Kodak

Kodak has filed for bankruptcy protection. From what I've read all over the internet, employees and management consultants gives similar explanation, that they brought it upon themselves. I don't deny that they have great products, but that alone won't make them successful forever. They need to take care about other things like marketing, customer relationship, etc.
Its sad to see their decline, but I really think technology will eventually fills in the gap that film left. I think the only thing that digital have to catch up is the highlight roll off. Many people talking about film color rendering, but with a good color profiling, that should be no problem. That being said, the best time to live is now, its time to move on.
Or watch a movie.. Midnight in Paris, starring Owen Wilson. :)

Printing Experience

So.. after just a few prints I notice that my ink cartridges are almost empty!

I search the web for explanation for some time. Eventually I stumble into this on a third party ink website.

The easiest method to install Piezography inks on the R3000 is by installing them into the printer as it's first set of inks. The reason for this is that when the R3000 is first turned on and ink cartridges are installed for the first time, the printer performs an ink initialization which pulls in about 15ml of ink from each cartridge into the ink dampers, the ink lines, and the print head. This is not much different than that of the Epson Pro 3880 - and this printer shares many of the same components.

Quite a shock.. but OK.. that explains it, so I can move on and sleep peacefully :) 

Exciting Year!

2012 might not be a good year for some people. Financial meltdown, job loss, and there's the 21st December.
But not so for the photographic world, even at the start of the year, we're seeing D4 from Nikon, X-Pro1 from Fuji, and Lightroom 4 beta from Adobe.
Lightroom 4 now include a book module, and reworked sliders. A little bit confusing at first. You have to decrease the black slider if you want darker tone.

X-Pro1 is a particularly exciting camera, given the promise of higher DR from Fuji EXR sensor technology. It could be that digital will be able to produce film look at last.

Well.. come to think of it, some people will get poorer this year. Man.. I'd better not make any budget related resolution this year.. LoL

Back to work (or first post! (of 2012 :))

After a week of Christmas-New Year holiday I finally get back to work. I now practically have zero time for my personal muse. 


Two good books I recommend reading :

Who's in Charge?
Free Will and the Science of the Brain

Rational Optimist
by Matt Ridley

Rational Optimist
I've always been a pessimist, so naturally I have reservations about this book heheh. Early chapters of this book explains about the exchange of ideas, and later on, trade, which send me asleep. What can I say, I get bored easily, so I ventured to read other books, which brought me to the next book. Matt is sort of against the green movement, but given the facts, I think is justifiable. I must say this is a good book to start a year with optimistic outlook (hurry.. before 21st December LoL)


Who's in Charge
But after reading few chapters Mike's book, I can't help being fascinated on how our brain works and relate to Matt's explanation about how ideas exchange evolution. The fact that our brain consist of multiple processing centers working autonomously in parallel is rather amazing.


But as usual.. I haven't finish both books, and few others. So I'll write another time.


In other news, I got a new phone with my plan re-contract. Cost me $0, and it works great

First Print

Okay, so I finally unboxed and install the printer last night. Although after going through my picture collection again and again, I realized that I have little to print, I need to print something personal as a gift. A friend was leaving the country soon so I want to give her something nice.

So I print something from one of our dinner outings..
And....

The print was too dark...

At first I thought it was because my monitor setting was too dark. Then I recalibrate it using i1Display 2. Few problems arose. The calibrator said that green level is not high enough. The problem is that RGB setting was at their maximum value, I can't gauge it higher. The secret is that the value is all relative to each other. So I tweak down the red and blue a little bit, and voila! I also decrease the monitor brightness waaayy down. But the print result I had still too dark compared to the monitor, and the colors are somewhat muted.

Then I search for clues in the paper manufacturer websites and forums for some clue. I had a hunch that the paper setting in the print dialog is the key. But it doesn't have any custom paper option, while I'm using third party paper. After some searching, I set the printer to use Matte Black with Epson Fine Art paper.

I print the image once again, and... voila! Nice colors. I managed to improve the print only after one failed attempt. Not too bad eh?

Ok.. since I submitted my enigmatic cat picture for a print sale. I've been thinking a lot about what makes a good print. More so when I finally bought a large fine-art printer. I think now I have a grasp of what makes a good print and what is not, in terms of subject and composition. I had gone through around five thousand pictures from my collection, and found just a handful print-worthy photos. I haven't even set up the printer since I bought it last week.

I pulled the trigger

and budget....