luis_de_la_orden_morais

Hi folks,

 

I have been reading several posts concerning calibration of a Dell UltraSharp

2407WFP for a Epson R2400 with a Spyder2Express but unfortunately the

information provided is very sketchy and lacks detail such as values entered,

buttons pressed, options checked, etc...

 

Does anybody know of a tutorial that explains with pictures/screnshots and or

detail how to calibrate that setup?

 

Many thanks,

 

Luis

Rob,

 

I believe someone will be able to understand what I mean, it demands technological knowledge, knowing what has been around in terms of software and hardware validation, a good deal of ergonomics and also knowing how people buy these products a little bit far away from our own backyards (in markets such as Latin-America and Asia where the buying habits are different), I tried to make it easy for you to understand with the Windows Vista DVD example, but it didn't work.

 

In order to avoid you get more confused it is best you let it rest for now, I fear you are taking this discussion so personally that you are starting to feel belittled by answers I gave to other people: it was Craig who mentioned policing, not you, I am afraid, I was asking him to re-read what my suggestions were not you, and did so politely and kindly.

 

Please re-read the thread with calm and don't force yourself too much to understand, the most important is that you can get your cards safely, I am talking about those who can't or don't know how.

The article has been written from the perspective of someone who walks around the hardware and software stores of London, have friends in several parts of the world, who in most cases have to import those cards from somewhere else, and also from the point-of-view of someone who used to buy cards online. I know Costco sell SanDisk cards for almost nothing but from the UK perspective, the cards they sell are not for professional use as the Extreme series.

 

Bait and switch operations do not really illustrate the case here; in fact it is not the product that is in question in these kind of operations but the business/selling practice. Also there are several blogs and product review sites or to name the mother of them all, Amazon, which contradict the point said above that "Those that purchase products and never have any issues simply do not post". Be at ease, this is not a conspiracy to make a brand look bad :).

 

When I say SanDisk has a point of responsibility in all that, I say it not in an accusatory way. If someone steals your identity and use your bank details and id, you still have to go after the credit card company, talk to your bank, call the police and produce some minimal evidence that will help the authorities see that you are not the person who has been using your name and money. One can sit down and say, "I am in the right here, I didn't buy a pair of ultrasonic skies and tickets to Paris. They should/will know it". This attitude will not help the victim, in fact it will just make them liable.

 

As to SanDisk, I can't see why, now that they are a targeted hot brand for every card counterfeiter under the sun, they shouldn't provide a more effective and easy way for any user to check whether a product is genuinely theirs or not, but not only genuine, also know that an Extreme IV is an Extreme IV and not an Ultra labelled as its higher-end version. But frankly, as a consumer, what do I care when I have two or three other brands which are not so likely to be counterfeited if I buy them from any computer hardware store in Edgware Road? After all, if tomorrow I decide to create a company called Sandisc which sells CF cards, wouldn't the lawyers hound me to death with infriegement of copyright and trademark? If it were my business brand I would do the same. Now, if it were my business product, the first thing I would do was to make sure people knew when it was mine dead easily. This is a no-brainer, no?

 

Once again, unless you are sure you are buying from a reseller which is not ripping you off for the 'privilege' of selling an authentic product (remember memory cards are not luxury items, they are not even iPods, although they can cost more than an iPod Video), or do not really mind paying more, as a consumer I would avoid the brand until I was given the power to easily check and spot the authenticity of a product I bought in the place and for the price I chose to.

 

The idea is not to police, read the article again please, the idea is to provide the means to empower consumers to identify genuine cards as easily as genuine DVDs of Windows Vista for example.

 

With regards to the theory that "bargain-minded" consumers produce the market environment for fakes, it sounds contradictory as the pace of technology nowadays is to make things faster, with more capacity, in less physical space and costing less and less. When it comes to storage, it is even more difficult to maintain this idea when every 3-6 months prices drop and capacity increases. Unless one is able to provide the mathematical formula which shows the safety buffer in decreasing prices and adapt that to each economical zone (mostly for the UK where we pay double for everything produced elsewhere, and Latin-America which pays even more than the UK for those plastic luxuries), it all ends up as the sermon of the fat priest about temperance: one doesn't really know what they are talking about.

It took SanDisk a great amount of effort and research to get to the top of mind

position enjoyed today. Think of memory cards think of SanDisk, or least it used

to be so.

