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If you have already a Canon camera registered, you can get $20 or $50 back on a second camera.

Download the rebate from Canon’s website.

Previous versions that MUST have been already registered with Canon are:

“This upgrade offer is for current registered owners of Canon EOS Digital Rebel, Digital Rebel XT, Digital Rebel XTi, Digital Rebel XSi, Digital Rebel XS, Digital Rebel T1i, 1D, 10D, 20D, 20DA, 30D, 40D, 50D, 7D, 5D Mark II, 5D, 1DS, 1D Mark II, 1DS Mark II, 1D Mark II N, 1D Mark III, 1DS Mark III, PowerShot PRO 90 IS , PRO 1, G11, G10, G9, G7, G6, G5, G3, G2, G1, TX1, SX1 IS, SX20 IS, SX10 IS, SX200 IS, SX120 IS, SX110 IS,
SX100 IS, S5 IS, S3 IS, S2 IS, S1 IS, S90, S80, S70, S60, S50, S45, S40, S30, S20, S10, D10, SD1200 IS, SD1100 IS, SD1000, SD990 IS, SD980 IS, SD970 IS, SD960 IS, SD950 IS, SD940 IS, SD900, SD890 IS, SD880 IS, SD870 IS, SD850 IS, SD800 IS, SD790 IS, SD780 IS, SD770 IS, SD750, SD700 IS, SD630, SD600, SD550, SD500, SD450, SD430, SD400, SD300, SD200, SD110, SD100, SD40, SD30, SD20, SD10, S500, S410, S400, S330, S300, S230, S200, S110, S100, E1, A2100 IS, A2000 IS, A1100 IS, A1000 IS, A720 IS, A710 IS, A700, A650 IS, A640, A630, A620, A610, A590 IS, A580, A570IS, A560, A550, A540, A530, A520, A510, A480, A470, A460, A430, A420, A410, A400, A310, A300, A200, A100, A95, A85, A80, A75, A70, A60, A50, A40, A20, and A10 cameras (“Qualified Product”) who have registered their product before October 12, 2009.”

The new models that you can get a rebate on, are:

“Purchase and register a new Canon EOS Rebel XS, Rebel XSi, Rebel T1i, 50D, 7D, 5D Mark II, PowerShot G11, G10, S90, SX1 IS, SX20 IS, SX200 IS, SX120 IS, D10, SD970 IS, SD980 IS, SD960 IS, SD940 IS, SD780 IS, SD1200 IS, A1100 IS, and A480 camera (“Qualified New Product”) anytime from October 12, 2009 through December 31, 2009. Must enter valid serial number at time of registration to qualify.”

I’ll take this opportunity to tell you about the Canon PowerShot S90 — the only powershot or G class camera with f/2 Lens.  I’m very surprised both at it’s lens, and it’s output.  I think the next open lens is a f/3.5.   Only if it could be easily converted to IR, it would have been the perfect camera for me.  I’m still keeping my eye on a used G10 or G11 to convert.   Well after ordering a Mark IV, it’s going to be a while before I can buy another body, but I’ll keep an eye open nonetheless.

Camera

Let’s start with the source, since as always GIGO applies (Garbage in, garbage out)

The camera’s color management is fairly easy to control. You have two questions, “Color Space” and “White Balance Kelvin”. Color balance refers to the range of colors that will be available, and how they will be defined.  Adobe RGB has more colors (wider gamut) than sRGB. However, Adobe RGB is usually used for commercial printing and if you’re not going to a lab, you will need to do more post processing to bring out the colors of your image. In camera they will look washed out and subdue.

The second question White Balance is the color of light. There are various pre-defined settings such as Auto, Sun, Shade, Cloudy, etc… but the best setting is Custom White Balance.

To combat white balance, the best option is to use a 18% gray shot and set your custom white balance several times during a shoot (unless the light does not change, i.e. Studio, short session).

One caveat, shooting in RAW would defer the entire argument above. With RAW all data is kept at 16-bit data points as the sensor captures it, so no matter what you have set for your color space or white balance, they can be changed without loss of data in Camera Raw Converter.

Recommendations: Use sRGB in Camera, use a 18% gray target and set your custom white balance and always shoot in RAW.

