grizzlymarmot

I'll add on thing that I just learned about B&W scanning. If you are scanning true B&W

negatives (like tri-x or plus-x) you will want to tell the scanner that information at the time

of scanning. If you don't it will expose each color channel at a different time to correct for

the orange color of a color negative.

Everyone talks about the high price of this lens. But most lenses prices will fall with time -

the ef-s 10-22 is $100 cheaper than when released. This lens has so much competition -

even within the canon line up. I bet the price comes down quite a bite over the next 12

months.

I added the Rebel XT to my film EOS where I already had collected the 24 f2.8 , 35 f2 and 50

f1.4 primes. (These comments pertain to the XT) The 24 2.8 is really nice for indoor

shooting. You'll need 1600 iso but it is there. The 35 makes for excellent outdoor shots

where you have a bit more room for your feet to do the zooming. Quite frankly the 50 is just

not that useful unless I am desparate for the 1.4 - for example some indoor swimming

events where I can get pretty close to the action.<div></div>

The panasonic manual are available on their website<P>

<A HREF="http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/vProdSupportModel?

displayTab=R&surfModel=DMC-FZ7K&modelNo=DMC-

FZ7K&storeId=15001&catalogId=11017&itemId=96060&displayServiceCenter=false#">FZ7

manual</A><P>

if the link doesn't work go to<P>

http://www2.panasonic.com, click on 'product support' and enter the model number.

I've got the 7e and I like it also - I'm waiting for eye control digital - basically you'll call up an

overlay on the viewfinder and select ISO, aperture priority, exposure compensation just by

pointing your eyeball and then blinking to confirm

I was in the Flamingo 2 years ago - I just asked if I could take some pictures and the security guy said ok. I was in the area of the slots - which are brighter and more colorful. Perhaps around the card games they get a bit more uptight. In any case Vegas is meant for a 24mm lens. I always had trouble with my 24 but in Vegas the scope of everything begs for the wide angle. The Flamingo is probably part of the new Vegas - with the Bellagio, Cesar's and Bally's sharing its intersection. There are some classics in that area though and you can get a high perspective from the "Eiffel Tower".

I picked up the Lowepro Rover AW II this summer for day hiking. It has the features you

want. I could pack it with a 350d with 35 f2 lens mounted, 3 more lenses (70-200f4,

10-22, 50 1.4) a very compact velbon tripod, appropriate extra layers for me - a small

lunch - (no high volume potato chips!), 2 750 ml (water bottles and a small guidebook. I

was travelling with other people and I couldn't share in carrying any of the common gear

- like first aid kits, extra snacks etc. It really was a 'personal' day pack. The Rover AW

Plus is larger but neither of these packs has an internal frame. My experience with a fully

loaded Rover AW II was that if I was to pack more gear I'd want a frame in my pack. It

easily weighed 15 kg. All these packs are essentially day packs - with some nice features

for photographers. If you want a backpack to haul equipment - like a rock climber who

has to bring 75 m of rope, protective gear and axes along with all he needs for a day hike

then you need something with an internal frame. If you think on this scale you can get an

Arc'teryx or Wookey (or a high end Lowepro).

I scan into Adobe RGB from Vuescan - you could do that moving forward. In reality the

best color space to scan into is the monitor color space - because that is the one that you

are using to judge the colors. There are problems with that down the road though

because it is not a standard one. Basically if you are happy with how your scans look when

you open them in PS then you are fine.<BR>

My Vuescan workflow<BR>

1: Scan 16 bit TIFF with Adobe RGB colorspace using IR cleaning light or medium<BR>

2: Clone or Patch any spots that infrared missed in PS<BR>

3: Correct colors and brightness with Curves, Highlight/Shadow in PS<BR>

3: Appy noise reduction in PS (especially on 400 speed or higher)<BR>

4: Apply the Photokit Capture Sharpener in PS (if I think it helps)<BR>

5: Save as a single layer 8 bit TIFF<BR>

Depending on how many I have to do I may use the multiple passes in Vuescan - but I've

never seen a significant difference.

You can add he metadata into the file with Extensis Portfolio or iView Media Pro. I suspect

in some future version of Apeture you will be able to do that as well. For TIFF images the

metadata goes into the IPTC tags (EXIF is for JPEG). If you are scanning printed photos the

software that comes with the scanner should be fine. Vuescan is an alternative that runs

well in OS X but I suspect that the scan quality will be equal. If you scan negatives and

slides often the dedicated programs can get more shadow or highlight detail than you ever

knew existed in your work. But with a printed photo - if it looks black - its black and if it

looks white - it's white. Unless the scanner comes with a propriatary dust and scratch

removal feature (slide scanners can do this with an infrared scan), you are correct - there

is no real need to remove dust at input - but on the other hand if you're all ready to create

that great memory book for Grandpa you don't necessarily want to spend two months

removing dust spots from your scans (Grandpa may not have that much time left!) I like to

make sure the photos in my library need as little touch up as possible so I remove as much

dust as I can and get the colors where I want at the time of capture. Cropping, resizing

and sharpening are the only edits I leave off at the time of capture.

ArcSoft Panorama Maker came free with one of my digital cameras and it does a fine job. I

am using the mac version. Canon digital cameras come with an application called Photostitch

that runs on OS X.

The price will come down someday and it also will be added to the list of lenses where you

can obtain a rebate. For example the ef-s 10-22 is selling for $720 at B&H now and when

it was introduced (8/2004 I believe) it was hard to get and cost $800 everywhere. I bet

the price of this lens will be down by $100-$150 (100 Euro) within a year - considering

good lenses can last for decades avoiding the early rush seems like a good idea. If you

think the price will drop by 300 Euro I would doubt that.

