Improving my presentation - Part 4: Choosing a Wide Format Printer

In part 1, part 2, and part 3, I talked about deciding on print sizes, evaluating online print services, and the advantages of purchasing a wide format pigment printer. Now I'll discuss what printer I chose to buy and why.


In choosing a wide format printer, there is a huge range of printers to consider. However, with a few requirements, we can narrow the field dramatically.

Pigment Based
First, the printer has to be pigment based, not dye based. While some companies brag about long lasting, fade resistant dyes, I feel a lot better with a pigment ink. Some of those dyes only get their long lasting ability by being used on a specific line of paper, and perform drastically worse on other papers. With pigments, sure there are certain papers that they may perform terribly on, but as a general rule pigments are much longer lasting over a much wider variety of paper. This is important, as I may want to experiment with different types of paper/media (glossy, matte, velvet, metallic, watercolor, canvas, etc)

Minimum 16" Print Width
There are tons of 13"x19" printers out on the market, but I already had the ability to get cheap 12"x18" prints. 13"x19" is pretty much a negligible improvement. My plan for new prints was to be 16" on the small dimension, so I'll use that as the start point.

Must Be Affordable
You can debate the meaning of affordable...it will be different for each person. For me, the absolute maximum total investment had to be $2000. Even at that cost, that is REALLY stretching my budget. $1500 was a much more desirable goal, though I didn't expect to reach that low, so $2000 seemed to be more realistic.


Now, even with just those 3 qualifiers, the field is narrowed down to just a few options.

HP is the easiest. Most of their printers are dye based, and almost all of their pigment printers are over $3000. The only printer left is the B9180, and it's maximum print width is 13". Right off the bat, HP is completely eliminated (which is fine, since I have issues with the company, based on several past experiences and also based on some of their business philosophy).

Canon is the second easiest. They too have have a history of being only a dye-based manufacturer. For the last couple years they have been experimenting with mixed dye/pigment systems (pigment black with dye colors). However in the last year or so they have updated the imagePrograph series of printers to be fully pigment based. However, only one printer in this line comes even close to the $2000 price. The iPF 5000 is able to print 17" wide. We have our first contender

Epson is the next up. They are probably the company best known for pigment based inks. They pretty much pioneered the consumer pigment printer industry and had a several year headstart on everyone else. While they have a broad line of printers, only 2 of their current models fit all 3 requirements. The Stylus Pro 3800 and 4800 are both 17" wide pigment printers for under $2000.

And with that, we end up with 3 competitors. Of course, there may be printers from other manufacturer that fit the bill, but I want to stick with a well known brand for which supplies are readily available.

Canon iPF5000 vs Epson 3800 vs Epson 4800

With these 3 printers chosen as our final contenders, it's to to start comparing features.

Print Quality
This is one of the biggest factors when choosing a printer, but it turns out to be a non-issue. The 4800 is excellent. In fact, beyond excellent. It's hard to imagine much better, yet the 3800 and iPF5000 somehow did it. The 2 are slightly better than the 4800, but nearly equal to each other. The iPF5000 is a little better with shadow detail and some parts of the color gamut, while the 3800 and 4800 are each better with different parts of the color gamut. If I were grading the printers, then all 3 get an A+. Thus print quality is pretty much a non issue.

Maximum Print Length
First up is long printing. My absolute requirement is to print 28" long, but longer would be better. I've got a nice panorama from Mt. St. Helens I've always wanted to be able to print. It's 6 times wider than tall. That means at 17" tall, I could print it over 8 feet wide. Of course, at that size, framing and glass become an issues, but that's no concern right now...now we're focused on printers.

So back to length. The Epson 3800 has a maximum length of 37". OK, so that's not enough to handle Mt. St. Helens (a 3 foot wide but only 6 inch tall panorama isn't all that impressive), but printing that photo was more of a dream than a requirement. In comparison, the iPF5000 can print up to 59 feet long. I can't imagine what I'd do that size. The Epson goes one better, with no print length limitation. Your only limitation is what the software can handle and how big a roll of paper you can find.

Although technically the 4800 is better than the iPF5000, realistically they are even (if I can't figure out why I'd need 59 feet, then 60+ doesn't really seem to be any more useful). For grades, the 3800 gets a B while the iPF5000 and 4800 both get an A+.

Roll Printing
When we also consider length, a real advantage would be to have a roll feader, so that I don't have to manually unroll, cut, and then hand feed the paper through the single sheet feed. The 3800 has no roll feed option. The 4800 includes a roll feed.

The iPF5000 has an optional motorized roll feeder that includes some interesting features. Since it's motor driven, it's easier to load and unload the paper. The printer can track the length remaining on the roll. When you go to unload it, it can print a bar code and text on the end indicating the paper type and how much is left on the roll. When you reload the paper, the roll feeder reads the bar code and continues counting where it left off. Finally, with the iPF5000, you can leave cut sheet paper in the main paper tray while using the roll feeder (unlike the 4800).

For the roll feed category, the 3800 gets an E, the 4800 an A-, and the iPF5000 an A+.

