Category archives: technology

Meet the Mastodon, an off-road wheelie backpack

This goes on the list of weirder things I’ve done, but here it is anyway: an off-road wheelie backpack. Anyone who’s ever tried to lug a large format camera around for any amount of time knows about exhaustion and back pain. Over the years, I’ve been through a string of ever more complicated and expensive camera backpacks, trying to find one that wasn’t terrible. They all are. Earlier this year, I switched to an inexpensive frame backpack, which is more comfortable than any camera backpack I’ve ever tried.

You gotta have a ladder

Photograph of Alec Soth, photographer unknown

I got a crazy good deal on a tripod that is about 7 feet tall. I attached my camera and extended it all the way up and realized that it’s more than a foot over my head. So I got myself one of these.

Looking into the past

I have written previously about photographs made at the sites of famous paintings, and about using Google Maps to investigate and record the locations of well-known photographs. A similar mash-up of art and technology has been developed by the Tate and Google, which demonstrates just how much the British landscape has changed since the time of Turner and Constable.

I finally did it.

I broke down and bought a Nikon Coolscan 9000 today. For two reasons: I found a small crack in the glass of my Epson 4990 yesterday, and also because I am very excited about my photos from Sicily and want to be able to print them larger than 12×12. I’ve never been satisfied with the print quality of medium format scans on the Epson beyond 12×12. I think I may have gotten the only 9000 in New York City, since Calumet is the only shop that had it in stock, and they had exactly one.

Taking a picture, part six: black and white digital printing

Thanks for your interest in my “Taking a Picture” series. Just as a note, I have continued improving my digital workflow and some of these notes are now out-of-date. Feel free to drop a line in the comments or contact me directly if you would like more information on my photographic workflow.

I’ve been planning to sit down and write this for quite a while, but I’ve been keeping very busy with other things. The fact that it is currently hailing outside has given me the chance to spend some quality time indoors, though. Much like my previous post on scanning, I am going to try to avoid going into excruciating detail on every step of my digital printing workflow, because I don’t think it will be worth reading for most people. The general ideas are more important, and I am glad to answer any specific questions in the comments or offline. That’s not to say this won’t be a very technical post, and a long one at that. Please remember that I am giving this final print away to someone who has commented on one of the posts in the series, so feel free to drop a line even if it’s just to say hello.

Black and white inkjet printing felt like a very daunting subject when I first approached it. Two years ago, I had a low-end HP inkjet printer which made acceptable 8×10 color prints, but was absolutely lousy for black and white. It was impossible to get profiles for non-HP papers, and there was practically no information about archival permanence for the paper and inks I was using. In short, I wanted to create black and white prints on matte paper that looked as good as or better than what I could produce in the darkroom, and I wanted them to last a very long time. So I took the plunge into the deep waters of selecting a printer and building a solid black and white digital printing workflow.
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