This section is primarily intended for
other photographers who are currently sorting through equipment and software
decisions. Below is the current set of tools I use with comments.
Camera and
Lenses
Since the fall
of 2000, I've been using an all-digital workflow and have sold most of my
film and darkroom equipment. I now use the following:
Leica Digilux
1 - Review to come.
Canon 1Ds
digital SLR - This is an extraordinary camera and about the only two
negative points I could mention about it is the weight (which I've gotten
used to) and its price. It's very solid, weatherproof, has a big
bright finder, responds very quickly, makes a file that rivals medium format
film, creates very clean files from ISO 200-800 and reasonably clean files
at ISO1250. It's easily the best camera I've ever used.
What more could one want?...maybe noiseless files at ISO 6400 but otherwise
this thing is really wonderful.
Canon 20 -
35/2.8 L - This is a compact, sharp and rugged lens. It doesn't
have USM but doesn't really need it. I prefer its metal body to those
of the newer L lenses.
Canon 28 -
70/2.8 L - Heavy but very sharp and versatile. I'll replace this
with a 24-70L down the road just to gain the weather sealing.
Canon 70 -
200/4.0 L - Half the weight of the 2.8 version and just as sharp as the
70-200/2.8 L I owned briefly.
Canon 50/1.8
Mk1 - This is a little gem of a lens, very sharp and cheap although not
always easy to find. Construction quality is only average but it
hasn't failed yet.
Canon 85/1.8
- This is another reasonably priced lens which performs beautifully in all
respects.
Computers
Primary
editing computer - home-built Athlon 1.7 Ghz, 512MB DDR Ram, Matrox G4
video card, 100 Gigs. HD storage, Sony CDRW burner, Hitachi Superscan Elite 751 monitor
Laptop -
Dell Inspiron 8000, PIII/600, 128 MB RAM, 60 Gigs HD storage
Printing
Epson 1160
with CIS system - I use this with Media Street Generation 4 inks for
non-critical workprints. With a lot of profile tweaking this now
produces fairly good prints and is inexpensive to run because of the bulk
ink system.
Epson 2200
- This is an excellent printer and the output is really exceptional.
Despite lots of profile tweaking using third-party pigment inks on other
printers, no other output comes close to that of the 2200. Inks are
expensive but at least can be replaced one color at a time. This is
the device I use for final prints.
Paper -
I've tried many papers, some quite expensive, and in the end my favorites
are the Epson "Heavy Weight Matte" and Epson "Enhanced
Matte". The latter may not be as stable as some because of the
brightening agents it uses but it yields a beautiful print when used in the
2200.
Software
Adobe
Photoshop 7 - What can one say about this program that hasn't already
been said?
Adobe Camera
RAW - This and Phase One's Capture One DSLR are the best RAW file
conversion programs I've ever used. Conversion quality is superb
from both and both allow previews of modifications to RAW files in real-time
which is essential to my workflow.
Canon 1Ds
ISORpro Package -
This set of actions by Fred Miranda does what it claims to do and does it
better than anything else I've tried or cooked up on my own. I use it
on ISO800 - 1250 files.
File
Storage and a Portable Storage Device
Comparison Review
My Canon 1Ds (RAW
+ small JPEG) files run about 12 - 14 MB each and so storage in the field is an important
issue. I use a set of three 1 GB IBM microdrives and in 2 1/2 years
have never had one fail. Some photojournalists have reported that
these are not as sturdy/reliable as solid state CF cards but I've yet to
experience a problem.
Three 1-Gig
microdrives create about enough storage for 230 files which isn't always
sufficient for my average day of shooting. To supplement that "in
the field" storage I tested three portable hard drive units designed
for photographers and bought the unit I thought performed best overall. All
three are basically variations on the same idea which is to combine a CF
card reader with a notebook sized hard drive using a simple processor and
operating system to transfer files and accomplish a few other very basic
tasks. All three devices run on an included rechargeable battery pack
or AC. The SuperDigibin also includes a 12-volt car adapter
which is very handy to have. The three devices I tested were the:
40 GB Leading
Spec SuperDigibin - available from InsideComputer
for $350.00
30 GB Delkin
Picture Pad with Firewire adaptor - available from Delkin
for $740.00 or from other sources for about $660.00
40 GB Workbit
Tripper - available from InsideComputer
for $330.00
First, the
numbers from my casual testing...
| |
Transfer
968MB RAW
files from 1GB IBM
Microdrive to storage unit
minutes:seconds |
Transfer
968MB RAW
files from storage unit to
Desktop PC (see above)
minutes:seconds |
GBs downloaded
per battery charge
|
Card
Reader Mode
Transfer
968MB RAW & JPEG
files directly from 1GB IBM
Microdrive to
Desktop PC
minutes:seconds |
| Tripper |
11:56 |
1:04 |
3.4 GB |
5:13 |
|
Delkin
with
Firewire |
12:03 |
2:02 |
3.3 GB |
no card
reader mode |
|
Super
Digibin |
6:30 |
30 mins., approx. |
not tested |
not tested |
Timings were
from the moment the command was selected to the moment when the operation
was complete. Battery life test involved downloading 968MB of data,
turning off the unit, letting it cool for 5 minutes and then loading the
next set, etc.
