michael_spencer3

<p>Oh, Yuck!<br>

Now I am getting these messages in English! Still no way to get off the list.<br>

I found a web page the purports to allow you to contact the Webmaster for "camera-info.de" but it requires that you accept a download that will execute with admin privileges before it will send an email. This kind a activity, where a site picks up your email information somehow and then never lets go seems more like a scam than a legitimate photo forum. Any thoughts on who or where to report these guys?</p>

 

<p>Hmmm. May not be rocket science but it may be a huge scam; I wouldn't know since I don't know any German. Anyway, This is the last message in total. Don't see anything that looks like an unsubscribe in either the message or the link.<br>

-----Original Message-----<br /> From: CI-Fotocommunity [mailto:keineantwortadresse@camera-info.de] <br /> Sent: Friday, December 25, 2015 4:17 AM<br /> To: mspencer <michael.spencer@cox.net><br /> Subject: Frohe Weihnachten!</p>

<p>Liebe® mspencer,</p>

<p>wir wünschen Dir frohe Feiertage und eine besinnliche Zeit im Kreise Deiner Freunde und Familie!</p>

<p>Bestimmt waren auch ein paar "fotografische Geschenke" für Dich unter dem Weihnachtsbaum, mit denen Du Dir die Zeit der ruhigeren Festtage im allgemeinen "vertreiben" kannst und hier bei Camera-info.de auch zeigen kannst.</p>

<p>Dein CI-Team<br>

<p>For some time now I have been getting Emails from something entitled "Camera-Info". All the emails are in German and I don't understand them at all. I have tried going to their web site (http://camera-info.com/index.php) to try to unsubscribe but that is in German as well. I have used the Google Translater to try to find something that will let me unsubscribe but no luck. I am not sure how I got subscribed in the first place, no doubt it was unintentional.<br>

Can anyone help me get off this email list?</p>

 

<p>Years ago when in the market for my tablet, I found many references (for artists) using the tablets that described how the motion of using the pen would involve the whole arm. My very slight previous attempts at art work with pencil, charcoal and so forth matched these descriptions so I took notice of these comments.<br>

I purchased a medium sized tablet, a little larger than 8x10. I found right away that the pen/tablet combination was most useful and comfortable when using the "whole arm" to maneuver, not just using the pen held and manipulated as a pencil. However, my main use of the tablet was to clean up very old slides and negatives that were damaged by dust, scratches, and fungus. So a whole lot of my actual work with the tablet was using the pen as a pencil "pointer" to jab at the little white dust spots. Very hard on the fingers when you do this for long periods. <br>

The first couple of years I swore that I should have gotten the smaller sized tablet; but now I find the medium size more comfortable. It took a long time to work in the "whole arm" movement when scrolling and so forth, but I do that now and its very natural. And the tablet size seems well matched to my images which are 3k x 4k or more (6mb up to 24mb). When zoomed in to see the detail there can be quite a lot of scrolling around. I still have to go after the dust and scratches one by one and that is still hard on the fingers; but the mouse is even harder!. So I find the tablet works really well in this particular task. For other photofinishing tasks, such as dealing with Photoshop layers, and making adjustments and so forth, I keep coming back to the mouse. I am pretty adept at mouse movements. Basically, I keep a mouse pad right on top of the tablet so I can switch back and forth pretty rapidly.<br>

Keep in mind as the tablets get larger you will run out of real estate on your desk top and it will become more unwieldy to use.<br>

So if your work load is similar to mine, my recommendation would be to get a tablet with a working area not less than around 8 inches by 6 inches, but not much more than that. The actual tablet will be larger, perhaps 13 inches by 9 inches. Balance the larger work area which is good, with the larger overall tablet size which will get hard to use on your desk top.</p>

 

<p>Thanks everyone for your input. Turns out it was much easier to do something about this than I thought. For Internet Explorer Version 8 there is an option on the top row labeled "Page" which leads to a menu that has an option labeled "text size" which in turn offers five text sizes from Largest to Smallest. You can therefore separately set the margins of the forum page using the "zoom" button, and the size of the text to be separately set from the "page" button. Just what the doctor ordered. Other browser versions should have a similar option somewhere.<br>

