The IMAGING RESOURCE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
NEWSLETTER

Copyright 2000, The Imaging Resource. All rights reserved.

Welcome to the 13th edition of the Imaging Resource Newsletter. You may be pleased to learn it's shorter than our record-breaking 12th edition <g>.

TOPICS

• Feature: Focusing on O'Keeffe's 'Things'
• Feature: Casio QV-3000EX Enters 3-Megapixel Era
• Beginners Flash: Getting a Charge Out of Your Batteries
• Advanced Mode: Metering Modes Exposed
• Just for Fun: Spring Training for the Fleer of Foot
• Dave's Deals
• We Have Mail
• Editor's Notes
• Signoff

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• http://www.amazon.com/electronics for electronics, http://www.amazon.com/digital-cameras for digicams, or http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001X5AL for the C-200

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Feature: Focusing on O'Keeffe's 'Things'

The O'Keeffe exhibit -- Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things -- blew into town a few days ago with our regular winter storms and, craving a little exercise during a break in the weather, we hiked up the hill to the museum to take a peek.

O'Keeffe is the genius behind those large paintings of flowers and bones that seem made of nothing but abstract, stepless gradations of intense color -- without a single drawn line to guide them. She has an unmistakable style.

What struck us, though, wandering from one room to the next, was how photographic her composition is. It seems informed primarily by what was, in her day, the beachhead photography was establishing in the art world. Indeed, her husband was the Columbus of the movement, Alfred Steiglitz.

Aren't those seductive tonal gradations in her work instantly familiar to anyone who shoots in subdued available light? And those large peeks at pistils and stamen -- aren't they the stuff of macrophotography?

In fact, the calla lilies are blooming in the back yard now and we couldn't resist taking a few shots. Inspired by her sense of line, the flow of one curve into another (those lilies are as exciting as roller coasters up close), it was fun to frame them at extreme angles and see the color of the white flowers bloom iridescently (well, CCDs are famous for blooming) in the images.

Serious photography (the stuff meant to last) in her day was black and white photography, intent on tonality. Her achievement as a colorist was beyond anything that could be done with film's fleeting dyes at that time. But her extraordinary attention to composition paralleled Steiglitz's argument that qualities like tonality and composition were what made photography an art too.

And when, in the late 1950s, she herself picked up a camera it was to tackle the composition of a particularly vexing patio door she painted nearly 20 times between 1946 and 1960 and which had given her no peace until she bought the house that contained it.

The exhibit is particularly well presented by curator Elizabeth Hutton Turner who "felt that most people had not really looked at O'Keeffe. They thought they knew her, they formed their opinions ... and they're sticking with them. I felt compelled to know more about her."

That "more" puts her in the context of the Imagist movement, too. Citing William Carlos Williams' dictum "no idea but in things" (an idea itself, amusingly), it focused on things in themselves, without the need to find some higher meaning in them. What something looks like is enough cause to celebrate it, as in Williams poetic finger pointing at "a red wheel / barrow / glazed with rain / water" or Ezra Pounds' "Petals on a wet, black bough" to describe the faces in a crowd of subway commuters.

O'Keeffe spent a lifetime disavowing erotic subplots in her pictures of "things" (as opposed to her pictures of landscapes, the only distinction she drew in her work). In fact, when she said she was intrigued by the bones she found in the New Mexico desert in relation to the sky, she meant nothing other than, "Hold them up!" You may have seen some of those paintings of bones before the blue New Mexican sky. She wasn't kidding. She had the candor of a stopped-down lens.

So it's no wonder the exhibit here ends with a room full of photographs: many by Steiglitz (representing just a few of the nearly 200 he took of her over 15 years) and a nice selection of a couple dozen or so images from the Group f 64 and other early Pilgrims (who followed Columbus) of the movement to establish photography as an art. Among them Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Dorthea Lange, Alma Lavenson, Paul Strand, Roger Sturtevant, Willard Van Dyke, and Edward Weston. If you haven't made their acquaintance, you're in for some fun. Cunningham, in particular, was worth a good long segment on the Tonight Show before it relied primarily on politicians for amusement.

