The Monomagician

When I used to shoot 35mm film, one camera that I loved using was a Ricoh GR1s.  This little beauty was built to last, with a magnesium alloy body containing a retractable 28mm f2.8 lens which gave stunning results.  When I moved to digital and the original GRD was announced, I was keen to get hold of one as it offered similar handling and field of view to the GR1s and had a lens which purported to give the same field of view as the original 28mm lens.

The GRD was a disappointment for me.  Whilst the images could be stored as .dng files, it took an age to write them to the card and during this period, the camera couldn’t be used.  Shooting jpegs was faster, but I was never really happy with their quality.  Moreover, the files were noisy if anything other than the lowest ISO setting was used.   I bought a Canon G9 as a replacement and whilst it is by no means a bad camera, I was never completely satisfied with the image quality.

My misgivings were mainly due to the small sensor used in the camera.  This has an adverse impact on two important areas, namely noise and depth of field.  I remember thinking that if Canon could bring out a digital camera which was about the same size as the G9 but had a bigger sensor, say APS-C sized, then for me,that would be a winner.

So far, nothing of that ilk has materialised from Canon.  I wasn’t keen on Sigma’s DP1 offering: it just didn’t appeal to me, mainly because I don’t believe it is supported in Adobe Lightroom.  Rather, you have to use the proprietary raw processing software that is packaged with the camera to process the files. I have also read that this camera is slow - possibly slower than the GRD when writing files to its card.

I was never that interested in the Four Thirds standard and to be honest, when the newer Micro Four Thirds standard was announced, I couldn’t really see how it would be relevant to me.  Then Olympus announced their new PEN range of cameras, shortly followed by Panasonic’s announcement of the GF1.  When I started to hear and read good things about the GF1 and the 20mm f1.7 pancake lens, I thought it was time to have a look at one and see what all of the fuss was about.

To cut a long story short, with a significant birthday fast approaching, I decided to buy a black GF1 with the 20mm f1.7 pancake lens, which gives a field of view equivalent to 40mm on 35mm film.  An acquaintance on the Leica User Group was selling a Voigtlander 40mm optical viewfinder for a good price, so I duly bought that too.

For my money I have a compact camera outfit which isn’t much bigger than my Canon G9. The GF1 is compact enough to fit comfortably into an overcoat pocket, though it will never fit into a shirt pocket like a Ricoh GR1 / GRD used to.

This picture illustrates the difference in size between the GF1 (with 40mm Voigtlander finder) and the Canon G9.

When the the lens on the G9 is extended, there really isn’t much in it size-wise.  The bigger sensor in the GF1 means that the body needs to be correspondingly larger, but not excessively so in my opinion.

So, after using the GF1 for nine days, what do I think of it? Well, my initial thoughts are that I am going to get along famously with this camera. Despite what some people say, it’s not a Leica M8 replacement, though it does complement a rangefinder (or DSLR outfit for that matter) very well and I have been very pleased with the results I have obtained so far.

This camper van was a very sorry sight to behold. I used the 40mm optical viewfinder to frame this and was pleasantly surprised at the accuracy. Click on the image to see more shots taken with the GF1 / 20mm Pancake lens.

The 40mm optical viewfinder means that handling the GF1 is very similar to the Ricoh GRD and one area where it is better is that it is possible to switch off the rear LCD display - something that you couldn’t do on the GRD, which was a bit of a distraction when using the accessory viewfinder.  The main advantage of being able to disable the rear LCD is it must improve the battery life of the camera.

Likes:

• overall build quality

• size - not too big, not too small.  Perfect for Goldilocks

• ergonomics - it didn’t take too long to suss out where everything was.  Why though does a camera need a 196-page manual (see below…)

• optical quality - which is what really matters isn’t it?  The first few prints that I have made are nice and sharp. The colour rendition is excellent.

• autofocus - the face-detection and follow-focus features work very well indeed.

• a nice quiet shutter, with no appreciable lag time.
• well-balanced
• a large sensor.

Dislikes:

• the battery/SD card door feels a bit flimsy.  It spoils an otherwise very nicely made camera.

