Comments on: I’m Mr May

By: Donal

Donal — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:18:53 +0000

Thanks for the input, evamonkey. I kinda guessed that there would be some sort of calibration needed. I’ll have to invest in one of those to get this right.

By: evamonkey

evamonkey — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:19:24 +0000

RE colour and brightness of pictures. The issue you have is a common one. The first thing you need to do is accept that the look of an image on your monitor has no bearing on how it will look printed.

The brightness and contrast of your monitor are factory set or may have been tweaked by you, but the truth is, neither will show true colour. Your monitor will also have a colour cast known as temprature, literally tinting images warm or cool depending on settings.

The solution to all this is to have colour calibration hardware. I would recommend a pantone huey or huey pro. This will calibrate your brightness contrast and gamma as well as correcting temprature.

http://www.amazon.com/Pantone-MEU101-huey/dp/B000CR78C4

If you use photoshop you will also have to go into the my programs start up folder and delete the adobe gamma shortcut there to stop it messing with your settings. Hope this helps.

The last puzzle piece is that when looking on screen, you are looking at absolute whites. If the paper you print on is anything less than brilliant white, with a printer capable of brilliant black, you are going to lose a small quantity of brightness and contrast.

By: Donal

Donal — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:03:45 +0000

Thanks Kate, Ryan, Jamie.

Nice photoblog there Jamie!

By: Jamie Lawrence

Jamie Lawrence — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:26:59 +0000

Congrats on getting the picture published. I received some of the Top calendars for entering and yours in certainly one of the best shots there.

I had a photo in the guide dogs for the blind calendar last year and wasn’t too happy with how the reproduction came out either…

By: Barry Montgomery

Barry Montgomery — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:02:31 +0000

hey donal,

I’m interested in using your photographs for a new music magazine, could you drop us a line at [email removed], much appreciated.

Regards
Barry

By: ryan

ryan — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:38:51 +0000

Well done, great shot!

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:41:32 +0000

I did wonder what the rest of the entry would contain when I read the title! Great panning work though, and I agree…the colours are amazing!
So how do you find your 70-200mm lens – do you use it on the 400D?

By: Donal

Donal — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:56:23 +0000

Thanks Kevin. I actually got that photo on one of my first attempts and couldn’t re-create it on further attempts. It’s something I try every now and again but the background colours on this are still my favourite.

By: Kevoto

Kevoto — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:41:46 +0000

Congrats – it’s a really nice shot. It must have taken a while to get one that was sharp!
I still haven’t mastered the art of printing photos – it’s interesting that they came out darker for you too because it’s usually the same complaint with mine. I’ve never had photos come back brighter than expected!

By: Style Living Eating

Style Living Eating — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:36:52 +0000

[...] My brother Donal is Mr May in the Top Oil 2009 [...]