chip

<p>Could be an issue with some part of your display system. What kind of computer, display card and monitor are you using? Many display cards and LCD monitors even when configured correctly do not have the level of hardware required to support smooth gradation between digitally very similar tone values. With a high-end PC or MAC display this is less an issue but the cost is still fairly high when compared to commodity priced display cards and LCD monitors. <br>

HTH! </p>

<p>The issue of portrait focal length is just a matter of style and situation. I've used everything from my ancient EF 15 to my old non-IS EF 300 2.8L for shooting portraits. But for straight single portraits the EF 135 2L is generally going to be too long unless you are only shooting single heads. For shoulders you need to back up too much for my taste and you tend to loose touch with the subject which I prefer not to have happen. So a I have an EF 100 2USM and EF 85 1.8USM to suit the situation. <br>

I love the EF135 2L! Over the many years I've been an EOS system user starting with the EOS 1 (pre-N) I've shot and owned several examples of this fantastic optic. The 135 2L is one of the purest most amazing lenses I've ever used. Fantastic blur when used wide open and incredibly detailed and brutally honest for most 17 year old women's tastes. The ES 135 2L requires the best digital bodies to get the most out of it but if you are shooting RAW with a 1Ds or equivalent pixel count EOS full frame sensor body yoiu will be pretty happyu with the image quality. <br>

Cheers!</p>

Tim,

I shoot a lot of interior architecture and frequently use an EF15 2.8 fisheye on an EOS 1DsXX body. Even though I

have an EF14 2.8L the EF15 is more usefull for my work. I shoot a room and in post I run the image through PTLens

and "defish" the image to get sharp ultra-wide angle images with lots of DOF and a wider than 14mm FOV. Works

great!

As usual the answer is it depends. Favorite for what? I've been shooting a long time first with the original Japanese market EOS 5 bodies which quickly proved inadequate for the abuse of motorsports. That bad experience caused me to jump to the EOS 1n and EOS 1nRS bodies which I loved and used for many years to cover motorsports. When the EOS 1D came out I bought one and six months later I never shot a roll of film again. I have owned and/or used virtually every significant Canon EF lens offered except for the EF1200 at some point or another and my list of favorite lenses has evolved over time depending on the subject.

Shooting a lot of interior and exterior architecture using EOS 1DsXX bodies I almost always take shots using my trusty old EF15 2.8 and EF16-35 2.8L lenses. But interiors are funny and a lot of the high-end buildings and homes I shoot are huge and require some focal length and I frequently use an EF70-200 2.8L IS or if I can my middle length primes EF85 1.8USM, EF100 2USM, EF135 2.8L or the EF300 2.8L.

I often have to shoot a lot of table top product shots usually taken with an EOS 1DsXX and an EF50 1.4USM, EF85 1.8US or EF100 2USM.

Back in the golden days of CART I used to shoot motorsports and for those jobs I usually had an EF70-200 2.8L on a secondary EOS 1n body and booster and depending on the track an EF300 2.8L or EF400 2.8L sometimes with an EF1.4X on the monopod with my primary EOS 1n body and booster mounted. I would also carry an EF16-35 2.8L and sometimes EF15 2.8 to add interest.

I also used to shoot a lot of music groups and personalities for European and Japanese music magazines and trades with a shooting partner. We used just about everything in the bag from EF15 2.8 to EF300 2.8L depending on what the magazine or outlet was looking for. For straight portraits and candids I currently shoot an EOS 1DsXX with EF28-70 2.8L, EF100 2USM, EF135 2L or EF70-200 2.8L IS.

For personal work which is largely street scene, people and purely graphic I like EF50 1.4USM and EF16-35 2.8L or EF28-70 2.8L backed up with the EF70-200 2.8L IS on an EOS 1DsXX..

My most favored lenses are EF15 2.8, EF16-35 2.8L, EF28-70 2.8L, EF 50 1.4USM, EF70-200 2.8L IS, EF85 1.8USM, EF135 2L and EF300 2.8L. But I also have and find regular use for the EF14 2.8L, EF20 2.8USM, EF28-105 3.5-4.5USM II, EF100 2USM, EF300 4L IS, EF1.4xII and EF2xII converters.

But in all honesty I'm pretty spoiled given the lenses I have sitting on the shelf.

