What’s New?
First this in the first post on the new version of Wordpro. They have changed all the interfaces, so it is just like starting over. I wonder why programmers insist on doing that? What I like least is that it no longer gives me info on how many words I have written. I try to keep these posts between 250 and 1500 words long.
ADDED: Just discovered that they had moved the word count to the bottom of the editing window.
I got an ink refill set for the CISS on the Epson 1400. It was easy enough to refill the tanks, but I think I will get a system that uses bottles with nozzles on them next time, so I will not have to mess with syringes.
I finally got the part to fix the four wheel drive on my old Mini Blazer. The weather was perfect for working on the truck. So how does it work? I do not know, I do not have a needed tool to get the front drive shaft yoke off. You need to remove that so that you can pull the syncro-motor off the transfer case, after you remove the three bolts that hold it in place, so it will have to wait until I have enough funds for the tools, and the weather is nice. We arecurrently starting into a least a week of rain. Oh well, that is better than 3 weeks of snow.
Got the 40-140 telezoom for my e420. It was a deal only $99 bucks if you bought the camera with the kit lens. I picked up an extra CF card, and a couple of spare batteries for the camera. The battery grip was missing the spring in the bottom battery compartment and the seller eventually sent me one. Only now I am not so sure it was missing, because with the spring in there the latch will not hold the battery against the spring pressure. Sigh… I guess I will have to remove the spring.
The Olympus e420 has the capability of saving both raw files (.orf) and jpeg’s at the same time. Only, that has resulted in some strange exposure problems. It has been driving me nuts. My current theory is that they implement most of those features by biasing the exposure. I will have to do some experimenting to verify that, but if that is what is happening I will be going back to strictly raw files.
I have noticed that since I decided to again make photography my central interest, I have come into some serendipitous funds several times that has helped me get things I need to do that. Now if the weather would just cooperate. Oh well, after ten years of drought around here, I guess it is time to get back to wet foggy weather.
You probably have noticed that I still have not shot a new header photo. Mostly laziness, but also poor health, a bad back, and the late winter blues.
these four words make 501 –Good Day!
Sick as a Dog
I spent this past weekend sick as a dog. I figure I picked up something during my routine visit to the doctor. I seem to get a cold or something every time I go in there anymore. This thing this weekend was a lot worse than a cold. I am beginning to think I should have “lived fast, and died young”.
I once again had problems with eBayers. The battery grip I ordered was missing one of the springs in the battery compartment. They were nice enough, said they would look and see if they had one. The then dummied up on me, did not respond to emails, etc. I filed a dispute with PayPal, and they immediately responded to that. They claimed their junk mail deleted my emails. Said they had a spring, and would send it as soon as I closed the dispute. ??? Wait a minute! Fool me once, OK. But I am not going to be a sucker twice. I responded that I would close the dispute as soon as I get the spring. All this hassle over a 10¢ part. Anyway, they said they had mailed it, but it has not arrived yet. Sigh.
A week ago last Saturday, it was fairly nice out and I went uptown and shot a bunch of photos with the new camera (Olympus e420, for those who have just come in) on auto. I had it set to save a raw file and a VGA (640×480) size jpeg. All of the raw files were usable, most of the jpegs were rather under exposed. A couple of examples:
First the jpeg as it came out of the camera.
And then the raw, default ACR settings, downsize to 640×480, converted to 8 bits, and saved for the web.
So, for the people who ask why I shoot raw, that is the reason.
Oh, if I had been doing my usual thing the jpegs would have no doubt came out better. My usual thing is to shoot manually, metering with my incident light meters. In fact, the next day I went out to the Greenway Trail Park and shot some snow shots that way. A couple of the jpegs had burnt out highlights, bad technique on my part, while the raw files were OK.
The problem, for those who do not know, in both cases is that what you see in the jpeg is what you get, any data that was lost was permanently gone, while with the raw files everything that was captured is still there (as long as you do not overwrite the file with an edited version). For example the default conversion burns out the highlights like on the jpeg’s, you can go in and change the settings and there are your highlights.
I have to go check at the Post Office and see if that spring has arrived. So long until next time.
Homebrew Camera Strap?
