Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    It depends upon the application.
    
    If you are looking for photographs or transparencies of screens,
    you can shoot right off the screen, using a slow shutter speed and
    a long lens (to minimize screen curvature distortion).  With the
    RGB output, you could probably feed a film recorder like the Palette
    system.
    
    If the end result is for four color printing, it is possible to
    take the image file on disk and send it to a service that translates
    it into a Scitex image file for four color separation.  The advantage
    of this process is that no film is involved.  You wind up with a
    printed image that is vitually perfect--perfect rectangular pixels,
    each representing the original colors, no grain from film, no fuzzy
    edges.  This process only applies to images that are going to be
    printed (on a printing press, not photographically printed).  Amiga
    World magazine uses this process for the images in it's 'Digital
    Canvas' section.  The last issue has an article about how to get
    'output' from the Amiga, and might offer some more insight.
    
    Randy
    

    How does one get an image file on disk?  And, once it is on disk
    what is the format of the information?  Are the pixel values in
    terms rgb values or do they refer to the color registers?
    
      db

    I have received excellent results with a Polaroid SLR680 camera
    (a SX-70, autofocus folding slr camera that uses 600 film)  Just
    put the camera on a tripod, turn the room lights off, turn the internal
    flash off, aim and shoot.  Becuase the camera is a SLR, what you
    see is what you get, making image cropping easy.
                                                    
    You get wonderful saturated colors and good detail.  The camera
    can focus down to 10.4 inches, allowing you to zoom in on portions
    of an image.  Digital's Industrial Design Group in Maynard uses
    this technique with their "Lightspeed" computer graphics system
    with great success.                             
    
    Randy
                             
    

    re .2
    Any graphic created with Graphicraft, Deluxe Paint or Aegis Images
    is stored in a standardized IFF graphics file. (There are slight
    differences but all are interchangeable)
    

    I recently got the public domain Mandelbrot set drawing program,
    and this inspired me to take some more screen pictures.  So I trotted
    out my trusty Nikon FA (state of the art technology to match the
    Amiga) and started shooting.  I had done this before with my F3
    and noticed no anomalies;  why then was the FA's metering system
    freaking out (i.e., I was using it in aperture preferred automation
    mode, and the shutter speed was varying continuously over a range
    of about 4 stops!)?
    
    A little thought led me to the following conjecture - the FA's AMP
    "intelligent" metering system's clock rate was "beating" with the
    Amiga's screen refresh cycle.  Since the 1080 monitor has a low
    persistence phosphor, the screen is actually illuminated in a wave
    that sweeps down the screen 60 times a second.  Our eyes don't perceive
    this wave because it's faster than the visual system's fusion
    frequency.  But the FA's metering logic IS fast enough to perceive
    it.  The FA looks at five different areas of its view and based
    on the relative brightness of these areas makes a decision about
    correct exposure.  My guess is that what's happening is the FA
    periodically looks at these five areas, and the periodicity of these
    updates is interacting with the Amiga's screen refresh, so each
    time the FA looks, it sees a different part of the screen illuminated,
    and computes a different "correct" exposure.
    
    Solution: turn off AMP metering.
    
    Incidentally, I've been shooting my screen pictures with a 105mm
    f/4 macro lens, at about 3 feet distance.  I've been using Ektachrome
    100 and Kodachrome 64 (whatever's handy) and exposures have been
    about 1/15 sec. at f/4.  The pictures are gorgeous.
    
    len.
    

    ImageSEt had an ad in AMIGA WORLD SEP/OCT pg 62.They say they will 
    put your files on disk out to slides,or prints. While I have nothing
    to work with at present except GRAPHICRAFT I am tempted to submit
    something just to see the results.The ad said 2-3 days+mailing?
    for those not lucky enough to have AMIGA WORLD
                ImageSet corp.
    		555 19th St.
    		San Fran.,CA. 94107
    		(415) 626-8366
                                                                  
    bill

    ImageSet are the people who also provide color separations of Amiga
    Graphics for print, going straight to Scitex.