How Does a Dye Sub Printer Create a Final Image?

Here’s the basic idea. The paper passes through the printer and it passes over a colored ribbon, for example magenta. As the paper passes through, the ribbon is exposed to heat, which transfers a certain amount of the magenta pigment onto the paper.

The paper passes through the printer several times, and the printer applies all of the colors in succession. It’s pretty cool to watch, as the image takes on more color with each pass. Together, these colors combine to form the final colors in the photo. This is a typical color process for printing technology, which is different from the RGB color combinations created for on-screen graphics.

How Are Dye Sub Printers Different From Inkjet Printers?

In an inkjet printer, a print nozzle moves over the paper and drops colored liquid ink onto the paper. The different colors vary depending on the printer, and some inkjet printers can have six or seven different pigments. But in the end, these pigments are arranged in a tight pattern of individual points, like pixels on a screen.

This is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it can create a sharper image, with clearer definition between colors. On the other, the individual droplets formed by the print nozzle can cause the image to appear pixelated and you might see dots. This is, however, less of an issue with a high quality inkjet printer and quality paper.

What Kind of Supplies Do I Need for a Dye-Sub Printer?

This is the weird part about dye-sub printers. Rather than using an ink cartridge that is used up at varying speeds, dye sublimation printers use a very specific and very predictable set of supplies. Each piece of ribbon can be used only once, because the heating process physically removes the pigment from the film. So if a ribbon contains enough film for eighteen photos, then it will print 18 photos… no more, no less.

This allows you to very easily predict how much prints will cost. For a Canon SELPHY CP800, a set of supplies for 108 photos costs about $30.00. That means that you’re paying about $0.30 per print. A larger, professional grade dye sub printer like a HiTi P510S uses cheaper supplies. The ink and paper for 660 photos costs $116, or $0.17 to $0.18 per print.

Some people complain that dye-sub printers are more expensive than inkjet printers. I’m not so sure. I think these people tend to over-estimate how long their color print cartridges will last, and underestimate the combined cost of both paper and ink.

Shopping For a Dye Sublimation Printer

There are a few basic questions you should ask yourself when shopping for a dye-sub printer. How is the print quality? How much are supplies? How long does it take to make a photo?

I wrote a review of a Canon Selphy CP800 last fall. I loved it, and for the cost ($80-90 for the unit, and $0.30 per print), it created great quality photos. One detractor is that it takes 30 to 45 seconds to print an image.

If you’re looking for something that works quicker and cheaper, you can get something like a HiTi P510s. It’s a much larger investment up front (~$900), but the print cost is much lower (~$0.17) and it only takes 10 to 15 seconds to print a photo. For heavy use and/or professional use, this is a much smarter investment in the long run. I wrote up an article comparing the print cost of the Canon Selphy CP800 and the Hiti P510s.

Although I’m happy with my Selphy for the moment, I’ll be doing some more research about other dye-sub printers over the next few weeks. If you’re in the market for a dye sub, check the Dye Sub Printers tag on this website to keep up to date.

If you own a dye-sub printer, I’d be interested to hear about your experience in the comment section below!

So what exactly is a zoom lens?

A zoom lens is a lens that has a range of focal lengths. In the example above, the lens can be adjusted to anywhere between 24mm (a fairly wide angle) and 70mm (a standard or slightly telephoto angle). This allows you to “zoom” in and out.

Is this a good thing? It can be. Sometimes, you need to have a range of focal lengths. When you’re inside taking pictures at an event, for example, you might want to quickly switch between a wide angle for groups and a more zoomed in angle to capture a close up on a single person. If your lens had only one focal length (in other words, if you had a prime lens), you would have to switch the lens each time or have two to three cameras on your shoulder. Neither option is all that plausible.

On the other hand, a good zoom lens with a constant, large aperture (i.e. f/2.8 or maybe f/4) can be quite expensive.  Cheaper zoom lenses often come with variable apertures that are smaller and less useful for certain applications (night sports, indoor sports, indoor events, etc).

