steve_bright1

I had one of these a while back. It can produce good results, but the big problem with mine was that it couldn't cope very well with dark areas in images - there was significant banding present. Actually, now I think about it, it produced banding in uniform lighter areas too, like clear blue skies.

 

I only kept it for a year during which time I sent it back to Nikon twice - they reported that it was within its design parameters.

 

Hope yours is better.

...and if you're in the UK, you can get the Photographic Solutions products at <a href="http://www.crown-digital.co.uk">http://www.crown-digital.co.uk</a>. Click on 'cleaning products'.

I have found that whilst shooting cityscapes at night (and bracketing), the best transparency for scanning is normally 0.5 to 1 stop lighter than the best slide for projecting.

 

I think a lot is going to depend on how well your scanner copes with dense transparencies.

I seem to recall the dpreview preview of the 300d saying that the image chip was being made *for* Canon in Taiwan, whereas the 10d chip was made in-house *by* Canon.

Beau describes it perfectly. I'll just add that this phenomenon is referred to as 'outgassing' or 'out-gassing', which is described in many places on the web, e.g. <a href="http://www.inkjetart.com/news/gassing.html">this inkjetart article</a>.

<p>The phenomenon is not limited to either Epson or Ultrachrome inks.

<p>If you place a piece of plain paper over the print for a day or two as suggested, it's surprising how wavy that paper gets, in a pattern corresponding to the image on the print.

Practically all film scanners will be able to scan mounted slides as well as unmounted film strips. There are a few flatbed scanners with transparency adapters that can also scan mounted slides too.

I used a 28-85 for about ten years, then switched to the 24-85. That extra 4mm at the wide end made a big difference for me. I tend to shoot at the wider end and it gives more flexibility. There is a bit of distortion at the wide end, though. Here's one at 24mm.

You'll find it helpful to select manual focusing, otherwise some cameras won't fire a shot because they can't focus in those conditions.

Thanks for your responses.

<p>

I've read up on diffraction and as far as I can tell, that's just going to make the images softer rather than giving these colour fringes. Looking back through some images, I found another shot of a very bright white line next to a dark railtrack. The white line had a bright purple fringe and that was shot at F5.6. So I don't think it's diffraction, but I will definitely get an ND filter to smooth water.

<p>

Puppy Face says '...if you're going to be that critical...'. I don't really accept this argument. If this is chromatic aberration caused by a design limitation, then this is worse than I have ever seen, even from lenses costing a third as much. I find it difficult to accept that a company like Canon would be prepared to even put their name on it or release such a poor product to market.

<p>

This leads me to think that the lens is actually faulty in some way, unless...

<p>

The colour fringes do look quite similar to some examples of Moire artifacts I saw on the <a href="http://www.lashier.com/home.cfm?dir_cat=20523&gal_col=1">Lashier photography site</a>

Forgive me if you've already found these links, but you can access the technical support page for the scanner here <br><a href="http://www.nikonusa.com/usa_tech_center/dtc_options.jsp?cat=1&grp=2&productNr=9290">http://www.nikonusa.com/usa_tech_center/dtc_options.jsp?cat=1&grp=2&productNr=9290</a>. <p>Specifically, you'll need to get an ASPI driver so that Windows 2K can talk SCSI to the scanner - it's discussed thru the FAQ 'General SCSI Setup Information'.

<p>Extract from page:

<p>"Nikon does not support the use of "USB to SCSI" or "Firewire to SCSI" converters. SCSI Scanners can only be used with computers which have either a built-in SCSI port or an approved SCSI PCI card.

<p>"When connecting a Nikon SCSI device to a Windows based computer a pieces of software called �ASPI� needs to be installed. This is basically driver software that �teaches� the operating system how to interact with SCSI devices. The easiest way to obtain this ASPI software is to download it from the Adaptec web site.

<p>"Follow the link below (or search for �ASPI� on the downloads section at �www.adaptec.com�).

<p><a href="http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/drivers_by_product.html?sess=no&cat=%2fProduct%2fASPI-4.70&prodkey=Windows+ASPI+Package">http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/drivers_by_product.html?sess=no&cat=%2fProduct%2fASPI-4.70&prodkey=Windows+ASPI+Package</a>

<p>"Users may also wish to download the �ASPICHK� utility. When run, this software will display a list of which versions of the ASPI software are installed and is useful when troubleshooting.

<p>"No ASPI software is needed for Macintosh computers."

<p>Hope this helps...

You might want to check out <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00657v">my thread from earlier</a>, which shows some of the problems I've had with my 28-135mm IS lens. The consensus of the replies implies that it's a design fault/poor lens rather than being faulty.

This is my first forum thread - please be gentle with me.

<p>I have some strange colour fringes that are appearing adjacent to

highlight areas in my images. I've attached a sample image, taken

with my EOS 10D, down-sized to 600 pixels wide. I've highlighted a

number of areas as white boxes, and these sections are shown

separately, magnified by a factor of two.

<p>Most of the colour fringes are near the edges, red on the left,

purple on the right, but there's even a slight fringe towards the

middle.

<p>If it was a film camera, I'd suspect chromatic aberration from a

really poor lens, but the body is digital and the C.A. is at a level

far worse than I've seen with any other lens. Is there another

explanation? Perhaps digital artifacts from the anti-aliasing filter?

Is something faulty?

<p>Here's the technical info:<br>

<table><tbody>

<tr><td>Camera</td><td>Canon EOS 10D</td></tr>

<tr><td>Lens</td><td>Canon 28-135mm IS USM</td></tr>

<tr><td>Focal length</td><td>28mm</td></tr>

<tr><td>ISO</td><td>100</td></tr>

<tr><td>Shutter speed</td><td>1/6 sec</td></tr>

<tr><td>Aperture</td><td>F22</td></tr>

<tr><td>Size/Quality</td><td>Large/fine</td></tr>

<tr><td>Color space</td><td>Adobe RGB</td></tr>

<tr><td>Parameters</td><td>All normal</td></tr>

</tbody></table>

<p>The full image:

<p align="center"><img

src="http://www.stevebright.com/photonet/IMG_2771.jpg">

<p>...and the small sections:

<p>

<img src="http://www.stevebright.com/photonet/IMG_2771a.jpg">

<img src="http://www.stevebright.com/photonet/IMG_2771b.jpg">

<img src="http://www.stevebright.com/photonet/IMG_2771c.jpg">

<img src="http://www.stevebright.com/photonet/IMG_2771d.jpg">

<img src="http://www.stevebright.com/photonet/IMG_2771e.jpg">

<img src="http://www.stevebright.com/photonet/IMG_2771f.jpg">

<p>Thanks for your advice. I hope I haven't committed a gross faux

pas with all these images, but they are all quite small.

If playing a DVD on a set-top (i.e. non-computer) DVD player is important to you, you could check out <a href="http://www.dvdplusrw.org/resources/compatibilitylist_dvdvideo.html">this compatibility list</a> for DVD+.

<p>I think one of the selling points of DVD+ is that it <i>tends</i> to be compatible with more players than DVD-. Although I dare say that most new ones will support both formats.

<p>If you're UK-based, you might want to get hold of the latest edition of PC Pro magazine which has a review of many different DVD writers and explains the format differences. This is also available on-line. Go to <a href="http://www.pcpro.co.uk">www.pcpro.co.uk</a>. Then click on 'view all labs' (under 'Lab Tests'), then click on 'DVD Re-writers'.