Ink Cost
Cost is an important one. Ink costs for these printers range from $0.40/ml to $0.70/ml, with the 4800 being the best and the 3800 being the worst. Also to take into account is the ink consumption. The iPF5000 uses about 1ml/sq ft, while the 4800 uses about 2ml/sq ft. I couldn't find consumption figures for the 3800, but being that it uses the same inks and roughly the same technology as the 4800, I'm assuming about the same (2ml/sq ft). This makes the iPF5000 best (about $0.55/sq ft), the 4800 second (about $0.80/sq ft) and the 3800 worst (about $1.40/sq ft). On ink costs, I'll grade them iPF5000=A, 4800=A-, 3800=B

Head Clogging
It has been reported by many that the Epson 4800 has issues with head clogging, and resolving this consumes a fair bit of ink. The 3800 is reportedly better, but still has a little problem. The iPF5000, on the other hand, has had pretty much no reports of clogging issues. This may be due to the way canon printer deals with it. Every day it powers up and runs a very quick cleaning cycle. In addition, should a clog actually occur, the printer can detect it and remap its printing algorithm to use non-clogged nozzles. I'll give the iPF5000 and A+, the 3800 a B+, and the 4800 a B-.

Ink Waste
In relation to head clogging, the iPF5000 wastes the least ink, but there is a much bigger issue here. The iPF5000 has all cartridges installed at the same time. This means you don't need to switch ink cartridges when swapping between glossy and matte paper (which require different black inks). With the 3800, you need to swap out cartridges, which requires the printer to purge the black ink line. This wastes about $1 worth of ink each time you switch (and then another $1 to switch back). Not bad, but not perfect. The 4800, on the other hand, is an abomination of ink waste. It has the same swapping issue as the 3800, but wastes MUCH more ink...about $40 worth on each switch. I'll give the iPF5000 and A+, the 3800 a B, and the 4800 a D.

Print Longevity/Durability
In terms of longevity, the Epson K3 inks (used by both these printers) has been rated fade resistant for about 100 years for color and 200 years for black+white. The Canon has been rated for about 95 in color, but no black+white rating has yet been given. It's possible it could be as good as the Epson, but at the moment, we don't yet know (but it wont be any less than its 95 year color rating). However, for practical purposes, we can call this a draw.

In terms of durability, there is 1 issue with the canon inks. There have been reports that with certain papers, it seems that certain colors will smudge if you touch it with a wet finger. Thats kind of unfortunate, but isn't a major issue. As it is, I try to touch the prints as little as possible, and when I do, I certainly don't do it with wet fingers.

Because of the smudging, I'll knock the iPF5000 down a bit and give it an A-, while the 3800/4800 get an A+.

Service/Support
Epson gets a lot of credit here. Reports are that their service is top notch, the documentation good, and the warranty on all parts very reasonable. Canon, on the other hand, has a lot to be desired in this area. The documentation for the iPF5000 is quite poor (though to make up for it, the user community has setup an incredible website to deal with the iPF5000). The warranty on ink cartridges and print heads is pathetic (pretty much nonexistant), although there are reports that this is starting to be dealt with and that Canon may be changing their stance here. I'll give the 3800 and 4800 an A+, while the iPF5000 gets a well deserved D.

Minimum Paper Size
A small factor, but a factor none the less. The iPF5000 and the 4800 cannot print on any paper smaller than 8x10. Thats a bit disappointing for anyone that wants to print 4x6's (which I use on my greeting cards). The 3800, on the other hand, can print on anything down the 4x6. This earns the 3800 an A+, while the 4800 and iPF5000 get a A-.

Misc Other Factors
Other factors which may be of concern for others (but weren't for me) are things like weight (the 4800 and iPF5000 are about 100 lbs) size (the 4800 is large, the iPF5000 is a monster), print speed (the iPF5000 is fast, the 3800 about half as fast, and the 4800 about 1/3 as fast), noise (the 3 are about equal), and tons of other small details.

Also, while I said affordability was a concern for me in that it had to fall within my budget, as long as it fit within my budget, the actual price wasn't an issue. As far as which one is better, I can't say. Based on MSRP the 3800 is best, and the 4800 and iPF5000 are about tied. In real life, you can find the printers much cheaper. However, I can't really say which ones are cheaper, as I didn't bother wasting time to search for the best price until after I had made my decision. And that decsion is.....

The Canon iPF5000 Wins
While there are certainly areas where the Epson printers win out, overall the Canon seemed like a much better option to me. The only major concern for me were the warranty issues on the cartridges and print heads. The cartridges aren't so bad, since (as I mentioned) I'm hearing they are starting to deal with it. The print heads, on the other hand, are a major worry. They run $600 each (the printer has 2 of them) and they are treated as consumables (no warranty). However, the reassuring part of this is, in the year since the printer was released, I haven't heard of any print head failure horror stories. So, while it is an issue in theory, in practice it hasn't been.

So, what price did I settle for? Well, the printer lists for $1945+ another $250 for the roll feeder. As I said, MSRP is way more than you usually pay. I had been looking around, and I was expecting (and prepared) to fork over the $1700 for the printer + $200 for the roll feader, which is the minimum price I saw everyone selling for. In addition, shipping on this monster of a printer runs about $100.

However, in the several hours before I ordred, doing some last minute research, I came across the iPF5000 wiki I mentioned earlier. In the forums, people were discussing what retailers provided good support. In the process, there were 4 retailers I had never heard of before. I looked at all 4, and they all blew the $2000 I was expecting to pay right out of the water. It turns out they were all selling below $1500. The best deal I found was at ColorHQ. They were selling the iPF5000 for $1295, the roll feeder for $99 (if bought with the printer) and offered free shipping. My total outlay of cash was UNDER $1400.

That extra couple of hours of research saved me about $600, and very quickly swayed my thinking from "this is a lot of money...I hope this is the right move" to "I'm definitely doing the right thing".

I'm still waiting for the printer to arrive. After I get it, and get to try it out, I'll post my thoughts here (in a separate post, apart from this multi-part series).

So, after a rather long discussion, that wraps up the topic of printing. In part 5, I'll turn the topic to something entirely different.