Mike S</p>

<p>Bob,<br>

You may be right that other sites don't re-size when zoomed. The NY Times, for example, does not change the margins; but they don't use the full available screen width for the column of text so that when you do zoom in there is "room" enough on the screen for the larger column width and the text does not run off out of sight to the right. Also, I have seen some sites that have a little button that will change the text size internally to the page so the margins stay put, but the letters get bigger. That's something that photo.net could probably incorporate.</p>

<p>Mike S</p>

<p>How can I adjust the font size so that I can read the forum listings. The text lines do not fold, so if I zoom in sufficiently so that I can read the text the line extends way past the right side of my screen and I have to try and scroll left and right. Almost all the other sites I use manage to resize the screen margins to accomodate the change in font size to the size of my monitor. Don't know why this site does not do that.<br>

Is there a setting that I am missing? <br /><br />msp</p>

<p>The "two lens deal" at Costco seems to include an non VR zoom lens:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Features: 24-85mm VR Lens, 70-300mm VR Lens, WU-1b Wireless Mobile Adapter, Nikon Case, 32GB SD Card, Nikon School Guide to DSLR Photography, Full Frame Sensor</p>

</blockquote>

<P>

I think this might be the older version of the lens, not the one that usually comes as a kit lens. Anybody got a clearer idea of what is going on here? Does this make a big difference?

</P><P>

msp

</P>

<P>

<I>Nikon has only one version of the 70-300mm that has AF-S VR. The Costco kit includes the current version of the 70-300mm, namely the one that starts at f4.5 at 70mm and ends at f5.6 at 300mm, with AF-S and VR, both. The early 70-300mm start with f4 instead of f4.5 at 70mm. Nikon is not going to pair up some old junk lens with the D600. -- Shun

</I>

<P>

<p>Peter, there is some space saving due to the use of PSD. Using the PSD file format generates space savings of about 120MB both for the file with just the three adjustment layers and the file with the three adjustment layers plus the "dust&scratch" layer. But still, 180MB is better than 301MB. If you have to use the file somewhere other than Photoshop I guess you could always save it in the TIF format later. I wonder what has gone missing between the two file formats? Of course, the scanner doesn't save the file as a PSD so you will always have to remember to go back and erase the extra files.</p>

<p>Greg, you are correct, although I didn't see any thing to turn it on (or off) in ACR for CS5. ACR does work with the TIFF file but when it saves the results the adjustments are included with the TIFF file so there is no separate "side car" or XMP file. The size of the TIFF file is increased by about the same amount (7KB) as the XMP that goes with the NEF file. It is easy to overlood this little feature so thanks for the heads up. This might even be better than the NEF+XMP because you don't have to keep track of the extra little files. </p>

<p>I need some advice on how best to control the rapidly expanding files sizes of my various scanned images.<br /> I have been using my Nikon Coolscan 4000 for several years without paying close attention to file sizes. I recently upgraded to Win 7 and CS5 (64 bit). I also changed from Nikon Scan to Vue Scan because I found it too hard to keep the Nikon driver working under Win 7. Mostly I find Vue Scan does a good job for me, although I was very used to the Nikon Scan software interface. Not having the the "NEF" output option with Vue Scan, however, got me to pay attention to disk file sizes and I am now very confused. Consider the following slide which is 25 years old and will need exposure, brightness, contrast and color adjustments and maybe some dust & scratch restoration. Actually, this sample is in pretty good condition considering some of the old images I am working with.<br /> Scanning with Nikon Scan yields an image of 3,724 pixels high by 2,457 pixels wide (9,149,868 total pixels) and a NEF file size of about 123mb. I also saved the very same scan as a TIF file at about 122mb. For comparison purposes I opened the NEF file in Bridge and made some adjustments to exposure, brightness, contrast and color adjustments, but no dust or scratch removal. I saved the result using the Adobe "side car" option to hold the adjustents. I also opened the TIF file in Photoshop CS5 and using this file I also saved additional versions with adjustment layers for levels, curves, and color balance (soccer-adj.tif) and another version with those adjustments plus a regular layer for dust & scratch removal (soccer-adj-dust.tif). Finally, I saved the last file with LZW compression (soccer-adj-dust-LZW.tif). I then had the following files for comparison:</p>