I have been experimenting a bit.
Some people have recommended the R-Strap (http://www.blackrapid.com/setup-and-tips/). So I thought I would try something similar, only less intrusive. I dislike heavy bulky straps that are always in the way. Using the lanyard from one of my light meters, that is one of those with the loop of string on the end, on the Epson C-5050z I lashed up the rig in the following photos.
With the string looped through the eyelet, and the lanyard worn bandoleer fashion it leaves the camera hanging about in the position that the R-Strap does.
It is easy to reach down and grab the camera by the grip and lift it to the eye. Of course, there is no clip to slide up and down the strap, but the lanyard is soft enough and flexible enough that it does not get in the way.
This light lanyard wouldn’t do for a heavy camera, of course, but should be fine with that one. If I remove the lens tube and sunshade, the camera with retracted lens fits nicely under a coat too.
I may make up something similar for the DSLR out of a bit heavier strap, maybe 3/8″. In the mean time, I found another lanyard laying about the apartment, this one a wrist strap for who knows what? I am using it on the DSLR as a safety strap, so I do not drop the camera. It does not even get in the way when the camera is on the tripod.
Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it works for me.
Blog or Website?
Some things I have been thinking about.
I want to start putting up more photography related stuff, but I do not know if I should add them to the Graywolf Photo Website, or put them here in the blog, or put up another blog limited to those posts. One of the things I have noticed myself doing is writing posts in forums, while ignoring my readership here. I do not think that is in my best interests. I have limited energy and if I am going to write I think I should do it here.
I feel it is OK, when I give a brief comment to someones post on a forum, but initializing and following up one articles seems counter productive. I could just as well write them here.
Blogs are easy, but web articles are now mostly a case of just cutting and pasting the formating stuff into an article written with any editing software, so it is pretty much 6 of one or a half dozen of the the other. I tend to think of the website as more permanent, and the blog more like magazine articles. So, maybe, that is the answer. If I think what I am writing about is of lasting interest put it on the website, and if it is of passing interest put it here.
I believe I mentioned that I intended to make photography once again my central interest. I have, as you know, many interests, but limited resources. I have spent a large portion of my discretionary funds on photo equipment over the past several months, and done not much with it. On the other hand, I have spent an inordinate amount of time moving snow with a broken plastic shovel (GRIN!).
So over the next few days, I will have to make a decision of which way I want to go with this.
What about that double header image? I have increase the with of the main column in this blog so I can put in slightly larger photos, but the code for the header image does not seem to resize, instead it tries to put multiple copies up. I will have to figure out the code, or shoot a new photo.
New Camera
As most of you know, I am an equipment snob. Unfortunately, my funds do not run to the stuff I like. I usually resort to old old good stuff, but this time I bought new. It was not easy coming up with the funds, but I managed to scrape together a few hundred bucks. My choices seemed to be a very used pro DSLR, or this:
Olympus e420 with kit lens
Since I am trying to get that hobby business going (Currently hung up do to weather and my back), I decided I wanting something with a warranty that I could buy locally. The Olympus was cheap ($400) it uses Compact Flash Cards (Important to me), and I thought it would use my Olympus FL-40 flash (It will not. Olympus says it will damage the camera), and it would operate similarly to my C-5050z (Partially correct). Another factor was the availability of adapters to us my Pentax lenses on it; especially the 50mm as that would be equal to a 100mm portrait lens in 35mm (The 4/3 lenses are 1/2 the focal length of 35mm lenses).
So is this going to be a digital replacement for my MX’en? Well it is actually slightly smaller.
Olympus e420 wit 14~42 Kit lens on left, Pentax MX with M100/2.8 on right
How do you like my dramatic photo? All photos with the e420 in them were taken with the C-5050z.
The C-5050z remains my carry around camera and will be backup to the e420. Since I showed the e420 and the camera ir replaces, I will show the C-5050Z and the camera it replaced.
C-5050 on left, Canonet GIII EE1.7 on right
In fact the C-5050z feels a lot more upscale in the hands than the e420, but it does not react as quickly as the e420. Right now I am far more comfortable with the C-5050z, but then I have had it for five years, and have only had the e420 for three days.
