Here are some tips to help you get the best quality prints from digital images when you use a desktop inkjet printer:
Photo Review tips section
Defining Empty
How do you know when cartridges in your inkjet printer are really empty? Strangely enough, it’s not when the printer driver tells you to change cartridges because, for most inkjet printers, between 10% and 25% of the ink still remains in the cartridge – and usable – when the first ‘out-of-ink’ warning appears.
Displaying and Sharing Digital Photos
Photographers today have many ways to display and share their digital photos. Which ones you use will depend on your taste, level of expertise with particular technologies and the ways in which you would like to present your images.
Create Your Own Photo Books
Most photographers will know of one or more companies that can print and bind customers’ photos into photo books (a Google search on Photo Books yields at least 10 pages of local suppliers).
Create Exhibition Quality B&W Pictures
With the release of inkjet printers and special papers and inks, digital photographers can now produce ‘fine art’ prints with a quality that was formerly only achievable through chemical means. But, as with traditional photography, good results can only be obtained with effort and understanding.
Advanced Editing Techniques
Once you’ve mastered the basics of image editing you can move on to explore the tools that serious photographers use to correct minor flaws in images before printing them or posting them on websites. The most useful tools are those for selective adjustment of brightness, contrast and colours.
21st Century Photo Albums
recently reviewed the new Epson Pro 3800 A2 format, eight-colour inkjet printer. Who would have thought just two years ago that for around the same cost as a half-way decent black and white darkroom, we could purchase a printer with which we can, with a few mouse clicks, produce truly extraordinary, full-colour 42 x 60cm poster prints at home? Let alone have sub-$1000 cameras which can do justice to that size of enlargement!
Understanding the Micro Four Thirds System
On Tuesday, 5 August, 2008, Olympus and Panasonic jointly announced a new digital camera format. Based on the existing Four Thirds system and using the same 18.0 x 13.5 mm sensor, the new Micro Four Thirds (MFT) system – which has also been tagged the EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) specification – promises even smaller, lighter interchangeable-lens cameras. Technically, cameras built for the new system won’t be DSLRs. They will have no reflex mirror system and optical viewfinders will be replaced by electronic finders.
Photo Review camera and lens test procedures
An outline of our review philosophy and test procedures to compare the performance of cameras and lenses.
Insider: Ten Bad Habits to Avoid
Taking digital photographs can make even experienced photographers let some aspects of their practice slip occasionally. Being able to shoot and review on the spot, and the enormous scope for post-capture tweaking of images can make digital photographers careless. Standards slip and before long you find the shots on those memory cards don’t meet your expectations. Or maybe, there aren’t any shots at all!