• vertical pictures are not auto-rotated when imported to Lightroom.  I subsequently discovered that this feature which is known as the ‘direction detection feature’, isn’t supported with the 20mm pancake lens.  Not a deal-breaker, but as I like to shoot portrait format quite a lot, it’s an annoyance.

• more modes than you can shake a stick at.  I think the camera was dipped in Complicatonite!
  There are scene modes: 17 of them, plus the usual Program, Aperture priority, Shutter Priority, manual, movie, intelligent auto, two custom modes and one with an artist’s pallette, which I have no idea about.  Then there are the flash modes (which I haven’t looked at yet).  This little camera is very a la mode!   In short, I think it, like many other cameras of Japanese origin, is too complicated.  Features have been added for three reasons: first because the marketers think it’s a good idea, second because the opposition do it and third because they can.

For me, the biggest advantage of the GF1 is definitely the 4/3 sensor. I’ve used it up to ISO 800 and produced some pleasing prints.  Yes, they are noisy, but whether the noise is acceptable is a personal thing.

Battery life seems to  be OK, though I haven’t used the camera enough to make a proper judgement yet and furthermore, it’s been very cold lately - when I took the campervan shot above, the temperature was hovering just above freezing.

I don’t know whether it’s got something to do with the 4:3 aspect ratio, but the 20mm lens (which is equivalent to a 40mm lens on full-frame 35mm), seems pretty wide - probably wide enough for me in fact, so whilst I have heard that Panasonic are due to bring out a 14mm pancake lens, giving a field of view equivalent to a 28mm, I would need to think very carefully about whether to get this lens.

On the subject of accessories, I have a lens protection filter and lens hood on order.  One small problem with the 20mm pancake lens is the filter size.  At 46mm it isn’t that common and consequently it can be hard to get lens accessories in this size.  I have a Lee RF-75 filter kit complete with a 46mm adaptor and I think this will be very handy when I try landscape photography.  I wonder how the camera will fare with my Leica universal polariser?

One accessory I will get for the camera is a decent wrist strap.  Being so compact, the GF1 lends itself well to being carried from the wrist.  It’s certainly less obtrusive that carrying a camera around the neck or over one’s shoulder.  I also think it will be quicker to bring the camera into action: especially with the optical viewfinder in position.  Moreover, it will probably lessen the risk of losing the optical viewfinder.  I have had finders fall out of hot shoes when I’ve carried cameras over my shoulder.  The voigtlander finders don’t have any means of locking them onto the hotshoe.

Overall, the GF1 is a very good camera and it has produced some very pleasing shots.  If you are in the market for a good quality compact camera then the GF1 comes highly recommended.

Introduction.

One of the most desirable lenses for many Leica rangefinder owners has been the 50mm Noctilux. This lens has seen several iterations since the introduction in 1968 of the original f1.2 version. The current version, with a maximum aperture of f0.95, retails at £6181! The reasons for the appeal of these lenses are the ability to take photographs in very low light levels, whilst minimising the risk of camera shake as well as a unique look brought about by the very wide aperture. The depth of field at f1.0 is miniscule and images taken wide-open have a dream-like quality due partly to certain lens aberrations.

Now, there is a newcomer to the f1 club: Voigtländer have recently introduced a 50mm f1.1 lens with a Leica M bayonet mount. It costs a rather more affordable £1092, though this is still a hefty price to pay for a single lens!

Having hankered after a Noctilux for several years, but been unable to afford either a new or second hand lens, I was rather pleasantly surprised when this lens was announced by Cosina in late spring 2009. I was even more pleasantly surprised to see a secondhand, mint example come up on the Internet rangefinder forum and following some financial jiggery-pokery, I was able to buy the lens for considerably less than the retail price.

Description

The Voigtländer 50mm f1.1 lens is a weighty piece of glass, weighing in at 428g. It comprises 7 lens elements in 6 groups.

The aperture ring, which is very smooth and has firm click stops, allows the user to select apertures in half-stop increments and runs from f1.1 to f16.

