Sutton Warrior

So what the new lense Westie? SW

Thanks Steve, I have DL'ed the windows RAW viewer, not sure yet if it suports D80? See tomorrow? Printed off the Adobe page, give that a read as well. SW

Curently totaly confused, frustrated a and generaly going around in circles. Lots of help is being offered which is appreciated, in shooting RAW or not, the computer is crashing regularly in the middle of a work programs, just to ad to my problems, and the cod fishing of Felixstowe is dyer to say the least . . . the only good thing is when the cod finish gourging themselves on the sprat bonanza they are curently indulging in, they will weigh more when they are cought So been out to day, essentialy a wast of diesel? Perhaps not, I took the D80 half expecting the poor day, thinking I might make a few pictures. The day turned into a 40 photo session, inbetween skippering my boat and driving to and from the marina. Superb light, I thought, and from the 40 shots, I have picked this set of 5, there are a few more but I want to keep these perhaps for the curent competition entry? With the problems I am experiencing with RAW, my brain and the computer, I have gon back to JPG, with the thought that at least I can cope with the processing. Creep up on RAW from behind in the future These are purly my selection, if you dont like them, thats fine, say so, with constructive coments would be apreciated. Cant please all the people all the time . . . I had a great day with the camera If not so good with the fishing SW PS, fair bit of my usual croping, but very light on the PhotoShoping, most of the colouring is essentialy out of cameras, with minimal adjustment, as I say, it was a great day!

Thats great Newt, thanks, 6.30am, just off out on my boat for a days winter coding, weather window of a few hours, fill my boots Computer 'blue screen crash' after 15 mins switched on! seems to be a pater bevloping, this early crash hapens regular, 'caused by devise or driver' . . . nothing switched on only the base computer? Saved the report, will be able to look more closley later. Regards, Cliff

Hi Colin, Windows Explorer cant deal with RAW, but Elements Organiser makes an admirable job of thumb nails for both RAW and JPG, side by side, it will deal with one or other or both together, I just cant work out how to get the Elements Organiser to create named folder. In fact in my simple way, I can see the potential in Elements 7 organiser, I just can seem to access it in any logical way, very frustating, cos I have seen rieviewers getting very excited about the new Organiser? SW

Newt In adition to the above. You asked for the problem desription???? whew I have one her in front of me that I printed out: Problem caused by USB driver Received message, because the USB driver has caused a 'Blue Screen' error. Error caused computer to shut down abruptly to protect itself from loss or corruption. 1 Adjust computer power settings 2 Checkfor a system BIOS update for your computer 3 Download and install latest updates and drivers for computer 4 Try removing newly added USB devices 5 Do not disconect USB devises while computer isshutting down or going to sleep --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Has a similar warning with to the above with referance to RAW, but I did not print out and If my life depended on it, my memory affected by dyslexia will not recall what it said. All I can say it was in a similar vein? Sorry its a bit vauge The other one I get is: 'the computer has encounterd a problem and will shut down in 30 seconds' Sorry for the disjointed nature of the infomation Newt. Cliff

