martijn_houtman

<p>Hello all,<br>

I am looking for a supplier of decent-to-good quality A3 sized inkjet print paper, preferably in large quantities (50 or more), of a price between € 0.50 to € 1.00. We're using Tetenal Spectra Jet Glossy paper right now, and we're quite satisfied with it, but somehow all our suppliers are unable to deliver it. We used to pay around € 0.50 per sheet, all we can find are papers for around € 1,20 to € 1,50 per sheet, which is quite a large increase.<br>

International delivery is no problem, however we prefer to do it locally (the Netherlands). <br>

Thanks in regards!</p>

<p>In my experience, sensors lose their dynamic range, causing blow-outs in the lighter areas, giving more saturation. But that would not explain an overall increase in brightness, but rather at the lighter parts of the scene.</p>

<p>Post an example and we can probably tell you what went wrong.</p>

<p>I am quite sure that the uneven lighting is not that big of a problem, it is usually the subject being too close to the background.</p>

<p>On a technical note (I wrote chroma-keying software myself), lots of software tries to do it in RGB color space, while I find that HSV/HSL or YCbCr color spaces seem to work a lot better. In PS you can try it manually in LAB color space.</p>

<p>Bill, it might be me being a bit too picky, but I think with this Foveon technology, one would expect a sharp image with good colors, even at pixel level. It might be JPEG compression (chroma subsampling), but take a look at this image (large images!):<br>

http://www.sigma-dp.com/DP2/sample-photo/img/SigmaDP2-001.jpg<br>

The reds are overly saturated and there are lots of "color bleeds" around the edges (again, might be compression/subsampling). But the same over-saturation occurs here:<br>

http://www.sigma-dp.com/DP2/sample-photo/img/SigmaDP2-017.jpg</p>

<p>The next image shows how sharp the images are:<br>

http://www.sigma-dp.com/DP2/sample-photo/img/SigmaDP2-011.jpg </p>

<p>Nice, looks much better than the two-photos animated GIFs. Any more and you'd have a Matrix effect.</p>

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<p>The sample photos are tack sharp! But for such a big sensor, I still see quite a lot of noise. And the samples are overly saturated. I would like to see better, non-post-processed, real-life examples. Good and simple camera design though.</p>

 

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<p>Yeah, level adjustments can do this (for instance contrast increase and such). The comb effect you describe means the "in-between" colors are not being used, meaning the image you started off from has too little information. It can be seen as gradient banding, such as skies. Try what Scot Baston says.</p>

<p>If you're not doing any post-processing, it might be the problem that Mike Dixon refers to: the scene you are shooting just does not contain enough tones.</p>

<p>Also take a look at Crumpler bags. </p>

<p>Gabriel, considering your arguments about a camera having trouble focusing with f/1.4 lenses, I start wondering: would it not be sane to have such a fast lens with an extra option to set the aperture to, say, f/2.8 for more accurate focusing, i.e. enabling the user to set the fast aperture when the user really needs it? Would that ever be an option?</p>

<p>My girlfriend just bought a Pentax Optio V20. It's a nice camera for the price.</p>

<p>We went downtown last saturday and were able to get a good deal and bought a Pentax Optio V20. It seems like a decent, small camera, and from what we could tell makes pretty good quality photos. It has a nice zoom range and a decent, large LCD screen on the back. I've read some good reviews, so it's exactly the camera she was looking for. </p>

<p>I don't really know too much about the quality yet (it is hard to judge on such a small screen), but from what I could tell is was at least en per with similar-priced models. </p>

<p>Thanks for the comments and links, they really helped us orientate!</p>

<p>Thanks, that looks pretty cheap. Now I need to check out if they ship to the Netherlands. I have never done an ebay order before ... Thanks again!</p>

<p>Hello all,</p>

<p>My girlfriend is looking for a really cheap digital compact camera, in the price range of about € 120-170 (US $ 150-200?). Now I don't know anything about compact camera's, except that my advise to her would be that is has to be able to shoot manually (or at least some sort of Av/Tv mode and setting the ISO). Another of her demands is that it needs to be small. I don't really care about MPs, larger sensor is a nice plus, and if it goes up to ISO 800, it is fine.</p>

<p>I read a lot of good things about the Pentax Optio M60, so I would love to know if anyone has any experience with this camera or brand. I would advise her to go for big brands like Nikon or Canon, but if the alternatives are better, that would be fine.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance!</p>

<p>I've done some research on stereo vision, but that was in the case of two pictures taken with two camera's at the same time, with both camera's pointing at the same direction at the same location, with a small (5-20 cm usually) horizontal distance between them. From this you can derive a so-called "disparity map" (disparity is what photographers would call parallax) and this disparity map can be used to derive a depth map (this is a linear transformation). A depth map is nothing more than a third image that states the depth at each pixel. See http://martijn.uncinc.nl/research/disparity/ for details.</p>

<p>I also heard from methods that can calculate a depth map from a single image, for example through focus analysis, but these methods do not work as well as methods that use disparity. You can also try and create your own, hand-made depth map; it does not need to be very accurate to give fair results. You can then use this depth map as a so-called "height map" in many 3D software to create a 3D look.</p>

<p>a. For a face to cover only 10% of the image at 300 mm, you would have to be over 50 meters away or something. Are you sure you are zooming in with the 18-200 mm lens? </p>

<p>b. The replayed image on the camera is probably just a preview of the resulting image, you should only judge composition and exposure. Sharpness and detail is best done on a larger computer screen with the result image. For detail, you need sharpness, and at focal lengths like this you might need vibration reduction if you are hand-holding. And the sharpness depends on the lens as well.</p>