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Improving my presentation - Part 3: Advantages of a Wide Format Printer

In part 1 and part 2, I talked about deciding on print sizes and evaluating online print services. Now I'll talk about the advantages of doing my own printing with a wide format pigment printer


As I mentioned in part 2, my costs for an online print service were surpassing $600 for just a small selection of prints, and would leave me with high incremental replacement costs. It was quickly becoming obvious that I should reconsider my original desire of printing for myself with a wide format pigment printer.

Going with my own printer gives me a lot of advantages:

Incremental Cost
Most obvious is the incremental cost of prints. After the initial investment, 16x28 prints would likely cost under $10 each. Thats affordable enough that I could justify printing many images in this large size, and I don't have to be in fear of damage or theft.

Print Consistency
From now on, all of my prints (until I decide to go even larger) can be done on the same printer. There will be no differences in color gamut, print quality, or paper characteristics. One process for everything. In addition, should I decide to print on a different material (like watercolor paper or canvas), I will only be changing one factor in the chain. I can continue to enjoy the same quality and color gamut (except for any limitations of the media itself)

Pigment is Wide Gamut
Speaking of gamut, I had mentioned that other printing solutions had limitations on color gamut. The Chromira process seemed (at least from what I could tell) to be the best traditional printing solution out there in terms of gamut. However, even it can't hold a candle to the gamut available on pigment printers.

Pigment is Archival
Previously, my larger prints were printed archivally (exposed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper), but my smaller prints were not. Although I had no real concern with the longevity of those prints, now I can be pleased to advertise that all my prints are archival quality.

Instant Proofing & Replacement
With a mail order service, I have to wait to get a proof back before deciding if the quality is good enough to go for the full size print. Doing the printing myself, I can make that decision in a matter of minutes (and again, for a fraction of the cost). Likewise, if I sell a print on day 1 of a show, I'd like to have it replaced as soon as possible. With a mail order service, I either have to invest the money up front to have a second copy on hand, or wait several days for the replacement (which means not having a copy for the remainder of the show). Now I can either more easily cost-justify having the replacement on hand, or just reprint it that night and have it ready the next day.

Ability to Experiment
Sometimes there is a picture you might like, but you aren't sure (because of content or image quality reasons) whether it will look OK at a large size. For just a couple of dollars, I can feel free to enlarge it and see if it really works at that size. If I had to pay $100, I probably wouldn't feel so free to experiment.

Buzzwords
Finally, saving the least important for last: I can now refer to all of my prints using the buzzword that really seems to be in vogue lately: Giclee.

In part 4, I'll talk about which printer I chose and how I decided.

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Improving my presentation - Part 2: Printing Larger Prints

As I discussed yesterday in part 1, I've now decided (mostly) on some sizes for larger prints. The next big question is how to print these larger prints.


My home printer only does 8.5" wide. For larger stuff, I've been using Costco's lab, which does up to 12x18. For anything larger, I need to go mail order. I started looking around, evaluating different options.

One of the big issues was color profiling and color gamut (ie: color range). A problem with some of my costco prints is that they had colors that were out of the Noritsu printer's gamut. Some of them I just settled for close enough. Others were far enough off to be embarassing, so I didn't even print those in larger sizes.

I started looking around, and from experimenting with some ICC color profiles from various print services, I discovered that the Chromira printers appeared to have a better gamut than the Noritsu printers, and could handle at least my most important photos (I never got around to checking some of the worst case photos, though).

Looking around at how much the prints would cost got interesting. I originally started out thinking $35 a print. However, I soon realized it was a bit more. And then as my ideas changed and I eventually decided on 16x24, and then 16x28, the cost got higher and higher. Now I realized that I was at the point where just having ONLY 6 photos enlarged, with a copy of each in the print bin, and 3 of the 6 also having a second framed copy, for the 9 prints total with shipping I was looking at around $600.

After that initial investment, as I sold them and needed to replace them, I'd either have to reorder them at the first print rate, or take a gamble and order the replacement in quantity to drive down the price. In addition, I'd have to pay fairly expensive shipping. So I was looking at replacement costs of $100 each or investing several hundred in reprints (which might not sell).

Then, what happens if I screw up and damage one of the prints (screw up signing it, accidentally crease it, etc)? That's $50 to $100 down the tube for one small mistake. Or what if someone manages to steal one from my booth? Or if I sustain some water damage? Or if a customer damages it in the print bin?

Originally I thought my enlargement investment would be about $200 to $250. However, as it grew and grew to over $600, I quickly realized it was starting to approach 1/3 to 1/2 the investment of what I wanted to do all along: buy a wide format pigment printer.

In part 3, I'll talk about all of the advantages of buying a wide format pigment printer and printing your own prints instead.
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Improving my presentation - Part 1: Larger Prints

As I mentioned last year, my plan for 2007 was to have a much improved presentation in my booth. Well, I didn't work at it nearly as much as I intended over the winter. Procrastination got the best of me, and I decided to enjoy spending times on non-photography stuff. However, for the last few months I've been ramping up and getting things done. I'm getting there slowly but surely. In the process, I'm making a number of changes.


I'm going to try and do something in my blog I haven't done in a while: make regular updates (at least for a while). I'm going to break this article into bits and pieces, and post a new piece every day or two. For now....here's part 1:

The first thing I want to do is have some larger print options. My largest matted size is 16x20 (11x15 print), and then I've also got a few 18x24 framed pieces (12x18 print) but I don't carry them separately matted (doesn't make sense to carry 2 sizes so similar).

