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Post number 1!
mood: 
chipper
chipperBeing a film aficionado, I must admit that I had difficulty accepting digital as the photographic medium of choice for the future. Film, for me, was the true artistic medium, as I had a choice between literally hundreds of film types, ranging from Kodak T-Max 100 (my favorite black and white film) to Kodak Ultra Color 100 and Fujichrome Velvia (my color choices, for the most part), with each film type giving their own unique "signature" on the photos I took. Surely, I surmised, digital cannot hope to measure up to film's dynamic range of colors and tonal range!
Was I ever wrong.
I'm currently taking Digital Imaging I, and I had the opportunity to use two top tier programs for digital imaging manipulation, Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom, also an Adobe brainchild. I already knew Photoshop had a plethora of image editing tools, but I was a bit dubious about Lightroom. My professor Scot Hill encouraged me to shoot in .raw (I was previously shooting in .jpeg) to take full advantage of Lightroom's power. In this neat program, you can adjust tonal range, recover lost data (to a point) using image recovery sliders, fill in shadows with fill flash tools, even adjust individual colors' hue and saturation. I shot one particular photo using Velvia slide film slightly underexposed by .5 stop, then shot it again using my Canon EOS Rebel XTi in .raw with the exact same f-stop and shutter speed settings. I took the Velvia to the lab to have it processed, and printed the optimum best print from the slide. Beautiful color rendition, great tonal range, everything I expected from Velvia.
Then I inserted the Compact Flash card into my Mac G5's USB reader, and much to my annoyance, the scene was underexposed by what felt like about 1.5 stops, give or take. I lost shadow detail, highlight detail was there, but barely noticeable, and the scene was noticeably dark. "Hmph."
This is where Lightroom saved the day. Using the program's recovery slider, I boosted the lost tone in the shadows, and pulled the exposure range from -1.5 stops to almost .5 stop over "optimal" exposure, then boosted the saturation and did a few curve adjustments, and printed it on Ilford paper - I was amazed.
I saw literally the same print, although I have to say that the Lightroom adjusted print looks much better, due to the improved "punch" of colors from the saturation work in Lighroom. Quite a program, and a steal at $190.00 for the everyday consumer. Get it if you're a photography buff!
I'll post photos later, once I get a chance to upload images at flickr.com. Oh yes, by the way, since this is a "paid" version of live journal, expect many more posts from me! Until next time!
One of my older shots, shot with Kodak T-Max 100. :)
