About the Gear
Workstations and Software:
I use Windows and Macintosh computers with Drobo RAID storage and multiple offsite copies of my images. The iMac is an I7 27" and the Windows box is connected to 2x30" and 1x21" NEC and Dell monitors. I use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom. Sometimes I work with plugins from NIK software, Pixel Genius and OnOne software. The combination of these software solutions rivals anything I can produce in my wet-darkroom. I am still absolutely amazed at the creative solutions I can create with this combination of software.
Panoramic images are created with a comvination of a Nodal Ninja Panoramic head, Feisol Tripod and the Autopano software. I find that the Autopano software is far superior to the panoarmic creation software in Adobe Photoshop. It provides far greater versatility and flexibilty (as well as does a better job finding the correct links between the photos being stitched).
An example of a pano from Parc Manceau in Paris being built in Autopano. This is 10 images being stitched together.
Here are a few links to the software comnpanies I mention above. Adobe, Pixel Genius, NIK Software, OnOne Software and Autopano Software.
Cameras:
This is about the cameras.
Drum Scanning:
I work with Howtek D4000 Drum Scanners to prepare scans of my medium and 4x5 film driven by a workstation running a special version of Silverfast designed for this scanner. It is tricky to get drum scans to look right. Running a drum scanner requires the following steps (1) Clean drum (2) Clean film (3) Mount Aztek plastic sheet to drum with tape (4) Move drum to mounting station and carefully stage film into drum (5) squirt drum mountin fluid between drum/film/plastic sheet (essentially making a film sandwich) (6) with finesse roll drum to mount film to drum (watch out for air bubbles) (7) tape end of sheet carefully to drum (8) mount drum to scanner (9) run pre-scan (at low resolution) (10) adjust settings on image scan to how you want the final image to look like (11) enter filename, click <START> and wait. Every 4x5 scan takes approximately 1.25 hours to complete at 3200DPI across the film. Quite often you will get a complete scan only to find some small defect rendering the scan worthless and requiring a rescan and/or a reloading the drum with the film. Good drum scans can be printed to massive sizes ( I mean like the side of a building kinda large) but they are a real PITA to run.