<ol>

<li>soccer.nef.................... 123,671,411 </li>

<li>soccer.xmp...................... 6,816 </li>

<li>soccer.tif...................... 122,141,800 </li>

<li>soccer-adj.tif................. 211,967,592 </li>

<li>soccer-adj-dust.tif.......... 301,860,096 </li>

<li>soccer-adj-dust-LZW.tif .. 303,981,556 </li>

</ol>

<p>The original NEF (1) and the corresponding unadjusted TIF (3) are about the same size on disk, with the differences probably related to how much overhead information is stored. I don't think this is significant. However, if you have to make exposure, brightness, contrast and/or color adjustments, then these can be stored in the side car "XMP" file (2) for only 7K Bytes, but you can't use the XMP adjustment file on the TIF version and it will take 90mb Bytes to store the three adjustment layers in that format (4). Each additional layer would add another 30mb and this would add up fast if you use many layers that have to be saved.<br /> Adding a single regular layer for dust & scratch removal adds 90mb (5) which is is just about the same as the original file size. Additional non adjustment layers with pixels would add equivalent amounts for each such layer. Finally, I saved the file (6) with adjustment and the dust&scratch layers using the LZW compression option and the final file size on disk is <em><strong>slightly larger </strong></em>than the uncompressed file size.<br /> My D100 yields a color image of 3008x2000 pixels with a NEF file size of about 9.5mb! Similar pixel size for the image, but a whopping difference in disk file storage requirements. And the file size for the example shown below is under 100K. What is going on here? It just doesn't make sense to me that these scanned images are getting up to the half-gigabit range. Isn't there a better way to scan and store them?</p><div></div>

<p>In Dec of 1966 I purchased a Eurorail pass and embarked on a 4 week tour beginning here in Amsterdam. Most details of this trip have been lost in the mists of time: I don't know why I took this particular image. I remember staying in a fifth floor guest room in a home facing a canal. Perhaps this is nearby. The weather was typically dark and stormy as shown here although the Christmas decorations in the city made evenings seem more cheerful. In the full resolution image I was able to read the sign under the clock ("Rondvaart door havens en grachten") which the Google translater rendered as "by cruise ports and canals". Using this clue I located this site on Rokin Street at Taksteeg looking toward Grimburgwal. The Google street view allows a close up examination of these structures as they appear today. Not much changed except for the businesses e.g. the "Antiek" shop now sells "Souvenirs" and the "Millshop" is now "The Mill" and deals in diamonds. The Coiffeur has been replaced by a cafe.<br />For this trip I carried a Nikon F (for Black & White) and a Nikkormat (for Kodachrome slides). I had four lenses -- two 50mm 1.4, the 35mm 2.8 and the 130mm 2.8. The slides were often stored in abysmal conditions with high heat and humidity over the next 45 years. I used a Coolscan 4000 scanner to digitize them this week. Fortunately not much fungus infection, but the colors had shifted badly so the ROC correction was invaluable in restoring the images.</p><div></div>

<p>My Christmas present came late this year, but the Paul C Buff parabolic umbrellas finally got here this weekend. It was a bitterly cold day so out came the hat box and we went into the family room to try out the new brollies. I am glad that I stuck with the 64 inch diameter model because I might not have been able to deploy the larger 84 inch units indoors. This photo was done with the silver umbrella shooting though a white diffuser panel at 10 feet from subject at camera right, with a smaller soft box for fill light to camera left. I can't make up my mind if the silver umbrella did something harsh to the color rendition.</p><div></div>

<p>Port Isaac on Cornwall's north coast is very pleasant and situated in a rural and very photogenic area. Lot's of King Arthur locations to visit. See the BBC series Doc Martin which was filmed there. Mevagissey, on the south coast is in a much more built up area but is also photogenic as can be! An episode of the the BBC "Fat Ladies" cooking show was filmed there. Lot's of water craft, fishing ports, shorlines and so forth. You won't go wrong at either place, but your choice will probably be determined by whether you prefer to stay over in a rural or urban setting. Don't forget that Cornwall is a small place, so you will be able to get about easily if you have a car at your disposal.<br>

