will_daniel1

Matt, I highly respect your background as an IT guy, and I know that sometimes "it happens," just as you say. But I am one of those who don't agree that because some other party through syndicated advertising caused an attack, that absolves Photo.net of any wrongdoing. Management is responsible for the security of its site, in my view, period. I say that with the sour grapes of having been viciously attacked on this site three times. After switching to MS Security Essentials on your recommendation, I feel safer entering this site now. However, I still always take the precautionary step of increasing my browser's security level to maximum before coming here.

If the kid is cut out for the military, the Air Force will fly him around the world to take photos of aerial refueling, combat missions, etc. The school is just down the road at Fort Meade, Maryland, and while he's in the Air Force he can work on his degree in photography from the (fully accredited) Community College of the Air Force. All of his military schooling will provide credits toward the degree.

I disagree with those who say you need Capture NX2. I bought it, and it sits on my system pretty much unused since Nikon made all those wonderful improvements to View NX2 in 2010. Adjusting exposure plus or minus two stops was mainly what I used Capture NX2 for, and that feature is now in View NX2. You can do some pretty hefty edits of NEFs in View NX2 (since 2010), save as TIFF, then more hefty edits in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements before finally making a JPEG. That's the route I take.

<p>I was a staunch advocate for ThumbsPlus from Cerious Software (<a href="http://www.cerious.com/">www.cerious.com</a>). I had purchased v7.0 Pro, and was amazed by the program. When I was a newspaper editor, we bought a 10-seat network version license that was nothing short of phenomenal. It is a visual file browser with a fairly sophisticated editor. A separate downloadable digital camera plug-in contains Canon and Nikon color libraries for perfect viewing and editing of raw files (for saving as TIF or JPG) within the editor.</p><p>I tried probably every thumbnail program on the market, including Lightroom, ACDsee, Bridge and others, but ThumbsPlus does one thing that I can't find in any of the others: sort files by similarity. If I have duplicate images, this program finds them in a heartbeat. So I don't plan to abandon it any time soon.</p><p>But the developer introduced v8.0 that was apparently quite buggy. I didn't buy the upgrade and advised folks against it based on ThumbsPlus user forum comments about not only the bugs, but the company's unwillingness or inability to fix the bugs. A recent development infuriated long-time, loyal users. Rather than keep working on fixes for v8.0, Cerious gave up and introduced v9.0. Both 8.0 and 9.0 omitted important features that have users (like me) clinging to v7.0</p><p>That's the history up to a couple of days ago when Cerious seems to have shut down the user forum. I was just wondering if anyone here has any insight into what's going on with the company. It seems to have one foot in the grave.</p>

Lady Gaga.

I recently decided I no longer need Nikon Capture NX2, so I contacted Nikon to see about transferring the license. No go. It's clearly stated in the license agreement, and Nikon won't budge. I was going to offer it in trade for a lens or something.

I travel with a netbook computer. It's small enough to fit in a camera bag, but it's a real computer with an SD card slot for quick and easy saves. When I shot with a camera that used CF cards I used a USB CF card reader. Best of all, netbooks cost only about $229.

At the risk of sounding grumpy and self-righteous, you are using letters that you think everyone understands instead of real words. What is FM? I know what DPR is, but why don't you spell that out as well for those who don't now? Thanks.

Abandoned in Virginia<div></div>

My thoughts were exactly like Steve's. This sounds like a disaster in the making. Have you and your colleagues given adequate consideration to the likelihood that a magnetic item could zap not only memory cards, but internal memories in modern digital cameras? Wow.

I use the Nikon combo, but I don't have to switch back and forth because I use two bodies.

Right, David. When I was nearing completion of a recent book (250 16-bit TIFF files to the publisher) I sometimes swapped the off-site drive twice a day. My daughter lives just around the corner from me. Call me anal, paranoid or any number of other names you could come up with, but I will never lose more than a few hours worth of important data. By the way, I'm also a writer, so that goes equally for my text files -- perhaps even more so.

My main internal hard drive is partioned with only 40gb allocated to the operating system and applications (C Drive). MyDocuments, MyPictures, all cache folders, etc., are kept elswhere. I have an automated backup system that images C Drive once a week. No data is kept there. A second internal drive holds the data, and I back it up daily to an external hard drive. Once a week I swap the external drive with a second one I store at my daughter's house, then repeat the process. If I'm working on a major project, I replace the off-site drive more often than that -- sometimes daily.

My work-around for the 16-bit file editing is going to be Nikon Capture NX2. In addition to Nikon raw files, it works with any 16-bit TIFF.

@Dave: You were correct about Elements not being able to fully edit 16-bit files. That could be a problem for me. I send 16-bit TIFFs to my book publisher, and have often had to do some edits in CS3. In my research, I found that there may be some cumbersome workarounds -- plug-ins that I probably won't bother with. Oh well -- CS3 and Elements peacefully co-exist, so I can switch back and forth as needed. Thanks for the inputs everyone.

<p>Dave, I think your question is answered <a href="http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshopelements/using/WS287f927bd30d4b1f37ddd85312e28a79f5b-7fe4.html">here</a>.</p>

<p>Daniel, can you please elaborate on what would constitute an emergency that would make me want to use Gimp? I mean, what can it do that Elements can't? Please be specific. Thanks.</p>

<p>(Oxymoron, I know) I don't know why it took me a dozen years to learn this, but I recently became aware that unless you're a graphic artist you don't need the full power of Photoshop. Mostly by lurking here, it became apparent to me that Photoshop Elements is all most photographers need. So I downloaded a trial copy of Elements 10 and put it through enough testing to know that it has all the tools I need and more. I had been using Photoshop CS3 Extended, so it is a downgrade and upgrade for me at the same time. I purchased Elements 10 this morning. My question is have any of you made such a switch and later regretted it? If so, what did you miss? Thanks.</p>

<p>All of the items (1-4) on Dave L's list of limited capabilities, while true, have nothing to do with the quality of images you can take with the kit lens. As he said, you can take good images with the kit lens. Every time I bought a newer, bigger, faster lens I always seemed to go back to the kit lens for no other reason than size and weight. Oh, there is another reason -- it happens to make very good images.</p>

Some of you seem to have overlooked an important clue in Kevin's original post. Those two photos were shot "with the camera sitting flat on the ground," and the assumption is that the ground was level. The effect is quite strange, and no doubt a camera malfunction of some sort. Kevin, get it in the shop ASAP.

I second Jim's comments. At the very least, be able to spell photography.

Yeah, brilliant -- announcing it on April Fool's Day. Good one, Ray.

 

LOL

Doncha just love April fool's day stuff? LOL

<div></div>

<p>The coolest thing about View NX2 is something you'll never see unless you use a dual-monitor setup. By default, it shows all the usual View NX2 stuff on one monitor and a full-screen image of the selected file on the other. I use it all the time (while my purchased copy of Capture NX2 seems to just sit there unused most of the time).</p>