Goleta DeskTop Publishing User Group
Meeting Information

January 3 -- Digital Photography

Click here to see the article "Things to consider when purchasing a Digital Camera".
Click here to see the article "My Experiences With a Digital Camera".

So Santa rewarded you for being so good by bringing you a new digital camera and now you want to do all the things the ads implied would be easy to do: print photo-quality prints, send pics of the twins to Grandma via email, and maybe add some pictures to your web pages.

But somehow those smiling people in the catalogs and ads seem to be having a much easier time of getting something that anyone would like to look at than you -- what could be the matter?

Part of it is hype and unreasonable expectations, but by gaining a little skill it's possible to get quite acceptable results most of the time.

This month's meeting will be about how to take, massage, and print digital still pictures. Digital is a different medium than a point-n-shoot film camera, and one's techniques need to take that into account.

My wife Sue just got a new Nikon 775 camera and a Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX printer and we will bring them to show off the importance of several important rules:

• Get closer! Pixels cost money and there are never enough of them, so don't waste any on stuff you will crop out of the photo.
• Push the button!
  • People shots: The best expressions are fleeting, so be sure to select the zoom amount, as well as the focus and exposure before you tell people to "smile". Otherwise you get frozen expressions or worse.
  • Scenics and still-lifes: Digital photos don't cost anything until you print them, so take lots of pictures, look at them critically to determine how you can take better pictures, and edit ruthlessly.
• Hold still! Sure the camera is small and light, but the optics and sensors conspire against you -- they really aren't that fast. If you shake the picture will be blurry, especially on the telephoto shots. So brace yourself or use something to keep that camera from waving around.
• Expose well Digital cameras do not have the wide exposure range of color negative film, so you have to watch for overexposed highlights and blocked-up shadows. The solution is to change the lighting or recompose your picture to leave out the problematical areas.
• Select your target Making a photo look good in print is different than making it look good on the Web, so you have to decide what medium you are targeting before you start messing with it.
• Economize but don't skimp! The most important parts of a good print are a good photo, good paper, good inks, and a good printer. The most expensive parts of a good print are the paper and ink. There are ways to economize but you can't skimp. As an example, Epson sells photo paper in convenient rolls 4" wide by 26 feet long, which makes 52 4" x 6" prints. Those rolls cost $20, or just over 38 cents a print. You can buy Epson S041141 photo paper at Costco for $20 for 100 8.5" x 11" sheets, from which you can make 200 5" x 7" prints. This paper is quite similar to the roll paper but the prints are larger and cost only 10 cents each. And you don't have to flatten the print (prints from the roll have a quite persistent curl).

I'll also bring along one answer to the expensive ink cartridge problem -- a modified Epson Photo 1200 printer that drinks ink from 4 ounce bottles. The ink costs $48 for 6 bottles which will print about 1200 5" x 7" prints. That works out to about 4 cents a print for the ink, meaning that if you combine that with the paper from Costco the overall cost is about 14 cents a print. There are consequences, though, and some are not immediately apparent. I'll tell you about the features and foibles.

Please send email to gdtpug@troutcom.com with suggestions for topics you are interested in seeing covered. Or even better, volunteer to give a presentation!

The Goleta DeskTop Publishing Users Group is a SIG (Special Interest Group) of the Santa Barbara PC Users Group. We are not platform specific: some members have PCs, some have Macs, some have both. Linux and other systems are sprinkled in as well for good measure. We focus on the issues of publishing in all forms, be it on paper, web, CD-ROM, or some other medium.