Work environment

In your work environment your monitor and video card are the most essential parts as this is how you see your image.  You are going to make decisions on color, contrast, vibrancy.  Sadly most environments are not a true representation of what your image looks like.  The “profile” of your monitor maybe (or I should say “is”) giving you a distorted color variation of what the photo actually looks like.

A “Color Profile” is simply a lookup table that tells reads in the color values of the most saturated colors available.  This means that it knows what the highest blue, red and green are where as if something is green, the question is always “how green?”  The profile defines the maximum and the rest fall below that as needed.

The best option is to use an external caliber to not only calibrate your monitor but build a specific profile for your monitor and your environment.

The following are important points to remember

1. It is by far the cheapest tool in photography.
2. It is by far the most important tool in color management.
3. Get a unit that not only does calibration but generates a specific color profile for your monitor
4. The unit should also remain attached to your computer and continuing adjust the monitor based on the light in the room.  The colors on your monitor will not look the same when being viewed while a warm glow of a sunrise is lighting the room, vs. a cloudy day, vs. Halogen bulbs at night.  The unit should determine the color of the light in the room and do slight adjustments to the monitor.

Recommendations: I, personally use the Spyder3 Pro from DataColor to calibrate, profile and keep an eye on the room ambient light.  It works for me, but your mileage as always will vary.  Please do a full due diligence before any purchase to make sure it’s the right tool.

Outputs

The output of a photograph can be:

• Printed
• Projected

1. Viewed on another monitor

However, we’ll discuss only printers for now.  Projectors and other monitors although important would take a lot longer.

With printers, and I’ll only discuss higher end printers, as with low end printers the color is going to shift no matter what you do.   Higher end printers, and even commercial printers, will always have a Printer Profile that you can use.

Just like with a monitor, a printer profile defines the most the most saturated R, G, B (or CMYK) color the printer can provide.  The rest of the colors are below those numbers as they need to be.

The profile for your commercial printers can usually be downloaded from them directly.   With most professional printers, they either provide updated profiles (every month or so), or they calibrated their printers back to a specific profile themselves so that they’re consistent even though the profile may have changed.

There are various tutorials on the web on how to do soft proofing and print matching and I will not go into that here.  If you have any questions please follow up in email or comments.

Let’s start with what color management is not. Color Management is not proper color, adjusted color, or anything to do with how an image looks in reality.

Color management refers to the transfer of a specific color from one device, to another. What does this mean? Let’s take an example of a head shot. Color management gives you the best shot at making sure that the color of the eye in the portrait in camera, on the monitor, printed, or displayed on a projected are all the same hue and luminosity (it’s the same color). That’s it. Now the question becomes why wouldn’t it the same? The answer is that there is very little chance (almost none) that two devices will produce the same color even close to each other.

I’ll try to make further posts on this subject and what you can do to make sure that you’re images are handled exactly as you want them to.

Well as all know one of the most useful tools when editing is to see how much you’ve changed.  Sometimes you find it you’ve gone over the deep end on something and need to back off because whatever was, would work better.

In Lightroom, while under the “Developer” modeule (D) 2 has the (\) can be used to switch back and forth to the before and after image of your shot.  With or without any edits.

What is going on is that the image is shown as it stands, compared to the “Import” usually the initial view.   What if you had 12 changes, but only wanted to see the last 6 changes to a customer as before and after and not all of the other corrections?

The trick is to move the “before” stamp to a new spot on the history.   Select the step you want to be “before” and on the History item, right click and select “Copy History Step Settings to Before”.   Remember, that whatever history item you have selected is the “After”.  So select the next point of comparison and use the backslash key.

Yeah I know I’m getting out of hand with the music.   I’m sure I’m not the only one that hates American Idol, although I admit, I actually like Kelly Clarkson’s voice, as the show is more of a who can best “show” in every category rather than be really good at one genre.

Ok, way way off topic. Here is Colbie Caillat singing Fallin’ for you.

You can buy MP3s of these songs from Amazon’s MP3 Service.  (Don’t forget to checkout “Green” by Brenden James too)

Yes, I know I was really bad at keeping this blog going.  I have decided to chuck all of it and start with a fresh install.  Latest and greatest wordpress and all sorts of plug-ins and goodies that I actually researched this time.

So let’s get started with some news.
If you’re on the LinkedIN, please join the “Canon EOS Digital Photography” Group. We have over 7,700 members now and the discussions are great.