Mike S</p>

<p>Robert Roney asks: "...is some kind of RAW file even an option?"<br>

<br />I believe that the process that leads to a scanned image is quite different from the process that leads to the raw image produced by camera sensor. Scanners employ red blue and green light sensors when they are doing the scanning. Camera sensors simply record a black-and-white light source along with an intensity value. The "rawness" of the camera sensor refers to this non-color input. Since there is a red blue green filter that is positioned over the camera sensor at each sensor point it is possible to convert these basically black-and-white values to color. Scanners don't do this; they simply scan red blue and green from the start. Thus, there are no "raw" values to save for use later on.<br>

The Nikon scanner refers to a raw file output, for example, but it is not really a "raw" file and provides no basic improvement over the tiff or JPEG as far as color or other adjustments are concerned. <br>

mike</p>

<p>This comes up every once in a while since Washington DC is full of tourists taking pictures of everything and there are so many security forces. It even happed to me while I was standing in the median strip on L'Enfant Plaza Promenade in back of the Smithonsian Castle. Private guard ran over and told me it was illegal to take pictures of the Dept of Energy building and I gave him a short lecture (i.e. not only not illegal, but not even suspicious behavior). Also reminded him that <a href="http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=1066">Eleanor Norton was holding a hearing</a> on the subject that week and threatened to turn his name over to her. I have some hope that having an article so prominent in the Washington Post will tamp down the enthusiasm of some of these anti photography zealots. Maybe Eleanor will be motivated to hold more hearings. msp</p>

<p>Compare this incident with the curious case of the <a href="../street-documentary-photography-forum/00WXbQ">Motorcyclist Charged with Videoing Cop</a> and the hapless Southern Marylander arrested for "<a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:59ii30yEHTwJ:www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx%3Fstoryid%3D102616%26catid%3D187+Motorcyclist+charged+with+videoing+cop+ACLU&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us">holding a cell phone in a manner suggesting she was recording</a>" an officer's activity. The American Civil Liberty Union has initiated a suit in defense of the Motorcyclist, but there definitely seems to be a trend toward shielding police actions. Maryland is probably out in front on this particular trend due to its quirky law regarding recording consversations. Back in April, however, a videographer caught <a href="http://www.sott.net/articles/show/206746-Video-catches-Maryland-police-beating-unarmed-student-unprovoked">Maryland police beating an unarmed student</a> apparently without provocation. The student was charged with "suspicion of assaulting officers on horseback and their mounts". The charges were dropped after the video was widely diseminated by the Washington Post and other mainstream media.<br>

Mike S</p>

<p>An <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/photographer-tells-of-being-followed-by-bp-security-and-then-detained">interesting article </a>by Lance Rosenfield about his experience as a photojournalist for <a href="http://www.propublica.org/">Pro Publica</a> on an article about a BP refinery in Texas. There was a serious toxic spill at the Texas sight several months ago and apparantly there are still on going violations. This article is a first person recap of how the BP security folks got the City's police to question him and then how the police involved a Homeland Security/FBI agent to further investigate the photographer's threat.<br>

In the end, they let Mr. Rosenfield go, but this surely looks like a problem that will grow and grow. <br>

Mike S</p>

<p>Andy<br>

I bought and used both a Nikon F and a Nikormat back in about 1965. I was travelling a lot with the US Navy and US Air Force and sometimes I had to choose which camera to take with me. More often than not, I would chose to take the Nikormat. I think it was a just a tad lighter and fit a little better into its leather case. Often I would have both cameras with me in which case I would but B&W film in one and color slide film in the other. I had an assortment of lenses but they fit either camera interchangeably. I still have both cameras, although I haven't used them recently. The Nikormat is a fine camera just not as flexible as the Nikon which had removable focusing screens, a removable back and so forth. <br>