Focusing is via a thick, scalloped focusing ring. The scalloped surface makes it virtually impossible to confuse the focusing and aperture rings and offers an excellent feel. The focusing action is firm yet silky smooth. In fact it’s impossible to tell the difference between the Nokton and a more expensive Leica lens in this regard. The lens focuses from its closest distance of 1m to infinity in ¼ of a turn.

The lens comes with a fairly shallow threaded lens hood which screws directly into the 58mm filter thread on the lens body. One minor irritation I found with the lens was when I initially fitted a 58mm UV/IR filter, the hood would not engage fully with the screw threads on the filter and it would rattle annoyingly. Thankfully, there is a second set of threads inside the hood itself, which are meant for taking a lens cap. The rather brief instruction manual does warn against using these for a filter as there is a risk of vignetting, but as I am using the lens on a Leica M8 with a 1.3x cropped sensor, this is not an issue for me and the whole thing feels much more secure with the hood directly attached to the lens with the filter nestled safely inside.

Handling

The 50mm f1.1 Nokton handles very well on the Leica M8. Whilst the combination feels heavy, it actually weighs just 75g more than my wife’s Canon EOS350D with 17-85mm lens.

The size difference between the f1.1 lens on the left and f2 lens on the right is striking. In spite of its size and weight, the Nokton handles very well on the Leica M. A handgrip is a useful accessory, particularly with the larger lens.

One of the problems with using physically large lenses on rangefinder cameras is the lens body often blocks part of the viewfinder. The body of the Nokton f1.1 is visible within the frame lines, but it obscures less than 25% of the 50mm viewfinder frame on the M8.

The biggest challenge with any wide-aperture lens on a rangefinder camera is accurate focusing. With the tiny amount of depth of field available, getting the plane of focus where it’s wanted is not a straightforward task. However, it does become easier with practice. One tip I was given by an acquaintance on the Leica User Group was to focus roughly using the focusing ring then make fine adjustments by rocking one’s body backwards and forwards to get the focus absolutely spot on.

Accurate focusing is helped somewhat by using a viewfinder magnifier. I use a 1.25x magnifier and this makes a huge difference to focusing accuracy, though it does make it a little difficult to see the light meter LEDs at the bottom of the frame, especially when wearing spectacles.

Using the Nokton in anger.

My first opportunity to use the 50mm Nokton f1.1 came at the Fairford Steam Rally in August 2009. I knew this would be a ‘target rich’ environment which would be suited to the 65mm effective focal length that the cropped sensor of the M8 gives with this lens.

Wide-open performance

I was delighted with my hit rate when taking portraits of the showmen with their traction engines.  In some cases, I missed focus as the subject moved slightly! As it was sunny, the camera was frequently set with a shutter speed of 1/8000s at ISO 160! In fact it was sometimes necessary to stop the lens down to avoid overexposure. A two or three stop neutral density filter may be a useful accessory for this lens if there is a need to shoot wide-open in bright conditions.

Discussing engines. This shot demonstrates the bokeh of the Nokton f1.1 when shot wide-open. The shutter speed was 1/6000 at ISO 160!

At f1.1, the lens is really in its element. The plane of focus is sharp and depth of field at 1.5 – 2m is no more than a few cm. The out of focus areas are rendered very smoothly and the bokeh of the lens is, to my eyes, very nice indeed.

Showman. Another shot taken at f1.1. The subject is very nicely isolated from the background.

Stopped down

Stopped down, this lens is very sharp and has an almost clinical look to it. Its character is very different to the 50mm f2 Summicron that I normally use, but the end results are very satisfactory.

The "Burrell Road Locomotive. This was taken at about f5.6. I have made an A2 print of this shot, and it's sharp from centre to edge.

Traction engines in the showground. This shot demonstrates the usefulness of the 50mm f1.1 Nokton as a general-purpose 50mm lens. The picture was taken at f8. At a 100% view in Lightroon, the name plates on the tractor and traction engines at the edges of the frames are clearly visible.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the Voigtländer 50mm Nokton f1.1 lens is well made and the results from the lens both wide-open and stopped down are excellent, although the effects obtained by shooting at or around f1 are not to everybody’s taste. This is a lens that requires a bit of work to get the very best from it. Wide-open, the hit rate can be variable depending on how accurately you focus and whether the subject keeps still, but in the right hands it is capable of producing first rate results.

