www.lumen-perfectus.com

Gear and Software

As mentioned elsewhere, Lumen Perfectus is not here to discuss equipment , photography techniques, digital image processing, or Web site development. We continue to receive, however, requests for this kind of information. We've created this page to answer some of the common questions about the equipment used and the development of the Web site. For photography techniques and tutorials, however, you'll have to look elsewhere. Please see our links page and visit some of the sites listed under the Photography Sites and Publications headings.

What follows is the photographer's description of the photo and computer equipment and the software used to create Lumen Perfectus, liberally sprinkled with comments and opinions. When not taking pictures, most photographers enjoy talking about equipment, accessories, film, and techniques. Their latest purchases, equipment trials or rentals, and X-Y comparisons are all topics of conversation. That's true for me as well, but as you'll see my "kit" is pretty modest. It's also necessary to hike to the places from which I like to shoot; a "modest" kit also means light weight.

You'll find links at the bottom of the page to most of the manufacturers mentioned here.

Camera Equipment

I use Canon EOS gear in the field. In April 2007 we ended our years of shooting film with the purchase of a Canon EOS 5D digital SLR body. I use Canon lenses, an EF 24-85mm F:3.5-4.5 zoom and a 100-400mm F:4.5-5.6 L IS zoom. I use Canon's 12 and 25 mm extension tubes for macro photography. I also have a Canon 1.4x teleconverter.

A small collection of filters is used, including B&W circular polarizers and split neutral-density grads. I rarely use colored now, as the effects of these filters can generally be added in Photoshop.

A Gitzo G-1257 tripod is used. The camera is almost never hand-held now, though nearly all photos on the Web site were taken sans-tripod until I saw the error of my ways around the middle of 2001. Since then I've taken the tripod everywhere. I use the outstanding "Ultimate Ball Head" from Acratech and quick-release plates from Really Right Stuff. The light weight of the carbon-fiber tripod and the Acratech head make up a nice system for hiking.

All of this fits into a Tamrack photo backpack. With the tripod this kit weighs about 35 pounds.

I also have a Manfrotto 3021B Pro tripod, but since getting the lighter and stiffer Gitzo, the older tripod with a pan/tilt head is used mainly with our spotting scope.

My now-retired film camera body is an EOS A2e, purchased in 1998 prior to a trip to Alaska's Denali and Glacier Bay National Parks. See my EOS Control Dial Repair site for an interesting story about this camera.

This site has a number of photos taken before I bought the A2e. Nearly all of these images are scenics or macros. These were taken with Topcon Super-D and RE-2 bodies and an assortment of third-party lenses. Extension tubes or bellows were used for some of the macro photographs. The maker of Topcon cameras and lenses no longer does that, concentrating instead on equipment for ophthalmologists, but the brand was quite popular in the 1960s and '70s. You'll find several Web sites devoted to collecting, history, and use of Topcon equipment.

For "snapshots" we carry a Canon S50 digital camera. This is a five megapixel "point and shoot" with the equivalent of a 35 - 105mm zoom. It is more sophisticated than the point and shoot moniker would lead one to believe, providing a full range of both automatic and manual settings. Because the thing is small, it comes along on most photo outings. Now and again a photo from the S50 makes it onto the site.

We still have slides not yet processed for printing or display on this site (more information below). Slides are viewed, sorted, and inspected on an Apollo light box with a Pentax 5.5 power loupe.

As mentioned above, I no longer shoot film, but for many years I used Fujichrome Provia F 100. I've also used Fuji's Velvia (ISO 50), but it was often too slow for use with my lenses, especially for wildlife photography. It's frequently fine for landscapes, and the color saturation is wonderful for most nature photography. I've used Kodak E-200 but have found it to be grainy and contrasty, especially when pushed a stop. You can see evidence of this in some of the photos from Svalbard, Norway and those in the Polar Bear gallery. I've also used E-100VS but have not cared for the overall color cast, especially in scenes with a lot of green.

I've occasionally used Fuji's Provia 400. The speed was terrific, and under some lighting conditions it worked very well. It can get a little grainy, especially in clear skies, under some conditions.

Older images from the Topcon days were generally shot with Kodachrome 25 or 64 or with Ektachrome 160 or 200.

Digital Processing

Although we no longer shoot film, we have many slides yet to be reviewed and scanned for the Web site and for printing. Slides are scanned with a Nikon Coolscan V-ED scanner. Previously I used a Hewlett Packard "PhotoSmart" S20 scanner, a surprisingly flexible low-end film scanner. The HP's scans were more than adequate for the small files on our site, but would fall short when making prints much larger than 8 x 10 inches. Scans from the 4000 dpi Nikon result in files over 100 megabytes in size. This is overkill for anything displayed on the Web, but I usually use this resolution and then resample as necessary to reduce the image sizes as required by my page designs. We are in the midst of a large project to rescan slides which were scanned on the HP. The goal is for all slides in our library to have high-resolution scans so we can print at any size on-demand.