So what is a prime lens?

A prime lens is a lens that has a single focal length. In the example above, the lens has a focal length of 50mm… and that’s it. In other words, the lens always has the same level of magnification, and you can’t vary it at all. You can’t zoom in and out.

So why would you want a lens that doesn’t zoom in or out? The zoom mechanism in a lens makes it pretty complicated, and it requires some compromises in the construction of the lens.  Cheaper zoom lenses have small, variable apertures, and high quality zooms still have apertures that are usually no larger than f/2.8. Prime lenses, on the other hand, usually have very large apertures (f/1.8 or larger), and they provide very high quality images at a lower cost than a zoom lens covering a comparable focal range.

If you can make do with a constant focal length, then prime lenses can be a great choice. Sharp images, high quality glass, wide open apertures.  All you need to do is learn to “zoom with your feet,” as they say.

When you view an image on your screen, for example a jpeg image, you’re looking at a processed photo. Somewhere along the line, a computer has taken the raw image data from a camera’s sensor and turned that into a jpeg file. The “raw” file is that un-processed image data.

If you have been shooting files in jpeg (which is the default on most all cameras), you probably never thought about the “processing” that goes into every photo. It comes out in a ready-made jpeg file that you can print, e-mail, Facebook, etc. That’s because your camera contains software that processes the raw data to create that jpeg.

By shooting in raw and saving those files, you allow yourself to do that processing and make certain important decisions about the image later on. Things like white balance, exposure, and contrast can be edited much more easily and effectively on a raw image than they can on a jpeg. The basic drawbacks, though, are that it requires time to make those edits and the raw files are 2-3 times as large as comparable jpegs.

A more detailed explanation of why you should think about shooting in raw to come later…

Your camera most likely has a “White Balance” button or setting on it. Chances are, you probably leave it on auto most of the time. If you don’t know what it does, that may be a good thing…

The image to the left is the result of using the wrong White Balance. My student photographers were shooting a football game yesterday, and one of them accidentally changed the White Balance setting to Tungsten. The result is a blue-ish tinge to the picture.

Why? Well, let’s leave a thorough description of light and color for another day. The short version is that every light source contains different color elements, and if you leave white balance on auto your camera guesses which light source you’re using (the sun, a flash, a flourescent bulb, etc). If you don’t trust your camera (and sometimes it can go quite wrong), you can manually choose a type of light or a light temperature and tell the camera what to expect.

If you tell the camera the wrong type of light, you get something like the first image. If we told the camera the proper light source (a cloudy day, i.e. sunlight that is diffused through cloud cover), we’d get a much better image (like the one to the left).

In this case, I edited the image in Adobe Lightroom, adjusted the white balance, and got a usable picture. As an aside, this is one good reason to shoot images in RAW – sometimes the camera messes up the white balance on its own and you need to be able to fix it. If your camera processes the RAW image and creates a JPEG, you’re SOL. If you leave it in RAW and edit it later in Lightroom/Photoshop, you’ll still have an image you can use. [Note: More on this editing to come this weekend]

As a final aside, this is also a good reason to chimp your images from time to time. My students did not chimp their images (at least not very well) for the entire second half… so an entire half of the game came out blue. Thankfully, that’s the type of error we can fix in post. Some errors, you can’t.

Coming from some old school photographers, this tends to carry a negative connotation. They grew up shooting film, and you couldn’t just look at the image immediately. Either you got it right, or you shot a roll and realized it was all wrong. To them, you should be able to judge the exposure properly (perhaps with the built in light meter) and not need the immediate feedback given by the LCD screen.

But, they’re just grumpy old curmudgeons. While you don’t need to chimp every picture you take (especially if you’re taking hundreds of pictures), it’s a good idea to check in every once in a while to make sure everything is going right. Last year, I was shooting a football game. I dialed the settings in manually, because it was a night game and the lightning was fairly consistent. At half time, I snapped off some pictures on the sidelines, so I changed the settings. When half time ended, I took some pictures of the players running back on the field… but I forgot to re-set my manual settings. Luckily, I chimped those pictures and realized that the settings were wrong – or else I might have screwed up the whole second half of the game.

