On Apr 5, 2010, at 8:01 PM, Mark Roberts wrote: > Brian Walters wrote: > >> On Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:24 -0700, "Jack Davis" <jdavi...@yahoo.com> >> wrote: >>> I gave my honest reaction to the crude first half dozen words of your >>> first sentence. I read no further nor do I intend to. >>> You're obviously still stinging from the dressing down you receive some >>> time ago. >> >> Geez - I'll have to pay better attention. Must have missed that one. >> >> :-)> >> >> FWIW, I though Godders' original reply was informative. Maybe not what >> you were looking for but I got some good value out of it. > > I'll second that. I thought Godfrey's answer was right on the money.
I agree. But while I worked with the zone system when printing in the darkroom, I find it somewhat useless for digital photography and printing, where some scenes are best exposed for the highlights and others for the shadows. Because we now have access to instant histograms, control can be much more precise than that of a system which was devised for photographers who had to work with light meters and a zone 5 base. There are times when letting the shadow detail go off scale is desirable and those where out of range highlights complement the photographers intent. The histogram is our friend. > > All I'd add would be that it's best to start with a good quality > monitor: I've found if a monitor isn't good quality then profiling it > is minimally helpful. You can improve shadow or highlight detail a > *little* through a profile, but not much. Better a top-notch monitor > without calibration/profiling than a TN monitor with calibration and > profiling in my experience. > Calibration is essential to color accuracy, and you can achieve that with a good TN monitor. However, as I noted earlier, some TN monitors can't be counted on for perfect shadow detail delineation. But there are workarounds for that. I've found that if I calibrate the monitor than match the brightness level to what I need to achieve a perfect print, I'm golden with a less than perfect monitor. But without calibration, color accuracy is hit and miss. That being said, Id rather work with a top notch monitor. It's on my wish list:-). Paul > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
