10D portfolio shots.. questions

[MediaMagic]

Hi gang, I wasn't sure which forum this post should be located, but since they are shot on the 10D and this seems to be the area with the most technical information, I chose the EOS Digital forum.

These are examples of my more serious work. These are a varied sampling (from close facial to to bizarre to standard portrait) of the first digital shots I've added to my pet photography portfolio. They rival my film examles in every aspect on paper.
These examples look fantastic on 8x10 prints. On my monitor, they appear exactly the way they appear on paper. I've recently calibrated my monitor with the Colorvision spyder/OptiCal at the recommended color temp of 6500K. These edits were done post calibration. Now here's my question/concern...

I emailed these shots to a coworker interested in some family dog shots to take a peek at until I could bring her the print portfolio. On her monitor, the shots appear completely screwed. Completely blown out highlights, bizarre noise patterns all over the black fur, etc. I was thinking, "what the hell?" So, I viewed them on my work monitor.. same result.. all weird, so it wasn't just her monitor. Brought a disc home of the weird files, viewed them on my monitor, and they are stellar again. I don't get this. It doesn't seem to be a matter of just tweaking, it's wayyyy beyond that. I also don't know what information about spaces, editing, etc. you would need to give me an informative answer.

I'm not looking for photo critiques (although if you have some, fire away) but rather a technical answer to this monitor/viewing connundrum. What do you guys see when you view these? Are they blown out with noise? Do you have to edit the shots separately for monitor viewing as opposed to print? And if so, how do you determine how to edit differently for prints and viewing on *other* people's monitors? I'm truly at a loss here.


http://images.fotopic.net/?id=1427834&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

http://images.fotopic.net/?id=1427832&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

http://images.fotopic.net/?id=1427833&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

http://images.fotopic.net/?id=1427835&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

Thanks,
David

[Beowulf]

It sounds like the other PCs have their desktop color depth set to 16-bit or maybe even 256 color... could that be the case?

To find out on a Windows machine, right-click on the desktop, choose "Properties" from the menu, then choose the "Settings" tab in the dialog that comes up. You should see the Color Quality setting in the lower right.

My desktop is set to 32-bit and your pictures look great to me.


Dave
http://www.beowulf99.com

[CyberDyneSystems]

Same here,. viewing it on an extremely high quality Sony FW900 and they look fine. There is absolutley not a single pixel blown out and no real visible noise. Colors look spot on.

[robertwgross]

These look normal to me, except that they are all covered with cat hair.

I liked the last one best.

If you are really good, you will get a shot of a black cat eating licorice in a coal bin at midnight.

Routinely I send JPEGs to my friends, both photographer types and also non-photographers, and I get routine feedback. If there had been anything fouled up in my system's color calibration, then I would have heard about it quickly.

I do photo editing on-screen and get normal results. On one night's work, I got to experimenting too deeply, and virtually everything I did in the space of three hours was trash. It took me another three hours to figure out what I had done wrong, and then another three hours to correct it all. Fortunately I had those routine feedbacks so that I could detect my mistakes quickly. Otherwise, I could have continued fouling up the work.

Have you been experimenting with color calibration?

---Bob Gross---

[MediaMagic]

Thanks guys, it must be something specifically related to our work system/video card set up, color resolution, something.


robertwgross wrote:
These look normal to me, except that they are all covered with cat hair.


I tried cloning out that distracting hair but I just wound up with fleas in the keyboard. heh



If you are really good, you will get a shot of a black cat eating licorice in a coal bin at midnight.



lol.. now that's hilarious.. I'm afraid the closest I'll ever get to pulling that shot off is popping up the built in flash so I can get two glowing orbs hovering over some fangs clinging to a stick like object



Have you been experimenting with color calibration?



Not really experimenting, I'm nowhere near that level of proficiency. I know several around here mess with their camera profiles, design their own color profiles, fly around in the color spaces like is nothing more than a sunday stroll, all in the name of squeezing that last drop of ooomf out of every shot. I'd love to be able to do that.... maybe someday

Your habit of sending out the jpegs to regular viewers is one worth adopting. Great idea.

Take care,
David

[KarlJones]

Everything looks okay here (with maximum oomph!). The last one is the cat's passport photo, no?

[iwatkins]

All looks puuurrrfffectly OK here :)

I'm viewing on a TFT LCD (not the best either) panel at 32-bit colour depth and the images are fine and also rather good. Especially like No. 4.

As above, I suggest your work systems have a very nasty setup, say 256 colours only. Or a combination of this and the contrast/brightness turned up very high.

You should easily be able to recreate these conditions on your known good system at home by simply changing your colour depth down to 256 and see it it looks the same as you viewed at work.

Cheers

Ian

[toddb]

Look good to me. I have the spyder calibrator also on my Viewsonic VX800 and it looks real good.

[Rob Larsen]

The pictures look great on my IBM P260. I suspect like others that the color depth is shallow on the work monitors.

The last picture is my favorite. Love them green eyes!

[MediaMagic]

Thanks everyone for the input! I'm just glad I didn't have to spend hours trying to figure out what I had done wrong. As it turns out, the IT dept. sneaked in on the night shift a couple of weeks ago and added a "smoothing" driver for the CAD guys. The silly thing is that my area doesn't even use a CAD program. We work in databases. But, word came down from somewhere to upgrade so everyone got it.

Yeah, the last pose is the "money shot" in pet photography. That's the shot you want the potential client to see right when you are closing the deal. The order of the shots in the portfolio can make a huge difference in impact and work to your advantage in sales. I think the biggest mistake amateurs make is in thinking that just handing their portfolio over to a potential client will allow their technically wonderful pictures to sell their services. I never allow the client to hold the portfolio prior to closing the deal. This way I can pitch my service while turning the pages like a slide presentation. I have only one shot viewable at a time and each shot is strategically placed to be part of my presentation. I have a pretty high sales closing rate and I attribute most of it to learning how to set up and work my portfolio to maximum advantage. The pro's pictures may sell themselves, but we amateurs have to work a bit harder.

Take care,
David