Clearly the SDB
is quickest transferring files from the MD, downloading nearly a Gig in half
the time needed by the others. Since one has to "babysit" a
portable hard drive while its working, i.e. it should be set down somewhere
while it does its work, the shorter transfer time of the SDB is a
useful advantage. The SuperDigibin also functions as a USB 1.1
CF card reader. The SDB I tested however, had a serious
defect that will be described below, and that took it out of the running for
me.
The Delkin
and Tripper had almost identical transfer times when transferring
from the MD and both were dramatically faster than the SDB when downloading
to the PC. This is due, of course, to the USB 1.1 connection on the SDB vs.
the USB 2 connection on the Tripper and the Firewire connection on
the Delkin. What surprised me was that the Tripper was
nearly twice as fast as the Delkin in this test.
The Delkin
Picture Pad is reportedly a sister product to the Nixvue Vista
but the Delkin has a 2-year warranty and the Nixvue has, I'm
told, only a 1-year warranty. Unlike the SDB or Tripper,
the Delkin has a small LCD monitor that allows one to see thumbnails
of the pictures just as they do on most digital cameras. It can also
display a histogram and output a signal to a television or VCR. With
my 1Ds files, even JPEGs, I found that the unit took so long to display a
thumbnail picture that this feature would be of no use to me. The unit
seems to be very well made, includes an excellent case and generally worked
without fault. The Delkin has a good reliability reputation among
photographers I know and the Tripper reliability is unknown. That may
be an advantage for the Delkin.
The Delkin PP
also has a significant advantage in that it is able to display the file
names recorded to its hard drive at any time after the file transfer has
taken place. So if, for example, you're working quickly and
transferring files to the Delkin as you go along, you may at one point
forget which cards you've copied to the PP and which ones you
haven't. It's very useful to be able to review the data recorded
on the PP (just the file names) to clarify which data you have and have not
copied over. The extra $300 spent on the 30-Gig Delkin , vs. the
40-Gig Tripper, buys you this data display feature, which is very useful,
and the picture display feature, which as mentioned above is not
particularly useful (because of its slowness).
The Super
Digibin damaged one of my microdrives because of a defect in one or both of
the supporting rails in the CF slot. This defect caused the MD
to be forced against the upper edge of the slot which stretched and bunched
the mylar (?) covering. It's still working but the damage to the case
obviously makes it more vulnerable. A quick look at the CF bay reveals
a seemingly flimsy set of plastic rails that hold a CF card under
tension. The Delkin slot uses a similar design but worked just
fine. The Tripper uses a better CF mounting system all around.
Very much to his
credit, Charles Cheng at InsideComputer has agreed to send me a replacement
Microdrive in exchange for my damaged one. I have no affiliation with
his company whatsoever but continue to be impressed by their
service. I would hope that this defect was unusual for the SDB
but I trust the mechanism in the Tripper more. In any case, its worth
checking the CF bay carefully in these devices before attempting to insert a
card.
The Tripper
delivers the best bang for the buck in my mind. For $330 it includes
40GB of storage, downloads a MicroDrive as fast as the Delkin
and uploads to a PC almost twice as fast as its rival. Reliability is
unknown as of yet but the unit does use a high-quality IBM TravelStar
drive and seems well made. The CF bay mechanisms seem better designed
than those in the Delkin or the SDB and it is the only unit to
include a push-to-release button for the CF card (the others just load and
unload using tension). Unlike the Delkin, the Tripper
also functions as a USB2 CF card reader and it works well in that
capacity, see chart above. It's too bad that the Tripper doesn't
include the Delkin's file review option, as that is a very useful feature for working
photographers. The Delkin therefore has a couple of
unique advantages, but in the end the Tripper won my
wallet vote.
A Postnote:
Now that I've begun using the Tripper in my workflow I've noticed
another advantage that it, and probably the Delkin as well, have as a
result of their high bandwidth PC connections. I now download
all of my Microdrive files directly into the Tripper and use
it as a third hard drive for initial editing in software (ThumbsPlus
for JPEGs, Camera RAW for RAW files). The connection is fast enough
that I can then burn my archive copies directly from the Tripper to
CDR at 12X using Nero Burning ROM software running on my PC.
There are a couple advantages to this method. First, there's no time
spent transferring the files from the Tripper to my PC hard drive. (I
have one HD reserved just for image files). Better yet, my PC's
second hard drive becomes far less fragmented because its not involved in
the almost daily process of storing image files, burning image files to CD
and deleting files once they're archived. In other words, that drive
is no longer seeing 5GB or so per shoot being written to, and then erased
from it. All the data on the Tripper HD is either deleted
during initial editing or archived to CD so that the drive can be
reformatted prior to being used on the next shoot. When one is
dealing with 250 or more 11MB RAW files from an average day's shooting, this
streamlining can be very helpful.
Note:
InsideComputer has done their own testing of the SDB, Tripper and two other
units and their results can be found at http://www.insidecomputer.com/performance_comparison.htm
