PHOTOGRAPHIC THREADS: camera queries, any photo tech stuff!

[Anthony Darby]

I must investigate further. I wonder how he managed to make the spider stay still? (Row 3, column 6)

[mark smyth]

I'll change the direction of this thread slightly and tell you about Dell Computers. Sadly Dell Ireland has nowed moved to a base in India just like it's UK base. I phoned yesterday because my laptop is acting strange so I should get a new model that is up to date. Before I got anywhere they asked for my address, phone number and bank details saying this was normal practice. I said what I wanted and the guy says I suggest you go for a better model for editing photos and Power Point lectures. I said all I need is XP and Office 2007. He then tried to sell me Vista and tried to sell me a laptop double the price I was interested in. He has phoned me 12 times in the last 24 hours - 5 yesterday and 7 today "Mr Smyth we are holding production just for you, Sir. If you do not place an order soon you will miss your delivery date" I havent placed an order yet. I just tried to speak to someone in customer service. Another Indian!! Bluntly and I apologise - where are the  men with English/Irish accents for me to complain to?

[Lesley Cox]

You have my sympathies Mark. Nice people all but for companies trying to sell anything to people whose main or only language is English, to employ hundreds of people on the subcontinent is plain stupid. It's all about cheap of course but unfortunately that generally equates to nasty as well. NZ companies use call centres in India for banking or insurance enquiries, selling anything you can imagine, various surveys and so on. Nowadays my reaction is to put down the phone pronto and go to someone else.

[mark smyth]

I would like to apologise to everyone who watches the forum or takes part for my outburst yesterday.

This morning I have tried many phone numbers on the Dell web site to get through to someone in the UK but they all go to their overseas call centre

[David Shaw]

Mark, what are friends for but to give a shoulder to cry on.
I am sure we all get frustrated by overseas call centres but we recently had very good assistance when our wireless connection went down after a power failure.

[TC]

Paddy,
I have belatedly come to this topic and see you have bought a Nikon D200.  I moved up to the D200 from the D70 in February this year and am pleased with the change.  On its first outing I dropped it as the strap had come loose - my fault - real men don't read instruction booklets !  Instead of a pile of broken plastic it survived unscathed thanks to its metal body.  I have taken about 40 Gb.'s of pictures since then.  The only minus point I can see is the battery life. It seems to chew up power at an alarming rate.  Every picture I have taken has had to go through a photo editor to get it exactly as I want it.  Many user reports have complained that the picture direct from the camera is not pin-sharp.  That is why we have programs such as Photoshop and AC/DC pro.  The camera can produce top quality pictures.  One of its other advantages is that it opens the field to a range of top quality lenses.  In film photography the adage was that the two most important items in photographic equipment were the film and the lens.  In digital terms sustitute sensor and processing chip for film.
One accessory I can recommend is a moulded rubber casing which fits the camera like a glove but still allows the use of all the controls.  If you look up www.speedgraphic.co.uk you will see them there.  Also, a spare battery is essential. I bought two EN-el3 equivalents from 7 dayshop.com at well over half the price of the Nikon models.
My next problem is that Nikon have now brought out the D300 with a 12.3 CMOS sensor designed by Sony, a live view 3" monitor which is ideal for near the ground shots of plants and a self cleaning sensor.  What more could a young boy want!
Can I justify trading in a 9 month old camera for this "goody"  Luckily for me the cameras are virtually unobtainable at present so maybe common sense will prevail.

[mark smyth]

yes! flog the old one for as much as you can to make up the difference

[TC]

Mark
Call centres !!  For the last 10 days I have been trying to get through to a call centre to find out what has happened to my Visa card renewal.  I have been forced to listen to inane music while my phone bill racks up at 7p a minute and then I give up and put down the phone.  When I finally got through after 3 days, I found it was in Glasgow ! I could have walked there in less time.  The only saving grace was that they understood me and I didn't have to repeat anything.
My dealings with call centres on the sub-continent have been mixed.  They have been extremely polite but are obviously reading from a prepared aide-memoire. At least they are much better than "Essex Girl"  They could not get their brains round the name Cameron and would spell it as Kamwan.  You would have thought that a name that had been around for about 700 years would have been in common parlance, but no.  Not to estuary woman.
On another occasion I was in a remote island in the Seychelles when I injured my back and had to call to the UK call centre for assistance.  Essex girl answered.  "Where are you" she said.  In the Seychelles I replied.  "Is that in Portugal ?"
I thought, I'm in trouble and I was right!!  Give me an Indian call centre any day

[mark smyth]

Many people are scared to change to digital presentations and maybe put off by very fancy lectures with bits dropping in here and shooting out. The down side for the older lecturers is not having digital shots of their garden dating back to the very start. I was at a lecture recently where the lecturer was showing quite poor slides that were up to 30 years old. They were dark or had had lost their colour. The dark ones were very dark where the object could hardly be seen. The palest could be described as bleached. The lecturer must be able to see this. I would say that they are letting their name do the talking. Maybe I am getting way too critical? What do you think?

[Carol Shaw]

Hi Mark

We are going to go totally digital, means we will have to scan our slides but that is doable. Anne Chambers talk at the discussion weekend was digital but most of the images were originally slides and the quality was fantastic! David is the slide librarian and the majority of the slides he inherited were totally unusable do to serious deterioration. In an ideal world the club would buy a scanner and we would scan anything that is still usable. A few individual members have such scanners but not the club as such, what do the rest of you think?

[Heather Smith]

I am moving over to digital now (it means I don't have to remember all those place names etc.).
Mark's point of "very fancy lectures with bits dropping in here and shooting out" is just bad technique. No professional (I'm one) would ever recommend that.  One sees this on TV now where the medium is striving to out-do the message and the latter is usually lost amid the confusion.

Scanning slides is time consuming as it is best done one at a time with careful colour matching. Old slides with a colour cast can be reasonably restored and under-exposed slides made good. Many of my 'customers' were moving over to digital from slides in the years before my retirement so I was scanning and restoring hundreds of old, scratched and filthly slides and producing bright, clean digital images. Slides took anything from 2 minutes to 30 minutes to complete.

I will be scanning my best slides but will keep the slides as well, of course.  A good scanner and Photoshop will do the job. 

Digital projectors are beginning to get affordable while being good enough to be usable.  A good digital presentation, including captions, moving maps and video, can be very exciting - as long as the speaker has not been seduced by the 'amazing' possibilities offered by PowerPoint.  KEEP IT SIMPLE!!

[tonyg]

Heather has said all the right things - I too have switched, having amassed a good collection of digital images.  A volunteer who wants to help me scan my slides (a volunteer  with a scanner that is) will be handsomely rewarded!

[Gene Mirro]

I rented a professional quality slide scanner, the Nikon Super CoolScan 5000, and scanned several hundred slides with it over the course of a weekend.  The results were excellent, vastly superior to the scans produced by a document scanner.  I highly recommend it.  A text file of simplified instructions is attached, in case you decide not to spend six weeks reading the manual 

[Carlo]

Was it a Freudian slip that the instructions are entitled "Canon 5000"?

...for the Nikon 5000 scannner?

[Gene Mirro]

More senior moment than Freudian slip.  I bought a Canon camera at about the same time as I rented the Nikon scanner, so they are hopelessly intermingled in my brain.  But you get five stars for proofreading prowess.  I just fixed it.