the things we think but do not say

Chicago Botanic Gardens-0797

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

After years of sitting on the fence about having a full size (17″ wide), professional printer, I finally gave in and bought an Epson Pro Stylus 3800. Click here for some gratuitous printer porn.

It’s simply amazing.

But quite honestly, the issue of buying the printer was far less about deciding which printer to buy, but how to navigate my way through the maze of issues that come from matching a print to what you see on screen.

The numerous reviews of the printer pretty much guaranteed that it would be a winner (9 ink carts, 80ml ink capacity, automatic matte and glossy media switching with minimal ink loss, 17″ wide media). The 800lb gorilla in the world of printing is deciphering the fifty plus opinions on how to match a print to your monitor.

Well after a relatively painless few weeks, I think I can safely say that I get it now.

And by get it, I mean, I can get my prints to look pretty damn close to what I see on my monitor.

Here were some of the obstacles along the way:

Q What does calibration mean?
A It means that devices like monitors, printers, cameras etc all are displaying images reliably.

Q What does ‘calibrate my monitor’ mean?
A It means that you get your monitor to take some tests that prove that what colours it thinks it’s displaying are truly the colours it’s displaying. The simplest way to do this is make your monitor perform a few minutes worth of tests, unsurprisingly a ‘monitor calibration tool’, like the X-Rite/Greytag Macbeth Eye One Display 2.

The part of the test that surprised me the most was just how damn bright I had set my screen. No frickin’ wonder all my prints always turned out so dark! I’d bumped up my monitor(s) to twice or three times what it should be.

Q Does the printer need to be calibrated too?
A It depends. (Don’t you hate it when the answer is ‘It depends’. Ugh)
If you have a printer that is from an established printer maker, a la Epson, then there’s a pretty good chance that there will be lots of people out there that will have made it easy for you to not need to calibrate your printer. Now here comes the tricky part. Calibration is really just a slightly more confusing way to explain something called ‘profiles’.

Q I’ve heard of ‘profiles’. What the hell is a profile and how does it relate to calibration?
A OK. Here’s the real meat of this whole topic now. A profile is a set of instructions (for a device) that tells it (the device) how to display a colour. And the clever part is this: it tells it how to display with respect to what kind of device it is. A profile empathises for the device itself.

For a printer to reliably display its colors, the printer has to have a profile which takes into account a few things that are totally specific to that printer. In fact, the profile even takes into account the paper on which it will be printing on to. Which really makes sense, since a matte paper will soak up ink in a totally different way than a glossy paper.

So, for a printer that profile takes into account: the printer model itself, the number of inks available to it, the kind of ink it’s printing with, then finally the paper on which it will finally be printed.

For a monitor, when I talked earlier about calibrating it, I was just glossing over the fact that I was in fact making a profile for it. The profile took into account the kind of monitor it was (laptop LCD, desktop LCD, CRT), the brightness, the gamma point (I still have no idea what that means) and then a set of parameters for Red, Green and Blue output.

Q Ok, now I’m more confused than when I started. What does all this have to do with printing?
A Well done, you’ve now fully entered the maze. The next part will help us now get out.

The reason anyone gives a shit about profiles, calibration and the rest is because it all comes together when you finally press Cmd/CTRL - P.

Q So… what happens when I press ‘print’?
A I am going to assume that you are going to be printing in either Photoshop or Lightroom. I have never used Aperture or really anything else, so bear with me. Both programs have about a million control dialog boxes that appear when you go to print, plus a few that you might not have seen otherwise.

Well there are really only a couple that are important and if you get these set right you’re golden. And rather than hacking my way through the explanation, I’m going to show you the video that I saw that made all my questions fade away. Russell Brown is about as Photoshop as anyone gets and if you can get over the eccentric voice patterns, his explanations are top notch. Here’s where he explains how to print from Photoshop to an Epson printer (an old R2200).

Ok, I’m going to summarise anyway because when I got my head around which parts of these vital dialog boxes meant, it all became a million times clearer.

When you go to print, not only are you choosing which image to print today, you’re also choosing which profile to use for that image. And while it can sound tedious to choose a profile every time, if you’re printing a session with glossy paper, there is really no need to change the profile.

But really after some reflection, I think what is most satisfying is that each time I print out an image, I get a tiny bit more confidence with the system. I get the sense now that each print will be pretty damn close to what I see and that the results are going to be repeatable each time.

So, in very fast summary:

1 Calibrate and make a profile for your monitor. This is the foundation of all your images. If you’re adjusting images in Photoshop/Lightroom and your images are 300% brighter than they should be, all your work is for nought.

2. Get a reliable printer which has lots of freely available profiles. I would recommend Epson as the majority of user generated internet support out there is for Epson printers.

3. Set Photoshop/Lightroom colour space correctly.

4. Choose the profile that matches the paper that you’ll be printing on. This step implies that you’re picking from a list of profiles that are made for your printer. Choosing a profile that matches your paper but not your printer is retarded. The list will be organised for your printer first, then paper.