While the term has come into vogue with the advent of digital photography, the practice isn’t entirely new. It’s true that film photographers couldn’t immediately see every image they took. However, commercial photographers would often spend time setting up elaborate lighting schemes, and it’s a big risk to shoot blindly and hope everything comes out the way the art editor wants. So, one solution was to shoot a polaroid picture once the lighting was set up, get it approved, and then shoot away.

Instant feedback is just good sense… who wants to waste the time re-shooting something (if that’s even possible), when you can make sure you did it right the first time?

Previously, I wrote about the meaning of the term “exposure” in camera talk. To briefly recap, a “stop” is a relative term describing how well-lit and well-exposed the image is. Adjusting the camera settings to increase the light by “one stop” will effectively double the amount of light in the picture (either by opening the aperture, raising the ISO, or lowering the shutter speed).

The same terminology applies in post-processing, although at this point you’re no longer changing the camera settings. In photo editing software, including Adobe Lightroom, you will usually find an “Exposure” adjustment or slider. Dragging this will digitally alter the image and brighten or darken it as if you had adjusted the camera settings.

An Example – A Test Shot of Joel

Here’s an example from a shoot I did a few weeks ago. The original image was a test shot, one of the first frames I took in the afternoon. We were outside at Branch Brook Park, and it was pretty sunny out. So I was trying to pin down the ambient lighting conditions and then I was going to bring in one or two lights to fill things out.

This first image is clearly under-exposed, although not by a ton. It’s a little dark, and everything kind of melds together into shadow. For the second image, I simply imported the photo into Lightroom and dragged the Exposure slider to the right (to +1.00 – one full stop). Now the image is much closer to being well-exposed. It could probably use a little tweaking, but it’s close enough. Some other adjustments could help the image, too, but in general it falls a bit flat because it was taken in a shady area without any additional accent lights.

In the third image, I continued to drag the Exposure slider and it now rests at +2.00 (two full stops). At this point, it’s beginning to look over-exposed. The skin is getting a little white-ish and the cloth wrap is near to getting blown out. Too far! You’ve gotta be careful when dragging the exposure slider that you don’t over-do it, because you will eventually blow out the whites in the picture. Conversely, if you drag it too far to the left, you’ll black out the shadows.

So When Do I Use It?

The exposure slider is a pretty standard go-to tool. You shouldn’t have to make huge adjustments with it, but a lot of images (especially those taken under changing lighting conditions) can use a little tweak – about a third of a stop to two thirds of a stop. If you find yourself adjusting the exposure by more than a full stop, chances are you have the camera settings wrong and you should have changed that when you had the chance.

The effectiveness of the exposure slider also depends somewhat on how you capture the pictures. If you store them in JPGs, then you’ll create a lot more noise as Lightroom artificially brightens or darkens the image. If you captured your pictures in a RAW format, then there’s already a greater range of light information stored in the file than your screen can display. You can safely move the slider up and down by one or two stops without damaging the photo. In this case (and in most), RAW gives you more flexibility in post-processing to utilize all of the information captured by your cameras sensor.

If you increase the exposure by one stop, you double the amount of light in the picture. If you decrease the exposure by one stop, you halve the amount of light in the picture.

If someone says, “The picture is underexposed by 1 stop,” they’re making a comparison between the picture they see and what they think the proper exposure should be. If you double the amount of light in the image, it should look better.

So how do you adjust the camera settings to increase or decrease the exposure by one stop? Pick one of the three basic camera settings (aperture, shutter speed, or ISO) and make an adjustment.

Let’s go in reverse order from the simplest to the more complex. You’ve got a fairly limited number of ISO settings. A standard dSLR might include 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, and 6400. Notice how each setting is double the setting before it. If you bump the setting up one (i.e. 400 to 800) and double the number, you’ve just increased the exposure by one stop and effectively doubled the light in your image. If you turn the setting down one (i.e. 400 to 200) and halve the number, you’ve just decreased the exposure by one stop.

