Rangefinder Magazine
May 2002

Digital Photography by John Rettie
Price Drops, Monitors, Batteries & Adobe Photoshop Elements

I got caught out big time in my column last month when I said that the six-megapixel Canon EOS D60 would be sold at the same $2999 price as the D30 it replaces. Canon surprised everyone a few days after the end of PMA by announcing a street price of just $2199 for the camera kit and $1999 for the camera body without any batteries or extras. This was great news for all of those people (myself included) who have been patiently waiting for a high quality digital camera 35mm based body to drop to the magical $2000 price point.

At the time of writing this column Nikon had still not announced an official price for its D100 digital camera that will compete directly with the D60. Originally Nikon indicated it would be priced a few hundred dollars less than the D60, but that was when everyone expected the D60 to retail at $2999. Finally after all these years of waiting, the price drops have started in earnest, which is great for us photographers. It’s amazing to think that Kodak was charging $29,995 for a six megapixel camera body just three years ago, a price that dropped drastically to $7995 less than one year ago, when Nikon introduced the D1X.

Talking of dropping prices leads to the next surprise that prices of memory and LCD monitors are rising. After steadily watching prices drop for so many years, it’s an unusual turn of events. Because of this Apple had to increase the price of its recently introduced iMac in March much to the chagrin of the thousands of people waiting for the back-ordered computer. Fortunately for Apple, several other computer makers followed suit and started raising prices soon after. The problem is that component manufacturers ramped up supply a year ago and then when demand fell at the end of last year, supply exceeded demand so that prices dropped. Now demand has improved and prices are swinging the other way.

Industry analysts expect memory prices to stabilize at a price level not too far above where they were earlier this year, which is good news. The story on LCD screens is another story though. Prices dropped so low that demand grew faster than factories could produce them.

However prices will only go up so far before people stop buying them and revert back to CRT monitors which are currently at such a low price. They are not likely to go up in price as LCD monitors are steadily gaining favor with buyers as a smarter choice, even if they do cost more money. It’s confusing.

There’s plenty of room for a large desktop with both a 22-inch CRT and a 17-inch LCD monitor hooked up to a computer. (picture of Las Vegas model Maggie Goldstein.)

Comparing LCD and CRT Monitors
I recently had the opportunity to try out the KDS Radius Rad-7 active matrix TFT LCD monitor and was quite impressed. It had been a couple of years since I tried an LCD monitor and I was pleased to find that the quality has improved sufficiently that it’s usable as a monitor for photography. OK, I still would not recommend relying on it as your main monitor or even as your only monitor if you’re doing critical imaging work. However, it’s fine as a second monitor or as one on a second computer that’s used for cataloguing, general business work or even for displaying images for clients.

The Rad-7 is a 17-inch monitor that sells for around $600. It has a maximum resolution of 1280x1024, which means it is equivalent to a 19-inch CRT monitor, which costs between $300–$400.

Obviously the major benefit to an LCD monitor is the smaller footprint. LCD monitors only take up about five inches in depth compared to 20 inches or so for an equivalent CRT monitor. Apart from accurate color, the major problem with older LCD monitors was that they were slow at redrawing while scrolling, leading to blurred text and images. However this is hardly a problem nowadays. The other shortcoming has always been the limited angle of view. One used to have to view the screen head on as any view to the side the image would darken and the colors would shift badly. Although this has improved substantially there is still a slight change in colors as you move off center, but it is not too critical. A word of warning, there are as many variations in quality among LCD screens as there are with CRT monitors. It’s true that you get what you pay for.

At the same time that I was trying out the Rad-7 I also had the opportunity to sample the NEC FP 1375X 22-inch CRT monitor. It’s a monster of a monitor weighing in at 65 lbs., but it displays a great image with a resolution of up to 2048x1536, although the recommended resolution is 1600x1200. For a price of around $950 it’s by no means cheap, but considerably less than the price of an equivalent LCD monitor, which would cost $2500 or more. Having this monitor alongside the Rad 7 provided a fabulous amount of screen space which makes editing in Photoshop great, as you can see several images at once and have an uncluttered view on the main monitor with menus and palettes located on the secondary screen.

The bottom line is if you have plenty of space for large CRT monitors they are still a far better buy. But if you’re tight on space especially for a second monitor, an LCD monitor makes sense, as long as prices don’t go back up too far.

A Y-adaptor on a Quantum Turbo battery enables a flashgun and a Nikon D1 digital camera to be powered at the same time.

Quantum Battery for Digital Cameras
Quantum batteries for powering flashguns have long been a favorite with professional photographers, thanks to their tough reputation. I have often used my Quantum Turbo battery pack to power two flashguns simultaneously using a Y adaptor for two cables. Last year when I tested a Digital Camera Battery pack tailor made to power one or two flashes and/or a digital cameras, I thought it would be impossible for Quantum to do the same thing without introducing an entirely new battery pack.