The problem there is that I want something even larger. I started thinking about what size to offer. Nothing good came to mind. I kept jumping back and forth between different options. On one hand, I was looking for something that was a proportional size to my prints (1.5 ratio) so that I wouldn't have to crop. At the same time, I kind of dislike uneven borders on a print. This always left me coming up with some oddball sizes, and that brings me to the other hand of the equation...frame size. I really want to try to keep my prints so that they fit a standard frame size that you can easily find at the store. Finally, the last important point was to have the size be different enough that it isn't very similar to what I already offer.

So I started thinking of sizes. At this point, I don't even remember all the sizes that went through my head, so I'll cut almost to the chase. I decided to forgo the standard size frames. I figured people paying for more expensive prints would be more likely to be willing to pay to have it custom framed. Thus, I settled on a 16x24 print matted to 24x32.

That wasn't the end, though. I realized that was SO close to a standard 24x36 frame, so it might be better to go for that size. So now the choice was: uneven borders or crop. Well, looking through my photos, most of my best ones are landscape, and landscape tends to look a bit more impressive when its in a wide panoramic format. So I settled on cropping my pictures to 16x28. This is probably how I will do most of them. However, I have a few shots that don't quite work. Some of them can be stretched just a tiny bit to make them fit. Others just look wrong. For those, I'm still not sure whether to go for uneven borders or a custom (24x32) frame size. This question probably won't be answered for a little while.

In my next entry, I'll cover just how to get these larger prints onto paper

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Improving my presentation - Table of Contents

Part 1: Larger Prints

Part 2: Printing Larger Prints

Part 3: Advantages of a Wide Format Printer

Part 4: Choosing a Wide Format Printer

Part 5: Nicer Frames

Part 6: Better Matting

Part 7: Improved Matting Techniques

Part 8: Better Signs
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Visit to the Ansel Adams Exhibit

The Detroit Institute of Arts has had an Ansel Adams Exhibit on display for over a month, and I've been intending to see it. I finally made it there last weekend and was quite pleased. I actually learned quite a bit.


I've always known who Ansel Adams was, what he accomplished, how he was a pioneer in the field, how good he was in the darkroom, and all of that. I've seen many of his works. I knew about his involvement in the f/64 group, and all of that. However, I didn't know many specifics about his life. I'm not much of a reader (unless it's a technical guide or something) so I've never read any biographies about him. The exhibit filled me in on a lot of details about his life...like the fact that he was a pianist before he was a photographer, and that he did both for a while before really focusing on photography.

I learned about Adams evolving philosophy of photography. I never knew that early on he preferred to take soft focus photos. It was part of the pictorial style of photography...the belief that photography needed to emulate painting to be valid as an art. The forming of the f/64 group was an instrumental part of redefining photography as an art medium of its own, rather than an emulation of another artform.

The exhibit itself consisted of over 100 photos of Adams work. What I found interesting was how much of his popular work I was unfamiliar with. I've always known him best for his work in the national parks. However, many of his works, including what is apparently his best known work (Moonrise), I'd never even heard of.

I've known that retouching photos has been done for ages, but I've never seen any specific examples of it being done in popular artwork back then. At the exhibit, there was a photo that Adams took of Yosemite Valley back in 1925. When he reprinted it in 1927, he decided that the road was too prominent in the photo, so he retouched it. Unfortunately, they didn't have an unedited version of the photo, so I couldn't do a side by side comparison, but looking at the edited version, I'd never have even known if I hadn't been told. In fact, even knowing it, I still couldn't tell exactly what had been retouched. It was impressive to see how good of a job he did 80 years ago. It was also nice having a specific example to reference from a well regarded master, for all of those people who insist that editing is the new bane of digital photography. The only problem with my "specific example" is that I wasn't specific enough...I forgot to get the name of the photo. If any of you know what photo I'm referring to, please post a comment for me.

Another surprise was seeing just how exceptionally sharp and detailed photos were back then. I realize that they used large format cameras, and thus had an advantage over modern day cameras in that respect. However, I guess I've always been of the assumption that the state of the art back then was much worse than it was. We've had all of these advances in film technology (before digital came along) and computer designed lenses with specially designed optical materials. I guess I just thought the capability wasn't there back then to capture stuff as good as they did. It was a real eye opener.

There was only one thing I was disappointed about. I've always known that Adams was an expert in the darkroom, and that over the years, he revisited some of his older works and reprinted them using his latest techniques. I was really hoping to see an example of this...a set of 3 or 4 large prints that were redone at different points in his career. The closest they had were a pair of prints..a small one, not as sharp and with a tone, and then a larger one, true black & white and tack sharp.

Overall, it was a great learning experience. Well worth the $10 per person (free audio tour included). While my wife was done looking after about 45 minutes, it took me probably twice as long to study and appreciate. If you go, I'd recommend having at least 1.5 to 2 hours to spend. If you have more time and haven't been to the DIA in a while, admission to the rest of the museum is included in the $10 fee, so you could make an all day event of it.
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Lightroom 1.0 - The Library

Back in August of last year, I wrote about my initial impressions of the Adobe Lightroom beta. Since then, I've spent quite a bit of time working with the beta, and have really grown to like it. A few weeks ago, Adobe finally released the 1.0 version of Lightroom. As an owner of Pixmantec RawShooter Pro, I was entited to a free copy of Lightroom, so I downloaded it and have started to dig in.


General Improvements

First off, the 1.0 release is a dramatic improvement over the beta versions. The preformance issues are mostly gone. While not quite as fast as RawShooter was, it is definitely more than usable on my machine (AMD Athlon XP 2500+, 1GB RAM).