Mike S </p>

<p>Tim, Thanks! I thinks that's the trick. The menu choices look a little different using Windows, but you get to the same end result. I am including a screen shot of the Windows menu panel that you get from the "Tools/Cache/Build and Export Cache" menu. Purging the cache by itself has no affect. And if you "Build the Cache ..." and do not "also export the cache to folder" then all you do is to go back to the original thumbnails that match the unprocessed NEFs. But if you select "also export the cache to folder" then it builds a local cache in the folder and it will load those thumbnails when restarting Bridge. An additional modification to an image in camera raw was saved automatically in the local cache and and the thumbnail was correctly rendered after exiting and restarting Bridge. So I think this will be the solution to my original query. Thank you very much.<br />Mike S</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks for the suggestions. I could not find anything that referred the cache specifically to "local folders" but I did check the option: "Automatically export caches to folders when possible" and that seemed to have no affect at all. On the Advanced panel of preferences I checked the "Use High Quality Previews" and this had exactly the result I was looking for, but only for the first 22 images. In order to activate the updated thumbnails I had to view the images in the slide show option first, then the "content" panel would show the updated thumbnail. After repeating this about four times, purging the cache, exiting, restarting bridge after each little test, for a total of 22 images the updating effect failed. Now I am back to the original complaint which is that the edits and crops done in camera raw are not reflected in the thumbnails shown in the Content viewing panel. The edits will be properly rendered in either the Preview panel or the slideshow, but the thumbnails are not updated when you leave the folder and return. No amount of purging the cache or viewing the images in Preview or Slideshow mode causes the thumbnails to be permanently updated. The first 22 images I processed for this test, however, remain updated no matter how many times I have exited and restarted Bridge.<br>

Mike S</p>

<p>I use Adobe CS3 and I have notice a problem related to refreshing the thumbnails in Bridge. Others have noted similar problems, but my situation seems a little different. I am currently working with about 1,000 images that I have sorted into several folders. The thumbnails come up appropriately for the images as they come from the camera (Nikon D100 NEF's). However, after making adjustments in Camara Raw the thumbnails in Bridge do not reflect the changes I just made in Camera Raw (e.g. exposure settings and/or cropping). If I review the edited images in Preview the changes are correctly shown AND the Bridge thumbnails temporarily show the editing changes. If I change folders or exit Bridge and then later return to the folder with the edited images the thumbnails no longer reflect the Camara Raw edits. I have tried purging the cache but that has no effect. Any ideas on how to get the edits to show up more permanently in the thumbnails?<br>

Mike S</p>

<p>Thanks for all the feed back. I went out yesterday to walk the dog in my neighborhood so I took the Nikon Photomic F with my smallest zoom lens, an 18-105 non VR. It did fit on the camera, but just barely. The meter housing overhangs the aperture ring and makes it practically impossible to see the printed numbers. I wound up twisting the ring to f32 and then backing off on the clicks to f16 or f11 as needed. My hands were full of dog leash, light meter and camera, but the dog is very patient with me so that was fine, even if very slow. I really enjoyed the feel of the camera. It reminds me of why we thought it was so great back in the 60's. Even the shutter noise brought back nice memories. On the other hand, the split screen focuser did not work well with this lens: the bottom half of the split ring went very dark so I could not line up the two halves very accurately. I wound up setting the focus manually, most of the time at infinity. This worked out because of the particular scenes I was shooting. I am not sure how the focus would work if the subject was much closer. Maybe I would have to switch out the focusing screen. I have a waist level viewer which I may try since the meter housing gets in the way in any event.<br />I am now in the process of locating a store that will develop the film. Ha! And then I will have to wait a few days and go back to pick up the finished film.</p>

<p>I would like to try some of my newish lenses on my older film cameras (Nikon F and Nikormat) just to see if I still like using film. I have looked at a lot of discussion postings about possible damage of using old lenses on new DSLR cameras, but does it work the other way? Will my current zoom lenses with VR work on the film cameras? I know that I will lose metering capability, but that is a small thing and I have an incident light meter. I wouldn't like to break off a "tab" or some other internal part on the lens, however, by doing this experiment. It would be nice if the VR component still works, though. I have the 80-400 VR and the 18-200 VR lenses.</p>

<p>I live near George Washington's boyhood home and this is one of the structures from that time. The Rising Sun Tavern is noted for being a center of revolutionary ferver; it's owner, William Weeden, became a Continental Army General and led the Virginia troops at Yorktown. Nikon D100 with the 18-200VR lens @ 66mm.</p><div></div>