Fortunately you don't have to find a museum during a break in the weather to enjoy O'Keeffe.

While we are unable to recommend a Web site (point your browser to http://www.metacrawler.com/ and type in "Georgia O'Keeffe" with the "phrase" button selected to see what we mean), any librarian or bookseller can point you in her direction. She's one of our well-appreciated treasures. And who knows, just as she was inspired by the photographers making history around her, maybe she'll inspire your photography.

Return to Topics.

Feature: Casio QV-3000EX Enters 3-Megapixel Era

By DAVE ETCHELLS

(Excerpted from the full review posted at http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/Q3K/Q3KA.HTM on the Web site.)

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW

As the months and years go by, Casio has been steadily improving their digicam lineup. In our eyes, they've really come up with a winner this time in the form of the QV-3000EX.

Design-wise, they've changed some of the problems we had minor gripes with on the previous QV-2000UX, such as the catchy sliding lens cover and somewhat fragile pop-up flash. In fact, the entire camera body looks almost nothing like the QV-2000UX with a new duotone silver and black plastic body.

The QV-3000EX does remain very light weight and portable, thanks in part to its tough, all-plastic body. We're confident this digicam will be snugly tucked into a coat pocket or purse on many outings.

Control layout remains very similar to the previous Casio digicams and the same 3D menu system guides you through the camera's features. We liked the addition of the protruding hand grip on the right side and the addition of a Power/Mode Dial that flips between Record, Off and Playback modes. We were also glad to see that the placement of the tripod mount and battery compartment made it possible to change batteries while mounted to a tripod (although the location of the tripod mount directly beneath the lens was a little odd and made the camera slightly wobbly).

Overall, we were quite pleased with the new design of the body.

The QV-3000EX offers both an optical viewfinder and LCD monitor for shot composition. The optical viewfinder features center target crosshairs that help you line up shots and a dioptric adjustment dial which is always welcome for eyeglass wearers. We did find the optical viewfinder to be a little less accurate than the LCD, a common scenario with digicams.

The LCD monitor has a grid option that comes in handy as well as an information display that can be canceled and a playback zoom option for closer examination of captured images. We liked the fact that the shutter speed and f-stop appear on the monitor whenever the shutter button is halfway pressed (in all exposure modes), keeping you clued in to what the camera is doing.

We were really impressed with lens on this camera.

The QV-3000EX sports an f2.0 to f2.5, 7 to 21mm, 3x Canon zoom lens delivering very nice images that are clear and sharp. The aperture ranges from f2 to f8 and can be manually adjusted. A manual and infinity focus option give you greater flexibility with difficult to focus subjects and the macro setting does a nice job as well.

Like most of the operation on this camera, the zoom control is extremely quiet. At first we didn't think anything was happening until we saw the effect of the zoom in the display. There's also a 2x digital zoom option that can be turned on and off manually, a nice feature that keeps you from accidentally slipping into that mode.

Exposure-wise, the QV-3000EX offers most of the same options as the previous QV-2000UX model, with Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Speed Priority, Landscape, Portrait, Movie, Night Scene and Panorama modes available.

Portrait and Landscape modes fix focus and aperture to make the most of either subject. Likewise, Night Scene allows you to capture subjects with dark backgrounds and can be combined with the flash to get a slow-synchro effect. Panorama is particularly useful and painless, as the camera sets up an alignment pattern to help you line up each shot for one seamless image (up to nine images can be "stitched" together).

We were glad to see a nice amount of control with the Aperture and Shutter Speed Priority modes and we found an interesting little trick that puts you into a full manual mode: You can get to full manual mode by pressing the Set button and the left arrow button simultaneously while in Shutter Priority. This allows you to change the both the aperture and shutter speed. A similar trick extends the maximum exposure time from two to 60 seconds.

We're not sure why Casio keeps these features hidden, but we were very glad to have literally stumbled across them on the QV-2000UX and to see them retained on the QV-3000EX. Combine this full manual mode with the variable light sensitivity settings and you have a lot of flexibility, especially under dim lighting.