Hi Greg,

While the EF 400 5.6L is a very good lens overal it is a much narrower use lens. this means that unless you are ONLY going to shoot subjects that can be framed with a 400mm lens you are going to leave that lens in the bag more often than not. In your situation I'd go for the 300 4L IS and an EF 1.4X I/II converter. You'll get so much more versatility out of this combination and you'll also find that when hand holding a lens/body combination with an effective 35mm FOV of 670mm IS really is a wonder! The difference in sharpness is not that great with the EF 1.4X converter and you probably wouldn't see much if any difference even if you used the EF 2X II converter with a 10D.

Being a professional motorsports and sports shooter I've owned and used many of Canon's best long lenses and the lenses I come back to time and time again are the EF 300 2.8L and EF 300 4L IS. So these are the lenses I spent my own money on along with the usual EF 1.4X and EF 2X II converters. FYI, in testing the EF 300 28L on a tripod I didn't see any difference between the EF 1.4X mkI and the mkII converters so I kept the mkI 1.4X. The EF 2X mkII however showed a slight advantage on chrome films so I bought it.

Now that I'm pretty much fully digital (I had to buy an EOS 1 for a shoot and never sold it), I have no problems shooting with the EF 2X II because I can make up that slight difference in post capture processing. This is on of the great things about digital, flexability and the option to work your captures a bit to get the image that you visualized.

As for Thomas, he's nuts! Film has MUCH more resolution than even the EOS 1DS mkII is capable of recording, the limiting factor is still the glass, this is obvious. If this were not so why can we see and measure the differences between even identical lenses when using film as the test media but we cannot do the same with even an EOS 1DSmkII? The reason is because film has more resolution than the current DSLR's do. It's simple to test, try it! I already have and discovered this for myself.

BUT WHO CARES? I have so much resolution to work with from my EOS 1DS body when shooting interior architecture jobs that I don't see any reason to buy an EOS 1DmkII until Canon or SOMEBODY comes up with better WA glass. The EOS 1DS approaches the resolution of my old 6x6 Blads in terms of fine image detail, it's not quite the same but it's so close all of my clients have been amazed that the images came from a 35mm format camera.

Thomas you can stand by your comments but you do look kind of silly doing so.

Cheers/Chip

Hi Tom,

I'm located in SoCal and have walked my equipment into the Irvine facility several times over several years and they have ALWAYS bentover backwards to make it happen for me. I've walked in with two broken EOS 5QD (BTW, these bodies were Japanese market only), film bodies that both needed command dial replacements and they fixed them BOTH within 3 days! I've also broken one of the EOS 5QD baseplates after slipping on a scafolding at a CART race in the rain and they had it fixed for me in less than a week. I've had a new EF 50 1.4USM with a loose front element and an EF 85 1.8USM with a lose lens mount in for repairs and both were fixed free with a smile and a 3 day turn around. I've had an EOS 1|N and PB-E1 booster cleaned and a shutter button on the booster replaced in less than a week, of course I had to pay for that one. I had one of my EF 300 2.8L lenses cleaned and lubed and it worked like a champ when I got it back. I've had several EOS 1N bodies and PB-E1 boosters CLA'd too, all less than a week and 100% when I got them back. I recently took my EOS 1D and EOS 1DS bodies in for a sensor cleaning and they came back absolutely spotless after I took a lunch break and returned to pick them up N/C!

I got nothing but praise for Canon Irvine!

Cheers/Chip

Hi,

I've been running an ATI 9800Pro and an ATI 9800XT since they first came out. I've had only EXCELLENT print results with no problems using the later ColorVision Spyder PRO and OptiCAL v3.7.6 and v3.7.8 with Cat v4.1 and v4.2, v4.3 and v4.4 with the ATI hot patch update. The ATI Catalyst 4.6 drivers have resolved the LUT problems for me on ATI 9800, 9600 and 9200 cards so it seems that you should remove and install the updated Cat v4.6 drivers AND control panel. HTH

Cheers/Chip

Hi Bob,

The real limitations you are bumping up against is that you have an EOS 10D with a USB port that's pretty slow, the fact that C1 Pro DSLR is $500 and that you don't have an EOS 1D or EOS 1Ds which are the only bodies supported by C1 Pro in tethered mode.

The speed of the 10D's USB port is not going to change anytime soon and the cost of buying C1 Pro isn't going any lower (though IMO C1 Pro is a bargin even at $500). The good news is that the cost of buying a nice used EOS 1D/1Ds are going down although at a glacial pace, well until the new EOS 1Ds replacement comes along anyway.

HTH

Hi Steven,

Ethan may have hit the nail on the head, with your LCD display. The trick I've found to calibrating my 19" LCD panels with ColorVision's Spyder and OptiCAL package is that you must follow their directions exactly when using Spyder/OptiCAL by resetting the display to the default (sometimes called "auto"), settings before calibrating and profiling. You must also fully disable Adobe Gamma so it can not be run during or after your system boots up.

I have several large LCD displays and tried calibrating all of them to find the best one to use for photo editing. I found that LCD's are strange displays, often not showing full tonal range even after calibration and profiling no matter what you do to them. When the color and tonal scales are displayed side by side with any of my other high-end CRT displays the LCD's are not nearly as good looking color in terms of color and tone.

BTW, you should download the latest version of OptiCAL and PreCAL from the site before you use the Spyder. The latest versions are much better than the earlier boxed versions of OptiCAL and PreCAL.

Anyway, good luck with calibrating your LCD panel.

HTH

Hi Ray,

These guys are the best! Excellent prices, perfect service and very fair shipping rates especially if you do like I do and order a LOT of ink and paper on a single order. I use them exclusively for OE Epson ink and papers.

HTH

Hi Pantelis,

In terms of actual measured resolution the EOS 10D offers no more than a 10% improvement over an EOS 1D. I agree with these measured test and can tell you that in the real world you will be hard pressed to see the difference in resolution on paper up to 11x17 output if processed equally.

As to color accuracy, this is more dependant on post capture RAW processing skill and the calibration of the client's eyeballs than is likely to be seen when comparing JPEGs as the test and review sites use. I shoot with EOS 1D, 1Ds, D60 and 10D bodies, when shooting and saving RAW format iamges color "accuracy" is always dependent on the skill of the C1 operator and what the client likes even if you shoot a color chart to get your color corrections.

The general impression of many 10D owners is that the 10D has lower noise than the 1D at high ISO settings. This is a popular myth and simply not true, the popular website that has noise level testing information shoots their high ISO "tests" under bright light conditions which gives the false impression that the 10D has lower noise in the real world. Most people don't shoot in bright light at high ISO settings. Normally when the light levels are high a lower ISO is selected and when light conditions are lower a higher ISO is selected. This is how most DSLRs are used in thr real world. Under these more normal conditions the EOS 1D can produce lower noise images than the 10D.

Look here for real world high ISO and LOW LIGHT testing of the 10D and 1D DSRL's: http://www.tow.com/photogallery/2004/20040130_iso/ and decide if you still believe that the 10D has lower noise than the 1D at high ISO settings.

Cheers/Chip

Hi Devin,

When I had originally started looking for a camera for my niece I thought that 3MP would be enough for her but the cameras she really wanted were in the 4-5 MP ultra-compact P&S segment. I had not overlooked the SD110 but excluded it from consideration due to changing the requirements for her camera to a minmum of a 4MP sensor.

As I mentioned I've got an S230 (bought it about 9 months ago, incredible price of $199), and am pretty happy with what I can get out of it if I shoot carefully. It's no match for my EOS 1D or D60 but it's a pretty good compact P&S. At the price I paid it was almost free considering that I also got a year of free prints (288 free 4x6), included with the deal.

The S230 is the same camera as the SD110 but about a 1/10 of an inch thicker, uses a larger battery and the same CF type media cards I use in my EOS 1d and D60. The SD110 was also less attractive for its expensive SD media requirments and small battery so I didn't mention it. There are a few others in the ultra-compact 3MP range but due to poor lens characteristics (S-L-O-W), image noise, almost no usefull features, even weaker built-in flash and lower build quality they really are no more than toys for JSG's so 3MP cameras were not considered.

HTH

Hi Brian,

This is a "requirement" from a company that has no clue about digital image quality. The 10D produces an 18.8MB image file when uncompressed using only 24bit depth for color. File size is no more an indicator of image quality then if they asked if the image was shot with Canon or Nikon.

HTH

Hi John,

Is your photo editing display system color calibrated? What are you setting your luminence levels to? How do your histograms look? Are they all bunched up to the left, middle or right? Digital sensors are not the same as film and proper exposure is more narrowly defined than for film. This is caused by the linear exposure charateristics of most digital sensors.

HTH

Eliza,

I did a LOT of reasearch and carefully considered the capabilities and image quality of the smallest, most compact 3-5MP point and shoot digital cameras.

I looked hard at the Casio EX Z4U for its small size and histogram preview. But Casio was eliminated due to the need for a cradle to hook up the USB and TV outputs and due to Casio's history of poor repair support from the company.

I also looked at the new Sony T1 for its size but found that it was too slow between shots and lacked an optical finder as did several others in this class. IMO you need an optical finder for the bright conditions this type of camera will mostly be used under so any camera I was going to consider had to have an optical finder or it was out.

I looked at the Canon SD10 for its extremely small size, but I had issues with this camera. The SD10 is very, VERY small and uses the very limited SD type memory cards which are also VERY expensive to buy in higher capacities. I think $300 for a name brand 1GB media card is too much (I paid $160 for a name brand 12X 1GB CF card for my S230 P&S). The Canon SD10 is also very limited in features and also lacks an optical finder and has a weak battery so the SD10 was out.

The Pentax S4i is a great looking and working P&S digital camera but used expensive SD memory and only has USB 1.1.

Being a digital EOS shooter I also looked at Canon's better digital P&S cameras. The Canon S410 and S500 cameras are right in there in terms of size and have most any feature you could imagine using in the better digital P&S segment. The Canon S410 and S500 have the small size I know my niece likes, they are stainless steel bodies and are very tough.

The Canon S410 and S500 also meet ALL of my selection criteria for compact P&S type cameras. They have optical viewfinders with true zoom image, use batteries that are easy to buy from a third party ($10 each!), use easy to find and buy CF cards for media, can shoot very quickly even in max. image quality modes and have one of the most logical and easy to use while shooting menu and button layout. They can also produce a detailed, very high quality 8x10 with realistic, accurate color.

So I wound up giving my neice a nice new Canon S410 with a 1GB CF card and a small soft case. The whole sheebang was less than $570 out the door here in California including the sales taxes!

HTH

Hi Michael,

The suggested black luminace level for a CRT is 0.30 not 30. You should also make sure that all of your calibrations and profile runs are done in a dark room.

Make certain that the Spyder has the soft black rubber skirt attached to the bottom around the sensor (not the LCD attachment), and that the Spyder remaing fully stuck to the CRT face. During the PreCAL and OptiCAL calibrations you also need to be sure to wait at least 15 seconds after making any changes to the monitor to allow monitor electronics and CRT tube phosphors to settle, this makes a big difference.

HTH

Henry,

Bob A. took the EXACT words out of my mouth! This is what it takes to get really good images out of most ANY lens even good ones and the EF 28-135IS needs all the help it can get.

HTH

Hi Pantelis,

I have access to, own and rent EOS 1Ds, EOS 1D, EOS D60 and EOS 10D bodies. I own Canon's L class zoom "tripplets" (EF 16-35 2.8L, EF 28-70 2.8L, EF 70-200 2.8L IS), and several other fast Canon L primes and teles. I shoot sports and people mostly and am more and more often asked to shoot interiors (this is why I some times need the EOS 1Ds).

The body I reach for 99% of the time is the EOS 1D. The reason is that it's as responsive as the EOS 1V and EOS 1Ds bodies but is capable of digital capture at high speed and frame rates. The EOS 1D offers about the same resolution on prints as the EOS D60/10D does up to 11x17 with trivial effort during post capture processing and printing. The only real reason I use the EOS 1Ds is that I need the wider FOV of a full frame DSLR and the strong AA filtering the EOS 1Ds provides for lower pattern artifacts in print.

Dust is dust, the EOS 1D and D60/10D can and will collect it and will need occassional cleaning. This is the way it is at the moment unless you have an Olympus E1.

Can't say about the D1X compared to the 10D but I've seen beautiful moderate sized prints made from D1X files.

HTH

Hi Barry,

I'm a fan of nVidia's nForce 2-400 based MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR and VIA KT600 based KT6V-LSR mobos. I prefer the nForce 2-400 chipset mobo but they are both good, reliable motherboards. With your Barton cored XP2500+ (with a good HSF and slight voltage boost), stuck in this mobo along with good DDR memory will run at 2.2GHz. core speed. I do this all the time, as a matter of fact I have two of them running in my office that run under Win2K Pro and SCO UNIX 24x7.

The K7N2 Delta ILSR specs include:

CPU

� Supports Socket A for AMD® Athlon�/Athlon� XP/Duron� processors @FSB 200/266/333/400

� Supports 600MHz up to Athlon� XP 3000+ processor or higher

Chipset

� nVIDIA® nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset

- Supports DDR200/266/333/400

- Supports external AGP 4X/8X

� nVIDIA® nForce2 MCP-T Chipset

- AC97 Interface supporting up to two concurrent codecs

- Ultra ATA133 for the fastest hard disk throughput

- USB 2.0 EHCI/1.1 OHCI controller

- FireWire® and USB 2.0 for the fastest digital connectivity

- Audio Processing Unit(APU) encodes audio in Dolby® Digital 5.1 format for full surround sound effects

FSB

FSB 200/266/333/400 MHz clocks are supported

Main Memory

� Supports six memory banks using three 184-pin DDR DIMMs

� Supports up to 3GB PC3200/2700/2100/1600 DDR SDRAMs

� Supports both 64-bit and 128-bit DDR SDRAM

� Note: nForce2 does NOT support x4 memory device

Slots

� One AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) 1.5V 4x/8x slot

� Five 32-bit PCI bus slots (support 3.3v/5v PCI bus interface)

� One ACR (Advanced Communication Riser) slot

BIOS

� The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board automatically.

� The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface (DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.

On-Board IDE

� An IDE controller on the MCP-T chipset provides IDE HDD/CDROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA133/100/66 operation modes

� Can connect up to four IDE devices

Serial ATA Interface

� Support 2 serial ATA plus 1 ATA133

� RAID O or 1 is supported

� RAID function works w/ATA133+SATA H/D or 2 SATA H/D

In-Chip IEEE1394

� nVIDIA MCP-T IEEE1394 controller

� Support up to two ports via external bracket

Network

Chipset integrated 10/100 Base-T Ethernet/Fast Ethernet

Audio

� Realtek ALC650 6-channel audio

� Dolby Digital 5.1 format

On-Board Peripherals

- 1 floppy port that supports two FDD with 360KB, 720KB,1.44MB and 2.88MB

- 1 serial port

- 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode

- 3 audio ports in vertical

- 2 IEEE1394 connectors

- 6 USB ports (Rear * 4/ Front * 2)

- 1 RJ-45 jack

This is a premium mobo with most of the best features available, it costs a bit more than most boards. MSI on-line support is pretty good with BIOS and drivers updated regularly.

HTH

Hi Jeff,

Scott, this is a VIA chipset mobo but it makes no difference, the 4pin 12V power cable is needed to supply the CPU AFAIK.

Jeff, this is an entry level "combo" mobo and you need to confirm that your SDRAM is in the right sockets and that it's good and compatable with this mobo. These boards had problems with many different brands of SDRAM sticks. I bought 6 to use in retro-upgrades for low-end public access locations and had to send them back because of the SDRAM problems. As cheap as the mobos were I was not going to save any money due to the support problems I had with these mobos.

If you cannot get it to come up with known good DDR sticks after resetting the CMOS using the mobo jumper I'd send back the mobo and SDRAM to buy a mainstream mobo and DDR memory. Chances are your PS is okay based on what you are telling us. The problem is on the mobo very likely the SDRAM issues.

HTH

Hi GGG,

RRS are absolutely the BEST plates. Minimal material (weight), with maximum strength, cannot twist due to mechanical design (NOT rubber which breaks down and slips anyway), and minimal addition to equipment profile means that once mounted you will never take them off again.

HTH

Hi Guys,

Sorry for the typo, I use Atlantic Exchange or atlex.com. The prices I mentioned for ink carts for the R800 and 2200 were from old cached links, the current prices are about $11.49 and $8.90 each. I've never used Altex.com so don't know about their customer support or shipping policies. But as I said Atlex.com's customer suports is really very good and the prices seem as good as it gets.

Bill K, did you read what I said? If not here is is again:

"You can put any type of paper in the R800 (or any inkjet printer), that fits and that isn't over the speced paper weight/thickness. The problem is that the image quality and colors may not look like you think it will when the print comes out AND the ink may have issues with the surface. There is also the issue of profiles for these unsupported papers, you could have them made for you at $50 a pop but that seems silly to me. But I'm all for other people experimenting with unsupported papers and reporting back what they find. But for me it's just too much trouble for such limited results and unknown longevity IMO."

Did you see the part where I said "the ink having issues with the surface"?

Did you see the part where I said "But I'm all for other people experimenting with unsupported papers and reporting back what they find. But for me it's just too much trouble for such limited results and unknown longevity IMO." Thanks for the info but this is not news to anyone, least of all me.

Ronald P., what are you using for a network print server? Are you "sharing" the printer attached to a computer? If you are using XP's shared printer feature you have not actually networked the printer per se as it lacks a dedicated IP address and will require that the host computer system (the system the printer is connected to), remain turned on to server the client PC print requests.

HTH

Neil,

This is mid-May 2004; the report you cite was published in April 2002 from an initial draft done in December 2001. Knowing the federal government (having been involved in an FBI investigation), it probably took the FBI at least 6-12 months after the study was completed to get it published.

You are pointing at FBI research (ROTFLMAO!), that most likely used technology that is 3-4 years old at this point. Even IF they could figure out what the state of the art was at that time you're using an FBI report that likely used 4+ years old digital equipment to support your position in mid-2004? What is your position, that 4 years ago state of art consumer digital photography was not as good as modern film and 12,000 ppi PMT scans?

I agree with you that a good piece of 35mm film (good light, properly exposed & processed), will have more information on it than even a 11-14MP DSLR body can record with the same glass hung off the front. From what I have seen, under ideal conditions 35mm film can capture a slightly wider contrast range and maybe a bit more detail than a 35mm format DSLR at the moment but the problem is that this last bit in the real world is just not practical to extract.

The last time I had a good 35mm tranny scanned at 8,000ppi (I've never seen any evidence that a 12,000ppi scan is actually scraping off any more real image data than a good 8,000ppi scan), on a PMT scanner it cost me almost $300! This was a really good image that a client wanted to have a larger LightJet print made from. It was an incredible image but the film scan cost MORE than the LightJet print! Personally I don't know ANYBODY who can afford to have all of his or her film scanned and output at this level.

On the other hand an EOS 1DS can produce nearly equal detail on paper as that almost 600MB file and is pretty close (and often better), in other important image quality measurements like noise and color accuracy. For the cost of 20 high-end 35mm scans one can buy an EOS 1DS and with minor effort match a good 35mm scan of a good piece of film.

Of course I still shoot film along with digital to accommodate clients who accept only original film. This is funny to me as these images all get scanned, edited and laid up on a computer before going to the digital press they use! Weird.

Sorry about this Dave L.

Cheers/Chip

Hi Norman,

You can put any type of paper in the R800 (or any inkjet printer), that fits and that isn't over the speced paper weight/thickness. The problem is that the image quality and colors may not look like you think it will when the print comes out AND the ink may have issues with the surface. There is also the issue of profiles for these unsupported papers, you could have them made for you at $50 a popo but that seems silly to me. But I'm all for other people experimenting with unsupported papers and reporting back what they find. But for me it's just too much trouble for such limited results and unknown longevity IMO.

Ink for the Epson R800 is the same price as for the 2200, about $11.95 a cart. from Altex.com. I used to own a both an Epson 1280S and Epson 2200. The 2200 was an excellent printer when printing on Epson's matte papers but did a poor job on Epson glossy papers so I never used the 2200 and sold it locally. I picked up an Epson R800 for my nephew a few weeks ago and this printer produces images that are as good (if not as large), as my 1280S but that should last 3-7 times longer depending on paper used. Altex is the cheapest, reliable fast shipping online ink supply I and MANY other have found.

Personally I would not network any fine art quality photo printer because of the paper feed and bin control issues involved with a photo printer. This is not to say that you cannot use a hardware print server and stick your Epson printer on a network (actually you can), but you may (will), loose much of the control over the printer and you may (again, read this as will), also have issues with the Epson print drivers. I don't recomend networking a photo quality printer for photo printing.

If you need a shared printer use a switch but this will limit the distance you can locate the computers from the shared printer. The cost of the switch and necessary extra cables makes buying a second R800 a better option if you need this much access to a color photo printer.

The R800's 1.5pl ink drop size is the cutting edge and it does make a difference in image quality. But the difference is getting pretty small at this size droplet size. Few people will see the difference even if the prints are placed side by side for comparison. BUT the difference is there under even a 4x loupe which to me says that this is a good place to stop making the droplets smaller and to work more on improving the drivers. The R800 seems to clog more than my 1280S and 2200 did unless it gets used a lot.

The ability of the 2200 to use different black insets is a good idea that costs too much to do in reality. If Epson gave me all ink for free this would be okay by me but if I have to pay for it, forget about it!

HTH

Strange,

Unless one of your "strange" qualities is that you are invisible and can yourself fly, with a film body 420mm is not really enough reach for birds. If you sit in a tree blind, have a feeder or have found a favorite feeding location you can camp at you may get okay subject size on film. But 600mm-800mm will be a much better way to maximize subject size.

I was in Montana a few weeks ago and had my EOS 1D with the EF 300 2.8X and EF 2X converter mounted. Even with this longish combination (780mm FOV), it was hard to get tight images of the local birds.

Cheers/Chip