Today marks my 100th picture (in 101 days) on my daily-photoblog and thought I would post a "100 inspired" picture (see http://www.seemsartless.com/index.php?pic=137  )

I keep track of just how many similar shots I took to get the shot of the day; I took 564 pictures similar to the 100 I have on my site now, with 43 of the entries taking only one try, and my most extreme picture taking 34 similar shots to get the one I used in my blog.

Anyway, when I decided to post a special picture to mark my 100th entry I thought I would take a look around to see what others have done for such milestones but could only find one example:

Daily Dose of Imagery

• 100th entry: a picture with the # 100 in it
• 1 year collage

What other interesting ways have you seen people celebrate photo-blog milestones?

This is one of the first contests I've seen that actually offers prizes for top members.

http://www.betterphoto.com/contest.asp

Just thought I'd share.

Good luck.

Along with everybody's great advice, I went along and got myself a Nikon Coolscan V. It arrived today after ordering from B  and H photo and I set it up, rolled a bit of film in it to test it out, and was semi-shocked after witnessing the results.

I like it - big, sharp, images. What's scaring me is the level of dust on the image. I've done this with two rolls of different developed film I have - I've even blowed them off with a bit of compressed air at a distance.

Maybe I should wipe them with a silk cloth?

They look fine from my naked eye, but I know I can't trust that very well. It was then that I remember you all mentioning ICE. I find it, select it to go on, and guess what I find?

Big, blotchy, pitch black images with mid tones and highlights the only recognizable thing of the picture. What happened? How can I change this? I've scrambled through the book and the manual inside the program. It doesn't seem like I can change anything else than normal and fine ICE.

I have some samples and I've placed them up on my site. I've seen notraces.com and was told that he uses the same scanner as I, but I don't see how he achieves it. Dustless and without any errors of that sort whatsoever.

To see the pics, go here.

The first image is with ICE on and the second is without.

The other strange thing is that everything seems fine in the preview pane, even in the enlarged preview - I don't see any dust or hair until scanning it. Maybe, and I doubt this, it's my developer? I go to Samy's, but I really do doubt they would leave my film in such bad shape.

I am pleased to announce the details for this year's Holiday Party. So mark your calendars.

You are invited to the
GTA Bloggers / Toronto Area Photoblogs Holiday Party
at Big Trouble in Little China aka Joey Devilla's place. Friday, December 3rd, 2004 at 8 pm
(to get address details you must ask for an evite)

There will be the usual bath tub full of beer, pot luck food fare as well as a special on going slideshow featuring various work for Toronto Area Photobloggers.

So far we have had two out of town guests at a TAP event. If anyone else is feeling adventurous, this is an open invite to party with the Toronto folk.

I didn't plan to make a part 2, but after going on a new trip to the same city, not everything turned out as I thought.

First I would like to thanks for all the good advices which was given to me after my first post. It was really great to see other photographers helping me with their methods and ideas, that meant a lot!

I was spending all day in the city yesterday, and brought with me both my camera and 2 printed pages with ideas from you!
What went bad first was time. I didn't have that much time as I thought I would have, so was only out shooting for 1-2 hours. And that was from 3pm to 4.30pm.
Here in Norway it is getting dark early at this time of year, and that isn't always a good thing.

I was hoping to get photos of people. I had the themes "hurry" and "citylife" to go after. My first obstacle was a big bag I had carrying around, which made it hard to walk trying to carry my camera and keep the focus on subjects. So I had to stop and put down the bag every single time I found something to shoot.

Then I hit the wall, again. This time I think I hit almost 2 walls. I managed to walk around the first one(which was the "cannot-find-good-subject" one), but the other one I think I just ran into. Taking photos of people is not my strongest side. Maybe when they're lined up, smiling, waiting to be framed, but not people walking on the sidewalk, having a hurry, and not liking others standing in their way.

If any of you have seen my site, you might have noticed that I don't post any photos of people. I think I have just a few. And that include a self-portrait!
I am afraid. What will they say? What will they do? Will I get stopped by anyone?
The fair of taking photos of people you walk by on the street, that is what I am suffering of.  And I don't know how to heal it...

Since I don't know many other photographers who often go out and take pictures, I am on my own here. Don't think there are any others in my town.

So this must be my next question:  What can I do to get better at this?
I know I must go out and practice, but do any of you have good ideas how to overcome the fear? I have heard of others who have the same problem, and since most of you have photos of people on your blogs, you must have gotten through this.