The QV-3000EX's flash does a really good job of evenly illuminating dark subjects and we were happy to see the return of the variable intensity level setting (Low, Normal and High). Likewise, we were also pleased with the variety of metering options, from Multi to Center to Spot. Throw the option for manual white balance and the 30 second AVI movie capability into the mix and you have an extremely versatile camera that gives you a lot of control. You can also manually adjust image sharpness, contrast and saturation. Finally, for quick shooting situations, there's a continuous shutter option (under Drive in the record menu) that fires the shutter multiple times with a single press of the shutter button, achieving a frame rate of 2.5 frames per second for a 3-frame burst.

Casio included both a standard serial and a USB cable for connection to a computer as well as an NTSC video cable (PAL for European models) for playing back and composing images on a television screen. Image storage is on CompactFlash (Type I or II) and a 340 megabyte (!) IBM MicroDrive comes with the camera.

Four AA alkaline, lithium or nickel metal-hydride rechargeable batteries power the camera and we found that they lasted a surprisingly long time in the studio (although we heartily recommend always keeping a freshly charged set of spares close by).

Overall, we were very impressed with the QV-3000EX. It's light, portable and takes nice pictures with plenty of manual control. The variety of exposure modes will definitely satisfy point-and-shoot users while the extensive manual control will keep the more advanced amateurs interested. The uncomplicated user interface also makes the QV-3000EX a viable option for the beginner wanting to learn more. We think this camera will do well, as it appeals to a wide consumer audience and produces very nice, high quality images.

SHUTTER LAG / CYCLE TIMES

The QV-3000 was average to slightly faster than average in its shutter delay, with a lag time of 0.83 seconds in full autofocus mode, 0.71 seconds in manual focus mode, and only 0.18 seconds when the focus and exposure are preset by half-pressing the shutter button prior to the exposure itself.

Cycle time was surprisingly fast for a 3 megapixel camera, apparently thanks to an internal RAM buffer: The camera could capture successive shots at intervals of 3 seconds for the first three shots, after which it would take 15-18 seconds to capture the next one.

Strangely, the cycle time for low-resolution images was actually longer, at 6 seconds between frames. Our guess is that the camera is capturing a full-resolution image and then downsampling it, rather than the more common approach of clocking out only half of the data from the CCD in the first place. While the QV-3000's approach takes longer, the result is very highly detailed and artifact-free low-resolution files.

As noted earlier, the QV-3000 also has a "continuous" mode, in which it will capture 3 frames in rapid succession when the shutter button is held down. We clocked the continuous mode frame rate at 2.5 frames per second. (0.4 seconds between exposures)

The QV-3000 is a bit slower on startup, taking about 9 seconds from power-on to the first picture captured. On shutdown, it retracts the lens in only 3 seconds, letting you put the lens cap on and slip it in your pocket. The camera remains active (a blinking green LED next to the viewfinder) for about 25 seconds though, apparently to insure that all image data is properly written to the MicroDrive. The camera switches from Record to Play mode in about 4 seconds, although the instant review function mentioned above means this time delay won't matter in most picture-taking situations. Going from Play to Record though, takes the same 9 seconds as does initial power-up, perhaps because the lens has to telescope out again. (We'd like to see the camera leave the lens out until it's actually shut off, which could reduce this mode-change time.)

CONCLUSION

Overall, we were very pleased with the QV-3000EX. It offers the best image quality we've seen yet from Casio, with a strong feature set at a very attractive price. (Particularly given the inclusion of the 340 megabyte IBM MicroDrive!)

The versatility and flexibility offered by the full manual control and the variety of options (sharpness, contrast, saturation, flash intensity, sensitivity, etc.) make it a perfect camera for either the novice or the advanced photographer who wants the best of both worlds (full auto or full manual control). The camera is light and portable, has a good user interface, and its images show the significant increase in resolution you'd expect to find when moving from two to three megapixels. (Helped along by the excellent Canon optics.) Bottom line, we expect this to be a very strong seller, popular across a wide range of digicam users.

Return to Topics.

Beginners Flash: Getting a Charge Out of Your Batteries

It's the first disappointment of every digital photographer: batteries that die before their time.

