Richard Benson's Video

I think Richard Benson's video (thanks to Gary, in his comment on the previous post, for alerting me to its existence) is going to finally push me into getting cable for my internet. I stuck with dialup far long than I should have, and I've been on DSL ever since. But I can't watch this. Start, stop, load, start, stop, load, end, switch, start, stop, load, start...crazy-making.

Why can't I just buy this on DVD? I want to buy this on DVD. Richard Benson, are you listening?

But I've got to watch that. Yum, yum. I love prints, love printmakers, loved the book, and, actually, I quite like interesting lectures even when I'm not interested in the subject, and, in this case, I am interested in the subject.

In a related point, here's my suggestion to digital photographers thinking about long-term preservation: easy solution. Just make prints*, and preserve those**. Done and done.

Mike

*Like you should be doing anyway
**Like you should be doing anyway

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Geoff Wittig: "Fabulous stuff. Benson's book is near my desk, and I refer to it constantly when I'm studying various kinds of prints. It works fine on my DSL, but I would love to have a DVD version because it's so good, and on-line content is so very often here today and gone tomorrow."

Michael Hultström: "I hate you. That's eight hours of video, and I have work to do."

Gordon Coale: "I just finished the entire thing. Incredible and inspirational. I've got some printing to do. First I need to order the book! Tomorrow I print."

Comments

[Ed Grossman]

Wow. Good thing you posted that link on a long holiday weekend. If that had gone up on a weeknight, I'd be a zombie the next day!

I just started my version of "A Specific, Detailed Program for Absolutely, Positively Getting Better as a Digital Printmaker". (To be honest, my program is more like the one "Boz" followed and wrote about a day later than you did.) I'm already seeing better when out shooting as a result.

It's really a shame that great posts like that come and go as they do. Perhaps we readers should nominate our favorites for a "Best Of" collection that you could re-post when you're away from the keyboard for a day or two?

[John MacKechnie]

Sell the Merc. Get Cable.

[John Allen]

I don't think your problem watching the video is a DSL issue - it works fine on my DSL connection(about 4.5 Mbits/s). Is there a bottleneck somewhere else in your setup?

[John]

Well I have slow DSL and was able to watch it. Actually it is the slowest you can get from my provider. My DSL is 1.5 Mbs and it was downloading the video at 168 KBS. So I suspect there must be another problem.

[Roger]

It may be your ISP's DNS. Give Google or Open DNS a try before signing up for cable. It's very possible you' ll have the same issue with your local cable provider.

[robert e]

I don't have a fast DSL connection (2-3 Mb/s) and the video doesn't stutter. In fact I can stream two segments at a time while downloading a software update, w/o stutter. That's not to brag, just to say that bandwidth is probably not the issue.

Try this: right click (control-click) on the video and choose "Settings" from the popup menu, and click the check box to toggle on or off the "Use acceleration" option. That's the only playback option available in Flash, unfortunately. You could try a different browser, though I doubt it would make a difference.

You might want to check your actual speed with a speed test like the one at speedtest.net

Thanks for the reminder to the site--I missed it the first time. Great stuff.

[psu]

See if you can get Verizon FIOS. It is by far the best Internet service I've had.

Also, DVDs are a tedious waste of time IMHO. I'd much rather download a video than fuss with a disk and the silly dedicated player with its stupid user interface.

[psu]

Wow. Because I'm a bad person I skipped to the last video ... and his little tirade about "control" in digital printing has made this guy my new hero.

http://www.benson.readandnote.com/videos/calibration

I love it.

[The Lazy Aussie]

Dial up. I believe the correct response these days would be "LOL".

[Peter Croft]

I started watching it just to find out what it was. I'm on 3G wireless. Like you, start, stop, start, give up.

But I thought I'd see about downloading it so I can watch it later. Nope, it's Flash and can't be downloaded. Even Download Helper won't let me. So after 30 seconds, I walked away. Too bad. Not interested. Pity.

[Mathew Hargreaves]

Rather than print making, consider doing a photobook version on a specific subject or theme. The HP printing is rated to about 100 years by the Wilhelm Imaging Research. After a lot of research on the various manufacturers, it was Bay Photo that has done the production for me. The four color or six color printing is not as good as the best inkjet prints. Having the images in a nice hardcover for preservation and showing off to other people is the goal.

[Mike Johnston]

"Dial up. I believe the correct response these days would be 'LOL.'"

Except with dialup it would be L......O......L.

Mike

[Edgar Matias]

A solution to Mike's "start, stop, load, start...crazy-making" problem...

Since this wonderful lecture is not available as a DVD, I took the time to extract the addresses of the actual video files (mp4, not Flash). They are below.

Simply right-click on each link, then choose "Save Link As..." to save a copy of each video.

I would encourage you to buy a DVD copy if it becomes available. In the mean time, this approach at least ensures that you have a low-res version (should the web page ever disappear).

Edgar

_______________________

http://richardbenson.s3.amazonaws.com/BT001_Printing%20from%20the%20high%20parts.mp4

http://richardbenson.s3.amazonaws.com/BT002_Printing%20from%20the%20low%20part%20and%20smooth%20surfaces.mp4

http://richardbenson.s3.amazonaws.com/BT003_Colored%20inks_other%20techniques.mp4

http://richardbenson.s3.amazonaws.com/BT004_Silver%20and%20non-silver%20based%20photography.mp4

http://richardbenson.s3.amazonaws.com/BT005_A%20new%20era%20for%20photography%20dry%20plate_color.mp4

http://richardbenson.s3.amazonaws.com/BT006_Halftone_photogravure.mp4

http://richardbenson.s3.amazonaws.com/BT007_Photo%20offset%20lithography.mp4

http://richardbenson.s3.amazonaws.com/BT008_Collotype.mp4

http://richardbenson.s3.amazonaws.com/BT009_New%20printing%20systems.mp4

http://richardbenson.s3.amazonaws.com/BT010_The%20future%20of%20photography.mp4

[Jamie Pillers]

Mike (and Gary), thanks so much for the link to Richard Benson's lecture. I love the idea that, for me, Benson is pulling back the curtains that allow me to see much more of what I've been looking at for years... The Print. Very exciting!

And Mike, I agree about using prints as a method of archiving digital image information. Having a print stored away in a box gives me great insurance that I'll have the image beyond disk crashes and data corruption. Now... I've got to get busy preparing my workflow for your suggested print-a-day self-training. :-)

[M. Ellis]

This may be the best link I have ever got from any blog. It's amazing. Thank you so much.

[Dogman]

Great videos! I jumped to the digital printing section at the end and was totally involved. I'll go back and watch the first portion of the lecture when I have the time. Benson is an amazing guy--I have his "North South East West" monograph and really love his photography. Now "The Printed Picture" is on order. Thanks so much for posting the link.

[psu]

Strangely the files above display using a different aspect ratio than the web site. I wonder which one is wrong.

[Edgar Matias]

psu, the video files are 4:3 which is the normal aspect ratio for Standard Definition video. The look correct to me.

The streaming viewer squashes them down to a 3:2 aspect ratio, which is not normal for video.