general digital camera question

[Former FLL Now MSP Diver]

I'll put my nod in for Wal Mart. I just transfer whatever shots I want printed to either a CD or a CF card. They have a unit at the desk where you transfer them to their big Fuji photo lab, and they're queued up. Ready to go usually in less than half an hour. And all for 24¢ each.

They also offer a Kodak all in one type kiosk, but it's used mostly just for enlargements or multiples of the same picture on an 8X10.

You do have to make a point to tell them NOT to make any corrections to the prints. I've seen them use software before processing the prints that seems to do something similar as the auto levels correction do in Adobe/Picture It.

Marc

 

[marpacifica]

ssra,

Glad to hear that you're going to Dumaguete. I just got back from there and rank it as one of my favorite dive places, and Apo island as the best in terms of healthy and abundant species of coral. I dove with Atlantis Dive Resort and the DIs there are a fun and friendly couple. If you want more details about the place and diving, PM me and I'll give you more info.

 

[ssra30]

Dee once bubbled...
Good! My next trip isn't until the CCV/Roatan trip in April so you'll have plenty of time to test it. Whatever you do get it worked out for those Pigmy Seahorses. Have you seen the ones posted on DD? Amazing!

Yes, I saw those pictures on DD. Very very envious, I did take some pictures of pgymy seahorse with my C4040/macro lens in Komodo a couple of months ago but the pictures were nowhere nearly as good. Also in Komodo, both sites that I found pgymy seahorse were not really ideal, one was 20m down but had very quite strong current and I could barely stayed in place to take the pictures, the other one was down at 40m in 21C water (I only had on a 3mm wetsuit and hood), not very fun. Hopefully in April, Irian Jaya will be more accomodating. A friend just came back from there and said at one site, she saw 7 pgymy seahorses on one seafan:wacko:
Still kind of worry about how easy/difficult it will be to focus with stack macros, oh well....

 

[Dee]

I want to talk to Laz a bit more before I decide on a macro. Maybe I'm dense and I know my memory is shot but.... with the macro lens(es) you can physically get closer...right? Well what about those shots like Christmas Tree worms and Blennie faces that fill the frame? You get close enough for that and they are history! Yeah..I know about cropping but I know everyone couldn't possible be cropping THAT much! I want/need a macro lens that I can zoom in that close if I need to.

To get that someone will probably tell me to go with a housed SLR

 

[ssra30]

Generally, I think that's the idea for macro lens. You can get the camera closer to the subject. With my old C4040 in macro mode, I could to around 4-5 inches with one macro lens. Ryan was mentioning something about also getting 2:1 magnification with stacked lens. Unfortunately when asked, he did not really elaborated more on DD about the actual benefit or what to expect with stacked lens. Hopefully I will have a chance to try this in a 3 weeks and see what happen!

A friend of mine was drooling over the new Sony F828 8 MP camera with equavalent 28mm-200mm zoom, I think you probably can get pretty good macro shots with that. Unfortunately no housing has been announced yet!

 

[Dee]

I thought so. With my 4040, using Laz's sweet spot trick, I could get within 4" of the subject with the camera and even then that was scaring some fish and creatures. Now if stacking those macro lenses and using my zoom will let me see the eyelashes on those blennies, I'll add it to my Santa list!

I've also tried to get specifics from Ryan with no success. Maybe he's had time to get over the DDI trip and can take the time to answer us.

 

[Jerryg]

I download my digital pictures to my computer then upload them to a company called OFOTO (Kodak). I take a lot of pictures and never delete anything, because computer memory is cheap. I usually filter out the good ones for printing. I like Ofoto because I can print 4x6 5x7 and 8x10. I'm getting ready to order my 2004 calendar customized with my photos. While Ofoto is the company I prefer there are a lot of other providers on the web just do a google.
Jerry

 

[ssra30]

One thing I wonder about on-line photo hosting and printer is that can you upload a file any size at all or is there a limit.
The reason I ask is that , if I shoot in RAW mode on my camera, the picture is 7mb, after getting it to photoshop for a little editing, if there is no cropping, the file becomes about 10 mb. If I want to get a 8x10 print, can I just upload the photoshop file or will they only accept JPEG? If I convert PSD file to JPEG with lowest compression, the file would be around 2.5 mb (similar to SHQ mode on 5 megapixel camera). I guess if I reduce the file size further for easy uploading to the internet, making a 4.x6 print would not be a big deal but if I want a large print, there could be some problems with resolution loss etc.