the paper mount, so magnified. Also note - it's an extremely sharp/defined edge, thus, in focus!)
 Content with the camera and lens choice, we needed an adapter. A little research yielded the Extend-a-Slide (PhotoSolve - Xtend-a-Slide), a machined aluminum, black anodized device that, for it's simplicity, is really well engineered. It works with step-up rings, on most any macro lens. On it's front, you can mount a magnetic adapter for strips of negatives, individual mounted slides, or a speed-loader for multiple mounted slides. On top of that, what you might first consider to be a cheap locking device - the nylon screw which locks the slide in place, is actually well considered. If there was a metal screw, the force of locking the slide would create a metal marring of the inside tube, and so, with the clearances these tubes have, that would be a problem, so the nylon screw is actually a good thing, and moreover, very strong. There are other solutions, most more expensive, some much more expensive. Peter Krogh discusses his solution - Scans and Camera Scans - Camera Scan Sample - over at the DAM Forum. I had the opportunity to look at Peter's rig, and it's hard core - definitely a rock-solid solution as well.
With those issues solved, I thought I was set. Yet, issues like slide mount depth, and proper framing, meant I had to actually look through the lens, and, with my naked eye, judge focus and framing/alignment. Not good. The naked eye, without any magnification, can get it close, but not perfect. Certainly not like we used to when mounting a negative in an enlarger and using a grain focuser, back in the day.
Enter Liveview. Now, this isn't unique to Canon, Nikon has it as well (On both the D3, and D300, as reviewed here). And, since I am manually focusing, any limitations like auto-focus not being active in liveview isn't an issue. However, I am tasked with looking at the screen on the back of the camera, and using that screen to judge. Not ergonomically the best with the camera mounted looking down, much like an old enlarger (for ease of sliding the images in and out, a la a darkroom set up), and the screen on the back of the camera is a bit small.  However, by utilizing the camera's external video jack, I can plug in a TV monitor to it, and voila! I can see my image on a large screen (I have chosen a 7" one as more than enough). Note, we're not using the abillity to see the liveview on the computer screen, as there is a mico-lag in the time from focus change to the affect appearing on the screen, so we're using the external video jack for immediate response times, as if it was on the back of the camera. This is certainly better than my naked eye in the viewfinder, and also better than the small LCD on the back of the screen. In order to best see the image,  I place a maglite 3D-cell flashlight (in an empty CD spindle) below the mount, and now I am looking at a brightly lit image on the screen, and I just remove the flashlight before I make the exposure, a move that is familiar, my muscle memory remembers the placement and removal of the 10x grain focuser I would place and remove from the easel when printing negatives. Yet, I am only seeing the image full frame.
Both Nikon and Canon allow you to zoom in when using liveview. On Nikon, once in liveview, pressing the magnifying glass button on the left of the camera, along with the thumbwheel allows you to zoom in deep into the image, a two-fingered maneuver, but easy to do. On the Canon, simply pressing the button in the center of the back wheel engages liveview, and the "+" magnifier button allows you to jump to 5x, and then 10x, to see, very critically, your image. Looking at the image, and then making a minute adjustment to the lens, I saw the grain of the image snap in, and was immediately struck with the memory of watching the grain snap into focus when looking into that old school grain focuser. It was surely a familiar feel, I almost felt giddy with the nostalgic feel. 
Further, liveview allowed me to properly center and straighten the image, when I was in full-frame liveview (i.e. not magnified), and the camera was set at iso100, f5.6, 1/250th, and with the flash at 1/2 power and the camera set to flash color balance, I am now getting amazing results. Where my focus point of a specific image isn't in the center, both cameras have joystick capabilities to navigate to the best position in the image, however, even when not zoomed in to that point, you can see the grain in focus elsewhere in the image are. Now, I am capturing these images at 4x a minute, rather than 1 every 4 minutes, a 16x speed increase. Since I am only copying properly exposed images, I don't want to use the camera/flash auto-exposure feature, so the flash is on manual. Capturing in RAW, I actually have better latitude with image information than I did with the scanner.
Lastly, the camera is connected to a computer, so the images are streamed straight to a hard drive. Once viewable in the Image Browser software, I am able to rename the original RAW file with a more meaningful file name. In post production, we'll convert this image to a DNG, applying any corrections, and embed our metadata, all in the neat wrapper that is DNG.
It was very nostalgic to have that "darkroom" feel to the process. To see the image grain, to re-experience the placement of the grain-focuser (now the illuminating flashlight), and the removal of the image, before triggering the shutter and converting, once and for all, my analog images into digital.
I am not suggesting you go out and get these cameras to do your own copywork. I am also saying you an do this with either the D3 or the EOS 1Ds Mark III (or any camera with liveview). But if you're looking for reasons to get the camera with these capabilities, and then put them to good use when you're not using them for an assignment, this is an excellent way to leverage these tools when they would otherwise be sitting on a shelf.
Now, we can finalize the conversion of our analog images, and allow us to monetize those images that have been languishing in filing cabinets, not being seen by clients.
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
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