I would love to try the lens out on a full-frame Leica M9, but that will have to wait for quite a long while…

At less than 1/5 of the cost of the Leica f0.95 Noctilux, it represents excellent value for money.

Introduction

2008 was a special year for my wife Karin and I as we celebrated our 25^th wedding anniversary.

We knew we wanted to do something special to celebrate and came up with the idea of a ‘mini grand tour’ of Italy, taking in Rome, Florence and then a couple of days in the Piedmonte region.

Having taken to heart the notion of trying to reduce our impact on the Environment, we decided to avoid using aircraft and make our way by train where possible.

Our trip had the hallmarks of being quite an adventure and planning started in earnest in the previous October, when we signed up for a GCSE Italian evening class!

In addition to learning a little of the Italian language, we also started to work out just how feasible it would be to travel from our home in Swindon to Rome by train. The answer, it transpired was ‘eminently feasible!’ There is a daily sleeper train from Paris Gare de Bercy to Roma Termini called the Palatino. We booked our Eurostar tickets on-line. Whilst we could have done the same for the Palatino tickets, we opted to let a travel agent sort this out as we wanted to make absolutely sure we got what we wanted.

As we were celebrating a very special occasion, we decided to travel first-class on the Eurostar. It wasn’t cheap, but we would be wined and dined as we made our way through Kent, the Chunnel and Northern France. Now that the high-speed rail link from St Pancras to Folkestone has been completed, the journey time from London to Paris has been cut to about two and a half hours. I think it would be difficult, if not impossible to do the journey in the same time by air once you factor in check-in times, baggage collection and subsequent travel from the airport to the centre of Paris.

Equipment Decisions.

With travel arrangements and hotels booked, it was time to think about luggage and above all, camera equipment. We wanted to travel light, not wanting to have to lug huge suitcases and heavy camera bags through station concourses or on the underground. So we decided to restrict our luggage to a single airline wheeled carry-on sized case each.

Karin had already made a decision to take her Canon G9 digital compact camera rather than her EOS350D . The G9 was until recently, Canon’s top of the range compact digital camera. It’s quite small and light, very well made and has a 12MP sensor, so can produce excellent results. I originally wanted to take a Leica M8 digital rangefinder with 2 or 3 lenses. But in the end, I too opted to take a G9.  It’s much lighter and from a purely practical perspective, it meant we could save space and weight by having just one battery charger for the two cameras. In addition to the two cameras and a single battery charger, we each took a spare battery and eight 2 gigabyte SD cards. We could have saved a tiny amount of space and weight by using higher capacity SDHC cards, but we both felt that 2 gigabyte cards were large enough. Entrusting around 115 raw images to a single card is plenty in my book! For backup, we shared a 40 gigabyte Jobo Gigavue hard drive. Each outfit fitted into a Lowepro ‘bumbag’.

Any initial misgivings about not bringing my Leica outfit were removed when we arrived at Roma Termini. It was 30 degrees and there was a transport strike. Any hope of getting a taxi to our hotel before we melted was dashed as soon as we saw the queues. So we decided to walk to the hotel. It was only about a mile, but it made me very glad that I didn’t have my Billingham bag to carry as well as drag my suitcase through Rome.

Out and about in Rome

Rome is a fascinating city. There is so much to see and do and it was impossible to do the city justice in the three days we spent there. Thankfully, there is a very good underground system and most of the main sites of interest are close to a Metro station or are easy to get to by foot.

The entrance to the Palazzo Barberini - home of the National Art Collection

Apart from the heat, which was often oppressive, the down side of travelling to Rome in July is the harshness of the light. Many photographs were spoiled by hard directional lighting and it was often impossible to capture the full dynamic range of a scene. Many of the best shots were taken in shade.

A couple of things to watch out for were the hawkers around the Spanish Steps and students wanting signatures on petitions. The hawkers would usually approach couples, offering a rose, saying it’s a gift. Then when you’ve taken it from them, ask for money. Another trick was to offer to take a couple’s photo with their camera -  for a fee of course.