Other than the performance improvements, there were a ton of functionality improvements in 1.0. In the Library, you can remove panels you aren't interested in, so they don't get in the way. The kind-of-awkward Shoots panel (where each photo must belong to exactly 1 shoot) has been replaced by a more sensible Folders panel. Of course, all of your lightroom beta Shoots get migrated to the Collections area, so you don't lose anything.

Metadata/Keywords

There is now a Metadata Browser that allows you to find photos based on certain sets of metadata. For example, you can find all photos shot with your 70-200mm lens, or shot with a specific camera, or in a specific city. What's nice is that the Metadata can be selected in combinations, and can even be joined with the keywords. This makes it easy to look for things such as "all photos shot between Dec 1, 2005 and Feb 12, 2006, in the state of Michigan, using either my 12-24mm or 18-55mm lenses, containing the keywords water and sunset".

While the flexibility of this is very impressive, its not a fully complete query tool. While you can ask for all photos from 2004 that were also shot in Michigan, you cannot ask for all photos from 2004 OR shot in Michigan. Likewise, The keyword searching is also not complete. You can do a lot of things. You can search against the keywords, the exif data, the metadata, and various other options. You can search for any or all values. You can search for fields that start with a certain value. You can even use the exclamation point (!) to perform negative searching..."water, people, !sunset" gets you all photos keyworded with both "water" and "people", but excludes those that also contain the keyword "sunset". However, what you can NOT do is any type of complex boolean searching, such as "(orange and fruit) or apple".

Ranking

In the beta version, there was 1 way to rank photos: stars. Now there are 3 ways: stars, flags, and color labels. You can also filter images with a combination of these (all photos with 2 or more star and either the Red or Yellow label). You can use the flags to pick out all the photos you want to delete, and then review them all at once before actually deleting. You can also use flags to iteratively narrow down a collection of photos to pick out the few you like best.

How to best use these features is still an issue I'm looking into. In fact, I've started a thread on the adobe forums discussing how other people make use of these features. I've gotten some good suggestions, such as using the color flags to denote different stages of evaluating the images (ex: Red = new image that hasn't been looked at, Yellow = Needs some work on adjustments, Green = this image is done, etc).

Digging into this is a more elaborate topic (and a topic which I don't yet have a good enough answer to), so I'll probably address this specifically in a future post.

Other Improvements

After all of this, I'm not even through with describing the new features of the Library view. To go through the rest somewhat quickly:

• The toolbar is now customizable, so you can choose which tools you want to see


• There is a keyword stamping tool, so you can scan the images and click on any to apply a keyword to it.


• It now supports implied keywords, so that applying the keyword of "eagle" automatically implies the keyword "bird"


• You can choose from various subsets of Metadata to be displayed. Also, although you can't build your own custom metadata subset within Lightroom, it DOES support custom sets, and someone figured out the file format and setup a website to help build one (Adobe Lightroom: Custom Metadata-Viewer Presets)


• You can choose multiple images and "stack" them together to appear as 1 image. This is great for bracketed exposures, panoramic shots, etc.


• You can make a virtual copy of an image and apply different parameters to the copy without changing the original settings. This is similar to RawShooter's snapshot option, but more powerful (since you can apply different metadata to each virtual copy).

Issues

Of course, with all the good, there are a few issues that aren't all that great:

• Using the "Find" panel to search for images can be pretty slow and the user interface can grind to a hault for a while (depending on what you search for).


• The left and right hand panels STILL don't have any way to lock them in position, and thus every now and then I still open or close one on accident when trying to use a scrollbar right next to the edge of the screen.


• The new virtual copies feature (while nice) doesn't work in the Collection or Keyword views, and it doesn't work if the images are in different folders on the hard drive.


• Modifying metadata (country, state, city, location, etc) can be incredibly slow.

Bugs

And finally, there are (of course) the inevitable bugs here and there:

• If you edit 2 metadata fields in a row, sometimes the textbox loses focus a second after you start editing the second field. As a result, an incomplete value will be applied to all the photos. To make this even more annoying, as I previously mentioned, editing metadata can be incredibly slow, so now you have to sit through it twice.


• The program seems to perform some sort of time zone calculations on the EXIF timestamps. There is apparently a bug somewhere in there, because some people (myself included) are having problems with the timestamp being an hour off, depending on whether the photo was shot during DST and whether or not the computers clock is current in DST. The behavior even seems to be different for different cameras. The photos from my Digital Rebel and my wife's Digital Rebel XT both exhibit the bug, but they exhibit it in different ways.

Conclusion

Now that I'm more or less done with the Library part (at least for now), next up is the Develop panel. However, this is been a bit long, so I'll save that for a future post. I will give you a little teaser, though: the changes in the Develop part, while not quite as numerous, are definitely very good and quite welcome.

I will say that I'm now very excited by this tool and all the potential it offers. I'm now trying to go back and organize 17000 photos from the last 3 years by applying country/state/city/location tags and giving them all keywords. That's going to take quite a while, though.
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Making gift cards

I mentioned that I started selling gift cards at my September show, and that they really saved me. The cards generated a lot of interest

I've had a number of people ask about making gift cards...specifically, what kind of cards I use and how the process works.


