Joe Ciaria from Symphony Photography has a wonderfully informative blog revolving around the technology that surrounds us as photo professionals. He has some great first hand experience with the latest in hardware and software. Check it out, and if you ever are in question about what monitor to buy, or what type of RAM to purchase, I am sure he has answered it!
We are so excited to give this new paper a try! It sounds like it will be the perfect match for our wedding and portrait photographers. Here’s are some snippits from the FujiFilm press release found here.
I am awaiting samples from our FujiFilm rep, and will keep you posted on what we think!
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“FUJIFILM U.S.A., Inc. today introduced Fujicolor Crystal Archive Digital PEARL Paper™, a new silver halide color photo paper for professional commercial prints. Developed exclusively for digital output, PEARL Paper yields high quality glossy digital prints with a distinctive pearl-like appearance, making it ideal for professional applications such as commercial, fashion and portrait photography.
PEARL Paper was designed to meet the growing, diverse demands for commercial prints and it enables photographers to expand their customer print options. Embedded pearl-like crystals produce a high gloss reflectance, particularly in highlights, to enhance the warmth and depth of printed images.
Commercial photographers will find the lustrous, rich textural quality of PEARL Paper particularly beneficial in situations where subject matter involves highly saturated colors, fabrics or metallic objects. Its high D-max, purer whiteness and vibrant color reproduction deliver a wide tonal range, sharp text quality and high color saturation and allow commercial photographers to deliver stunning prints that capture viewer attention.
PEARL Paper features a thick base and high stiffness to enhance durability, rendering it ideal for portrait photography. Portrait photographers will also appreciate the capability of PEARL Paper to accurately reproduce a wide range of skin tones while adding a distinctive look to add value to wedding packages and other creative opportunities.
PEARL Paper contains highly specialized pearl mica pigments that produce silver-white and metallic reflectance effects through an interplay of transparency, refraction, coating and multiple reflections.
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Ever wonder how we make awesome prints from your even more awesome images? Well, I would like to share a little “behind the scene” view of how we take pixels and make prints on paper. I would like to start with where you leave off, Photoshop. After you have done all of your editing, cropping, sharpening, etc, the perfect image is on screen. Using the “Info” toolbox as shown below you can probe into your images and see Red, Green, Blue (RGB) values for each pixel that makes up your image. In the sample below you see that the pixel that my cursor is on has a value of 158 Red, 171 Green, and 161 Blue. Now…onto our first printer type, lasers in our Noritsu’s.
Our Noritsu printers use a laser exposure system. It uses three lasers, Red, Green, and Blue, to expose your images. Each pixel, as defined by your image, and seen above is “fires” the appropriate laser into a mirror, the light is then bounced around another polygon shaped mirror, finally traveling through a glass lens system to be exposed onto traditional RA-4 paper. The amazing thing is that this process is so fast that we can create thousands of 4×6 prints per hour!
Image courtesy of Noritsu
In the case of our Fujimoto SHP-5080 enlargement printer things are a little different, though achieving the same end goal, beautiful, continuous tone photographic prints from digital. The Fujimoto uses RGB LED’s or light emitting diodes, in place of Noritsu’s Lasers. The Fujimoto has a block of numerous RGB LED’s, these LED’s feed light to a 20″ wide print head via fibre optic wire. The print head contains many blocks of fibre optic ends terminated by micro shutter arrays that are switched on and off as determined by the RGB values as outline in your image file. This too is amazing technology that allows for high throughput onto traditional Fuji Crystal Archive Super Type PD paper.
Image courtesy of Fujimoto
After the image is exposed onto the paper, it travels through color reversal chemistry. This chemistry and process is exactly the same no matter which printer we print with. The paper travels through the processor via a series or rollers and guides.
from “How stuff Works.com”
The latent-image sites are developed, and oxidized developer molecules combine with the color-forming couplers to create a silver image and a dye image. The silver image and any remaining unexposed silver halide is removed in a combined bleach-plus-fix solution (called the BLIX). The print is then carefully washed to remove any residual chemicals. The print is dried.
The technology of digital imaging, from capture to output is simply astounding. This technology paired with the talents and artistry of you, the portrait and wedding photographer, allows for your client to enjoy a slice of life, frozen in time to remember and cherish forever.
Image by Cameron Ingalls, www.cameroningalls.com, his blog can be seen here.
tj cameron can be found at http://www.tjcameron.com. He is a Portland, Oregon based wedding and portrait photographer that is simply amazing. His photographic ability is only matched by his wonderfully outgoing, friendly personality. Take a look at his website for some inspiring images.
yes…that’s a 200mm 1.8!
Check this out! This is the website of Sara Heinrichs in California, www.saraheinriches.com. It has a really awesome opening “story” behind her photography. Her creativity extends beyond her words in a wonderful sampling of beautiful, fun and creative photography.
Check this out! Jeff Newsom post this thread on his blog showing his awesome home office! Check it out here!
A new ProDPI Price guide has been added to our website!
Changes or additions in this issue:
Adobe Acrobat needed to open our price guide.
This is part one of a technology overview of the products and services of PRODPI!
In order to provide you with the best possible prints, PRODPI uses the best emulsion available. By running fresh batches of Fuji Crystal Archive, Super Type PD daily we provide images with vivid color, realistic skin-tones and archival qualities. This professional paper has a great thick paper base and is backprinted with Copyright Information.
From Fuji Film USA:
Fujicolor Crystal Archive Super Type PD is our newest evolution to Fujifilm’s family of professional portrait color paper. Improving our renowned Crystal Archive Paper technologies, print output results in more accurate color reproduction, more accurate whites, plus improved highlight detail. Consistently high-quality custom wedding and portrait prints are a result your customers will appreciate.
Fuji Crystal Archive image stability continues to assure your customer’s wedding and portrait prints will withstand the test of time with unparalleled print permanence.
We hope that by using the best in photographic paper we can help to highlight your work as an artist and share with your clients their cherished memories.
PRODPI has finally moved our old site off of our web-server and have gone live with our new BluDomain website! We are so excited to have this site, and we hope that you love it! You will see a ton of additions and changes as we add more content, so check back often!
Caitlin and I went to see Jake Shimabukuro this evening at SloBrew. What an amazing musician and performer. He is an ukelele player from Hawaii that simply has the fastest hands and fingers ever! Check him out in this video clip!