5. When in the printer’s own dialogue box (the final dialogue box usually before the printer starts printing) make sure to turn OFF the colour management. This makes sure that the image isn’t being ‘managed’ twice.

6. Finally make sure the printer is choosing the right paper stock so it matches up with your profile and the paper itself. This part might sound like the printer is profiling again, but it’s actually much simpler than that. It’s just making sure that it knows how to handle the paper thickness.

Ummm, I think that’s it. Now go print!

Here are some of my references I used to gather all this info:

Russell Brown’s wacky world of Photoshop tips.
Eric Chan’s very thorough Epson Stylus Pro 3800 wiki.
Martin Evening’s Lightroom book.
Scott Kelby’s Lightroom book.

Critical Mass- May 2007- -6246

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

Taken at the last Critical Mass in Chicago last month, this is just a quick post about this amazing contraption I saw being ridden that day.

This guy is obviously a) insane and b) pretty handy with a welding torch. If you’re not aware of Critical Mass you can get a very up close and personal view of it when it rolls through Chicago again at the end of this month, June 29th.

Each meet starts down at Daley Plaza at 6pm and it pretty much becomes an unstoppable force as thousands and thousands of cyclists ride through the city on a fairly undisclosed route.

The photo below taken a at a previous CM is still one of my most viewed images on Flickr!

Epson RD-1-0836

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

A sad farewell this week. I finally said goodbye to my dear, dear camera which I only knew for six months.

Rangefinder cameras had a recent renaissance when the buzz around this camera broke out a few years ago, but it really got turned up to a white hot buzz when the Leica M8 was announced. The Epson was also limited to a production run of only 10,000 units.

Rangefinders and rangefinder photography is hard wired into photographic history and there’s no one that contributed more to this than a gentleman called Henri Cartier-Bresson. From the early part of the last century until his death in 2004, he was synonymous with three things: an enormous body of legendary work, being known for the phrase, ‘the decisive moment’, and for using Leica rangefinders.

No one I can think of is as tied to a brand as strongly as HCB and Leica. And so, in 2006 (when I started to think about the Epson RD-1) one can’t help but be wrapped up in all the romance and mystique of what these cameras offer.

A unique shooting style (manual pre-focussing) and a unique way of visualizing (through a separate viewfinder that shops crops marks of the field of view) all make up an experience that is difficult to describe without having one in your hands for a while. And truly when I bought this camera, I really wanted to give this style of photography an honest, through work out.

But sadly for me, I can say that this style just didn’t work for me. And how much of it was to do with this camera is sort of a moot point, as there is only one other digital rangefinder alternative available, the Lecia M8, which at $5000 for the body was way too expensive to ‘try out’. And after owning my first camera (a Canon A1) I’m not going to go back to shooting with film again to fully experience rangefinders.

Despite the awkwardness of my experiences with the camera, I found it to be one of the most exquisitely designed objects I’ve had in my hands. It was a great design exercise in melding analog, manual controls into a digital camera body. The Epson designers even integrated fully working, chronograph style dials to display the available space on the memory card, the white balance and the image resolution.

Ironically, the final nail in the coffin was my last assignment for some intense photography. The chance to photograph all over two cities was challenging enough, but when faced with this pressured assignment, I chose my trusty Nikon d70 instead. I just cannot afford to have a camera without auto focus anymore.

My Epson is now in the hands of a new owner and I’m sure that he’ll cherish it ten times more than I ever could.

In memory of this beautiful, romantic camera, here are some of my favourite photos taken with the Epson RD-1.

Tsukushi-0323

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

I’ve finally returned to Chicago after several weeks of travel taking photographs for two upcoming book for London and New York.

Each city’s schedule included 50 locations in a week. Invaluable to me during each shoot was my project manager Shane Parton, who magically arranged everything to line up, coincide, and be in place at the right time for all the shots.

The photo here is one of the last shots I took before leaving New York. It was at very discreet Japanese restaurant in Murray Hill called Tsukushi. At another table I noticed that one of their party was practically sleeping at the table. When I saw that one of his mates thought it funny to take a snapshot of it, I reached for my camera. I love shots of people taking photographs themselves. To see what another photographer is visualising is revealing.

So, some stats from my trip

2 cities covered
50 locations in each city
8-10 days in each city
non-stop, grueling, 12-15 hour days
3000 exposures in London
4000 exposures in New York
100+ cab rides
25lbs of equipment lugged all over town
35gb of images
20+ portraits of artists, bakers, restaurateurs, designers, and entrepreneurs.

During the trip I would go through all sorts of pressure, excitement, tiredness and disappointment. But there was simply nothing more invigorating or inspiring than finishing the shoot of a space or interior and then taking a portrait of the creator of that environment.

The proprietors’ taste, personality, even their demeanor, came through in everything that we saw or touched in that space. It seems so obvious now, but taking these portraits connected me so personally to the space in which it was being taken.

As a growing photographer, I think that taking portraits of the inspiring individuals who have created these unique businesses was the most rewarding part of my trip.