villaverde, justin

Just a quick update, the old PC was also running CS2, but did not have these performance issues. I'll try to up the memory allocation tomorrow.

Thanks,

Justin

<p>I need some serious help. I just built a new computer (P4D 930, 2gb of

677mhx ddr2, on an Intel 975x board, with 4 drives in 2 RAID 1 arrays). I

expected it to be dramatically faster, and it is in most cases, but not with

Photoshop CS2.</p>

<p>The problem is that CS2 uses the scratch disc for nearly all files with more

then one layer or any flat file 100mb or larger. My last computer with only 1gb

of ram would only use the scratch disc when I worked with huge panos.</p>

<p>As an example, today I was working with files that the doc: size was 100-300

mb at Photoshop would use the scratch disc for nearly every adjustment (crop,

resize, unsharp mask, levels, curves) making nearly all the tasks take forever.

I assumed that 2gb of RAM was enough, but should I add 2 more or is there a

setting that I can tweak to solve this problem. I read that Win XP 32bit will

only allow any individual program to use 2gb of RAM though.</p>

<p>Here’s my Photoshop memory settings: Cache Levels: 6, Memory usage:

Avail 1759MB, Max 60% = 1055MB.</p>

<p>In Task Manager, with background programs running, my computer idles between

350 and 400mb of RAM usage.</p>

<p>Any advice would be greatly appreciated, since this problem really

doesn’t make much sense to me. Or if you need more info please let me

know.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance,<br>

Justin</p>

Sean,

Copying the "Actions Palette.psp" file into the new directory worked. I was able to recover and save my old actions. Thank you very much for the suggestion.

Justin

I figured that they were lost forever. I had hopes that there was some hidden master file that saved preferences, settings, and other garbage that may have been transferable or at least accessible. I've learned my lesson and will now make sure I save my new generation of actions. Now I just have to invest the hours it will take to create them again.

I agree that Adobe should fix this issue, but the problem is fairly common. I also learned that Office doesn't save contacts as a file either (thank god for PDAs and webmail). I do feel lucky that the disks survived the crash, since my photo backup is months out of date.

Thanks everyone.

Justin

I recent crash of my main computer, due to a power surge or short of some kind,

forced me to replaced the motherboard and basically everything else just for

the fun of it. I'm now in the process of reinstalling all the programs from my

old/dead system. Luckily all the HDs survived, so I have all the data.

My current problem is that I can't find all the actions I created on the

previous install of CS2. I searched to old drive of .atn files, but only the

preset actions are there. I can only assume that Photoshop does not

automatically save actions to files.

Is there a way to recover the actions that existed in my previous install of

CS2 and migrate them to the new install? I really do not want to redo all the

work that went into creating the actions.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Justin

I own the 100-300 and my roommate owns the 80-200. Both of us use 1.4 TCs (Kenko for me, Sigma for him). Both of us are quite happy with our lenses. Personally, I chose the 100-300 for the extra reach.

As for a quick review, the 100-300 is excellent from f6.7 to f13, pretty good at f5.6 and f16, and I don�t consider f4 and f22 useable due to the lack of sharpness. The 80-200 is soft at 2.8 and f22 but marginally less then 100-300 at f4 and f22.

As for use with a TC, some have said that they don�t see a loss of sharpness on their 1.4x, I would have to disagree. I can see a big difference on a monitor, but it is not very noticeable on 8x12 prints. And there is a drop in AF performance with a TC on both lenses. Neither of us use 2x TCs.

As another user mentioned, I would not consider either of these lenses portrait lenses especially with the 1.5x multiplier on Nikon DSLRs. They may work in a studio with a lot of room, but in my opinion would be too long for wedding use unless you only want to shoot candids from across the room.

<p>All the processing and posting from my trip to Lancaster County is finished. I didn't feel that I got any great images. I struggled with light and hazy skys, but the trip was well worth just as a scouting trip. For those who are interested in steam locos or covered bridges, I can highly recommend a trip through Lancaster County.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.jvphotography.net/LancasterCountyPA/Lancaster1.htm" target="_blank">You can view my photos with this link</a>. Any feedback would be great.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the help,</p>

<p>Justin</p>

Thanks everyone. It looks like Lancaster County is the choice. I'm going to spend Monday and Tuesday chasing steam trains, hunting down covered bridges, and hopefully coming home with a few Amish candids too. It should be a good test for my month old truck and new PDA GPS. I appreciate all the useful advice and website links.

Justin

Michael,

I just took a look at your portfolio. It's quite impressive. Your shots of Eastern State Penitentiary opened my eyes to another must shoot location. I may have to switch gears and hit Philly instead and save Lancaster County for the fall.