Shutter speed is similar, although you’ll have many more options. Also, because of the way shutter speed is measured, it is a little counter-intuitive. Let’s consider a few options – 1/125th of a second, 1/250th of a second, and 1/500th of a second. If you go from 1/250th to 1/500th, you’ve just halved the amount of time the shutter is open and you’ve turned the exposure down one stop. Conversely, going from 1/250th of a second to 1/125th will increase the exposure by one stop. Note that your camera will probably also give you more options in between (like 1/160th and 1/200th). These intermediate settings are considered to be 1/3 of a stop – a more subtle increase or decrease in exposure.

Aperture is the most complex. Here, you’ve got numbers that represent the size of the opening allowing light through the lens – i.e. f/2.8, f/4.0, and f/5.6. The meaning of the numbers can be a bit confusing, so we’ll side step that for today. Just remember that the numbers don’t work like shutter speed or ISO. The difference between f/2.8, f/4.0, and f/5.6 is one stop each – but notice that there’s no doubling here. In fact, “doubling” the number f/2.8 gives you a two stop increase. Over time, you’ll probably memorize a lot of these aperture settings, but in the beginning there’s a fairly easy shortcut. Most modern cameras allow you to alter the aperture in steps equal to 1/3 of a stop. So, between f/4.0 and f/5.6, you can also choose f/4.5 and f/5.0. If you click the wheel to the right three times, you’ll go from f/4.0, to f/4.5, to f/5.0, to f/5.6. Three clicks either way will alter the exposure by one stop.

A little confused? That’s ok. Play around a bit. We’ll come back to this another day.

One reason to have a a battery grip is that it increases the battery life of your camera. For example, the battery grip for my Canon T1i allows me to have two batteries in the camera instead of one. Effectively doubles the battery life of the camera, reducing the need to pull out batteries and change them in the middle of an event. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had to stop and change the batteries in the middle of an event/shoot now that I have the battery grip.

A second reason is that the battery grip has an extra shutter release button (and usually some other extra controls). Normally, if you turn your camera to a vertical orientation (i.e. sideways), you have to curve your hand around the lens to take a picture. Not very comfortable. The battery grip provides you with a second shutter release button that will be in the normal position when the camera is turned sideways. It makes it much more comfortable and natural to take pictures in a portrait orientation.

As with all accessories, you’ve usually got a choice between an OEM option (like the official Canon grip above) and a third-party option (like an Opteka Battery Grip for a Canon t1i). The third party option is usually much cheaper (the Opteka is about 40% of the price of the Canon grip), but sometimes there is a quality trade-off. So do your homework before you decide…

For the record, I chose the Opteka Battery Grip for a Canon t1i for my Canon t1i. I’ll write up a review of that specific battery grip in a separate post this week.

In shutter priority mode, you select a shutter speed. The camera then automatically chooses an aperture value that gives you the proper exposure. This might be a good option if you want to control the amount of motion blur in the picture – choose a slow shutter (i.e. 1/30th of a second) and you can force the camera to capture a little blur. Choose a quick shutter (i.e. 1/250th of a second), and you’ll eliminate most of that blur.

This can, however, be problematic. The aperture value that the camera chooses is restricted by the maximum aperture value of your camera. Let’s say you’re at a night football game. To get a proper exposure, you’ll need something like 1/250th of a second, f/2.8, and ISO 1600. You don’t necessarily know this; you just know that you want a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second. So you flip the dial to shutter priority, set the shutter speed, and start shooting.

If you have a fast lens (i.e. a f/2.8 70-200mm zoom), you’ll be ok. If, on the other hand, you’ve got a slow lens (like a f/5.6 55-250mm, you won’t be in such good shape. The camera will want to set the aperture to f/2.8, but the lens only opens up to f/5.6. As a result, all of your images will come out about 2 stops underexposed (i.e. really, really dark).