Whether it's a rechargeable lithium battery made just for your camera or manufacturer-supplied alkalines, they hardly make it through your first shoot. Particularly if everyone wants to see their picture right after you take it.

The solution for camera-specific batteries is to buy (and keep charged) a second battery. If they happen to be lithium rechargeables, that won't be cheap, but it will be easy.

The solution to the alkaline AA problem is to switch to a different kind of AA. A set of rechargeable nickel-metal hydride batteries. Which means buying a charger (preferably one that monitors the charge in the battery, so it can quickly bring the battery back to life and then reduce the charge to a safe trickle). Thomas Distributing sells a popular, low-cost package to get you started.

For our modest needs, a set for the camera and a set for backup are enough to cover most birthday parties, holidays and other events, flash or not. And two sets just about drains all the recharging patience we have.

You'll get more camera time from Ni-MH batteries, but you still may not be getting all you can.

Ni-MH batteries do not, like lithium batteries, maintain their charge sitting on the shelf. The charge gradually -- but noticeably -- dissipates. So get in the habit of charging the sets you're going to use just before you need them. Charge them as a set, together, too, so they grow old together.

No need to cut too fine a line here, but if they've been sitting a week, top them off. Some people recommend leaving a set in the charger all the time so one set is always topped off. That makes us as nervous as leaving the water on, so we just recharge while getting everything else ready for the shoot.

Unfortunately, if your camera has been idle a while, those fresh batteries may spend a good deal of their energy recharging the built-in battery (usually nickel-cadmium) that keeps your camera's clock ticking when you swap batteries. Plugging your camera into its AC adapter (plugged itself, of course, into the wall, we hasten to point out) while the batteries are charging can take care of that.

Those two habits will delay the "dead battery" warning quite a bit.

But since they both take a little premeditation, you should invest in a set of lithium AA batteries (usually about $12 for four) so you're always ready to shoot. The lithiums do not lose their charge sitting on the shelf, and while they aren't rechargeable, they do last a very long time. One set can give you emergency power for years.

Then you can enjoy the real reason for taking all that trouble: not having to worry about using the flash, or the LCD or showing your pictures right after taking them. And that's something you can get a charge out of.

Return to Topics.

Advanced Mode: Metering Modes Exposed

Once upon a time there was no such thing as a light meter. Photographers relied on tables -- those "Bright Hazy Day" settings on film boxes are their most recent descendents -- which they built from their own experience. Unfortunately their usefulness was strictly limited by location. What worked in Yellowstone, for example, was all wrong for Yosemite.

And, for the most part, today we snap away as if there were no need to meter light. Our built-in light meters are so sophisticated we take them for granted. Although it's easy to get annoyed at them for making the same mistakes, over and over. Blowing out the highlights on our flower shots, for example.

But knowing a little about your metering options can help get the shot everyone admires.

Let's take a look at three common metering modes: matrix, center-weighted and spot. Even if your digicam doesn't offer a selection, it most likely relies on matrix metering. Understanding what your camera is thinking will help you appreciate what it can and can't do with automatic exposure. Then you can tap other features, like EV compensation (which we discussed in a previous Advanced Mode), to get the exposure you want.

Because the meter is inside the camera, it is measuring light reflected from the subject (rather than the strength of the light falling on it; before the bounce, so to speak). Your black fedora's deepest black may reflect only 3 percent of the light falling on it while parts of our white carnation may reflect 90 percent.

Your meter in matrix mode reads everything it sees, dividing the frame into sections whose values it averages to calculate the right exposure settings for the scene. How it averages them depends on top secret algorithms (how much weight to give each section's value, for example) each manufacturer has developed. But it averages them. Which usually does the trick but once in a while can be a problem.

The problem is that the meter will give the same reading for our high contrast scene as it will for a boring portrait (or landscape) of an 18 percent gray card (which, geometrically speaking, is actually midway between black and white). Same exposure? Well, maybe not. What works fine for gray may turn our carnation into a white blob in one corner and your fedora into a black blob in the other, both out of range.