Thanks,

Justin

I would like to get a good 2 day road trip in before my summer classes start

next week. Living just north of DC puts Lancaster County, PA about 100 miles

away. Before I plan the trip I have a few questions for anyone who's visited

the area.

1. What towns should I focus on? I'm looking for active farming, old barns,

covered bridges, and all other things photogenic. I've found a few sites that

list some covered bridges, but only a few have decent photographs. Are there

any "must see/can't miss" places?

2. How bad are the crowds going to be? It is Memorial Day weekend after all and

most of the back roads appear to be 2 lanes. I want to be able to get around

without being stuck in DC like traffic. I've found a few places with rooms

available, but of course the prices are pretty high.

3. Should I worry about photographing Amish people in their daily activities?

The sites I've found have mixed opinions about Amish being photographed. I

would hate to offend anyone and am not a very experienced "street"

photographer. My focus tends to be nature and landscapes. I expect to use my

100-300mm without flash most of the time. Any advice would be great.

Thanks in advance.

Justin

Robert,

The only filters that I keep in my bag anymore are a screw in Tiffen 3 stop ND, a Tiffen circular polarizer, and Hitech brand 2 and 3 stop hard and 3 stop soft graduated NDs for the Cokin P system. All fit a 77mm filter size and do not vignette at 17mm.

I do not use any creative filters. I prefer to add any affects or "WOW factor" in Photoshop.

Have a great trip.

Justin

My new D200 just showed up in the mail today. It's banding free,

unless I intentionally over-expose a light bulb by 3-5 stops, and

feels great in my hand. Its focus seems tons faster then my D70,

maybe even faster then my F100, but to be honest it's hard to

remember the last time I shot film. My problem is I won't have a real

chance to give it a solid trial run thanks to finals and end of

semester projects, so I have a few questions for those who have put

their D200s through the paces:

1. My first planned shoot is the Andrews AFB Air Show in a few weeks.

I expect that my Sigma 100-300 4.0 will be on my camera most of the

time. I assume that AF-Closest Subject is the best focus setting,

correct me if I'm wrong. And is there any other settings that I

should change (from default) to have the best AF performance?

2. Being that the camera has the choice to turn RAW compression on

and off, has anyone noticed a real difference between the 2? If so,

what? The D70 always compresses its RAW files and I've been happy

with those results.

3. Where can I find an extra battery? I checked the usual online

suspects (B&H, Ritz, Adorama) without success.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.

Justin

I love the Adams Morgan/DuPont Circle area for evening people photography. There are always some street musicians in the general area along with some excellent restaurants. I have to second a hike up the C&O Canal. Great Falls is a decent shoot also, I prefer the MD side. I must add Arlington National Cemetery to the list too. The changing of the guard is a sight to see there are also some good options for wide shots of the monuments.

Douglas mentioned that tripod use on the mall could be restricted. However, having lived in DC for the past 3 years, I must say that I rarely ever have a problem setting up my tripod. Of course I only shoot the mall on very early mornings (3am � sunrise). There is still a lot of security there, but as long as you�re not getting in other people�s way you should be able to use a tripod without a problem.

Also, another poster mentioned that they turn the lights off at around 1am. I�ve never seen that happen either. As far as I know the monuments are lit from about 30 mins before sunset to an hour or so after sunrise. Again most of my shoots are in the very early morning to avoid crowds and traffic.

I hope this post isn�t too late to help. Enjoy your trip.

Justin

Quang-Tuan, I don't mind traffic at all, but being that I do not sell any of my work and that I'm a "poor college student" I try to keep costs to a minimum. If my bandwidth keeps increasing, I'll have to switch to a more expensive host.

Rob, I've seen this code before. Will it block sites that do image searches, like Google and Yahoo? I would not want that to happen.

Thanks for the responses,

Justin

<p>A little annoyance has now become an actual problem. I normally

don't really care if someone grabs one of my web photos and uses it

as their background or something like that, as long as it isn't a

commercial site. However, with the growth of sites like MySpace.com,

this hot linking is eating up my monthly allotted bandwidth. One

photo in particular is costing me at least 3-7gb/month, with 5-10k

hits.</p>

<p>I see my options as:</p>

<p>1. Renaming the photo so that it breaks all the links.<br />

2. Reducing the size/quality of the photo to reduce the

bandwidth.<br />

3. Disable hotlinking on my website. (Never done it, but I've read

a few articles on how to do it)<br />

4. Keep ignoring it because I have yet to exceed my monthly allotted

bandwidth. (My least favorite option)</p>

<p>Hopefully someone with who has experienced this will be able to

help. Any other options, comments, or advice would be greatly

appreciated.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance,<br />

Justin</p>

<p>Joshua,</p>

<p>I too am a bit of a waterfall hunter. However, living in the Pacific NW for 10 years spoiled me. As a recent transplant to MD, I've found it hard to find any waterfalls that compare to the NW.</p>

