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Im happy to say that Don and I have sold out our first
workshop of the year: Slot Canyons and Monument
Valley. If you were thinking about coming along on this
trip well, of course, start a waiting list. But how about
signing up for Arches/Canyonlands instead? We still
have some room on that workshop (April 18-22) and
wed love to fill that one too!
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You might remember that a couple of months ago I
made mention of scheduling some Semi-Private
photo tours at reduced prices. Well, Ive come up with
some dates and locations that I could fit into my
schedule.
The first of these will be Oregon Waterfalls June 1-5. The second will be Zion Oct. 27- 31. |
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I just updated my computers to Windows 7 and so far
Im very pleased with it. As many of us do, I use two
monitors. Its always been a bit of a pain to make sure
both were calibrated and that those calibrations got
loaded properly. For Windows XP there was a utility
called WinColor that allowed the user to assign the
proper profile to each monitor. That worked well; I
simply put a shortcut to the program in my Start Up
folder and the utility would appear when I booted up
the computer.
Windows 7 gives you the ability to assign a specific profile to each monitor and the proper profile loads when the computer boots. Thats pretty cool. The problem crops up when the computer comes back from a sleep state or from power-saving monitor shut down. For some reason, the displays can lose their profiles. This is frustrating and for the first few days I had to go to the display settings control, click on Color Management, load the wrong profile for each monitor (which of course changed the colors), and then load the correct profile. For some reason, clicking reload profile doesnt work. That was frustrating but it worked. As far as I know, Microsoft hasnt fixed this, but during one of my web searches looking for a solution I came across a neat little utility from X-Rite that easily lets you load a profile into your monitor. You simply drag the program window to the monitor and click on the profile. Super easy. |
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If youve run the Windows 7 compatibility checker
program thingy on your computer, its probably telling
you that your favorite film scanner (in my case, the
Nikon LS-5000 CoolScan) wont, or might not be,
compatible. And thats sort of true. Same thing if you
have an older monitor calibration tool like the Monaco
Optix XR, like I do.
After I installed Windows 7 and plugged these things
in I got messages telling me that there were no
drivers or they werent installed or whatever. Bottom
line is that they werent going to work.
Fortunately, there are work-arounds. While poking around the internet looking for solutions I found a monitor calibrating program that was not only compatible with Windows 7 but was able to use the exact same colorimeter I already own. So I downloaded a trial version, which loads drivers for my supposedly non-compatible hardware. Guess what? Now I can use my Optix XR with a Windows Vista version of the same Monaco software I was using in the first place.
My older flatbed scanner also has compatibility
problems. Fortunately, theres a very affordable piece
of software out there that can run virtually any scanner,
including my older Epson flat bed and my Nikon
Coolscan. VueScan by Ed
Hamrick is the solution to having to buy a new
scanner or expensive software like Silverfast. Vuescan
comes in two flavors: Standard and Professional. The
Professional version has a couple of pretty cool
additions like the ability to calibrate and profile the
scanner and to output in the DNG format. |
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Hey, Ive got a new blog posting at Singh-Ray Focus
on Filters. Check it out.
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iFotoGuide, by
photographers Dan Baumbach and Brett Edge is a
new series of photo guides to national parks made for
the iPhone and iPod Touch. Right now there are just
two guides available-Arches National Park and
Yosemite National Park-with more on the way.
Ive bought both of these just to see what they were all about. For an iPhone app they might seem expensive at $4.99 but with all the information packed into these, this modest cost is well worth it. |
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I understand that the Photographers Alliance
Workshops site is undergoing a facelift. Im not privy to
all the changes or what it might look like but Im
looking forward to seeing what Jeff and the other web
wizards will come up with. So keep checking back at
the PAW
site to see what happens. Ill also be letting you
know when the latest version is up and
running.
Until then, check out the articles, reviews, and workshop listings available at the PAW site. |
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