OK Newt, I can be a bit thick it would appear, but you may have seen in previous post, I am dyslexic, you have seen my spelling So, it can take me a bit of time to get things the way I need, to understand whats being asked of me, sorry about that. However I think I'v got two out of three, thats not bad for me! Simple one first, Windows opening pictures or not in the case of RAW. Its 'Windows Explorer' I use to to open the SD card from the card reader, and then I transfer them on block (the ones I want to keep) to a folder on my desk top simplistic filing system, then extract the pics as I need then from the files into Elements, then back again after I have finished with them. Hope that makes sence. Now onto the Computer crashing, I would love to keep what I have got, because of my dyslexia, change for me is a 'nightmare', plus the financial cost, not good at the moment, for anyone? and my update from 512mg to 2Gb of RAM has put enough zip in my computer to satify me . . . when its not crashing, plus the new ex HD more than enough storage. Well Newt, I dont think I am doing this right but this is what I have so far, I have saved the events you have asked for but have no idea how to get to the 'clip board' to extract them never use 'clip board' cos I dont know how, I said I get blocks some times? Perhaps you see a picture building, I'm pushing myself all the time, cos I dont understan in a normal way, so its often a sideways go, and they dont always work out. I have copied what I saved into a 'folder' of the Belanc report but, it looks short on detail to me? Where do we go from here? I look foward to your answer, which I canot deal with now untill Sunday. Its 12.11 Saturday morning, I need my bed and I'm out early all day tomorrow. See what I'm like when I come in at about 5pm, but I suspect I will be bushed! Again, thanks for your help mate, reagards Cliff -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The license associated with the Belarc Advisor product allows for free personal use only. Use on multiple computers in a corporate, educational, military or government installation is prohibited. See the license agreement for details. The information on this page was created locally on your computer by the Belarc Advisor. Your computer profile was not sent to a web server. 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The 'why' Newt? Simple realy, I like fishing photos together, boat type pics together, family pics . . . not many of those! so friends and family. Then there are the spacifics, pics taken by Hazel, a photo session 'a day in Colchester' etc. Generalised headings, but it helps me when I'm rumaging. I get around it at the present, by creating a folder on my desk top, gets a bit clutterd with folders but in the days of JPG only, that was easy enough to deal with. Now I have RAW (will have) Windows cant deal with RAW files so, I have to use it appears, the capable 'Elements 7', organiser . . . but cant see how to get into it to organise. I'm fairly sure once I get the 'key' I will probably be able to display titled 'E7' type folders on my desk top or something, a coupe of clicks and I can open a folder. Although it will certainly be using 'Elements 7' running in the back ground not Windows. And then there is the 'frustation' Newt? This has all driven me, despite the upgrades, virus and cookie cleaning and a 500Gb external HD, to be on the brink of parting with a fair bit of the hard earned!!! Cos it still 'Blue screen crashes' occasionaly, I believe this may be a fault of long strnding that I ignored because it only happened occasionaly, twice a day is too often now! To day I had '2 serious error' messages and one 'Windows is closing down because of a problem encounterd'. I think I might be pushing 6 year old technology a little to hard, it in return is pushing a '62 year old' to destraction . . . enough is enough SW

Had another dip into 'Elements 7' organising section. Still strugling to work out how to creat a folder of any sort other than the general folder that the program is putting pictures in at present? However, the way it presents pictures is stagering, RAW/JPG all on the same thumbnail page, details of pic. convert to a Tiff file and do auto processing and present as a Tiff/JPG, full screen side by side comparison of the same picture in different file formats. I suspect I'm only scratching the surface in my clumsy way. Thats besides the open and do the processing youself. The only problem, I can see, it can become adictive . . . and time consuming I dont want Hazel to become a PhotoShop Widow. Its enough, that she puts up with me disapearing off on the boat for a days fishing. SW

Due to a bit of a disaster this morning with my fishing trip . . . that was'nt! As I had my D80 with me, I thought I'd take a few 'RAW/JPG Normal' pics for comparison, weather not exactly conducive, but I wanted to try my toe a little further into the mysteries of the medium. Click, click, click, a dozen duplicated shots RAW and JPG, Elements 7 opens them in its browser/organizer together for comparison. Problem now, strugling to know where or how to organize them, under what headings . . . I know that sounds a bit thick, but I'm not very good at this sorrt of oganization, you should see my filling cabinet and my shed shelves, tidy but no organiastion in groups or type . . . Plus, because I lack logical oganisation skills, I dont know where to go from here, mental block time??? However, from what I've seen of the comparison pictures so far, I'm pritty convinced of the detail retained. Need to work out what and how to do the organisation. Funny this, I sorted the problems of the RAW operatin program wise, now its the 'more simlple' organisation I am finding hard to get my head round??? Any sugestion that might help? SW

Yep I was up for it, literaly 'up' and locking out by 6.40 . . . '5-6mph my foot', twice that + a bit I recon!!!. I thought the sea would fine off with the tide turn, non of it, finaly gave it best, and turned at 8.30am, heading for the marina. Could have found some shelter closer in for a couple of hours 'dangling' but I did not fancy winkling small 2 pounders out of the in shore sprat soup. I am also still being affected by a stomach problem that I thought had cleared? All in all, the day started with good intentions and ended as a 'put it down to experiance' semi disaster, should have stayed in bed with N-NE in the forcast, heart rulling the head? Not to be put down, keeping an eye on Saturday, 2-5 mph? I went over some ground on the trip that is worth a look? if the sounder was anything to go by, light on sprat, heavy on individual red echos! thats decent size cod on my digital sounder this time of year. The weather will always have the last word, SW