Thanks for any help! Maybe others than me needs this help also? Think so. Hope so.

Here are some of the photos I got yesterday, all post-processed in Photoshop(because they looked terrible before..) :

Thanks again,

Kjetil M. Bergem
Photoflood.net

I am about to embark on a new photo essay and I have decided to shoot it on nothing but film...getting back to where my passion for photography started...with film and a Nikon 35mm SLR.

In this day & age of glorious digital cameras one must not forget what medium still provides the base for photography.  Shooting film requires technique, preparation and a keen eye for subject matter.  It also requires some knowledge on which film provides the best results and has the greatest strengths when it comes to certain aspects of "getting the shot". 

So, as I embark on shooting I referred to a recent comparison on Popular Photography's website of both b&w and color film available in the marketplace.

Here are two PDF's to download:

Black & White film

Color film

Also, any thoughts, from all the photoblogs.org readers, to share on your favorite film to use and why you tend to use it more than others?

Lastly, I am planning on purchasing nik Multimedia's Color Efex Pro 2.0 ...it offers a complete range of 75 traditional and stylizing photographic filters for the photographioc editing process...you can demo the product at their website.  Anyone out there using this product...thoughts?

An interesting article in the NY Times on digital preservation:  Even Digital Memories Can Fade

"To save a digital file for, let's say, a hundred years is going to
take a lot of work," said Peter Hite, president of Media Management
Services, a consulting firm in Houston. "Whereas to take a traditional
photograph and just put it in a shoe box doesn't take any work."
Already, half of all photographs are taken by digital cameras, with
most of the shots never leaving a personal computer's hard drive.

So
dire and complex is the challenge of digital preservation in general
that the Library of Congress has spent the last several years forming
committees and issuing reports on the state of the nation's
preparedness for digital preservation.

I was recently watching The Screen Savers on G4techTV and saw a segment on making photo mosaics with your photos using AndreaMosaic.  This is a simple program which asks you which photos you would like to use, what photo you want to make a mosaic, how many tiles you want, and a few other basic questions.  Then, all you have to do is click the Make the Mosaic button.  In a matter of minutes you have your mosaic.  Enjoy, and share your creations! 

NoelC has posted a thorough piece on the apparently flawed RAW -> JPEG algorithm in the Canon EOS digital cameras:

I looked at the exposure histograms for each of the color channels in an image I shot - which by the way had a luminance histogram on the camera that didn't touch the right side. Sure enough, in the images with the fuzzy/texture-lacking bright red objects, the red histogram had data climbing the right side of the image. Yet not in all cases. Some images with fuzzy reds had red channel data close to the right side, but not touching.

In looking at the channels in the images that weren't overexposed, one thing became clear: As the reds get pretty bright (upper-quarter of the histogram), they start to lose definition. This says the Canon demosaic/color generation algorithms may just have a small quirk - a characteristic that bright red objects lose definition.

All right, I thought, what if a different conversion algorithm were employed. Would the results be the same? I tried shooting a raw photo of red flowers and converting it in Adobe Camera Raw. What would happen? Amazingly, with some negative exposure compensation the reds came out vibrant, sharp, and full of texture.

Consider these images, the first is from the embedded JPEG Canon put in the Raw file, and the second is from the conversion through Adobe Camera Raw (Photoshop CS):

Check out the original post with photos and other users' experiences at dslreports.com

(Cross posted from my blog)

plan on buying a d70 or 300d for the holidays? nikon and canon are offering some nice rebates (good in the uk also).

Nikon and Canon US have announced Fall 2004 rebates for its digital
SLRs with savings of up to $500. The Nikon offer applies to the D70
body, the D70 kit with an 18-70mm DX Nikkor lens ($100) and a D1X body
which qualifies for a $500 rebate, among other items. The Nikon offer
ends December 31. Canon's offer is extended until January 31 and
includes a $100 rebate on the EOS Digital Rebel, plus a deal whereby if
you buy any two different items you get double the rebate amount, and
three times the amount if you buy three different items. Nikon UK is
also offering consumers a voucher booklet worth £300 for money off D70
accessories and Canon UK is enticing consumers by offering £100
cashback when purchasing the EOS 300D plus a 256MB CompactFlash card
when registering for Canon's iMAGE GATEWAY.

(from dpreview.com)