Advice about 12.8 MP Canon Please

I am seriousely contemplating buying a new 12 MP Canon.

Would appreciate advice from actual owners of that camera.

Contemplated usage will be mainly for producing offset lithography
phamplets and possibly larger 8 x 11 inch slick brochers, if the Canon
is up to that task, technically speaking.

My setup will be an Intel-based Mac using Quark and In-Design for
editing the raw digital image from the Canon.



Anything I should know or be aware of?

I am essentially new to digital photography. This will be my first
digital camera of any kind.

What am I getting into?

Mark-

In article , Neil
Gould wrote:

Well... the wrong newsgroup, for starters! ;-)

You may wish to try one of the digital camera groups for information.


Would, if I could find such a NG.

Did searching trying "photo", "digital", "cameras", but no joy. Closest
I came was a lot of Microsoft NGs, which does me no good a a Mac user.

Mac NGs have no postings from serious digital users, only from hobby
users of low res' digital cameras.

Occassionally, there were discussions in this NG regarding pro level
digital cameras, so thought I would try here.


There is a whole contingency of pro' users somewhere, even Mac pros,
wish I could find them.

Oh well...

Mark-

Recently, Mark Conrad posted:

In article , Neil
Gould wrote:

Well... the wrong newsgroup, for starters! ;-)

You may wish to try one of the digital camera groups for information.


Would, if I could find such a NG.

Did searching trying "photo", "digital", "cameras", but no joy.
Closest I came was a lot of Microsoft NGs, which does me no good a a
Mac user.

Hmm. This may be an issue for your ISP. A couple of groups on usenet:

rec.photo.digital

rec.photo.digital.slr-systems

Hope this helps,

Neil

Mark Conrad writes ...

I am seriousely contemplating buying a new 12 MP Canon

Go for it ...

Would appreciate advice from actual owners of that camera

I don't have that one but do own two of the Canon Pro bodies ...

Contemplated usage will be mainly for producing offset lithography
phamplets and possibly larger 8 x 11 inch slick brochers, if the Canon
is up to that task, technically speaking.

8x11 is no problem with that camera, assuming you buy a decent lens
with it. We routinely print much larger than that from 8 and 11 Mpixel
files.

My setup will be an Intel-based Mac using Quark and In-Design
for editing the raw digital image from the Canon

Quark is for page layout and I think In-Design is for designing web
pages, so you need a different program for converting RAW files ...
Photoshop ideally, Elements minimally, or maybe one of the RAW
conversion programs like Capture One or RawShooter, which are both
better than the Photoshop RAW converter for the cameras I use.

Anything I should know or be aware of?

You will have to learn how to properly edit digital files. Will take a
while to get this down ... good luck.

Bill

"Mark Conrad" wrote in message
...
In article , Neil
Gould wrote:

Well... the wrong newsgroup, for starters! ;-)

You may wish to try one of the digital camera groups for information.


Would, if I could find such a NG.


If your ISP won't serve them up, you can pay
for the service. See for example

www.usenetmonster.com

Their cheap plan is $2.95 per month --
for 5G worth of downloading.

The NG you want is rec.photo.digital

The program you want is Photoshop --
not Indesign or Quark.


rafe b
www.terrapinphoto.com

"Mark Conrad" wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:

Well... the wrong newsgroup, for starters! ;-)

You may wish to try one of the digital camera groups for information.


Would, if I could find such a NG.

Try the Canon 1D/1Ds/5D forum over at www.dpreview.com, and also, check out
the samples in the review of the 5D over there. Unfortunately, the forums at
the Rob Galbraith site have been closed down.

Unlike most of the MF digital backs, the 5D actually has a low-pass filter,
but it's a rather weak one so you will see less Moire than with a digital
back, but more than you'd like. Also, the Canon superwides aren't all that
great; for example, the 17-40 zoom needs to be stopped down to f/11 for the
corners to sharpen up. Of course, once you do, it's wonderful. Almost all
35mm lenses show a stop or more of light falloff at the corners wide open,
and images of plain gray walls look really ugly.

Other than that, it's great.

Occassionally, there were discussions in this NG regarding pro level
digital cameras, so thought I would try here.

Yes, but it really is off topic.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

In article , David J. Littleboy
wrote:

Occassionally, there were discussions in this NG regarding pro level
digital cameras, so thought I would try here.

Yes, but it really is off topic.

Yes, I guess so. I originally entered this NG because I had illusions
of buying a medium format 22 MP Hassleblad, but I almost had a heart
attack when I saw the price of that gear.



Unlike most of the MF digital backs, the 5D actually has a low-pass
filter, but it's a rather weak one so you will see less Moire
than with a digital back, but more than you'd like.

I was afraid of that. It is enough to cause a guy to go back to film.

The Moire effect could really louse up my work, because I will be
feeding my edited photos directly to the offset lithography guys.

I doubt very much if they can do anything at the lithography end to
minimize the Moire effect.

As I understand the Moire effect, it has to do with the digital image
being basically alternating red, green, blue "dots" at the camera end,
and because the lithography dots are a different pattern than the
camera dots, there is a decided tendency for colored "bands" to appear
in plain sections of the printed image, like skin tone areas.

Supposedly, the upcoming new model 39 MP Hassleblad has a way of
greatly minimizing Moire effect, according to the press releases from
Hassleblad. Think they do an automatic double exposure to somehow
modify the dot pattern.

That camera back is extremely high priced, I heard $43,000.

Mark-

In article .com,
Bill Hilton wrote:

Quark is for page layout and I think In-Design is for designing web
pages, so you need a different program for converting RAW files ...
Photoshop ideally, Elements minimally, or maybe one of the RAW
conversion programs like Capture One or RawShooter, which are both
better than the Photoshop RAW converter for the cameras I use.

Wow, I certainly have a lot to learn. I asked a offset lithography
shop what software they prefered for their input jobs - - - they said
Quark and In-Design, so I assumed they were talking about raw imaging
editors.




Anything I should know or be aware of?

You will have to learn how to properly edit digital files. Will take a
while to get this down ... good luck.

Thanks for the recommendations for raw editors.

Marks-

Recently, Bill Hilton posted:

Quark is for page layout and I think In-Design is for designing web
pages,

Both Quark XPress and InDesign are page layout applications that have some
web design features cobbled into them, but that isn't their main purpose.

Neil

Recently, Mark Conrad posted:

The Moire effect could really louse up my work, because I will be
feeding my edited photos directly to the offset lithography guys.

I doubt very much if they can do anything at the lithography end to
minimize the Moire effect.

If anything, lithographic printing will aggravate a moiré problem, as most
shops use traditional screening algorithms.

Neil