Mmm . . . who knows, the forcast says N or NNE 5-6mph . . . is it worth it? Roll on summer, simple in the river after the bass with tooth picks! and if you dont catch who cares, its warm, calm and time to pic-nic! And then again I have a few ideas about the big bass, and you dont have to go 35 miles either . . . But for now, its 6.30am, deep water or nothing . . . SW

I traded all my film cameras and lenses when I changed to Digital 4 or 5 years ago. I actualy came out with money in my pocket after the trade. That was a very early Nikon D100 appropriate lenses etc. On reflection, do I wish I had kept one film camera . . . . not on your life. The practicality of digital has revolutionised photography, not necicerily for the good, every one with a camera phone and up thinks they are Sir David Baily. However the reality is, I look at my photos a lot more now, in the computer albums and folders, have the oportunity of sharing them with a few key strikes and can play to my hearts content with colours and moods. There are online competitions that are good fun, and give a reason to be out shooting pictures. And the desire to upgrade . . . o'dear, thats one to be kept strictly under controll, a D90, I want a D90 essentialy a D300 with out the pro metal body, and minus the neck crunching weight of the metal body as well . . . . £1, £2, £3 . . . slowly saving SW

Thanks guys, very much what I expected to hear, but as I'm no expert, the confirmation is much appreciated. I have considered all the +&-'es, speed in my terms is anything faster than the old 512RAM set up. Looking at the system spec., it should keep up a reasonable 'rate for me', I dont live on the keyboard, so the fastest, fanciest 'wiz-bang', with the most gizmose is of little interest to me, infact, it would be unapreciated and wasted on me I think. I'd rather have a new D90 camera body or a decent lens to fit the existing D80 Mmm the D90 is essentialy a D300 with out the Pro metal body, so say the media reviews . . . drool . . . pant . . . Apparently, so the 'computer geek' behind the counter in Maplins told me, the 'Maxtor' 500Gb external HD will copy the contents of my entire curent hard drive, including the operating system and its set up, with the option of transfering it to a new computer when I eventualy make the move, sooner or later . . . Which is the whole idea, 'a safty net' cos I know I'm saling close to the wind! with an enforced change, next week, next year . . . SW

Thats tough Elton . . . I'm out tomorrow in my boat on my own!!! SW

OK, I have been looking at upgrading my 'Puter'. Gona cost £350-£400, reason, I want to get into RAW files, and the present unit is a 6 year old, Pentium 4, 512RAM. It threw wobblies when I put the soft ware on for RAW . . . so I upgraded RAM to 2GB, this sorted the instability out, but we still suffered a 'Blue Screen' crash a couple of times in a days use. Frustrating, to the point of checking out 'what, how much and when' for a new one. However, as the weather has been a bit off for fishing . . . or photography, I have had many hours (10 days holiday) to sit a stere at the screen, go through the why's and wherefores of what I was proposing and what was happening. You will have seen referances to this frustration in other threads. Finaly had one last ditch at sorting the old girl out, I dont like change, or things beating me when I suspect there is an underlying problem I have not identified. I found a freebe virus/spy program I dont use much, ran it, it found, cookies, viruses and spies in quatity, cookies were few as I had cleaned the HD recently. Cleaned the lot off the HD, made running web sites a problem for a while but all is well now . . . and I have run the RAM assoiated programs, on the computer for hours now, perfectly! I know a modern computer will run so much faster, but the old one is fair tramping along by my standards, after the RAM upgrade and virus/cookie clean up. I know, 300-400 quid, whats the problem . . . as I say I dont like change, re setting things, re registering with Virgin my broad band provider I find daunting, and if I can hang onto most of my cash for another year or two, in the present financial climate, why not. The problem boils down to the 80Gb HD in the old computer, wont store much in the way of RAW fils. Maplin are offering a 'Toshiba, 500Gb external HD' for £65, seems a decent price to extend the usefulness of my old girl, similar offer on a 'Maxtron One Touch 500Gb HD'. Question one; both say they work from a USB2 port, not sure if my computer is 'USB' or 'USB2', will one work from the other, pluged in verious modern card readers, 'printers HPC5180' and the like with no problems, I have a spare USB ports avaliable. Question two; any views on external hard drives? spacificaly Toshiba or Maxtron? The idea is that I have a back stop, if the old computer 'pops its Pentium' in a few months, I still have the external HD to plug into the replacement, so no wast of money Sorry for the long shaggy dog story but it seems a strange way to go about things untill it is understood, I supose I'm getting tight as I see the worl collapsing around my ears? Thanks for your patience, I look forward to you help in answering my questions, SW

