This is currently on iPlayer again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017svd6

Definitely worth watching to see the range of photographs from the Life magazine - some truly stunning shots

Also, these related links may be interesting:
* Archive of images

* The 75 best Life Photos

Matt

I'd suggest buying a Pantone Huey (which isn't that much) and using the more flexible dispcalGui and ArygllCMS open source packages

Or, alternatively, get a second hand Spyder 2, or Huey.

But, as said you should profile/calibrate regularly.
Matt

Don't think I've ever used the X-sync...
Especially now that I have a set of Cactus v4 radio triggers. So much more convenient to have no wires to trip over!
Matt

A. Unscrew - fiddly.

B. Microphone (top) & speaker (side) I believe

Off topic, but interesting link here: http://karsh.org/#/the_work/portraits/winston_churchill/

You can use also use Photobox - you can set print prices and then your customers can just place the orders directly. You don't have to worry about printing, delivery, etc.
(You get paid in Photobox credit, and IIRC, can claim real money back when your account reaches a certain amount)

Personally I use Photium - which has been an excellent service!

HTH
Matt

The RAW files have an embedded JPG in them anyway - and it's that you are looking at AFAIK. (There's some nice command line tools that can extract the JPG straight from the RAW as well)

The camera processing options are applied to the JPEG (both embedded and sidecar with RAW+). You can always reprocess the RAW in camera, or start again on the computer later.

Don't forget that RAW processing on the PC later will use its own rendering. For example, Lightroom will show the embedded JPEG first of all, and then the view will change as it generates its own cache image from the RAW data. Often I prefer the in-camera rendering as a starting point... wish there were presets for LR that mimic'd the K5

Matt

The original RAW file is 12-bits, or 14-bits (for the K5 etc). But in that form it's not much help - it needs to be demosaiced, white balanced, curve adjusted, and other various RAW conversion processes.

When you convert from RAW you have the option of converting into an 8-bit or 16-bit image - where each pixel is represented by 8-bit-Red, 8-bit-Green, 8-bit-Blue or 16-bit-Red, 16-bit-Green, 16-bit-Blue.

If possible, it's always best to do noise reduction in the RAW conversion process (as with Silkypix or Lightroom) since the software is doing the conversion from the original RAW. Once you've turned it into TIFF or JPG the noise parameters will be different (because the values have been 'cooked' by the process of going from RAW).

Also - you should use 16-bit output when you want to do heavy adjustments to an image once converted from RAW. It will help prevent posterisation when really shoving the values around. If you intend to convert into the ProPhoto colour space you should likewise use 16-bit output.

Generally, though, a good quality converter from RAW into 8-bit AdobeRGB or sRGB will be perfectly fine (and save you a LOT of space on the HDD)!

Hope that helps!
Matt

The Mac only link is fine - it's just a ZIP file that has the .BIN file included. The Windows version is just an auto-unzipper-wrapper-in-an-EXE

So you can unzip the Mac one on Windows

Matt

Cactus set arrived this morning (just needs new 23A battery).
Thank you Richard for a smooth transaction!

All the best with the MF transition!!
Matt