While I think the Nikon is a very nice scanner, I'm far less enthusiastic about Nikon's support for the device. It appears Nikon has abandoned the Macintosh market. Their Mac support for this product has essentially been dropped. One can today buy this scanner believing it includes appropriate Macintosh drivers, and the carton, manual, and included CDs, as well as all the advertising, indicate that's true. It's not. Leopard has been shipping since October 2007, and Snow Leopard since September 2009. It's pretty clear Nikon is not going to produce the needed drivers. To continue using the scanner I've created a Bootcamp drive in the Mac and installed Windows XP, with the single purpose of running the scanner. This works fine, but seems an extreme route to follow simply to work around Nikon's broken promise. If you are a Mac user considering buying a film scanner, it may be worth looking to makers other than Nikon.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 is used for image editing. Most images receive some processing and sharpening to make them look as much like my original vision of the scene as possible, at least on my calibrated monitors. They may look different on your monitor, as relatively few are calibrated for proper color, brightness, and contrast. I will also crop images to improve composition or better display the subject. This sometimes results in enlargement as well. I've used a drawing tablet ("digitizer") for creating some of the other art on this site.

Processing is done on a Mac Pro dual 2.8GHz Intel Quad-Core processor system with 10 gigabytes of RAM and dual monitors. Given the size of files produced by the 5D and the Nikon scanner, and those created for producing large prints, this level of computer performance saves a great deal of time. A Dell UltraSharp 2007FP (20.1" LCD) is the primary monitor, and a low-end Samsung 17" SyncMaster 712N is the secondary. The monitors are calibrated using ColorEyes Display Pro software from Integrated Color Corp., and an X-rite DPT94 colorimeter.

The Mac is networked to shared storage for backups, several Windows XP machines, a Windows laptop, and to a monochrome laser printer. The large-format color printer (see below) is also on the network. The network is held together by a Netgear Wireless Router/Firewall and an SMC 16-port gigabit switch. A Linksys print server is used for the laser printer.

Backup and archiving are done over the network to a Windows server with one terabyte of RAID1 storage. This machine and the routers are powered through a Belkin 1500VA UPS. The RAID is backed up to hard drives installed in removable cartridges, which allows the backups to be stored off-site.

Printing

I'd not done much printing going into the end of 2006. However, for a late autumn show at a local gallery I made and framed number of small prints. I discovered print making is an aspect of photography I really enjoy and find very satisfying. It's gratifying to see a fine print of my work framed and hanging on the wall. I have since concentrated on that aspect of the art and now have photos displayed in shows and galleries in the area.

In early 2007 I purchased a Canon iPF 5000 large-format printer. I spent a year working through samples of many paper types and learning the art of printing. In 2008, with much help from my wife, Pat, we aggressively pursued print sales and were rewarded with good results both from local galleries, outdoor shows, and commissions.

In December 2008 we began offering prints for sale via our site. Our About page has more information about our prints and how you can purchase them.

Software

Nearly all of this site's art, including the page-top banners, word marks, logos, icons, and other graphic elements were created with Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. These two packages make a nice set-up for such work, although Illustrator is certainly overkill for what I need to do. As mentioned above, all image processing is done with Adobe Photoshop CS5.

The original Web site, hosted by Corecomm's Stratos.net, was created with Microsoft's FrontPage 2000. This was also used to create the early "draft" pages for Lumen Perfectus. We upgraded FrontPage 2003, but used it mainly as an HTML editor. All pages on the current site are hand-coded using any of several HTML-aware text editors. Our new site design is XHTML "strict" compliant. Older pages remaining from the our earlier design (mainly, the "wallpaper" pages) very likely comply with nothing. We've lots to do before even thinking about updating those pages.

I favor open-source software and use it whenever it offers good alternatives to commercial apps. Some excellent examples are OpenOffice, Smultron text editor, and FileZilla FTP client. Naturally I also use a number of commercial apps, along with some free- and share-ware. For serious work I use nothing from Microsoft or Symantec, as I simply can't afford the hassles. See our April, 2005 article for details of our Symantec debacle.

Manufacturers' Links

Here are links to the Web sites of some of the manufacturers mentioned. These sites are maintained by their respective companies. We are not responsible for their availability, operation, or content, but if you find a broken link here please let us know!

- Canon EOS cameras and lenses
- Canon iPF5000 printer
- Schneider/B&W filters
- Pentax loupes
- Gitzo and Manfrotto tripods
- Acratech (ball head)
- Really Right Stuff
- Cokin filter system
- Tamrack bags

- Fuji professional color reversal films
- Kodak professional color reversal films

- Apple Macintosh
- Nikon USA
- Hewlett-Packard
- Epson
- Linksys networking equipment
- Netgear networking equipment
- Samsung monitors
- Dell computers and peripherals
- Integrated Color Corp (ColorEyes Display)
- APC backup power
- Belkin backup power