COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

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This has been a very interesting week for me in terms of copyright infringement. Earlier this week, I decided to hop on OfferUp to see if there were any good deals on some camera gear. I wasn’t necessarily looking for a cage for the Sony a6300, but this one caught my attention because of the thumbnail photo. I had no doubts about it, this is the same photo that I used for a YouTube video where I reviewed the same product.

In this situation, I just found it more funny than anything that someone was too lazy to take a quick photo (even with a cellphone) and would rather steal someone else’s photo. This should be common knowledge, but don’t steal other people’s work especially when it is used in advertising and for monetary gains. That’s a good way to get a lawsuit launched at you. Obviously, there’s no gain on my part from doing this because this person is only selling the cage for $30 but the advice still stands. DON’T STEAL OTHER’S WORK!!!

They say lightning never strikes the same place twice, but I’d say that this next case strikes pretty close. Moments ago, I went to check the business email that I have attached to this website and noticed that I got an email with no subject and just a YouTube link. This email was in my spam folder so my first thought was that this was just some spammer trying to send me to a scam. Against my better judgements, I clicked the link anyways and am glad that I did because it sent me to a direct re-upload of a previous review that I made for the Fujifilm Instax Mini 90.

This situation is a little more upsetting because the uploader wasn’t just stealing one still image like the previous person, this uploader reused my entire video with watermark/logo and all. They even added their own links leading people to their online store to buy the camera. Going to the user’s YouTube account, it is clear that this person just steals other creator’s work and re-upload them in an attempt to drive traffic to their store.

As a content creator, the work that I put out represents me and my efforts. This type of theft is not something that I’m willing to accept. Of course, we live in the digital age and this type of stuff is all handled online. At this point, I’ve filed a copyright claim against this account and am waiting for a reply from Google. Hopefully, they see the obvious copyright infringement and not only take my stolen video down but reexamines the entire spam YouTube account.

I’ll add an update to this post when I get an update on the situation.

*UPDATE*

After filing the first YouTube copyright claim, it came to my attention that there were two other accounts that had done the same thing, downloaded my video and re-uploaded it to advertise for the user’s online store. I also filed copyright claims against these accounts and am happy to say that all three videos were taken down.

*UPDATE 2*

I recently received an email from YouTube saying how they’ve implemented a new copyright system where they are able to match my content up with possible re-uploads. After checking out the new system, it was apparent that my original Instax video was a lot more popular with these re-uploaders than I thought. A few of my most popular videos were actually stolen. Luckily with this new system, I’m able to file a copyright claim much quicker and was able to take all of the re-uploads down.

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Pelican 1510 vs SKB iSeries 2011-7

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If you're considering on buying any of the products mentioned, please support my work by using the links below.

Pelican 1510 https://amzn.to/2EN2353

SKB 3I-2011-7 https://amzn.to/2UsRyKH

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Kodak TMAX 400 vs Ilford Delta 400 Professional

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This blog post is meant to act as a supplement to the video linked above where I compare Kodak TMAX 400 and Ilford Delta 400 Pro. The main purpose of this post is to include images so that you’re able to better see the differences that I mentioned in the video. All images are as scanned and unedited.

Click on the thumbnails to see a larger image. The first image will always be of Kodak TMAX 400 and the second image will always be of Ilford Delta 400 Pro.

If you're considering on buying any of the products mentioned, please support my work by using the links below.

Kodak TMAX 400 https://amzn.to/2HeqRWe

Ilford Delta 400 Professional https://amzn.to/2XFjayb

Nikon N2020 https://amzn.to/2PC53oX

Nikon N90S https://amzn.to/2CMR39i

Nikon 50mm f/1.8D https://amzn.to/2CMEPxk

Ilford DD-X Developer https://amzn.to/2PxtUdG

Ilford Ilfostop https://amzn.to/2yFBhIO

Ilford Rapid Fixer https://amzn.to/2CP7QIw

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The best way to color correct C-41 negative film scans

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I’ve largely been unhappy with my process for color correcting C-41 scans so I searched online to see what other people were doing. After going through a few Google pages, I came across a post on iamthejeff.com titled The best way to color correct C-41 negative film scans. In short the author developed a really quick way to color correct C-41 negative scans that from personal experience, seems to work very well. If you’re in need of a similar process, check out the video above where I go through iamthejeff’s process for color correcting C-41 negative film scans.

This process of color correcting C-41 film scans is straight forward, easy to do and quite effective. From my experience with this process so far, it pretty much works with every scan that I’ve thrown at it but there are a few drawbacks. The first being that some scans are a bit more tricky to color correct if there are elements that introduce multiple color shifts to the scene. Really, I don’t put too much fault on this process because images like the last one that I demonstrated on in the video is difficult to edit with any process that I’ve tried. Most processes, like this one, use global adjustments that effect all colors of an image. This will get the job done in most cases but some images will need further refinement with local color adjustments. 

Another thing about this process is that it kind of requires the editor to know how a certain scene is supposed to look in terms of color. For example, that last image again. I knew what the jacket was supposed to look like, it’s suppose to be off white. However, using this process I could only get the jacket to look somewhat beige or a light tan. Someone else editing this image may not know better and might stop at that. To me, it’s difficult to color correct with this process without having a good idea of what the colors should be. So in cases where you are not editing your own scans or you just completely forgot what the scene was suppose to look like, things may not look true to life. 

Edited with just iamthejeff’s process

Further edited to remove the color cast

Lastly, this is a process that you want to utilize when you want natural accurate tones, not so much for accurately representing a film stock. Think of it this way, some film stocks just inherently have a color shift. Some are just more green or more magenta than others or real life and if you want to accurately represent these film stocks, you have to show the color shift. Unless you have a really good photographic memory for just how much of a certain tint a film stock is supposed to have, it’ll be really hard to represent that with this process. Some other color correction programs utilize an entire database of different film stocks to cross reference in order to make all scans of a film stock look a certain way. That is obviously not the case with this process. Here, we are only looking at each image individually and apply color correction base on how we interpret each image, essentially just eye balling it and making adjustments based on personal preference. So, at the end of the day, all film stocks will largely look like each other in terms of color when using this process. Again, this process should not to be used to accurately represent the colors of a film stock. This process should be used for getting even, natural tones. 

At the end of the day though, this is a free process shared for anyone to use. If you don’t like it, no harm done because you didn’t pay anything for it. Me personally, I will probably continue to use this process as a first step to color correct all of my C-41 scans. This process is very fast and it gets me to a place that I’m happy with and can do further adjustments upon. If you’re looking for an easy and fast way to color correct C-41 negative scans, definitely give this process a try.

UPDATE

Unfortunately, the original creator of this method has taken his website down but an archive of it along with a download link of the action can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170702193137/https://www.iamthejeff.com/post/32/the-best-way-to-color-correct-c-41-negative-film-scans

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