But, lo and behold, Quantum has managed to do the seemingly impossible with just a special cable. Yes, you can now plug your Nikon D1 or a Kodak DCS professional digital camera into a special turbo cable that fits into the Y adaptor or directly into the battery pack. I must admit that I had some trepidation when I first used it as I know that the flashguns use 550 volts whereas the Nikon only needs 7.2 volts. There’s no transformer involved or even any apparent electronics beyond the special but regular looking coiled cable. It works though.

What a boon it is to have a large battery pack that can power a flash and the camera at the same time—no more worrying about running out of juice when on assignment. It also means that the camera thinks it is plugged into the AC adaptor so that the special function to hold the mirror up for cleaning the filter on the LCD can be accomplished.

I haven’t yet had a chance to find out how long the battery will last on a full charge, but I know from my experience with the Digital Camera Battery that the length of time varies tremendously. I have shot as many as 1200 pictures in 75 minutes without running it flat, while at other times it’s gone flat in six hours while only shooting 500 images. It seems that even when the camera is on but not actually shooting it draws juice. However, the real culprit is the LCD viewing screen. I find that I check images every few frames when shooting over a longer period of time, whereas there’s no time to do that when you’re shooting at the rate of 1000 images an hour!

Photoshop Elements provides Recipes and displays the look of Effects and Filters before they are chosen. (picture shows a 2003 Jaguar S-Type and Ventura, California model Amanda Henry.

Photoshop Elements
If you’re new to digital imaging you’re probably concerned about learning Adobe Photoshop. It’s definitely a very powerful program that has a steep learning curve if you want to get a lot out of it. Because of this a large number of people never really use more than perhaps 25% of the program’s capabilities.

For a number of years Adobe has been selling PhotoDeluxe, which is an overly simplified digital-imaging program aimed at beginners. It is not a very practical program for anyone who wants to go beyond the basics as it is driven by a menu system that does not allow much custom work.

Until last year Adobe made Photoshop LE, which is a version of Photoshop with some functions disabled. It was mainly available as a free program offered with many scanners and cameras. Now Adobe has introduced Photoshop Elements as an entry-level version of Photoshop at a substantially lower price of about $70, compared to a street price of $600 for the full Photoshop program.

I expected the program to be somewhat simplistic to use as is PhotoDeluxe. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I loaded the program and started to play with it to find that it is just like Photoshop only with recipes and macros that help one go through routine operations such as red-eye removal and other complex procedures.

There are a few extras that do not appear in Photoshop including a PhotoMerge tool that will stitch together a series of photographs to create a panoramic picture. Elements uses an almost identical layout for menus and functions so that anyone who learns the program would easily be able to upgrade to Photoshop and be off to a flying start by not having to relearn too much.

On the whole Elements is able to use filters that are made for Photoshop without any problems. In some areas, such as layers, it operates in a simpler manner. As you’ll see in the book I review below, the extremely useful Layer Styles can work with one click and can be combined much easier than in the full version of Photoshop. However, the level of customization is not as great in Elements as in Photoshop.

For those who are not planning on doing a lot of editing, Elements should prove to be more than adequate. For photographers who are just dipping their toes into the whole digital imaging world, Elements is an ideal low cost way of getting started. Then, rather than having to learn a whole set of new commands, upgrading to Photoshop will be relatively painless.

Photoshop Elements One-Click Wow! Book includes a CD-ROM with over 300 effects. The book describes how to use these effects and how to modify them.

Quick Book Review: Photoshop Elements Wow!
One of the most visually stimulating books about Photoshop is Photoshop 6 Wow! Book. It’s full of tutorials and information on how to produce stunning images beyond just straight forward photographs. Now the authors of that book, Jack Davis and Linnea Dayton have come up with a simpler book for users of Photoshop Elements called Adobe Photoshop Elements One-Click Wow! Although it only has 58 full color pages, it’s actually more than just a book as it includes a CD-ROM with over 300 effects to transform pictures. The book shows how to run these Layer Styles and modify them so that one can produce photo frames, modify images, and create great looking stylized text and graphics. Thanks to the simplified operation of Elements it only takes one click, literally, to have the Layer Styles do their magic.

The CD-ROM also includes a trial copy of Elements. This makes it quite a good deal for anyone who has access to a computer (Windows or Mac) to try out Elements and experience its powerful capabilities without spending more than $29.95. Incidentally the Layer Styles included on the CD-ROM will also work in Photoshop although the techniques are slightly different. This is explained in the book so, despite its title, it is also a useful book for users of the full version of Photoshop.

John Rettie is a photojournalist who resides in Santa Barbara, CA. He has been using a camera as a professional for 32 years, a computer for 22 years, and has combined his knowledge of both for the past nine years. Readers can contact him by e-mail at john@johnrettie.com or by snail-mail c/o Rangefinder.