What can you do if you're more interesting in seeing the feather in the black fedora than some faded boutonniere? Or you're more interested in that captivating carnation than some dusty old hat?

Don't you wish your camera was smart enough to discard the readings from the part of the scene you are not exposing for? Well, it is. Just change metering modes.

If your scene composition puts the subject in the middle of the frame (the fedora, the carnation), use your camera's center-weighted metering mode. Values along the edges don't count as much in the averaging calculation as those in the center. The bright window in the background can mislead your meter in matrix mode, but it can handle it in center-weighted mode.

But if your picture has a fedora in one corner and the prize winning carnation in the other, center-weighted won't help. You'll want to spot meter the main subject. You can point the camera at the spot you want to expose for middle gray, hold down the shutter button half-way to lock in the exposure, and recompose your image before tripping the shutter. Careful, though, this mode can expose your scene with very high contrast.

You can, with LCD monitoring, often see this process in action (but finger off the shutter, please). As you zoom in or out of a scene or pan across it (particularly when spot metering), the LCD's brightness often compensates as more or less dark or light areas are read and averaged by the meter. You'll notice more or less detail or texture depending on what you meter. The LCD isn't detailed enough to tell the whole story (which is why it's so hard to use for focusing) but it illustrates the principle in real time. And that can be very helpful as you learn to appreciate your metering options.

It's important to realize, as you get more specific about which tones in the scene you are reading, that the meter is calculating how to set the camera to record those tones as middle gray. Your whites get darker and your blacks get lighter, giving you a very dull carnation and a very flat fedora if you meter objects at such extremes. Although spot metering your palm (which reflects about one f stop more than middle gray) may turn out just right in tough to read situations.

For those extremes, adjust the automatic exposure setting based on that meter reading using EV compensation. You will then have placed the most important tonal values you want to record in the recordable range of your CCD.

Then you can tell your amazed friends you did it all from carefully constructed tables and long hours of experience in bright hazy sun. Without a fedora.

Return to Topics.

Just for Fun: Spring Training for the Fleer of Foot

Whether you call it spring training or practice, it's baseball season again. The crack or dink of the bat, the smell of the grass or melting turf, it's all promises or memories depending on your knees. You can't avoid it.

But as a photographer, you can enjoy it.

Step one is to get some close-ups of your slugger in action (we'll assume they are still under contract to you).

Game action is nearly impossible to capture -- digitally or otherwise.

You may be lucky enough to anticipate the swing, or where the ball is going, or whether or not it's fielded or the throw accurate, but it will be luck. Your camera's lag time will see to it if your reflexes don't.

And even with a zoom lens, you are not going to get as close to the action as you'd like from the safety of the stands.

Nope, this calls for true artifice. Pose the kids. That game-day scowl as they stare down the opposing but imaginary pitcher. The follow-through of a swing that doesn't have to make contact to impress. Or the high leg-kick of a full-windup (which has it's own amusing follow-through). The old batter-batter, glove sweeping the infield crouch isn't too shabby either. But get the face in there. Close up. Closer.

But wait, we aren't done yet. We're making baseball cards.

All you really need is your favorite shot of your all-star in action with an easily constructed border (thick, in a team color) and a little type (something bold in the contrasting team color). Which you can easily put together in a few innings using your favorite image editing (or page layout) program. Drop by Fleer at http://www.fleerskybox.com/ or Topps at http://www.topps.com/ for a little inspiration, if you get stuck.

Print them out on card stock (check your printer manual for the heaviest paper it can handle first) and trim them out with a sharp implement like week-old ballpark franks. Just kidding. Officially, they should end up 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches. Or they lose trade value.

If you have so much fun you end up doing the whole team, don't blame us. Next year, who knows, you could get the contract for the league.

Return to Topics.

Dave's Deals

Trial downloads of the (excellent) PhotoGenetics imaging program are still available. If you decide to purchase PhotoGenetics, be sure to come back through this URL (http://www.q-res.com/php3/downloads.php3?refid=imgresource) to receive the special $5-off deal for Imaging Resource readers!