The e420 is Olympus’s bottom line DSLR, it does not even have image stabilization like the e520, but it is also the smallest and lightest DSLR on the market. I believe it has been replaced by the e450 which by all reports only has a couple of “software features” added, and is not really available yet anyway It has a 10mp 4:3 image. The kit lens is supposed to be the best of the kit lens on any of the entry level DSLR’s. Since I will be using it mostly on the tripod, the lack of IS is not a hardship
I really do not love auto features. I took a photo out of the window this morning and the camera gave me a perfectly focused image… Of the screen. It selects focus points that I do not want it to focus on. So far the exposures have all been withing the raw of adjustment in Adobe Camera Raw.
I have not used it outside much, this photo from yesterday morning shows why.
Snow Day
Yep, taken with the e420; I did compensate for the snow, but then could not see the mountains in the background, so used the uncompensated photo. We have been having a lot of this kind of weather here in Boone this winter. I pulled my back shoveling the stuff a couple weeks ago, and it has not settled down yet.
Global Warming?
This so far is the coldest, snowiest, iciest winter since I moved here to Boone North Carolina USA.
The other night it got down to 3F, and the wind chill was -11F. I do not know where all this cold is coming from, it seems to be warmer up along the Canadian boarder. It is about 18F out there right now. When I checked the forecast earilier this morning it was supposed to get warm (35F) tomorrow and drop right down again. However, I just checked and it is not predicting mid-40’s later in the week. It is real confusing. At least the sun is out today.
I had to send the radio slave back to China. It died between one shot and the next. Lasted a whole two days. The unit was a Yongnuo RF-602, they have been getting pretty good reviews. It would not work with my studio strobe. A belated email to Yongnuo got the response they were not compatable. But if it would it will give me the ability to use the Olympus FL-40 flash off camera in the field it would be worth having. What I was trying when it died was using the FL-40 to fire the Norman P-808M optically, as it syncs with the old Wein photocell slave OK.
I printed this self-portrait on 11×14 just to see how that worked.
Chairman of the Bored
The print came out a bit dark, I will have to so something about that in future prints.
Light Banding with my Continuous Ink Supply System
The inexpensive CISS on my Epson 1400 worked perfectly all spring, summer, and early fall, then I noticed light magenta and cyan banding in gray areas on my photos. Thinking I had clogged print heads, I did a nozzle check. The Nozzle check was fine. Plain paper color prints, were fine, but still I had that banding. Ran a few cleaning cycles, but that seemed to make it worse. I read web comments about similar problems others had with their CISS. No one had a solution. I started cussing the thing, like other’s I concluded that CISS were useless junk.
Then I noticed that three was ink in the air filters on the supply tanks. I removed them, took them apart, cleaned them, put them back together and reinstalled them. After I did a couple of cleaning cycles and the problem was gone. Apparently, what was happening was with the filters clogged there was not enough air flow. It seems that that caused a partial vacuum in the tanks that actually was pulling ink back from the ink cartridges. It was OK if all I was printing was a nozzle check or a draft document, but when I tried printing photos, it restricted the flow of ink to the heads.
I ordered some new filters from a guy on eBay, but before they arrived, the problem was back. The filters were clogged with ink again. Why, I wondered?
I went through the process again, only this time I lost a filter disk and the top of one of the filters down the drain. Well, I had new ones coming, and I could see that the disks were so blocked up, even after cleaning that they would restrict the air flow, so I left the filter disks out.
How was the ink getting up into the filters? I have used about half of the ink in the system the top of the ink level was half way down the tank from the filters. Then I realized that with the heat on the air in my apartment was really dry. Could it be simple evaporation? Was the ink evaporating and clogging the filters with pigment? I think so.
I did some thinking and came up with this solution:
New Ink Caps on my CISS
Those red caps are #8 Screw Protectors from the local building supply store. They fit nicely on the step at the base of the air inlet of the filters. It helped that the new filters arrived today as well. The caps ought to prevent evaporation of the ink when the printer is not in use. Of course, I will have to remember to remove them when I want to print something.