 

SanDisk teaches every manufacturer in the market that it is not enough to

develop quality products but one has to have devised a secure and firm way to

guarantee brand-lovers that they are getting genuine products. SanDisk is

passing through the same plight of Lacoste, counterfeited products seem to

outnumber genuine ones offered in the market, and the market nowadays is much

more dynamic and large than it used to be in the 80's when fake Lacoste could

only be bought in brick and mortar outlets.

 

Memory card consumers have internalised a few rules of thumb: don't buy it over

eBay, don't buy it over Amazon MarketPlace, if it is cheap it is a fake.

Nevertheless, history shows that these rules are deemed to disappoint many as

they might not safeguard anyone anymore. It is a fact that fakes will always

cost cheaper than genuine products, nevertheless high price tags do not

magically turn fakes into genuine products; an average can be very effective

into tricking people though. Counterfeiters know that and the major high street

vendors wouldn?t hate the idea of marking their prices up to add a little bit of

legitimacy to the product; perhaps that is the reason why some major high street

camera outlets in the UK will charge ?249 or almost $500 for a SanDisk Extreme

IV 8GB, when you and I (and the counterfeiter) have a hunch that the fair

acceptable price could be a little bit less than half of that? Imagine that

there are laptops in the market nowadays that can be purchased by the same

amount of money.

 

The web is made of a long tail of small resellers, which unwittingly are very

open to be deceived by a more organised chain of counterfeiters offering

products even more similar to the original ones, at the moment the long tail

falls prey of counterfeiters then all is lost. Forget about 2GB compact flash

cards being sold as 8GB SanDisk Extremes, these were abundant in the beginning

of this 'industry' when counterfeiters didn't have a bean to their names and the

only option for making a quick buck was sticking a SanDisk label on top of an

inferior generic card.

 

Things promise to be different now and I am afraid to say, due to SanDisk's own

lack of an effective and aggressive response to the problem. So far, it seems

SanDisk has dealt with the whole issue from the perspective it is a customer

problem: 'tough luck, pity you bought a cheap fake. Here are some guidelines to

make you get it right next time.' One can imagine things went the same way with

Lacoste and more recently, Burberry, until the moment the clothing

counterfeiters were producing their own designs and just sticking the label on

the clothes to add the wow factor and then every minor outlet and garage boot

sale had a branded polo short for sale.

 

SanDisk has published a few guidelines to identify fake cards, these guidelines

are always useful, but after some time, guidelines end up working as tutorials

for counterfeiters to make more real-looking cards: "Ah, ok, so I just need to

make sure that there is a serial number at this end of the card, which can be

copied from an original card and used in thousand fake ones, and the label is a

little round here and here". It doesn?t take a streak of genius to even come up

of ways of not even having to counterfeit SanDisk cards, as for example, by

relabeling Extreme II, III and Ultra cards as Extreme IV cards, an old practice

in the rare whiskey and wine counterfeiting dens. The future looks bleak unless

SanDisk relies less in the look and feel of their products to determine

authenticity and start to outsmart criminals out there.

 

The flow of so many counterfeit cards also raise the question on how SanDisk has

been able to identify and give proper customer support for those owning genuine

cards which might be in need of support. In the peer to peer front side, some

time ago, whenever one opened a thread titled "my card is not working", a fair

amount of help would be the repetition of the same old advice "format the card

in the camera", nowadays, professionals are so confused with the overwhelming

flow of fake SanDisk products that many do not even bother to repeat this

reliquary any more, some just state that 'it might be fake'.

 

So why is SanDisk to blame? Aren't they the victims of this as well?

 

The point is that although the manufacturer is not to blame for being a victim

of counterfeiters, one still expects an easy and clear way of identifying

whether a product is original or not. Serial numbers do not work; they can be

copied and reproduced. Holograms are not fail-proof either. Look and feel is

just as good as counterfeiters refine their techniques. I would imagine that

some kind of digital imprint which could be checked online would be the answer:

a serial number validated by SanDisk only, something that even my mother could

check. Well, after all, we live in a world where even meat can be traced back to

its origin, up to the point one can check the cow's name. I would expect this

for a piece of plastic that can cost as much as a laptop, considering the power

this piece of plastic has to sink a career in case a photo shoot is

unrecoverable, I would say, this is a must.

 

Unfortunately, from the perspective of a consumer, the best practice is either

to buy directly from the manufacturer or from the likes of high street chains

for an inflated price or avoid the brand completely as many did with Lacoste.

Until SanDisk can offer consumers a bit more of assurance and independence with

a more fail-proof "seal of authenticity", history says avoidance of a 'hot and

targeted' brand is the advisable for consumers everywhere.

