Digital Innovations

All Photos © 2004, Joe Farace, All Rights Reserved

"I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on a disc somewhere."--how I feel on January 2nd.

It wasn't really a holiday present, at least I don't think so, but my pal Jason gave me a Russian-made Horizon 202 rotating lens panoramic camera as a gift. I've always been fascinated with widescreen images and had been reading actor Jeff Bridges' book (Pictures) of panoramic images made using a Widelux on movie sets. I hadn't shot any film during 2004, and just a few rolls in 2003, but here I was loading film and taking exposure readings with a Gossen handheld meter. The Horizon, you see, is an all-mechanical camera, no batteries included, no batteries needed.

Having a camera with a 120Þ view on a 24x58mm film format and a 28mm focal length lens changes your way of looking at and framing images. When combined with what must charitably be called an approximate view seen though the viewfinder and no focusing capability (I guess that's tough to do with a moving lens) the experience puts spontaneity and maybe even a little inspiration back into your photography.

After having the film processed, I hand trim the negatives--haven't shot slides and don't plan to--and place the strips in the film holders Epson (www.epson.com) provides with the Perfection 4870 Photo scanner. With its 48-bit color depth, 3.8
D-max, and 4800dpi, the Perfection 4870 Photo is a practical studio mate for film shooters. FireWire connectivity makes scans fast and LaserSoft's (www.silverfast.com) SilverFast scanning software makes it slick. After tweaking the images in Adobe Photoshop CS suddenly I'm Jeff Bridges, Nash Bridges, Brooklyn Bridges, or one of those guys.

"Planned Obsolescence" was captured with a Horizon 202 film camera using Kodak Portra black and white film. Exposure was f/16 and 1/125 sec handheld. Film was processed at Wal-Mart, scanned with an Epson Perfection 4870 Photo scanner, and tweaked in Adobe Photoshop CS. I tried to show as much of the film edges as I could; I guess I'll have to file the Epson's film holders to show more, like we did with negative carriers back in the old days.

Plug-In Of The Month
When it comes to color correction plug-ins, the one I reach for first is PictoColor's (www.picto.com) iCorrect Professional, but now there's something new. iCorrect EditLab Pro correction and color management software is available as a Photoshop compatible plug-in or stand-alone application for the Mac OS or Windows. Images are automatically profiled into a specified RGB working color space and color correction parameters can be saved as ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles or custom settings. The software merges the color correction and management functionality of PictoColor's iCorrect Professional and iCorrect EditLab, adding enhanced correction technology and batch processing tools to create a production tool for photographers and photo labs who have to color correct large numbers of photos fast, such as wedding, portrait, school, and sports photos. One photo lab owner reported that he corrected 500 wedding photos per hour with it. Postscript: With the introduction of iCorrect EditLab Pro, PictoColor is discontinuing iCorrect Entree, iCorrect 4.0, iCorrect Professional Plug-in, iCorrect EditLab Plug-in, and the iCorrect EditLab Stand-Alone application.

When using PictoColor's iCorrect EditLab Pro correction and color management software, that's available as both a Photoshop compatible plug-in or stand-alone application, image files are automatically profiled into a specified RGB working color space and color correction parameters can be saved as ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles or custom settings.