The students were everywhere!  They all wanted us to sign a petition and it got very wearing.  We soon learned that saying ‘non grazie, ho gia fatto’ (No thanks, I’ve already done it) was enough to get them to move on to some other unsuspecting person. (more…)

Having had our Italian class cancelled this evening gave me the opportunity to process the other scan that I made yesterday.  Both shots have now been printed on Permajet Fibre-based glossy paper at A3 and they look lovely.

Here’s the second shot:

Shen Hao HZX45II 150mm Apo Sironar N, HP5 plus developed in Perceptol 1+2, 12 minutes at 24 deg C.

I think I prefer the vertical composition and the post-processing isn’t as harsh as that in the other picture.

You can view more of my large-format work at monomagic.co.uk

Yesterday, we finished celebrating our 25th Wedding Anniversary at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire. We had a wonderful time. The food was exquisite and the service was incredible. I had arranged for a bouquet of red roses to be presented to Karin as we went into Dinner, so for the moment, I can do no wrong :-).

Today, I had a day’s leave. I had an urge to use my large format camera. As the weather was appalling today, I decided to stay indoors and turn my attention to the bouquet. I spent a good couple of hours experimenting with two lenses: a 150mm Apo Sironar S and a 90mm Rodenstock Grandagon ‘N’ f6.8. It’s been a while since I have used my LF kit, but it didn’t take long to get back into the swing of things. Though as I write this, my back and neck are a bit stiff from contorting myself to look at the ground-glass.

The shot below was taken with the 90mm lens fitted with a red filter. I wanted to lighten the red of the rose and darken the foliage so I would get a better separation of tones.
It was necessary to factor in some bellows extension to the exposure as I estimate the magnification ratio to be about half life-size.  The shot was taken on Ilford HP5 plus film, rated at EI200. The exposure was 5 seconds at f22.
The film was developed in Ilford Perceptol diluted 1+2 for 12 minutes at 24 degrees Celsius.

This image was originally scanned at 1200dpi, giving me a maximum print size of 20″ x 16″ at 240dpi.
Post-processing consisted of using the history brush to remove any dust and scratches, converting to greyscale (it was originally scanned as a colour negative to maximise detail) then a little adjustment using curves and levels. Then I flattened the image, converted it to eight-bit and then converted it to a duo-tone.

I resized the image to fit on A4, and applied a little sharpening before making a workprint on Permajet Oyster 271 paper.
I’m pretty pleased with the result.
Here’s the jpeg…

Shen Hao HZX45II, 90mm Grandagon, HP5+ EI200, Perceptol 1+2 12 min 24 deg C

It’s inspired me to make more use of my LF kit - though I suspect I will be scanning my negatives now rather than making wet prints. Retouching is just SO much easier that way!

Someone I know said the following about the Apple I-Phone:

“It’s a bit like Paris Hilton. Expensive, quite nice to look at, but what does it actually do?”

I guess it’s possible to make a similar observation about Leica M cameras and lenses. Sure, they are expensive. Arguably, they are nice to look at. But what do they do? Well, they enable the photographer to produce absolutely stunningly sharp images with beautiful bokeh. Or in my case mediocre pictures that are stunningly sharp with beautiful bokeh

Take the new 28mm ASPH Elmarit lens for example. I bought one for myself as a special treat a couple of months ago. It makes the perfect partner (in my view) to the M8, as it more or replicates the field of view of a 35mm lens which is my preferred focal length on the M6TTL or M2.

This lens is bitingly sharp - almost too sharp for some things. Its rendition of detail is incredible. I think this is definitely my favourite lens on the M8.

Another lens that I am coming to love is the wonderful Voigtlander 12mm Ultra Wide Heliar f5.6. I managed to get an ex-demonstration example of this lens from Robert White in Poole, Dorset. It gives a field of view equivalent to a 15mm lens on the M8, which is pretty wide by anyone’s standards! In fact you have to be careful not to include feet, errant fingers and any other bodily protuberances out of the shot!