Materials

The cards I buy are the Strathmore white photo mount cards. I've looked all around, and the best price I've found is the 50 pack at Dick Blick. If you are only buying 1 box, its cheaper to go into the store and pick them up because of the shipping cost for ordering online (my local Dick Blick sells them for about $17). However, if you are are ordering multiple packs, sometimes the Dick Blick website works out cheaper. I've seen Dick Blick's web price as range from $12 to $17 per box , and with shipping that comes out to somewhere between 30 and 50 cents a card (depending on the quantity)

Money Saving Tip
In addition, if you order online through Ebates, you can get a 6% refund on the cost. Instead of going to the Dick Blick website, you go to the Ebates website and go into the stores section, find the link to Dick Blick Art Materials and click on it. It will take you to the Dick Blick website where you can make your purchase. That's all you have to do. No need to send in any UPCs or wait for a rebate. They send it to you automatically. You need to signup for an Ebates account first, but it's free, and they offer you rebates for a ton of other stores (BestBuy.com, Target.com, etc).

If you don't have an Ebates account already, you can sign up by clicking here.

Signing up through this link and making a purchase will also get you a $10 signup bonus.

So that takes care of the cards. The next thing you need are the photos to go on the card. Any 4x6 print will work. Of course, the cheaper the better. Costco offers 4x6 prints for 17 cents. The 2 things I like about costco's prints are
1) They quality is excellent...printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, so it looks great and lasts long
2) They offer the option of printing on luster paper instead of glossy. The advantage of this is that a gift card, unlike a framed print, is likely to be handled quite a bit. Glossy prints show fingerprints really easily. However, because of the Luster paper's textured surface, they continue to look clean after normal handling.

Next, on the back of the card you are going to want to have your name and contact info. While you could print it or handwrite it on the card, I found it easiest to print it on an address label and stick that on the back. For the label, I used the Office Max brand 1" x 2 5/8" Inkjet Address labels 750 pack (Item # 07111118). These sell for $8.99.

Money Saving Tip
If you purchase from Office Max by going through the Ebates website, you can get 4% back.
You can sign up by clicking here.

Finally, you are going to want some sort of bag to put the card in. The best bet would be to get a clear bag like you'd use for a matted print. However, when I did my cards I was in a hurry and couldn't get any bags in time. Instead, I just used Target brand Quart size zip seal bags. 50 packs Sell for about $2

Thats all you need. So assuming a price of about 50 cents per card (though it could be less), 17 cents for the print (if you go through costco), another 1 cent for the label, and 4 more cents for the bag, the combined price is under 75 cents. Cards like this can easily be sold for $5 each (I sell $5 each, or 3 for $12)


Assembly


Here's the materials for putting it together



Apply sticky tabs to the back of the photo



Peel backing off of the sticky tabs



Apply the photo to the card and apply gentle pressure



Apply label to back of card, and stick envelope inside card



Put card and envelope into bag



Fold bag flap and tape to back
(Note: I messed up on this photo...the label should have been visible)



And here is the finished product.
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My fall & winter plan: make improvements

Not a lot has gone on recently. Since my last show, I have no more scheduled shows this year. I was planning on applying for some fall shows (and there are 1 or 2 shows for late November/early December that I may still apply for), but I think after doing 5 shows this first year, I'm going to call it a good first year and wrap it up until next spring, for a few reasons.

First, between working a full time job and doing everything for my shows, I haven't been able to get a whole lot else done. I've fallen behind on some things around the house, so I'm catching up on some of that.

Second, I've also been on 4 photo trips this summer (Hocking Hills, Ohio; Maine; Michigan's upper peninsula; lighthouse of western Lake Michigan). I'm also looking to take one more trip (a fall color tour). Yet I've only had the opportunity to pull a couple of good photos out of it. I've got a number of good shots in there, but I haven't had time to pick out the best ones, post-process, print, and mat them. So I'd really like to get caught up on that.

Also, I'm looking to work on my presentation during the fall and winter months. There are a few things about my booth I'd like to change. The primary 3 are larger prints, matting, and framing.


Larger Prints

On the larger print front, I'd like to do exactly that. My largest matted prints are 11x15 matted to 16x20, and then I have four framed 12x18s matted to 18x24 (but nothing in that size unframed). I have nothing at all bigger than that. I'd like to do a few photos printed at 16x24 or 20x30 and matted accordingly (maybe 4 or 5 inch borders). I'd also like to go though my archives and see if I can pull out some more panoramic shots and print up a few of those at a nice size.


Matting

As far as matting, I made a decision originally to buck the trend of plain white mats. I though I could do better with some colored matting which was chosen to match the photo. So far, my colored mats have outsold my white mats, so my approach would seem to be successful. However, I'm starting to think there is a problem with my logic, and that my conclusions are flawed. People that like colored mats are usually going to choose to buy colored mats instead of the white mats, so that explains why those sell. However, the people that do NOT like colored mats probably just walk right out without realizing that I also offer them in white. In addition, even if they do look through and see the white mats, the plain white, single layered mats aren't all that nice looking, so that might not agree with them either.

So I'm thinking about a few options here. The first option is to find a nice looking white or off white that has some type of a subtle texture or pattern to it, and offering all of my prints in that same color. The other option, is to pick out 4 to 8 nice looking neutral tones (whites, blacks, grays, and browns) and use that for my matting.

I'm not really sure what approach to take here, so it's going to take a bit of playing around to figure it out.


Framing

This is a biggie. So far most of my framed prints have been done with cheap & simple aluminum frames (black or silver) bought from Michael's for 40% off. When I started I was thinking simple was better, but now I really don't think it makes all that nice of a display.

I've started to think that the framing really needs to be complementary to the photo itself. Other than my plain, standard frames, I have a set of lighthouse collages that I have displayed in a nice frame that, to me and others I've asked, gives a beachy or nautical feeling that is complementary to the lighthouse subject. Indeed, I've been mildly successful at selling these photos framed.

