Saturday, December 22, 2007

Not that I was about to upgrade to Vista, or anything (the 2710, a film/slide scanner doesn't work on Vista) but the installation process, even on XP, was hard work. The ASPI layer had to be there, which meant a genuine "Adaptec" SCSI card, and it always reported itself as an unrecognised device.
I've just moved over to Ubuntu Gutsy for my main workstation setup. I spent a happy hour installing an Acer flatbed, which worked perfectly in xsane - indeed, even better than before on XP.
I put the SCSI card in. I plugged the FS2710 in. I downloaded vuescan from www.hamrick.com - and, lo and behold, it just worked. And the software is far better than Canon's own. I get real, archive quality scans

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Cunning photo-filch

Nice email on my flickr account arrived this morning, from a firm setting up an online guide, like, I guess the Rough Planet ones. They were after photographs.

It sounded as if I was about to win a competition. The small print, however, proffered what looked like a contract - I signed away my rights to my image, world-wide, indeed, whether or not I "won".

But they weren't paying.

I withdrew the image from the "competition" which I hadn't entered in the first place.

Harrumph!


Powered by ScribeFire.

The Stile


The Stile
Originally uploaded by Mark_Twells
Caer Caradoc. An HDR (High Dynamic Range) image, a composite of five bracketed shots.

Friday, August 24, 2007

tops


tops
Originally uploaded by Mark_Twells
More Wild Shropshire.

Stiperstones.

D40

My daughter has just bought a D40. I bought a D50 as a first foray into digital SLR sometime ago, and was pleasantly surprised at what was tucked away, underneath a veneer of beginner-friendly green modes - bracketing, and it even AFd with my mechanically coupled older lenses, like my 55mm Macro-Nikkor.

The D40 has none of that. There's nothing to help the user grow. No bracketing, the Macro-Nikkor won't AF, so the only lenses which will are the electronic focussing ones. Read expensive.

Shame. Nice camera, but a bit limited.



Powered by ScribeFire.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Les bateaux, Vassivières


Les bateaux, Vassivières, originally uploaded by Mark_Twells.

Minimal. I like it.