This lens isn’t rangefinder-coupled. Mind you with the sort of depth of field that you get using a lens like this, it’s hardly an issue. For landscapes and some interior shots, this lens is pretty hard to beat. Whilst it’s not exactly a ‘body cap’ in the same way as the 28mm Elmarit, it’s a damned useful lens to have when you’re out and about.

One thing that I haven’t tried with it yet is my Lee RF-75 filter kit. I have a feeling that the filter holder will vignette. If it doesn’t then it will probably be worthwhile having another custom filter adaptor made by Lee. It would probably be worthwhile as the lens lends itself to using ND grads to tame skies.

And what a week! Politically anyway. Not just from the perspective of what’s just happened in the US, but at work, the issues I mentioned in my previous post just won’t go away. I think the best strategy is to keep a low profile. Once the project goes live on December 1st, there will be so much back-slapping that whatever caused the original issues will have been forgotten.
Still on to more interesting things… I made three black and white prints using Permajet’s Fibre-based glossy paper this afternoon. It’s a thick, luxurious paper with a slightly textured finish. I used the Permajet ICC profile for the 3800 and the prints were spot on! Nice deep blacks, plenty of shadow detail. I would have taken hours to produce these in the darkroom. One was a scan from a very old negative taken with a Bronica ETRSi and 50mm lens.
The size of the negative meant that the scan resolution was relatively low and consequently there wasn’t much work to do in the cleaning department. It took a while to get the print to look “just so”…here’s an electronic version. Let me know what you think…

Wind-blown grasses and young oak trees in Savernake Forest, England

I’m in two minds as to whether use this shot for tomorrow night’s “Trees” competition at Shrivenham Camera club. The alternatives are:

Avenue of trees, Coate Water, Swindon

or

Horse Chestnut, Lydiard Park, Swindon

They all look lovely as prints. The last two by the way, were taken with a Leica M8 and the superb 28mm Elmarit ASPH lens. I treated myself to this lens in September and I have been blown away by it’s sharpness. It has become the ‘body cap’ on my M8.

The Horse Chestnut is my favourite of the three. This was quite a tricky shot, as I was shooting into the light. Rather than use the camera’s meter, I opted to use a hand-held meter and take an incident reading.  It took very little post-processing in Lightroom to produce what I believe is a “fine” print.  There were no blown highlights and there’s oodles of details in the shadows.  This is definitely one for the wall!

Why is it that large organisations feel the need to involve all sorts of people in issues that frankly, they have no understanding of and can add absolutely no value to. Why also do these people then feel the need to “get to the bottom” of a problem. Not necessarily to learn what the root cause was, but to find out who’s to blame?

There are times when I detest working for a large organisation and not surprisingly, today was one of those times.

You can imagine how happy I was when lunchtime came around and after a quick sandwich, was able to take a walk outside with my Canon G9. The light was pretty awful. Yesterday was what I call a ‘glad to be alive day’ owing to the crisp air and blue skies. Today was an altogether greyer affair.

Just as I reached the end of my walk around the perimeter of my workplace, I spotted a single leaf stuck in a chainlink fence. The camera was out of my pocket in a flash. I had in mind a monochrome image with the backlit leaf standing out from the hedge behind and the tones and hardness of the chainlink fence contrasting with the delicacy of the leaf.

The exposure was made with -1EV worth of exposure compensation to tame the highlights at the top of the picture. I didn’t want to go any lower as I wanted to keep the noise levels down to a manageable level as I was already shooting at ISO 200 to make sure I could use a decent shutter speed.

I processed the image in Lightroom. There’s quite a steep curve - partly to emphasise the mid-tones and also to lower the values of the darks tones and shadows. I also played with the contrast a bit to harden the image and accentuate the chain link and make the leaf stand out a touch more. Finally, I tweaked the green and yellow channels to bring out the leaf a bit more.

The final image is shown below.

Leaf in Chainlink Fence.

If you want to see more pictures a week taken in 2008, please visit Mark’s Picture a Week Pages

I felt much, much better for my walk and knowing I had a reasonably good shot in the bag made the afternoon a much more pleasant proposition.

A decent swim after work helped too!

