Lumière d’Argent

I have sold all my Canon lenses but the 100 macro. I sold them on eBay. I had setup a spreadsheet with my expected prices, based on an average of recently completed transaction on the same items.

Having bought the most expensive ones new, I expected a moderate loss. I made a profit!

Here is a table of what happened:

The big ones sold for more than I paid for them new! I mean, if I just bought again the same stuff new, I’d still be left with some change (after the currency exchange loss, eBay and PayPal fees and shipping).

Must be an effect of the current Dollar/Euro exchange rate.

This is great, anyway. It leaves me with the freedom to do much better than I expected. so I went through some painful weeks of thinking about what would be best. I am about to decide

Stephane :: Mar.05.2008 :: Gear, Lens, Sales :: No Comments »

In a word, they work great. Print quality is great, support is responsive, must be excellent… for US-based customers.

After having set up a few galleries, I got an order from a customer in Germany. That felt great! The customer places his order, I get the notification from Exposure Manager, I produce the print files and uploads them and the day after Exposure Manager prints and sends them. More than two months later, the customer is still waiting. Including for the re-print Exposure Manager offered at no charge.

I know Exposure Manager is not to blame, at least not 100%. It appears the problem is solely our unreliable european state-owned posts. It does not make the slightest difference for any of their employees wether the mail arrives or not. And it shows.

I would not write this if it was my first problem with them:

• I had a parcel taking six weeks from the South of France to here (about 900 km).
• The SmugMug test prints took a month to arrive. Of which about 25 days in my local post office.
• Our Luxembourgish posts knows: they subcontract international parcel deliveries to TNT. And when it is for France they advise not to write on the parcel what it is, because it raises the chances of theft by the post personnel. I never had a problem sending.

The only thing I could blame Exposure Manager for is that they did not listen to my advise and sent the re-print through the same way instead of calling DHL or UPS or whoever with global presence. I’d have paid. Apart from that, they always answered my mails quickly and patiently (I can get nasty). The month following the order I got a check from them with my profit. They fully refunded the customer. I did not cash the check but I could have. I have no doubt about their quality.

For me, though, it is back to the drawing board.

Stephane :: Mar.04.2008 :: Printing, Sales :: No Comments »

I just saw my last post was made the 28th December 2007! That’s more than two months ago.

Well, many things happened, a few long thinking processes took place and I did not see the time going, as often.

I have a number of thing to write about, so I’ll start right now.

In the mean time, since I did some actual photo taking, here is a new one:

Stephane :: Mar.02.2008 :: Random Thoughts :: 1 Comment »

I just realized I never mentioned I participate to a collective photo blog called Stills. This is thanks to Colin’s kind invitation and turns out to be a great experience.

It is a successful (in my opinion at least) experiment at photo critique and discussion. We all learn and get way beyond the dreaded ‘Good shot!’.

What made me realize I never mentioned it is that I just created a new gallery on this site with the collection of pictures I am posting on Stills. It is a series of old shots I made in an abandoned and now destroyed coke factory.

This picture has not been published yet and so is not in the gallery. It was taken during the first visit I made on the site.

Stephane :: Dec.28.2007 :: Locations, Photography, Pictures :: 2 Comments »

Among comments I got in different forums after the previous article, some pointed out I could have got even better results had I used a higher resolution. Others said 3200dpi was way above the Epson true resolution.

Well, I must admit I had chosen the 3200dpi resolution because I knew 6400dpi was ridiculous and 3200dpi gave still a manageable file size from a 35mm negative.

So I made some more tests.

I started at 6400dpi and that produces a huge file that shows big square pixels when sharpened. It looks like a the 3200dpi file at 200% on screen. Useless.

4800dpi has the same problem.

2400dpi, when enlarged to 3200dpi shows no detectable difference at 100% Needless to say, it would show absolutely none on print. So, 3200dpi was indeed too much.

1800dpi, when enlarged to 3200dpi shows a loss.

It appears the optimum is 2400dpi with this scanner. Still respectable considering the price and its multi-format capabilities.

Stephane :: Dec.27.2007 :: Printing, Scanning :: No Comments »