 

- Luis de la Orden Morais

 

Sandisk. I am getting the same problem with an Extreme IV 8GB CF since day one and last week the D2Xs simply did not accept the card anymore (CHA error). A week dealing with Sandisk customer centre, did everything, formatted, even used the HP USB Flash Formatting tool as advised by them and nothing.

 

Instead of wasting your time here, go to www.sandisk.com register your product and open a RMA ticket and enjoy a whole week fiddling around with the card.

Vivek, great info and links. Many thanks!

Vivek, the lens advice is based on the fact that aperture control is possible on a 135mm or 150mm El-Nikkor without release cables or diaphragms?

 

Hi Juanjo, thanks but I am looking for specific detail, namely the name of the parts that will complete kit, Nikon has 4 release cables plus the diaphragm which I am not sure is needed in conjunction with the cable.

First of all, I have been to the bellows tutorial in Nikonians and several other

posts about bellows and although now I have a fuzzy elementary knowledge of how

the elements interact, I have serious questions on which elements in specific I

will need in order to complete the puzzle.

 

I have:

 

1. a generic bellows, Nikon mount snuggly fit to a D2Xs;

2. Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8g IF AF-S VR;

3. ??

4. ??

 

Do you know if I do need a Diaphragm such as the BR-6 and a release cable to

control aperture. If I need a release cable which one would be the best?

 

Many thanks!

 

Luis

Hi Paul,

 

thanks for the link. I believe it has the same images as the Lowepro site, nevertheless by looking at the pictures again I imagine that I can figure out how the cinch is to be used. Waht was confusing me was the buckle at the back of the toploader which I thought I had to use with the cinch. By looking at the picture I can see all I have to do is to cling the four plastic thingies to the rings and that is it.

 

Only problem is that one ends up looking like a suicide bomber with that bulge in the chest covered with a grey all-weather cover. Not a good time to fashion the cinch in London.

 

Cheers!

Hi,

 

I just got a Lowepro Toploader 75AW, the shoulder strap is quite straight

forward as to where to cling it to. But the cinch belt leaves me clueless as to

where to start.

 

Any links or pics of how you have it done with yours please?

 

I couldn't find any information neither with the bag's leaflet nor in that poor

lowepro's site.

 

Many thanks!

Anybody read anything about cameras not reproducing purple, as it is a colour that doesn~t exist but a conception of the human brain?

 

I could only find the article below:

 

http://www.davidberryart.com/articles/purple.html

 

Your camera is not wrong. Try photoshopping it and best of luck!

Elliot Bernstein, Mar 07, 2007; 12:10 p.m.

 

The d40 and d40x are/will be excellent cameras but if you are shooting professionaly, you would probably not want either of them or even the d80 as a backup if you are shooting with d200's. The best backup for a d200 is another d200.

 

------

 

Nikon seems to think the same as the images in the official gallery (http://press.nikonusa.com/gallery/product.php?c=nikon/Digital_SLR/D40x/ ) have been taken with a Phase One P45, D200 and D2x. They seem to love Photoshop 7, perhaps because it was made before Adobe came up with the DNG format which Nikon refuses to adopt or give support.

 

Check the exif data.

 

- Luis

Hi Jim,

 

Yes, you can download everything from the remote server, not the best of practices (you are relying on the only copy left) but it can be done.

 

Nevertheless, you should know whereabouts your pages are located as downloading everything back from the server can be a pain if you have several blogs and content management systems installed. Generally your pages should be found in public_html or html_public in a linux environment. On the other hand, downloading everything again counts as used bandwidth. If your server just gives you a pittance of an allowance every month, it might affect your allowance that month (unlikely, as I imagine you just have a few pages no?).

 

But then you have the option of burning all your site in a CD and not worry about anything.

 

Good luck.

 

Luis

Wow, I am really impressed, yes it is a bit out of focus and the shots could make use of a bit of extra light, but hey! Would you be very kind and a real chap to let us know which 105mm lens and bellows you used?

The technology to present a resource where random displays can happen at the user's

request already exists.

 

I can see Younes' point, sometimes I just would like to be able to browse alittle bit below the

cream of the creme, but looking from the site's perspective, the idea of showing quality

photo work at the top, as voted by the community, adds weight to the value of the site and

consolidates it as niche.

 

- Luis

Making me the third to ask:

 

What card please?

Hi, I am not here to make any advertising for any company but I get all my gear from Hong Kong and from eBay. I deal with a store called DigitalRev and they never failed me.

