Thanks for Everyones input now some Questions

[DaveMarks]

I want everyone to know I appreciate your help and advice. The willingness to share information and help is great. I want to thank MrBobco for his detailed message and sharing his history with the D-30. I also want to start a new tread because the last one was getting very long, ha!

I need to learn a few things and I'll take them one or two at a time. Linear actions, have been mentions. What are they, what is the purpose, how do they help, why do I need to use them. Tell me all about them, please.
Second item, I use studio strobes. My book says that the canon has reverse polarity to some units, it will not fire my strobes. I read the information here about the voltage issues and will check that out. But my manuel mentions getting a polarity conversion cord? Anyone every buy one of those and where did you get it?
A lot of great things were suggested and someone questioned if I had read the manuel, well I have cover to cover and it does not mention any of the advice that you give on this site. The manuel acts like you can use every feature on the camera and be able to get great pictures. One last thought I know Canon makes some great lens' and some very expensive lens' but they also make many lens' in an affordable price range and must sell them to someone. I'm considering following the advice here and investing in a more expensive lens for a start.
Once again thanks for everyones help.

Dave www.DaveMarksPhotography.com

[Pekka]

DaveMarks wrote:
I need to learn a few things and I'll take them one or two at a time. Linear actions, have been mentions. What are they, what is the purpose, how do they help, why do I need to use them. Tell me all about them, please.

Hi Dave,

Basically linear actions by me and Fred Miranda are there because after you convert a CRW to Linear TIFF you'd probably want to automate the procedure of getting an optimal histogram out of them and so get them look as good a possible.

Linear format has the advantage of giving the user the choice to "develop" a photo in any way. My action http://photography-on-the.net/D30/linear/LinearAction_1_03.atn is suited for getting the "most" out of the image but of course it can be modified to any purpose by modifying the curves (you can make a copy of the action and record alternate curves and rename it as "high contrast" or whatever).

Converting from linear mode gives better skin tones and sharpness, as all D30 internal routines for sharpness _and_ color correction are not on at all in that mode.

Other advantage in linear data is that USM works very well on it. Timo Autiokari has a page about linear/USM "betterness" here: http://aim-dtp.net/aim/evaluation/gamma_error/index.htm

I used this USM advantage in my LinearSharpen action http://photography-on-the.net/D30/linear/LinearSharpen_1_01.atn .

LinearSharpen makes both sharpening and curve correction is one action so it's a very fast way to bring images to life. The benefit is clearly seen in much more crisp sharpening and sharpening really digs the details out - even strong sharpening does not result to white halos or bleeding of highlights (light areas get "broader" in all ways of non-linear USM sharpening). In some cases the downside of sharpening in linear mode is _black_ halos, but whether they can be seen and are disturbing depends a lot of picture content and viewer experience. I have a versions "2" and "4" inside LinearSharpen action which try to avoid strong black halos by applying half of the curve correction before sharpening.

You should resize in linear mode before using LinearSharpen. Inside the action you can tick on these...

http://photography-on-the.net/D30/linear/moresettings.gif

...and have more choices in how the action works (different sharpening levels for smaller images etc).

If you don't need sharpening but only linear-to-normal conversion, use LinearAction instead LinearSharpen.

Both my a Fred's actions use (Cathy Brown's) ICC profile which makes small color corrections to fix native color erros in D30. You can download the D30 Linear ICC profile from Fred's site http://www.fredmiranda.com (it's included in his linear conversion action package). Both my actions use that profile, too, so it's wise to install it to the system permanently :)