The final print, made onto Permajet 271 Oyster paper shows a full range of tones and there is plenty of detail in the leaf structure.
I’m in two minds as to whether it’s worth putting on to fibre paper. I think I’ll mull that over with a glass of Speyside Single cask whisky.

Or evenings, more like…The 3800 has been in place for six days and has had a fair amount of use by us both.  I saw my mate Phil Malpas at work this morning. He’s had a 3800 for almost a year and hasn’t had to change the inks yet.  He’s not exactly frugal with his printing either.  So it looks like it was the right decision from an economic perspective.

I cannot fault the image quality.  We’ve made prints on Epson Premium Glossy as well as Permajet’s Oyster 271 paper.  Both look great with colour and black and white images, but for me, the Permajet has the edge by virtue of its whiter base.  The Epson paper is positively creamy compared to the Permajet.

As I write this, I’m making my fourth A4 print on Permajet’s Classic Fine Art Fibre Base Gloss paper.  This is a 295gm² fibre-based paper.  The output is simply lovely.  I am chuffed to bits with the quality of the prints.  I want to try a couple fo the prints at A3 or even A2 if I can afford the paper.  It cost £1 per sheet at A4.  A pack of 25 sheets of A2 Classic Fine Art Fibre Base Gloss comes in at £94.95.  Not cheap, but in the immortal words of the Loreal adverts, I’m worth it!

To top it all, I even managed to take some pictures this lunchtime with my Canon G9, which I hope will have potential for my Picture a week project.

Less than twenty four hours after ordering an Epson Stylus Pro 3800 from Warehouse Express, I had a text message from Home suggesting that I might want to take the afternoon off work.  Sadly, I had to stay. Someone has to pay the bills…

When I finally got Home, there was a very large box in the hallway.  Our plan of campaign took shape over a cuppa and a carrot muffin.  First, empty the CIS ink tanks back into their original bottles, then make some space in the back bedroom, move the 2400 and then give the space where it had been a damned good dust.  I also took the opportunity to tidy up some of the cabling behind the PC and printer, which resembled an explosion in a spaghetti factory, with some curly cable tidying stuff that I had lying around.

Getting the box with the 3800 in it up the stairs wasn’t exactly difficult, but we were hindered by one rather inquisitive Samoyed with a penchant for cardboard packaging.  Moreover, having just had traction on my spine the day before, I had to be very careful not to undo the good work that my physio had done.  The right-angle bend at the top of the stairs added another slight challenge that was overcome with a little grunting and careful application of brute force.

Once the box with printer inside was in our study, there wasn’t much room for much else.  However, it only took a couple of minutes to get the printer out of the box and carefully heave it into position on the bench.

Once the printer was in position, it was time to power it up. After a few seconds of whirring, the door covering the ink tank bay opened.  The ink tanks are huge! They all required a good shake before being inserted into the printer.  Each one went in with a satisfying ‘click’.  When the door was closed, it was just a case of waiting about ten minutes while the printer charged the ink lines and went through whatever routines were necessary to set itself up.  Time for a spot of supper and a small beer!

So, supper finished and dishes in the dishwasher and it was time to connect the printer to the PC.  There was a bit of a hiccough when the Epson software said it could’t see the printer, but as Windows XP had detected it, I figured it was OK to continue.  When I went into the Printers and Faxes app on the Control panel, the printer was visible and I was able to run a test print from the Epson Stylus 3800 properties tab with no problem.

So, in total, I reckon it took about an hour, maybe an hour and a half to remove the 2400 from the study and install the 3800 in its place.  All that was left to do was fire up Lightroom and have a go at making some test prints.

The first print was a copy of this…

Port Quin, Cornwall

This was printed onto Epson’s Premium Glossy photo paper.  It looked stunning, even as a 9 x 6 print on A4 paper.  It was maybe a little dark, but that’s probably because I haven’t calibrated my monitor for a while.  I can’t wait to print it up on to A3 on Permajet’s Oyster 271 paper, which has a much whiter base than then Epson paper that I prefer.  It just looks cleaner to my eyes.

We decided to stop after five prints as it was getting late and I was a) thirsty and b) wanted to watch Thursday’s episode of “The Restaurant”.

OH HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN!