PaulCoen

<p>Leiter is an interesting photographer. Most (if not all) of these pictures are in <em>Early Color </em>- which has now been reprinted by Stedl. I bought it when it first came out, and it's terrific.<br> One note - he would sometimes use expired Kodachrome, just to get a different look.</p>

<p>We have one at work as a test - the display quality is fantastic, and the pen support is pretty good (I use a Wacom Intuos 5 at home). At 1024, it's half as sensitive as the more "Pro" oriented Wacom devices, but it's very usable.<br /><br />The Surface Dock is a great port replicator, and gives you two mini displayport outputs. And the Microsoft keyboard cover is surprisingly nice to type on - and I'm pretty picky about keyboards. Just be aware that any mere 1080 display you hook up to it will look terrible in comparison to the display on the tablet itself.<br> It's an impressive computer. </p>

<p>B&H just posted a good deal on Pro 5 Medium - I've got the previous Intuos 5 Small, which has been great for touchup work. I do sometimes wish it was a little bigger. Not enough to replace it - I'd rather put the money towards a Benq SW2700PT monitor since the Small is good enough (I got it as a refurb through Adorama before Wacom relaunched the old Intuos line as the Intuos Pro). <br /><br />It's hard to go wrong with the Intuos Pro line. If you get one, spend some time rotating through the pen nibs to see which one you like best. I ended up settling on the "felt tip" (light grey) nibs for touch-up work - they offer a little more friction/resistance than the standard black nib and some of the others.</p>

<p>I recently replaced the hard drive in my old Thinkpad x201 subnote with a Crucial SSD - it came with a (limited) copy of Acronis True Image, and I was pretty impressed. I bought a USB to SATA cable that worked with the drive and it went smoothly. Cloned to the SSD, swapped it out with the system drive, and it started right up. Even handled the (slight) space increase on the SSD.<br /><br />The retail version of Acronis should work with any combination of drives from any vendor. </p>

<p>Just a followup - I just threw my APC-C Sony SAM lens (18-135) on my old Maxxum 5 - it didn't have a full field of view, obviously, but it WAS able to autofocus the lens. Sony FF Alpha lenses should work on that last generation of film cameras with autofocus support.<br> So you want (in my opinion - declining order of desirability) a Maxxum/Dynax: 7,5,60,4,40. If you can find a 9 that was re-chipped to support SSM/SAM, that's arguably better, although I believe the AF speed in the 7 beats the 9.</p>

<p>Actually, the Maxxum 7 (at least) <em>should</em> autofocus with the full-frame SSM/SAM lenses. The 9 came out before the 7 and only supported SSM/SAM with an upgrade performed by an authorized service center, so some have the update and some don't. Other cameras that came out after the 7 (the 5, 4, 60 and 40) should support it as well.<br> There's a good resource for the body capabilities here:<br /><br />http://www.mhohner.de/sony-minolta/bodies.php</p>

<p>VMware Player is free for non-commercial purposes and should allow you to run a USB scanner in Windows XP if you really need to. Either the Vuescan or Silverfast driver suggestion should work. It worked with the Minolta scanning software under Windows 8, but I haven't tried it with Windows 10 since I've switched entirely to using Vuescan now.<br> As a side note, in testing at work and at home, I'm finding very little that worked under either Windows 7 and Windows 8 that won't work under Windows 10, including hardware drivers. And if you do an in-place upgrade, the "reverting to previous version" is surprisingly painless. I tried it on a Win 7 to 10 upgrade. And if the in-place upgrade fails for some reason, the installer will automatically flip you back to your original Windows version after a couple of automatic restart/retry attempts.</p>

<p>It should work, if you use a third-party package like VueScan. I've been using an even older Minolta Scan Elite II with Windows 7, 8 and 10 x64 using VueScan.<br> Some have reported being able to use the VueScan-provided drivers to get the original Minolta software working - I haven't bothered trying.</p>

<p>It's running fine on my five-year-old Thinkpad x201 (i5, 8GB RAM) - Photoshop and Lightroom CC, DxO Filmpack 5 and ViewPoint 2, and Vuescan are all working correctly.<br> <br />The computer's been upgraded from Windows 7 to 8 to 8.1 and now 10 without a reinstall. I cloned the original drive to an SSD a few months ago, so the performance is great. The Windows upgrade was telling me that I was reserved, but should wait until Lenovo certified the computer - which they aren't going to do because Intel won't certify 2nd generation Sandy Bridge systems for Win10, so I grabbed the upgrade with the Microsoft media maker app and installed off a USB flash drive.<br> Before upgrading, I upgraded my AV package (Kaspersky) to the newest version (after the upgrade it prompted me to reconfigure for KAV 2016 for Win10) and removed Stardock's Start8 start menu that I'd been using under Windows 8/8.1. </p>

<p>I use Lightroom for 90% of what I do, but since I went with the $10/month CC subscription, I dropped PSE for Photoshop. I'm finding it's a better fit for doing some more complicated repairs on scans of old pictures than PSE was, so I'm pretty happy with it. <br /><br />The update model for PSE is now centered around annual upgrades. If you actually want bugfixes, you've got to buy the next version. As far as I can tell, the last update to an existing PSE version was 9.0.3 in 2011. Outside of Camera RAW, there were no point releases for any version since. <br /><br />If you tend to keep up, the cost of an annual PSE upgrade plus the Lightroom upgrades every 18 months or so (average) isn't that much less than the cost of the subscription when you look at the cost over two years.</p>

<p>I've been running a Minolta Scan Elite II - also USB (albiet 1.1) and Firewire with Vuescan for years, both with 64-bit Windows 7 and now with Windows 8.1. There's been no problem with Windows 8/8.1, and most software (and a lot of drivers) that work with Windows 8.1 also work with Windows 10. Win8.1 and Win10 are actually very similar "under the hood". I haven't tried using the Minolta software in a few years.<br> In my case, I'm using a 1394a/Firewire card because it's significantly faster than USB 1.1. Worst case, I may have to replace the 1394a adapter if the drivers don't work with Win10, but I fully expect Vuescan to be able to drive the scanner under Windows 10.</p>

<p>Where I work, one of our offices that uses a ton of images (terabytes) is using one of the higher-end Synology NAS units, and they've loaded the Crashplan Pro client onto it to do cloud backups directly from the NAS. They've got a Crashplan Business subscription for their department. The initial backup took a while, but now that it's done, incremental changes are backing up quickly. A full restore would likely involve Crashplan's restore-to-door service, rather than a download.<br> It's working pretty well for them - some of their staff works off the NAS directly, and the performance has been good.</p>

<p>I haven't seen that exact issue, but when I've run into problems, I usually make a note of my settings, revert Vuescan to the defaults, and then only set a few key ones (like the type of media being scanned) as a test (File > Default options). If you want, you can always save your settings out as a custom settings file first. I generally then set back my desired settings a couple at a time, testing between changes. I've only had to do it once or twice over the years, but it was effective.<br /><br />What version of Vuescan are you using?</p>

<p>The data on an SSD - for the expected life of the SSD - shouldn't have to be re-written to be preserved. Just not powering the drive off for longer amounts of time and not exposing to to high heat should be enough. <br /><br />In fact, reading and re-writing to the same drive would likely (mathematically) increase the chances of a data error occurring, since the chance of an error occurring over time is at least partially a function of the amount of data written. An error can occur on read as well, which would then make the copy damaged.<br> <br />I've seen 16-year-old SCSI-2 drives, powered off for years, power up with all their data intact. There's likely zero chance of getting away with that with an SSD. They're really convenient and really fast. But, as always, make more than one kind of backup. </p>

<p>If I were doing "off-site", I'd be doing it with external HDD drives, not flash. I've got a fairly small safety deposit box, and I can get a drive into mine. That being said, when I priced out two drives, and factored in my time to switch them back and forth every week or two, I opted to go with a cloud provider. I also picked one that allows you to pick your own encryption key, which is stored locally. Data is encrypted before it's uploaded.</p> <p>Most backup services allow you to select what gets backed up - you could omit the financial data from the online backup if you prefer. I happen to be using Crashplan, and I could define one backup set for cloud backup, and a different (overlapping if I choose) set for a local backup-to-disk.</p>

<p>I wouldn't be so sanguine about any flash storage. NAND - commanly used in flash drives - is known to have poor data retention at high temperatures. EEPROMs had the same problem, and there's no indication that mRAM is going to avoid it either. And all of them suffer from wear - after a certain number of writes, you start getting failures. It increases over time.</p> <p>Anyone doing archiving of large volumes of valuable data is likely computing checksums on individual files, copying the data to reliable storage and to LTO-6 tape, and verifying the checksum on the copies. While any user can do the data validation, LTO drives and tapes are expensive for a home user. A well-reviewed external drive is probably fine for longer-term storage, especially if you have copies on more than one drive.</p> <p>I'm using an online backup provider - and the software also backs up to a local external drive. Saved my bacon when a malfunctioning RAM stick in the computer lead to a few image files being damaged - I was able to go back to copies from weeks earlier.</p>

<p>So, GPS. I almost bought an A77 for the same reason when they were selling them off a few months back. I like the GPS in my A65. At the same time, I'm somewhat resigned to losing it someday. It's not like it's the most accurate thing - I'll sometimes find that it's suddenly off by 50 yards from one shot to the next, and the altitude has a tendency to show up in the negative numbers if I'm near sea level.<br /><br />If you haven't, you might want to look at Jeffrey Friedl's geotagging extension for lightroom, and his GPS unit comparison from a few years ago: http://regex.info/blog/2012-01-15/1922<br> If you're carrying a Smartphone anyway, it may be no less accurate than the GPS in the camera. A GPS app with a tracklog might be the way to go.<br> In terms of the camera line itself, they just announced Sony Zeiss 24-70 f/2.8 and a 16-35 f/2.8 full frame A-mount lenses.<br> If I had a collection of high-quality A-mount lenses, I might get the A99. I also might look at the A7II and the higher-end A-mount adapter. That way, I could use the smaller FE lenses when I wanted something small to carry, still use the A-mount glass, and if Sony decides to move away from A-mount, I'd be on the current platform.</p>