<p>For decent sharpness, there are basic rules, such as 1/(focal length) (e.g. 1/300th second if you fully zoom in) and depth-of-field/choice of aperture and so on. I don't know your knowledge, but you might want to read more about it, judging from your questions. There is also a great beginners forum where people are glad to explain such things if you need further help.</p>

<p>And don't worry about not using the correct vocabulary, people will understand you :-) Posting an example photo will help a lot!</p>

<p>Are you really sure the 200 mm is not enough? I find this enough for close-up shots on a full-frame camera, let alone the D60, on which it is effectively a 300 mm lens.</p>

<p>Well, then you're a different audience than I am. I would much rather have these extra pixels spread out on a 16:10 ratio and have the option to rotate the LCD or use some sort of mirror system to project the image. This would be way more effective, IMO.</p>

<p>Oh, and I think it is not so much that pixels are (in)expensive, it is the price of wafer space that determines the costs :-)</p>

<p>Projectors were primarily made for projecting screens, and usually screens are unable to tilt as well. I've seen lots of uses where the input was portrait-orientated and people just rotated the projector, which works just fine.</p>

<p>I think the "problem" is that the designers did not anticipate on the usage of the projectors _yet_. What they _should_ do it make a projector in which the LCD screen is rotatable inside the projector. I think some projectors do this to allow slight tilting in order to correct perspective already, but they rotate around a different axis. </p>

<p>I see very small use in square projectors, as they is very little input that is square. Most projectors will be driven by a computer or some video device, and these are all 4:3, or becoming one of the widescreen variants. This will render a lot of pixels in a square projector useless.</p>

<p>Most video drivers allow you to rotate the display as well. You might just want to try that, rather than editing/rotating your photos. Then you can rotate the projector, I do not really see why this is not an option. I highly doubt they will ever design a square projector.</p>

<p>Yeah, the light is beautiful indeed, really reflects the winter's cold, somehow. I like the photo. But pigeons are still nothing more than flying rats, though.</p>

<p>I have not done any calibration of the printer yet, but in my experience so far, you really want to calibrate this printer if you want to do some serious printing. Especially with blues, they really don't match a calibrated monitor. The printer is able to deliver excellent quality which matches photos if you use the right paper. </p>

<p>First thing you want to make sure is that you do NOT use the Gutenberg drivers. Although the initiative is really nice (open source drivers which work over the network), the end quality just does not match the Epson drivers'. You can check in system preferences / printer section, it should be quite clear. I read that it is rather impossible to calibrate the Gutenberg drivers.</p>

<p>Second thing to note is that if you want to use the printer over the network, it is best to attach it to a computer directly, rather than on some sort of router or print server, and then share this printer of the network. Another issue when doing network printing is that the operating system of the print server and client should match. I don't know exactly why, it has something to do with the drivers (inkjet printers do the processing in the driver, rather than in the printer, or something). Read more at this thread: http://www.photo.net/casual-conversations-forum/00SYlT</p>

<p>Furthermore, if you really want to do loads of printing, I really recommend using a "continuous flow" system. What it does it replace the cartridges with fake cartridges with tubes attached to it, which lead to bigger ink tanks. This saves a LOT of money, because the ink is pretty pricey. </p>

<p>Nice results, although I must admit some just have too much dynamic range to be interpreted as realistic. Too bad the comparison shows a non-corrected non-HDR versus the corrected HDR version. Do you also have corrected non-HDR images?</p>

<p>OK, I just contacted their support via their website, and the guy I spoke to shortly replied that when sharing the printer will enable you to print to it from the same operating system, but not from a different OS. So if you share it on a Win XP machine (like I did), you can only print from an XP machine, but not from a Mac machine (and probably vice-versa). Uch.</p>

<p>Edward, thanks for your input. I have done as you said, connecting the printer to a dedicated Win XP PC, and share the printer over SMB, which seems to work fine, with two exceptions: both OSX 10.4 and 10.5 are unable to print.</p>

<p>OSX 10.5 (printer drivers 12491/612a) find the printer and have the correct driver, but the print job never reaches the printer, as was the case with sharing it over Airport. </p>

<p>OSX 10.4 (printer drivers 12433/31ba) find the printer, but the driver for the printer does not show up in the driver list; all I see are Gimp print drivers. When the printer is connected directly over USB, the printer driver does show up. Obviously I do not want to use a generic printer driver.</p>

<p>Printing from a remove Windows PC works fine, the drivers are correctly downloaded/installed etc. From a Mac just seems plain impossible. For now I am assuming it is Epson's fault, they just seem to have crappy drivers, so I would advice against buying an Epson printer as long as they don't offer decent drivers.</p>

<p>Hello all,</p>

<p>I've been trying to connect my Epson R2400 through our Airport Extreme base station in our office. We connect it through the USB connection on the station. The printer shows up as a Bonjour printer, so basically all is fine. But when trying to send a document to the printer, the document just "disappears" and never reaches the printer. I've installed the latest drivers from epson.com.</p>

<p>On OSX 10.5, the document never reaches the printer. On OSX 10.4, the printer seems to work fine, albeit very slow. On Win XP the same happens as on OSX 10.5, and after a while the printer spooler comes with a network connection error. </p>

<p>To me it seems the drivers from Epson are not able to print over a network like our setup. I have read the Gutenberg drivers seem to work over a network, but last time I tried them, the results are just too poor to use. </p>

<p>I was wondering if anyone ever tested this setup and came to the same or a different conclusion. My other option would be to have a dedicated PC or Mac and connect the printer to it directly, and if I am really lucky, share this printer over the network and print to it through that machine.</p>

<p>All comments and experiences are welcome :-)</p>