<p>I took a trip out last summer and found one more that you should add to your plans. <a href="http://www.mgs.md.gov/esic/features/muddy.html" target="_blank">Muddy Creek Falls</a> in Garrett County western MD is a nice free falling waterfall. There was horrible light on the day I was there, so I don't have any pics of my own, but in the right light and maybe with some fall colors could make Muddy Creek Falls quite photogenic.</p>

<p>Happy hunting,<br />

Justin</p>

I also own an Intuos 3 6x8 tablet. I use it for all my critical work. I still use the mouse more in Photoshop, but I switch to the pen for any painting, burning/dodging, and spotting. The pen allows for much more accurate adjustments and is simply easier to control then a mouse. However, it will take some getting use to and personally I still find it easier to navigate PS menus with the mouse.

I use it with a 21" monitor and could not see getting the 9x12 version. The 6x8 is more then enough for me to do accurate work. If you're doing advanced retouching, you may need the larger one, but I think even the 4x5 would be more then enough for most photographers.

I second Sean's point about it being eating up memory and CPU power. I noticed quite a slow down when working with large panoramas that didn't occur before I had the tablet. And I don't use the included mouse either.

Justin

I would like to have some calendars (no more then 50) printed to give

to family, friends, and coworkers as stocking stuffers for Christmas.

The plan is to use a standard 12 month design with photos no larger

then 8x10 maybe 8.5x11 to keep with standard paper sizes. I would

love to have creative control over the layout, I want to use some

titles and text to accompany the photos, and want to use photo

quality paper. I have everything available to help with color

accuracy, but lack a printer to handle the job.

I'm looking for some suggestions of printing companies that can

handle the job. And are there templates available or if I should

design each page myself? If I should design the calendar, what

program would make my life easiest? I'm quite familiar with

Photoshop, but I don't see an easy way to design the calendar portion

with it.

Any other advice would be great.

Thanks in advance,

Justin

I would like to take a trip to Shenandoah within the next 2 weeks.

According to weather.com's fall foliage map it looks like the area is

at or near peak. However, I could not find any recent detail about

Shenandoah itself. Most of the sites I found had information that was

over a week old saying the park was only at about 20-30%. Living in

the DC/Baltimore area, I know that there has been significantly less

rainfall then normal, which led to very poor fall foliage conditions.

My hope if that it's a little better 100 miles SW.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Justin

I have an inland marine policy that covers replacement value on all my gear. It doesn't have anything to do with my renters policy. It's actually from a different insurer. When I purchased the policy they asked if I was a pro, but I never found out what the difference in cost would be. At the moment, the policy I have costs about $10 per $1000 of coverage per year with no deductible. I was told this type of policy is commonly used with jewelry and other high value items that are taken out of the home.

I know I?ve written about this before on these boards so you should be able to search the site and find more info.

Justin

Dale,

Best of luck. I hope you share some of your panos with the photo.net community.

Justin

<p>Can I asume with that level of equipment that price isn't a huge obsticle? If it isn't, I would do it right and get a nice ball head and pano set up rather then the cheaper built Bogen versions. <a href="http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/pano/index.html" target="_blank">Really Right Stuff</a> makes a few great pano setups. The top one that allows for mosaics rather then just stiched panos runs $405 and you still need their main ball head pano setup, the BH-55 PCL, that runs $575. There are other options if you are only looking to make panos. FYI, the L-plates makes it extremely easy to switch from horizontal to vertical.</p>

<p>As far as using your 200-400VR, that may be an issue because of length and getting the nodal point in the proper position. I would call Really Right Stuff and see if they can help a little more. You could also search online to see if anyone has measured the nodal point's distance from the flim plane.</p>

<p>Hope that helps,</p>

<p>Justin </p>

I second Heceta Head Lighthouse. It's my favorite lighthouse in Oregon. There's a good wide shot from a lookout just south and a good close up over the fence and up in the trees behind the lighthouse. Be careful it's a long drop down if you loose your footing.

Justin

I'm a big fan of this lens also. I sold a Nikon 80-400mm VR for it. I like the optics better and the focus speed is a huge improvement over the 80-400. I like it at f8 and f11, but consider it usable at f5.6 and f16. I don't use f4 or f22 unless I'm forced to. I also use it with a Kenko 1.4 Pro tele at f8 or smaller to get decent results.

It's a great lens for the money, I would suggest it unless you spend double and go with a Nikon 80-200 AFS and 1.7x or 2x tele.

Justin