<p>If you're not looking to do heavy processing, a non-pro Surface 3 would do the job. Don't get the one with the smallest storage capacity. <br /><br />There's also Lenovo's outlet store - lenovo.com > deals > outlet. It's hit or miss, but at the moment they've got an i5-based Thinkpad S1 Yoga (Refurbished) for under $500, and a few for a hair more. If you keep an eye on it, you're likely to run across something very light that you'd be happy with. You can get a real system, and a pretty lightweight one (3.5 lbs), with a touchscreen for less than the cost of an iPad or a Surface 3 if you hit it on the right day.<br> They've got a mix of new, refurbished, and scratch & dent merchandise. </p>

<p>I bought a 532 battery from Batterymart.com for $9 or so a year and a half ago for use in a 360 - I've run 14 packs or so through it, and it's still going strong. Depending on the amount of use you're going to be giving the camera, it may not be worth the effort to make the modification. The battery doesn't run down quickly, at least in my experience. Then again, my use has been constrained by how many packs of film I've been willing to buy, and I don't do a lot of long exposures. <br> <br />The only two issues I had, by the way, are the usual "clip pushing on the plastic fuji film pack" problem, which I solved by swapping out a metal polaroid pack cover onto each fuji pack as I've been putting it in, and the meter was a bit off, probably caused by an age-related increased resistance in the circuit. A couple of layers of mylar antistatic bag over the meter dealt with that. </p> <p> </p>

<p>Actually, the current version is 9.5.07 - are you sure about that version number? 9.3.x was two years ago, for example. If it is 9.0.58, that's years old and I'd try a newer version. There have been a bunch of changes, including substantial improvements to infrared cleaning, in the past few years.<br> I'd just make sure you keep the installer around for the version that's currently working for you before upgrading (I always end up appending the release number to the end of the file when I download a new version, and keep a few versions back in case I missed a problem until I try to use a feature with a particular scanner). </p>

<p>If you're treating this as an archive, and if you're going to commit these to multiple digital media storage types, and either you - or someone else - is going to move them from device to device over the years - investigate using a utility to generate a checksum of each file, and store a list of those separately and with the file.<br> It allows you to validate that every copy you made is identical to the original, and it would allow someone in the future to insure that a particular backup copy hasn't become corrupt, and that any copy they make matches the original. I've seen defective computer memory - on a computer that seemed to be working fine until subjected to an intensive memory test - cause damage to large digital files when copied.<br> A number or archives, libraries, universities and professional organizations have been having ongoing discussions about this for a few years, and if you do a couple of google searches you may find some best practices and suggestions of utilities to use that could work for you. It may be overkill, but it's something to be aware of.</p>

<p>There's a big difference between purpose-built processors and other hardware and general-purpose devices. You can improve performance for the specific, required tasks at the expense of other operations that you don't need if you know exactly what the device is going to be doing at all times. And it's the same with the software in the camera - the maker has customized firmware handling everything. It's not a comparably large operating system that has to be able to do a ton of different operations. And the camera maker doesn't have to worry about you doing editing while you're also taking pictures. Your computer is always doing more than one thing at a time, even when you're not really trying to.<br> And in-camera editing doesn't generally include things like multiple levels of undo, layers, etc. as far as I know. Even the smaller display saves on the required horsepower. </p>

<p>If you like the 600si, you can probably pick up a used Maxxum/Dynax 7 in good shape for about $200, and a Maxxum 9 for not much more. Both have a similar control layout to the 600si, but with far more features and with significantly faster autofocus. The '9' is weather-sealed and has a higher quality shutter mechanism. The only downside to the 9 is that not all of them you find will work with the newer full-frame SSM lenses - a service center upgrade had to be performed on the camera, and the part's no longer available. Any 7 should work with them.<br> The Maxxum 7 is also surprisingly light. I still use mine. I love that control layout - I had a 600si, bought the 7 after the 600si developed a control dial fault out of warranty, and then picked up a Maxxum 7D digital (again, same basic controls) when that came out. I went more than a decade with my basic camera control positions never changing. </p>

<p>Ed Hamrick's <a href="http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/minolta_scan_multi_pro.html">Vuescan would work</a>:<br /><br />I'm using it with a Minolta Scan Elite II (firewire) under Windows 8.1.<br> You should be able to preview the whole strip.<br> The last version of the M<a href="http://download2.konicaminoltaeurope.com/openmind/technic/kmphdwl.nsf/psearch?OpenForm&ch=CAM&dist=BEU&ui=en&dg=sw&prod=DIMAGE%20SCAN%20MULTI%20PRO%20AF-5000&dsg=&os=&lang=&ml=1&rid=&sub=Scanner%20Driver">inolta software for that scanner can be found here.</a><br /><br /></p>

<p>Another alternative to VirtualBox and Virtual PC - VMware's free VMware Player. It's a "light" version of VMware Workstation. There used to be restrictions on creating VMs, but they've lifted that. The current version is quite capable, and VMware - while it'll use the CPU virtualization features if they are present in hardware - has always performed well even when they aren't (I've been using VMware Workstation since 2002 or so).</p>