Workflow
Card sharp
Get colours right
Lexar: swains.co.uk
Card speed is not usually an issue if you’re a shooting landscapes or still lifes, but if you are into action or nature photography – where you can rattle off long sequences – a card’s write speed is important if you don’t want the camera buffering, with the risk of missing the decisive shot. Leading memory brand Lexar has high-performing options for all in the popular card formats, including CompactFlash, CFast and the newest format, which is CFexpress. In the SD format, there’s the choice of performance speeds from 633x (£14.99 for a 64GB card) to super-quick 2000x cards that work at 300MB/s.
IT IS VERY easy to take those little miracles of technology that we all have sitting in our digital cameras for granted. However, it is worth making sure your memory cards are physically OK and updating them if your cards are slow, or if you upgrade your camera to a higher resolution model. One of the most popular card types is the also the poorest in terms of physical robustness, so if your cameras take SD cards, check that they are sliding into the card slot smoothly and the contacts are clean. SD cards are relatively inexpensive – unlike XQD and CFexpress type cards, which are expensive, but very robust and fast-performing.
HAVING A FIRST-class monitor is one thing, but the important thing is that it is properly set-up and calibrated. So first you need to think about where it sits in your room. Ideally, you don’t want any direct light (natural or artificial) falling on to the front of the screen to avoid any issues with glare, which can make your pictures flat and desaturated and also potentially be fatiguing to work with. You also want it to be at a comfortable working height, say the centre of the screen at eye level, and you should have a back-supporting chair to help your posture during those long hours of creative editing. Put simply, you need to think about the ergonomics of your digital workstation. Now you need to colour calibrate your monitor so what you see on-screen is correct and consistent when you print, upload to your website or submit it to a third party, such as when you submit to competitions or send work to the printers. Datacolor and X-Rite are the brands inextricably linked with colour calibration. X-Rite has an impressive line-up of display calibration solutions starting from the i1Display Studio, which retails at £135 and won the TIPA Best Colour Management Solution award for 2020. The i1Display Studio outfit comes with an i1 colorimeter and i1Studio software and is simple to use, too, with a wizard-driven workflow and you get a reminder when you need to re-profile the screen. It works for desktop monitors, laptops and digital projectors, too, so if you have those devices, the i1Studio means your colours will be consistent across your imaging devices. colorconfidence.com datacolor.com xrite.com lumesca.com
Paper round
Storage matters
PDF from its website, which will help you choose the best paper for your photographs called The Knowledge Vol 1: The Art of Paper Selection . It obviously highlights Permajet products, but there's plenty of general paper choosing advice regardless of the brand you use and it’s a good read, too.
ONE OF THE absolutely awesome things about inkjet printing is the huge range of media available to suit all preferences, needs and tastes. Permajet is one of the best-known media brands offering papers of all sorts, free ICC printing profiles, refillable ink systems and training. Plus it sells Canon and Epson printers and consumables. It also recently announced its protective printer covers – the medium (for Epson SC-P600 size printers) costs £25 and the large is £30. Permajet also introduced a free downloadable
YOUR COMPUTER MIGHT have a 4TB hard drive tucked away inside – and that’s a lot of storage – but despite that, you need a storage and backup strategy and not just rely on a single drive. The simplest option is couple of desktop external hard drives (HDDs), one you work on from day-to-day and one you regularly back up and store away from the computer. Desktop external hard drives are good value and you can get a 4TB model for less than £100. Obviously it depends on how prolific you are, but a 4TB HDD should be enough for many still photographers to take a couple of years’ output. Another option is a portable hard drive, which are available as HDDs or SSDs (solid state drives). A step on from a standard HDD connected to the computer is a multiple hard drive RAID. Here, data is placed across the number of drives so if one (or more) of the hard drives in the RAID goes down, the data is not lost. RAIDs accept two or more standard 3.5in SATA HDDs and are usually sold as a housing and you buy drives separately. Setting up a RAID is straightforward and doesn’t require IT skills, but it is important to buy suitable, high-quality HDDs. Advice on the manufacturer’s websites is usually provided. The unit’s software will also guide you through the set-up options and help you decide how you want the RAID partitioned. G-Technology, SanDisk, WD : westerndigital.com LaCie : lacie.com Samsung : samsung.com/uk/memory-storage
canson-infinity.com www.fotospeed.com hahnemuehle.com
innovaart.com permajet.com tetenal.com
Be a show-off
screen not only gives a bigger image size, it allows space for menus, tool palettes etc to sit next to the image you’re working, so you’re not constantly juggling things around the screen – unless you are lucky enough to have the option of a dual-screen set-up. The SW321C is a £1600 screen and designed to meet AQColor technology, a professional colour standard developed by BenQ to fulfil the its concept of ‘accurate reproduction.’ Key benefits include 10-bit colour depth for smooth colour gradations, 99% coverage of the Adobe RGB and 100% of the sRGB colour spaces, 16-bit lookup table (LUT) for RGB blending accuracy and uniformity compensation for even
THERE’S NO POINT skimping on a monitor and what you really need is a top-quality monitor aimed at photographers if you want to see your shots looking at their very best. What size you go for obviously depends on your set-up and how much space you have, as well as budget. A 24in screen is a good minimum starting point and 32in is perfect, with 27in a decent compromise. BenQ has a wide range of excellent monitors at attractive prices, including the popular 27in SW270C. Its range has grown with the arrival of the SW321C, a 32in monitor which covers 99% of the Adobe RGB colour space and has 4K resolution to show your shots in amazing detail. A larger
brightness corner to corner. There’s also a test of the award-winning BenQ SW321C in this issue. BenQ: colorconfidence.com EIZO: eizo.co.uk Philips: philips.co.uk
Issue 82 | Photography News 31
photographynews.co.uk
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