In addition, I've been looking around at the shows I was in and a couple other shows. I found a few other artists doing VERY well, and the first thing I really noticed was how well their framing matched their subject matter. One artist was selling African wildlife photos, and had some interesting frames. Zebra photos were in frames that had a subtle, stripe-like texture to it. Elephant photos were framed with roughly textured frames, much like an elephant's skin. Iridescent blue birds were in frames that had a thin, iridescent blue stripe embedded in the wood. Most of the frames gave that feeling. Another artist I checked out recently was selling old world European photos in very luxurious looking frames. They were incredibly eye catching, yet not at all distracting from the photo. They looked like they'd be right at home in a million dollar house.

Another benefit to redoing my frames is that I can switch things up a bit. First, I've had several photos on display that have sold nothing (or maybe just 1 print). I'd like to switch up those photos, and maybe get a display of more cohesive photos. In addition, the majority of my framed photos are in a different size than the mat sizes I sell. My mat sizes are all 8x10, 11x14, and 16x20, but the majority of the framed sizes are 12x16 (with a couple of the other sizes thrown in). This creates a minor problem in that people usually see the 12x16 and 11x14 as being the same size, and pointing out the difference just seems to cause confusion.

So now, in the last week, I've started seriously looking around online at different frame vendors to see what they carry. By the end of the month, I plan to start ordering frame samples, and hopefully by the end of October I'll start the process of ordering larger prints and frames to match.

Other Improvements

There's a lot of other small details to work on over the fall and winter. I'd like new pricing cards for the framed prints, nicely printed and laminated, displaying photo title, a short description, and a list of sizes and prices.

I need to find a better way of doing the mailing list signup. Right now I just have a signup sheet on a clipboard, and if I don't ask people to signup (which I don't do very often) they don't even notice it.

I'd like to have a work desk for behind my booth so that I can do my work back there instead of the shelf at the front of the booth. This will give me a few advantages. First, removing the shelf from the booth will give me a little extra wall space. Second, I wont have to turn my back on the entire booth to write up a sale. Third, I can keep my sales slips, tools, accessories, bags, etc in there, and more organized, instead of having them all tucked away in a few Rubbermaid containers. Overall, it will hopefully make me more organized.

I might try to work on some new display bins that give me some additional room, are free standing (instead of sitting on a table), and can close up to double as the storage area for my matted prints. This will make it easier to quickly put the prints away each night and then pull them out each day without having to order and arrange them.


Conclusion

To sum it all up, I'm looking at undoing a lot of stuff I did this year and starting many things over with a fresh perspective. My hope is that, in the end, I'll have a fresh and much more professional looking display for next year. I have 12-14 decent shows I plan on applying to for 2007, and then I'll fill in whatever gaps are left with whatever smaller shows are available.

2006 gave me a lot of ideas and experience. Hopefully 2007 will bring me a bit of profit.
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South Haven - a moderately successful show

This weekend we did our fifth show - the South Haven All Craft Fair. I've heard from a number of artists that this was a pretty good show in past years, so I gave it a shot. I may not have come away with a fortune, but I did make back all of my expenses + a hundred or 2 extra on top of that. As a side benefit, I also came away with a number of additional shots added to my portfolio, all rolled into the same costs.


Since Last Weekends Failure of a Show
As I reported, the previous weekend, I had a pretty miserable failure, walking away with a small net loss for the first time so far. I realized that my biggest failing point for that show was that the market for big ticket items just wasn't there. Even a $20 print was out of the price range of many, it seems. I noticed the same situation with the show before that (in Warren). In both shows, I honestly believe that if I had something to fall into the $5 price range, I could bring in a lot more sales. A few bucks here and a few there could add up to a decent amount, turning a bad show into an OK one.

Determined not to repeat this failure, I spent the week working out ideas for products in this range. The best option seemed to be photo gift cards. I went to a few different stores, picked up a few different options, and went with what I felt worked best. I then bought 200 of those blank cards. Next, I picked out about 130 of my best photos that spanned my entire work for the last 2.5 years but never made it into my official portfolio. I then added to that all of the photos in my official portfolio. The resulting 160 photos I then had printed up, one copy of each. I assembled the cards and stuffed each one into a quart size ziplock back.

I now needed someplace to display the photos. I searched online (using Google Local) to find "store fixtures" or "store display" businesses in my area. I called each one up and asked if they had any used spinning wire floor racks for holding 5x7 cards. I finally found one that had one in stock. On the upside, he wanted $20 for it, versus the $100+ they seem to cost brand new. On the downside, it was missing 1 of the 4 card holders, and the card holders were a little too small to hold 5x7 envelopes (which are actually 5.25x7.25). I thought it was a deal, so I bought it anyway. I took it home, tried bending each of the wire bins, and was able to fit 5 or 6 cards easily in a bin.

The last element was pricing. Each card cost me under $1 each in materials. I decided to try $5 each or 3 for $12.

Friday Night
Finally, onto the show. We left at close to 2PM to make the 3+hour drive across the state. With accidents and construction along the way, along with the heavier holiday weekend traffic, it took us a bit over 4 hours to get there. When we arrived, we quickly found our spot, pulled in, unloaded, and setup.

After we left there, I could see a beautiful golden peachy sunset just down the road. We headed down there but it was paid parking and private property. We decided to head for the lighthouse, but didn't realize at first that we were going the wrong way. The once we got straightened out, we didn't realize we were on the wrong side of the river, too. Finally, we worked our way around and down to the lighthouse pier beach. Unfortunately, by this time the sunset was all but gone.

