Photo Equipment
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Following is a list of the current equipment and procedures used in the preparation of photos for printing and web page posting.

Photo Equipment

Cameras: Nikon D-200 and Nikon D-300 for digital photos.

Lenses: Nikor 28-105mm zoom, Nikor 80-200mm zoom, Nikor 80-400mm zoom, stabilized lens,

              Nikor 18-200mm zoom,  stabilized lens.

Flash: Nikon SB-800 Speedlight.

Digital Processing Equipment

Computer: PC clone

Slide scanner: Nikon CoolScan 5000

Scanning program: Hammerick's VueScan

Printer: Epson Stylus 2200 photo printer

Graphics programs: Adobe Photo Shop, Corel Photo Paint,  Topaz Denoise, NIK Define, FastStone Image Viewer, FastStone Image Re-sizer

Web page design program: Microsoft Front Page 2003

Digital Processing For Print/Web Presentations

 Digital photos are saved in the RAW format when the Nikon D-300/D-200 are used. .The pictures are then processed using Adobe Photo Shop CS,  & noise reduction is done. Unwanted items are removed, color correction is done and lighting/special effects are added if needed. The photo is then resampled down to 300dpi and a picture size of 8X10 inches in the tiff format. It is then sharpened using the "unsharp mask" filter. At this point the photo is ready for printing. High quality photo paper in either glossy or heavy matte finish is always used. All printing is done in the above mentioned tiff format. The file size will be in the 9-12 meg range.

If the photo is to be used for presentation on this web page, it is transferred over to Corel Photo Paint where it is again resampled down to 100dpi and a size of 1000x700 pixels. After processing, it is again run through a pass of "unsharp mask". The file size, at this time, will be approx. 1800 kb. The photo is then transferred to FastStone Photo Re-sizer and saved to a jpg format which reduces the file size down to the 100-300kb range and is suitable for posting on the web.

Many folks will wonder why all the different procedures are done just to get a photo ready for the web. This sequence was arrived at after many sessions of trial and error. In short, Photo Shop is the program to use for processing while Photo Paint was found to be better for web prep. FastStone does a better job of getting the file size down at the final stage and  does a superb job of transferring the picture to the printer.