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Archive 2016 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr

  
 
leethecam
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


Is it just me, or do you want to scream "switch the lights on / open the curtains" when a client decides to view an album in poor light.

Normally I like to have a little control or make suggestions if I'm there, but sometimes there are no good options and a little piece of me might die...

So, a recently lovingly crafted album, beautifully balanced with calibrated Eizos to have gentle skin tones and no burnt highlights or crushed blacks... viewed in low, tungsten light.

I had my camera bag with me so I sneaked out the meter, 3.0EV @ISO100 (1/60, F2.8, ISO 6400 approx).

Strangely enough the images didn't quite show themselves at their best - until I persuaded to open a curtain and let the albeit overcast light in the room - yey... there are highlights now...!

I wonder sometimes if clients ever notice the difference?

There are times when I see the point of the Digital-Only packages... ha.

Rant over. Feeling better. Grrrr....



Dec 06, 2016 at 12:53 PM
TTLKurtis
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


You don't include a daylight balanced lamp with every album purchase?


Dec 06, 2016 at 02:11 PM
Mark_L
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


Reminds me of recording studios. Things get mixed on high end studio monitors but many also have 'grot box' systems to represent crappy music systems people have to improve the mix for the general population.

TTLKurtis wrote:
You don't include a daylight balanced lamp with every album purchase?


I do one better. I keep the album but let them view it whenever they want in my specialist perfectly controlled viewing booth.



Dec 06, 2016 at 02:43 PM
LeeSimms
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


In this instance, the iPad Pro wins.


Dec 06, 2016 at 03:39 PM
leethecam
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


I used to own a full 24 track recording studio 25 years ago - huge mixing desk and recording space that could take an 80 piece orchestra.

Of course we had lovely monitoring, but also a pair of cheap (except they were very expensive), simple speakers, designed to sound like a basic sound system.

And of course the sound would be different depending on whether you played it loud or quiet, and don't get me started on the perils of the old cassette tapes that NEVER sounded like the master recording.

I have daylight bulbs in my house / office and I hate tungsten orange with a vengeance. Know knows what our precious albums look like when they're viewed at clients' homes or around at their friends.

It looked great under my proofing light. I have to remind myself that this is the important thing... anything else is wrong... ha.



Dec 06, 2016 at 03:48 PM
leethecam
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


TTLKurtis wrote:
You don't include a daylight balanced lamp with every album purchase?


Maybe one of those little LED torch things that strap to your head...?



Dec 06, 2016 at 03:49 PM
InSanE
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


I sell albums with special coatings that look perfect under any lighting. Also glow in the dark. If clients do not have 20/20 vision I insist on specialist eye exam and expensive glasses.


Dec 06, 2016 at 04:20 PM
LeeSimms
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


> Of course we had lovely monitoring, but also a pair of cheap (except they were very expensive), simple speakers, designed to sound like a basic sound system.

Hugh Padgham mixed all The Police, etc records on lowly AR-18's

h ttp://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/acoustic-research/ar-18.shtml

Someone got it in their head that Yamaha NS-10's typified the "everyman's" speaker and they become a mix standard. Ugh. My favorite mix-downs were the cue speakers in the Studer 2-track machines.

Sorry for being so off-topic. We now return you to this wedding album thread already in progress.



Dec 06, 2016 at 05:00 PM
leethecam
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


LeeSimms wrote:
> Of course we had lovely monitoring, but also a pair of cheap (except they were very expensive), simple speakers, designed to sound like a basic sound system.

Hugh Padgham mixed all The Police, etc records on lowly AR-18's

h ttp://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/acoustic-research/ar-18.shtml

Someone got it in their head that Yamaha NS-10's typified the "everyman's" speaker and they become a mix standard. Ugh. My favorite mix-downs were the cue speakers in the Studer 2-track machines.

Sorry for being so off-topic. We now return you to this wedding album thread already in progress.


Staying off topic for a moment... Yes if memory serves it was all Thomas Dolby's fault. He said he liked them and so everyone followed suit - at least that's how folk-law tells it.