Scansoft, creators of TextBridge Pro OCR, recently acquired the Kai line and decided to combine PhotoSoap2, SuperGoo, and PowerShow into a new product called PhotoFactory. They're offering the three-in-one package for $29.95 -- a savings of almost $50 -- at http://www.digitalriver.com/aladdin/scansoft/22617/ for both Macintosh and Windows platforms.

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We Have Mail

You can email us at [email protected].

RE: Creativity vs. Enlarging

First off, thanks again for all the work that obviously goes into your newsletter. I continue to be amazed that it is both useful =and= free (to us readers).

In v2n4, in the section entitled "Advanced Mode: Image Editing in Order," you describe reshaping/cropping and then (shudder) enlarging. One of the advantages of traditional film photography has been the ability to do reasonable cropping and then enlarge back to a standard size (i.e., you had a negative that would be printed to 4x5, you cropped maybe 30 percent off to better focus on the subject, and you enlarged back to 4x5).

But your warning on enlargement is pretty severe. ("Except under extreme duress, avoid enlarging your digital images.") So, how does one (especially a novice) reconcile the desire to be creative (or recover somewhat from composition errors) with the admonition not to enlarge? And -- perhaps vitally important -- is this partly a function of camera/image pixel density? Is the issue different if you are using something like my Olympus C2000 in 1600x1200 mode vs. a lower-end camera at 800x600?

(See, if you didn't write such thought-provoking articles, you wouldn't get such inquisitive mail! <smile>)

-- Clayton Curtis MD PhD

(Thanks for the inquisitive mail! It brought a grin (when we didn't see a DDS there).

When we were all suffering with 35mm negatives and 4x5 inch prints, enlargement was the name of the game. And cropping to fit a 5x7 or 8x10 sheet of paper was part of the fun. I remember it well, but not fondly.

The missing variable in the digital scenario is your output device's resolution. A dye sub printer requiring 203 dpi will print a pretty small 480x640 pixel shot (2x3 inches, in fact, but they make nice kitchen refrigerator magnets). But that same image will print much bigger on an inkjet printer which may only need 72 dpi. Without enlargement.

By which we mean changing (upward) the number of pixels in your image. Which you can do, but is rarely worth the time because it adds no information (or detail) to your image.

So, how to reconcile creativity with enlargement? False issue: be creative. Want a bigger print? The trick is to stand back (really: take a look in the Index of Articles on the Web site for our treatise on how large you can print). -- Editor)

RE: Reloading CompactFlash with Edited Images

After I edit my images, I reload them onto my camera's CompactFlash disk. Then I put the CompactFlash into the camera, but all I get is a message "no photos on disk," which is not true, as they are there. I can check it out on the computer and load them into any photo edit program with no problem.

Do most cameras have the capability to read the CompactFlash after it has been edited? HP said no for theirs.

-- Muriel

(Most cameras have very limited internal processing power (relative to your computer), and so are very particular about what sort of JPEG files they can interpret. There are about a zillion different parameters that can be set when a JPEG file is created, all sorts of deep technical stuff like chroma sub-sampling ratios, etc. The cameras only understand JPEGs with a very limited range of these settings, and any modification of the files by an imaging program frequently renders then unrecognizable by the camera. (Even just opening and re-saving, without making any changes.)

In some instances, saving the photo from the imaging program using a significantly lower quality setting (higher compression ratio) will create a file the camera can digest. To see if this might work, try saving an image from whatever imaging program you're using with the lowest quality (highest compression) setting available, and see if the camera recognizes that. If it does, try inching up the quality setting to see where the camera starts to get indigestion.

Hope this helps, good luck! -- Dave)

RE: Digitizing 35mm Slides onto CD

I recently found some old slides and wanted to share with the rest of my family. I felt the best way would be to find a way to digitize. I knew the labs were providing Photo CDs for newly developed film, but did not know if they were able to produce good repros of framed slides. I tried through a Photo-Art store after calling several processing places. Most said that process was not available. The Photo-Art store sent the slides to Kodalux. The result was wonderful. Forty year old slides I can do with as I like.