My wife wanted to just sit in the car and wait while I take my couple of pictures and was done. However, just because the sunset was gone didn't mean I was done here anytime soon. I could see a sky full of clouds with a gap near the horizon. I knew this boded well for some spectacular afterglow. After convincing her to grab her camera and head down with me we waited. Before long, the clouds started to glow more and more. Before we knew it, they looked like they were on fire. We were there to capture what several locals told me was the best sunset of the summer, and we captured it behind the town's lighthouse.

I realized that what we captured would be sellable, however, I didn't realize just how golden it was. We stopped at Walgreens on the way to our hotel and ordered up a few prints to pick up the next day. I got a few 4x6's and an 8x10. Luckily, I had brought some extra white 8x10 and 11x14 mats and foamboards, along with all of my extra blank photo cards and ziplock bags, with me for just such an occasion.

After that, we headed to our hotel, which was 20 minutes to the south. Hotels in South haven were all considerably more expensive, so we opted for a considerably cheaper hotel with a short drive.

Saturday
We picked up our prints and headed to our booth. The show was scheduled to start at 10AM, and after everything else, we got there about 9:30AM. Unfortunately, the show already started picking up a lot of customers. We had a hard time parking and had to walk quite a ways. When we got there, we discovered part of our awning had torn. One of the velcro straps had ripped right out of the stitching, another part had been cut/torn, and one of the support arms had bent a tiny bit. In addition, inside the booth, my print bin (which was luckily empty) had tipped over. What I still can't decide is, was this damaged caused by the wind, or did some other artist hit my awning with their vehicle or trailer after I left? As far as I knew, there was no significant wind overnight. For the future, I need to find a way to drop the awning at night (currently, dropping the awning interferes with zipping up the front wall).

After taking care of this small problem, we got on with the show. Saturday brought plenty of traffic but little sales. I sold a couple of my regular prints and a handful of gift cards. In addition, I sold out of my sunset photos and enlargement.

By the time day 1 was over, I was plenty disappointed with how things were progressing, but I wasn't the only one. Lots of artists found themselves doing much worse than they did in previous years. At one point, I was starting to believe my prices on prints were too high. However, after looking around the show, I found most other photographers had sold about the same number of prints as me. The only difference was that they made less off of each sale. I felt reassured that my prices were good. I left, hoping for a better day tomorrow. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Walgreens again and ordered some more sunset prints and enlargements (9 4x6s, 2 5x7s and 2 8x10s).

Sunday
We picked up our latest batch of prints and got to the show early enough to not have to park far away. Upon opening our booth, we found that condensation on the roof had apparently seeped through to the underside. Any shaking of the booth resulted in a mini rain shower inside the booth. We ended up having to wipe of the underside of the roof to remove the water now before it became a problem later. I'll need to find something to do about this (waterproof spray, or something).

The show was off to a much better start. Almost right away, people started buying up cards of the sunset. Within a few hours, I was nearly sold out of sunset cards, so I sent my wife up to buy another batch of 4x6 prints. I ended up selling half of that batch. I also sold a variety of other cards and prints throughout the day.

When the show finished, I decided that as we tore things down, the last thing to be torn down would be the card rack. I wanted it to remain on the sidewalk to catch the stragglers as they left. That idea paid off, as I ended up making another $30 or so in card sales while we tore down.


Conclusions

When all was said and done, we had made back all of our expenses plus a few hundred in profit. While not enough to quit my day job, for my first year, I consider those type of shows to be a pretty good success. It was also a nice reversal on my trend of declining sales at each successive show.

The card sales made me almost twice what it cost to buy the rack, all the materials and prints for my entire card inventory, and the cost of replacing the inventory sold at this show. From here on out, keeping my card rack stocked up will be a minimal investment of time and money, but should hopefully net me a tidy profit each show.

Considering I didn't do too bad, and that many returning artists said the show often does much better than it did this time, I decided to pay for the show next year, guaranteeing me the right to return and have my booth in the same spot. I've already got a couple who told me they'll be back next year to see what new local shots I have.

Lessons Learned

1) Inexpensive product options can pay off. In fact, I think almost all of my profit from this show can be attributed to card sales. Without them, I think I would have only broke even on the show.

2) Local shots pay off. To reclassify things another way, I could also say that all of my profits were attributable to the sunset photos we took Friday night. Of course, it's difficult to say how many of those sales were due to it being local and how many were due to it being something people experienced firsthand and wanted to have a memory of. I guess I'll figure out the answer when I see how well the same print sells at the show next year.

3) Research the local area better to find out what items are big attractions and might sell better. I discovered that there is a very popular tall ship that has merchandise in all of the gift shops and sells pretty well. Had I known, I would have taken pictures of it ahead of time.

4) Related to the previous item, after you research the area, make plans to go there ahead of time and collect some local photos to sell at the show. I planned to do this around setting up the booth and at night after the show ended Saturday. With everything else going in, there wasn't time to do that outside of catching the sunset.

5) I'm getting a little better at being a salesman. In a few instances, I was able to talk people into buying a $5 card they seemed ready to walk away without. Not a major accomplishment, but it's definitely a start.

6) I need to fill out my card collection some more. I only picked what I felt were my best photos to turn into cards. However, on several occasions, I had someone ask me about a particular scene which I've photographed but not had in my card collection. The card collection is the perfect place for carrying all of those obscure shots that aren't worthwhile to carry in your enlarged print collection.

7) I need to find a better way to organize my cards. People look at them and assume each bin has all the same cards. Very few people look behind to see there is a variety of cards (3 to 6) in each bin. I partially resolved this on Sunday when I added little tags to each card bin saying "In this bin: location X, location Y, location Z". Adding those tags helped quite a bit, but it could still probably be made more obvious.
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