Digital BW, The Print

In a message dated 10/3/06 10:57:31 PM, dlruckus@... writes:


> My thought is that the out take was
> CD's way of segueing into a pitch for the latest and greatest. Clever
> promotion.
> 
Fair enough, and I'm certainly a sucker for the latest and greatest. But I 
sincerely believe that much of the impact of that image would not have been 
there if I had shot it with an earlier generation of digital camera, rather than a 
Canon full format sensor, and an L series lens, and had processed it with an 
earlier form of software, rather than a current RAW convertor, on an earlier 
generation of monitor, with older calibration, rather than a Cinema Display and 
Spyder2PRO, and most directly to the point, if I had printed it on an earlier 
generation inkjet, rather than a Z3100 through a PrintFIX PRO 2.0 profile.

> 
> Nothing wrong with the latest and greatest from my perspective---but,
> I suspect that most of those walking the halls of great museums know
> easily what they like and are impressed by, and few beyond scholars
> and artists disect the techniques and tools used.
> 
> If you would like to move back to analog, I agree that a good 8x10 shot, 
> printed at the same size, could easily have stopped the crowd walking by, but 
> that would have been quite a feat to shoot on a floating dock, and to print at 
> 3x5 foot size; and I certainly couldn't have done it in an hour, on the show 
> floor.
> 
> CD's target audience was and is already predisposed toward the new,
> but the print he mentioned must have been impressive enough on it's
> own to make people want it. I doubt greatly that a nothing ho..hum
> content would have drawn much aclaim, irrespective of technical print
> quality.
> Otherwise all would have been saying "man.I want that machine" rather
> than "I want that print".
> 
Absolutely agreed that a good image is still central, whatever the medium 
(otherwise, whats it all for?) And the image I mentioned certainly won my own 
informal popularity test, in that it was the "most stolen" image at the 
ColorVision booth. I had a hard time printing copies of it fast enough to have one left 
in the light box when I needed it. All over Europe there are now images of 
Southwest Harbor Maine, which people there are assuming are Scotland, or 
Scandinavia... 


> CD is a great contributer of his knowledge to this and other groups
> but his recompense is to gain a platform.
> 
Its more complex than that. I contribute, but I also I learn from the groups, 
and I find out from them what people are interested in, what they need, what 
they want. Then I try to find ways to meet those needs in the products I 
develop. And when, after months of not talking about products under development, I 
finally get to tell people about them, I'm sure I am overly enthusiastic about 
it. Soon enough it will be testers that are posting about PrintFIX PRO 2.0 
instead of me, and I can settle into a more comfortable position of answering 
their questions, not whipping up my own posts from scratch.

C. David Tobie
Product Technology Manager
ColorVision Business Unit
Datacolor Inc.
CDTobie@...
www.colorvision.com


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