Trick was to pop a piece of tissue over the tweeters to take the bite off their sound. The "cheap" and cheerful speakers were a pair of Auratones. Nothing like the rather lovely Genelecs I have in my edit suite. Things have come a long way...



Dec 06, 2016 at 05:53 PM
glort
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr



This view in the dark thing probably has something else to do with the proclivity of Iphoneys. My Daughter and all her friends have the things turned down on the screen so far you can hardly see them. I get the shits when she tries to show me something on it and it's like looking into a black hole as if the piddly little screen size didn't make reading things hard enough.

They turn it down so they can get more battery life. UGGGH!
Going to be an epidemic of people with terrible eyesight, deaf and brain tumours in not too many years to come.

I do actually have a colour balanced light in the studio. I set it up more for my own printing but I put it on ( it's a highbay type light) when I deliver prints or albums and let people look at the prints under it. If the first time they see something it looks right, they will never question the quality again, from there on in it will always be the lighting/ person who did reprints/ the monitor etc.


I also used to have this problem when I did Video.
Use 3 tube/chip camera's, editing gear that cost a bomb, Cut it on the highest quality tapes available and people would come back complaining it looked awful.
Put it into my domestic Video Player and on my Sony TV and it was perfect. Then they would go on like you were tricking them or something. Couple of questions and you found they were watching it on the first model Colour TV to come out and the Video player was 5 years old and they looked at you with that absent head tilt when you asked them when was the last time the heads were cleaned ? Huh?

I woke up after a bit and would sit them down and play the highlight section at the end to show them what the thing looked like. They knew then it was good and the complaints diminished although I still got asked If I could make the video look good on their Old POS TV.
Well yes I can! Go buy a new Vid deck and decent TV and donate the one you have to a museum and I'll come round and colour balance the TV settings so it looks great.

I got taken to small claims court once over this. Bride holds up a piece of the funky Purple metalic material that changed colour that were the bridesmaids dresses next to the monitor and said see, it's not the same. I pointed out the skin tones of the people were the correct and the grass was green, the sky blue and the cars white.
She still wasn't happy so I fiddled the colour on the monitor until she was happy at which point people were green.

Fortunately the referee had a clue and dismissed the claim.






Dec 06, 2016 at 07:41 PM
Mark_L
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


glort wrote:
I got taken to small claims court once over this. Bride holds up a piece of the funky Purple metalic material that changed colour that were the bridesmaids dresses next to the monitor and said see, it's not the same. I pointed out the skin tones of the people were the correct and the grass was green, the sky blue and the cars white.
She still wasn't happy so I fiddled the colour on the monitor until she was happy at which point people were green.


Her daughter has probably got married now and she probably thinks the pics all pee stained with VSCO actions are great.



Dec 07, 2016 at 05:51 PM
glort
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Album viewing and poor light. Grrr


Mark_L wrote:
Her daughter has probably got married now and she probably thinks the pics all pee stained with VSCO actions are great.


Anyone that had that colour dresses for their bridesmaids was either seeking revenge on them or was wearing rose coloured contact lenses! uggh!

Why is it that people have dresses and colours for the attendants at the most important day in their lives that none of them would be seen dead in otherwise??
My wife and I wondered that when we got married 24 years back. Her bridesmaids all loved their dresses and wore them many times afterwards. I had a very expensive tailor made suit which was my best bit of gear ( and still is thinks to classic design and foresight by my tailor whom new where to leave extra material) and I have worn it many times since.

Why to the girls get put in something that looks ridiculous from the start and they would never wear again except to a fancy dress party?

Equality is creeping in though. Recently saw wedding pics of friends of friends where the guys wore the most insipid coloured suits I have ever seen. I thought it was a joke at first but the couple were really pleased with them. Whoever the tailor was that made those and didn't tell the people to wake the hell up to themselves and refuse to bring his trade into such disrepute should be made to walk round naked for the rest of their days as punishment for what they have inflicted on other innocent people.

Don't talk about daughters getting married.
I am now getting enquiries and bookings from people I shot their parents wedding.

I feel sooooooooo old.



Dec 07, 2016 at 07:53 PM





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