Canon EOS capture 1.5 which can be run from the Canon Imagebrowser program can do

this. The cable you need is the USB cable that comes with the camera. WIth EOS capture

you can control a number of exposure parameters and you can have the camera either

save the image on the card or save it directly to your computer - then it will show up as a

thumbnail in the Image Browser program and you can open it. That software is on the

install disk or available at the canon site

works great on my fish eye lenses too!

Stick to f4 and 5.6 until you can clean the sensor (or faster depending on the lens).

<BR>When you clean the sensor make certain the chamber is clean before going into

cleaning mode. There's no way to know if that's a smudge or dust until you try to brush it

off. Every significant defect on my sensor has come off with the brush.<BR> Last piece of

advice - be very very gentle with the brush. Oh yeah - don't expect perfection you

probably will have a few small spots visible at f11 or higher even after cleaning.

<BR><i>The preposterous persuit of a perfectly pristine sensor is a potentially

pyschopathic pastime.</i>

I use PS CS 2 on a 500MHz G4 Mac (single processor). Because Adobe has taken the file browser out of Photoshop and created the Bridge application some tasks are actually faster in CS2 as there is no cataloging or image preview creation going on in Photoshop. You actually can get an amazing amount done with the two applications - for example in Bridge you can be tweaking the RAW images' parameters with the Adobe Camera Raw plugin (and you can work on more than one at the same time), while Photoshop is grinding out a sharpen - resize - save as JPG script (again on a batch of files).

Use the Adobe DNG converter (which is a standalone program for OS X) to convert the

photos to DNG format. PS CS version 1 can open those. You can find the progam on the

Adobe site

Its possible the 20D will be the "best" (fastest, most fully featured) 1.6 crop camera that

Canon ever makes.

-- For Giampi<P>

Yes it took over an hour to empty a card onto the iPod Photo and the camera is attached to

the other end of the connector so I was unable to take pictures with the XT for several

hours during my trip - my travel companions were perhaps happier for that fact. I usually

downloaded during dinner so I could recharge the iPod overnight (when I had electricity)

The download process did not seem to tax the camera battery very much.

I have the combo (20GB iPod photo) and spent 3 weeks on the road and in the wild with

the pair. The compatibility is fine. I used the RAW + L format and two 2 GB cards in the

XT. You can view the jpgs on the iPod after downloading which is of course fun! Also

when you upload photos to the computer from the iPod the speed is impressive. Each

time I downloaded a full card to the iPod the charge on the iPod was quite low. I would be

worried about trying to download more than 3 GB to the iPod on a single charge. Also the

download speed for files is slow at about 40 min per GB. At the end of my trip I had 13 GB

of photos on the iPod! I think it paid for itself right there.

When I upload files from my canon 350d to the ipod photo 20GB it takes about 20

minutes/GB. I can load at least 2GB on one battery charge - I bet I could get 3 GB before

the battery dies. I can view the JPG files that are saved with the RAW (the RAW+L option

on the camera). The ipod takes about 5 hours to recharge. You also can not charge the

ipod while uploading the photos. So the ipod photo can do double duty if you can keep it

charged while traveling and don't take more than about 3GB of photos in a day. One last

thing the slow uploading of photos doesn't seem to drain the battery of the camera much.

I can't take credit for this brilliant idea. Strap one of those air activated hand warmers to the lens (the ones skiers and snowmobilers put in their gloves). You can place some material between the lens and the handwarmer to regulate the temperature. How's that for a one dollar solution!

Here is a picture of the color gamut of the rebel 350d on dpreview.com<BR>

 

<A HREF ="http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos350d/page13.asp">http://

www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos350d/page13.asp</A><BR>

 

I find it notable that when the Adobe RGB space is used the colors do not push all the way

to the edge of the colorspace as they do in the sRGB colorspace. To me it appears that the

cameras "native" colorspace is closer to sRGB than anything else - of course each camera

is different and you can always map the raw data to a larger colorspace but you need to

consider whether you are actually mapping to colors the camera captured or stretching the

colors beyond the cameras true input abilities. (I read that article also and don't really

agree - at least for the rebel 350d.)

Here's how to solve your problem - just send them back to Canon USA for warranty

service before you take delivery in Europe. Everyone who has done that has been

satisfied. If enough people start doing this the prices in the USA will climb to those

in Europe and all our worries will be over.

I've got this camera and I find it produces excellent images with my lenses. Once I

took a close picture of my dog at 1600 ISO and rather than seeing every single hair

when I was pixel peeping there was a lot less detail. The internal noise reduction will

degrade the superfine detail at high ISO. I don't know for sure but the D20 does go

to ISO 3200 perhaps its ISO 1600 results are better. The camera's optimal ISO are

100-400. 800 and 1600 have some compromizes when viewed at 100%

Neither the Canon nor the Adobe software for openning RAW files from a 20d works

in System 9.2. Photoshop 7 could use Adobe Camera Raw Plugin version 1 - but that

only supports the D30, D60 era Canon SLRs. Jaguar (10.2.8) can run the software just

fine and isn't too bad on my old machine (Beige G3 upgraded to a G4/500). If your

G3 has max RAM and is running at 500 MHz or so it should be fine to go to OS X and

use it to run the conversions and downloads. (Jaguar can be purcahsed for about

$50) . The other alternative is to try to use a windows emulator on your system to do

the RAW conversion - it would probably be slow also.