Have you done any reviews of discussed this aspect of imaging before? If you have, I would appreciate knowing how to obtain comparisons done within the last 12 months. I have friends that want to do the same as I did, but would like to price shop among comparable services.

BTW, they charged $1.19 per slide. Turnaround time was 5 days for 92 slides. They did a great job. Prices quoted while I was looking ranged from $.75 to over $2. I did not keep my notes I took during my search. Most did not seem interested. All had minimum numbers of slides they would take, between $15 & $20, which I think is OK. I tried looking for a slide scanner to rent, no joy. I thought about buying a scanner until I saw some of the prices. I even thought about making an investment in a home business scanning slides etc. I asked the Photo-Art store manager about how many requests he was getting for this type service. His response was vague, but interesting. He said he did not get many requests but they were picking up???

-- Ken Gray

(Very interesting. You had a PhotoCD made by Kodalux. We almost always had PhotoCDs made of our film when we had it processed until it became harder and harder to find a lab that would do it. Commercial labs found it impossible to make a profit on the process (it requires manual scanning) and Kodak's support ran hot and cold. As far as we know, the process is still available (particularly for Pro scans) but not easily found. -- Editor)

Return to Topics.

Editor's Notes

Ofoto, Inc. at www.ofoto.com will be giving away a digital camera each day to Ofoto members throughout the month of March. Every day of the sweepstakes, one winner will receive a Nikon Coolpix 800 digital camera, an approximate retail value of $599. The sweepstakes is available to anyone who signs up for the Ofoto service in March, as well as current members who click on the sweepstakes entry button at sign in.

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Cabela's and DuPont Thermolite Insulation have created a new Web site, http://www.cabelasiditarod.com devoted to the Iditarod 2000 International Sled Dog Race. The site will feature race updates twice a day via satellite phone, laptop computer and digital camera, from former 1989 Iditarod champion, Joe Runyan. The site also hosts a wealth of information including biographies of the mushers, race history, trail maps, sled dog details, weather updates and Cabela's(r) Iditarod gear worn and tested by Jeff King and insulated with DuPont Thermolite(r) Micro. Mush on over.

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Caere Corp. has announced a new family of ImageAXS media asset management software for Windows and Macintosh platforms. The lineup includes new and updated versions of ImageAXS, ImageAXS Professional, and ImageAXS CD Authoring Kit. Managing digital photographs, MP3s, videos, movie clips, graphics and other digital media, the new ImageAXS products control the flood of multimedia files, turning chaos into order.

ImageAXS media asset management software enables users to create a visual catalog and then organize, browse, find, use and share digital media, including audio, video and image files. ImageAXS 4.1 and ImageAXS Professional 4.1 provide the most powerful database and unique sharing capabilities of any media asset management application. Caere's new ImageAXS CD Authoring Kit takes sharing collections to another level, enabling users to publish a searchable visual multimedia database on CD and distribute an unlimited number of CDs with a read-only version of ImageAXS license and royalty-free.

ImageAXS 4.1, ImageAXS Professional 4.1, and ImageAXS CD Authoring Kit are priced at $49.95, $199.95 and $499.95, respectively. A free full-featured 30-day trial of ImageAXS 4.1 and ImageAXS Professional 4.1 can be downloaded from Caere's Web site at www.caere.com. ImageAXS and ImageAXS Professional are available now through mail order catalogs, most e-commerce resellers, or by calling Caere at (800) 535-7226. ImageAXS can also be purchased through major software resellers. ImageAXS CD Authoring Kit can be ordered directly from Caere at (800) 654-1187.

ImageAXS and ImageAXS Professional for Windows require a minimum Pentium processor running Microsoft Windows 95, 98 or NT 4.0, 16 MB RAM (32 recommended), 20 MB hard disk space, 16-bit color or better, and a CD-ROM drive.

ImageAXS and ImageAXS Professional for Macintosh require a System 7.5 or later, 68030 or better processor (Power Mac recommended), 16 MB available RAM (32 recommended), 20 MB hard disk space, 256 colors (thousands or millions recommended), and a CD-ROM drive.

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Mike Pasini, Editor [email protected]

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