At the same time I ordered the filters (I ordered two sets so if I have to clean them again, I can just swap them out and keep printing while I did so), I ordered one of those waste ink bags from the guy in England that sells them on eBay. As soon as I get it installed, I will do several cleaning cycles. I hope this will be the last of that banding problem.
The Gods demand a Sacrifice
As you know I am trying to get setup to do more photography than I have b een doing in the past. I now have the capability of doing professional looking portraits. And, in that, things are moving a bit, I am schedule to do portraits at the local Senior Center next week. However, the car gods demanded a sacrifice last month and this month computer gods want their share. What that means is I had to spend money on the car last month, and the computer this monet (one o the hard drives went belly up.
The drive is still under warranty so I sent it into Western Digital for replacement. But, one of the connectors broke off the drive cage and I had to order a new cage, actually bought two from ebay. Because the dead drive was in a raid-5 array the computer is still working but a bit more slowly. I also need to get at least one more 500gb drive as the current 3 drive array is getting somewhat full, adding another drive will give me 1.5tb of storage v. the current 1tb.
Unfortunately, the money I am spending on the computer was earmarked to go toward buying a used DSLR, most likely a Nikon D1X although what I would like is a Kodak SLR/n. Well, maybe the new year will bring me another windfall. I need a camera with low shutter lag, that uses Compact Flash cards. Too bad Pentax never made a camera like that because I already have Pentax lenses.
CISS Printing Woes
OK, been ill, first a cold, then an ear infection. So, I have not been using the Epson Photo 1400 printer which is not a good thing with the bulk ink system (CISS). Very strangely, to me, I am only having problems with photo quality prints. Nozzle check and draft quality are OK, but photos have horizontal lines in them.
I kind of think the cyan nozzle is partially blocked. I learned a long time ago that rather than running a lot of cleaning cycles it is better to run one, then wait two theree hours for the ink to soften and run another, as that seems to work better and it certainly saves a lot of ink. That has helped byt not completely cleared the problem.
So, I thought that maybe the air filters on the ink reservoirs may be partially clogged. A google search found a lot of irrelevant stuff. An eBay search found a guy in England selling the filters. I oredered a couple of sets from him. I also ordered a waste ink bag kit from another guy in England while I was at it. Why is not one selling this stuff in the USA? I also cleaned the existing filters as well as I could. I wonder how ink got into them in the first place?
I did not have these kinds of problems to start with, and I wonder if maybe some of the solvent in the ink has not evaporated leaving the ink thicker than it should be. I have used about 1/2 the ink in the system in the 6 months I have had it. Maybe that usage is not high enough and I should have gone with refillable cartridges. However, before you say I should have used Epson ink cartridges, I have already saved about $500 on ink, so even if I have to throw out the Epson 1400 and buy another, it is still cheaper than using Epson ink.
Nothing World Shattering
Nothing world shattering to report. Got another cold that has sapped my energy. Had to spend money on the car. So, everything is pretty much at a standstill.
I did get some 3/4″ c 5/8″ nylon bushing stock and made adapters so the Norman Lamp Heads fit the 5/8″ spigots on the stands better. That was after finding that the Norman ones cost $8.95 + $9.00shh each. In case your math skill are weak that come to almost $72 for four of them. I made the first one like the Norman ones with a hole in it for the set screw, then realize the nylon was flexible enough that they did not need a hole as they just dented in enough to hold them tight.
I finally got some 11×14 Epson Photo paper. Have not printed anything on it yet. But at least I can now make prints bigger than I could on the R200 so it kind of justifies the 1400.
I also bought a rear kickstand for the Dunelt. One of those that I will install that and fixe the chaincase so it will not move, “real soon now”.
It has been raining again. It has rained about 2/3 the time for the past six weeks. It is beginning to get old.
I bought a new cardigan sweater today. My old sweaters are showing their age to the point where I do not want to wear them in public. The interesting thing is that I had to pay 25 bucks on sale for a synthetic one. The last one was about ten bucks for wool. The only store I found stocking wool sweaters was TJ Max and they were about $40. It is getting harder and harder to find decent clothing in Boone.
Well, now that I have reminded myself that I actually occasionally do something, I guess I will quit rambling and go take a couple of aspirin.