 

I have bought my R1-C1 kit from another vendor in China and it arrived ok.

 

Point to note, one or another manual such as the one for the D2Xs might be a photocopy of the ENglish manual becuase they are importing their products directly from Japan. Also expect to have your warranty defaulted to Asia unless they provide a Mack Warranty extension as DigitalRev does.

 

Good luck!

 

Luis

I bought two "8 GB" cards in eBay from a guy who was supposed to be in Japan but in the

end turned up to be a merchant in China. No problem there, I have been buying my

photographic material and recently my D2Xs and all lenses directly from China and Hong

Kong for the last 4 years now and never had a problem.

 

This guy had thousands of positive feedback accumulated during a couple of years of

trading in eBay.

 

Then I receive an email in the line of 'problem in my Paypal account, can not refund you,

open dispute with Paypal'. I check his feedback and in the few days I had bought the card

and had sent the message, a spell of bad feedback made his percentage tip to

the negative side. Reason: fake cards.

 

Well, fortunately Paypal decided I was deceived and refunded the money. I was lucky his

Paypal

account was blocked before I received the cards, otherwise I would be left to negotiate

with

the bastard. Lesson: forget eBay

for memory cards. Simply forget it.

Ellis,

 

Thank you!!!!

 

Luis

Hi,

 

This is a question to those who are in a digital workflow from camera to

printing and publishing, sorry for those of you who use film and scanner but I

am not really interested to hear of books that concentrate on that for now.

 

Ever felt confused whether you should be changing either the RAW lighting

settings, or curves, or exposure, or simply stop at the levels correction? Ever

asked what makes a picture hi and lo key and another under or overexposed? Ever

asked yourself what makes a good b/w and what makes a bad one independent of the

photoshop tool you use? Ever been in doubt whetehr your pic looks warm or is

more likely to be spotted as having excessive red hue? Do you really really

understand the philosophy behind the unsharp mask and wondered what is beyond

the pre-canned settings people pass away in books? Have you read a book that

really connected curves manipulation/saturation/sharpening/levels/etc/etc/ as

something that might need to be applied on the same pic and explains the impact

these tools have on each other, like the in real world?

 

I would like to hear of books you read that really introduced you to the

aesthetic side of digital photography and the digial darkroom and made you

understand what makes a good picture a good picture and what technique can be

used, up to which point, and *why*: what is good contrast, what is good colour,

good saturation, etc...

 

I really want to give Amazon Returns Department a break but unless I find

something good in this area, books will keep going back (to a shredder

hopefully). Any suggestions?

 

Cheers,

 

Luis

Hi folks,

 

I am not sure if you guys and girls have heard of a couple of publishing servicesw that deliver

professionally printed books in full colours and several formats. They are:

 

www.lulu.com and www.blurb.com

 

Blurb.com seems to be more geared up for photographers and photography whilst Lulu seems to have a

wider range of options to choose from. I have browsing their catalogues and looking through the titles

available, there is some quality stuff there.

 

Do you know of any other services around?

 

Cheers!

"True for pins, not for artificial joints."

 

Hi Bob, many thanks for the clarification. Hope you had a good New Year.

 

Cheers, Luis

Sorry, Frank, you lost me there. But probably it is me who is misunderstanding that waht you

are considering correct information is actually the opposite of what I quoted from

Bjorn? Could you elaborate a bit more please?

 

Many thanks,

 

Luis

I have a Nikon D2Xs, a MacBook Pro and PictureProject installed. After reading this thread I

decided to retweak my color settings and discovered that PictureProject installs several

profiles for you to choose from in the colour profile tabs in the MacBook Pro, I chose Nikon

sRGB.

 

Does everyone use the same?

 

I personally find the whole calibration process a waste of time and money if you use a

laptop such as the MacBook Pro in several different environment settings (living room,

train, office, light on, light off, etc..). Isn't it more practical to just download profiles and

use them, mostly when Macs have far better screen an image quality?

 

Any enlightment is mor ethan welcome!

 

Cheers,

 

Luis

"The 70-200/2.8 VR, AF-S, lens has 10 pins and transfers more signals. Seems that the VR

function could not be transferred ? However, perhaps usage of VR for macro would not be

recommended anyhow, nor the AF-S, as manual focus and camera on the tripod is the way to

go, metering shoud work OK."

 

Bjorn somewhere in his site (link above) says and shows that the use of a lens with VR

switched on on a tripod has adverse effects on the final picture. I might not be using the right

nomenclature but effectively the VR should be turned off when using a tripod.