I would agree with you Newt, its the middle ground I find interesting. Set the camera to RAW/JPEG and you have the best of both worlds. Any one give me an idea how many RAW/JPEG pics can be stored on . . . 100Gb of hard drive . . . ? to many '0' for me to get my head around it I'm just about to order a new computer, built to order, it come with 160Gb HD, I suspect I need a bit more, so now is the time to up the anti! So how may images to 100Gb, the camera (Nikon D80) tells me it will store 109 images @ 'RAW+JPEG Fine' and 130 images @ 'RAW+JPEG Normal' on a 2Gb SD card. So relating that to 100Gb's worth of HD, 5,450 and 6,500 duplicate images respectivly. Dump a lot cos they are 'poor photos'. Thats strikes me as a lot of storage if the maths are that simple? Next question, I normaly shoot in 'Fine JPEG' at 3,872x2,592 pixels, Normal JPEG is 2896x1944 pixels. The way I understand it, the final print size changes, but dots (300) per inch remains constant 'in the camera'. Therefore, it makes no sence to shoot in more than 'Normal size' as the print size would be, Quote: "printed at 200dpi = 14.48x9.72 inches" Thats bigger than an A4 sheet of paper. So, RAW/JPEG or just JPEG, the 'Normal' setting is the one to go for, unless Im getting this all a bit screwed? . . . SW PS Edit! did you spot deliberate mistake,

Hay Snatcher, you convinced about 'RAW' yet . . . SW

My daughter phoned me this afternoon to wish me and Hazel a happy Christmas . . . anounced she was officialy engaged today to here long term partner, Matt, and that she was 7 weeks pregnant . . . Well despite tha fact that my computer has been giving me grief this week, and I'v been getting frustrated with RAW programs etc. I'm putting Christmas 2008 down as a good'n . . . what with Hazel making fantastick strides on the recovery stakes as well, all I need is another good session out with the camera, a double figure cod on board when I go out on the boat during this holiday period. I will go back to work with a smile on my face on the 5th of Jan. SW

Colin, You have a PM. SW

I tell you what Steve, if Snatcher is not sold by now . . . dumping 6mb of infomation befor you start gets to the point of a 'no brainer' I'm taking the advise of shooting RAW/JPEG for the present, untill I get into the swing of things. SW

Hi Newt, I'm slowly getting to grips with RAW, as Steve says, there is an unjustified mystery. One wonders, if this has been deliberatly perpitrated?? Although, the camera manufacturers could have done us all a favour with a universal standard . . . is 'Tiff' that standard?? I see the reason for JPEG, for me JPEG has served a perpose, however I can see the need to move on. Its not essentiasl, but as one has the facility, and now, slowly, a better understanding, its 'onwards and upwards'. SW

Steve, The above puts a very simple slant in my mind to 'RAW'. Elements v. 7 opens RAW files in a very similar way to your description of how PhotoShop does it. I presume, the converted JPEG file then becomes a 'lossie file', but you still have a virgin RAW file in the original folder? Makes the need for shooting RAW/JPEG a bit pointless, although I think its 'belt and braces' untill one is confident of the 'method', finaly ditching JPEG at the camera stage. Thanks for a very easy on the brain explination Steve, I would think Snatcher could be convinced by that SW

Quote: 'Snatcher': Hi SW,been thinking about the RAW option for a while but not tested the water yet! Scared in case I open a can of worms or is it a case of old horse/new tricks?? Go on tell me the benefits and talk me into it Dont know about talking you into it Snatcher? But RAW does look like an interesting option, its very early day for me, with a lot of frustration, which is contiuing to cause grief! The big factor that swung me was, Steve Randles drawing my attention to the fact that RAW as a comercial option can make or break a photo sale. You know, post a print on the net, someone sees it, "that will go nice in the XXXXX artical or on the cover of XXXX". Whats on the screen and what is in the 'original file' if its JAPG can let you down. Its a bit of a lottery, may never hapen, I had one bought a few years back, a picture of a boat at full power. In those days I had a Nikon D100, the picture was a 6mp JPEG file I got £250. The first thing was a lack of RAM in the computer, the computer is 5-6 years old. New computer or upgrade the RAM, £50 or £500?? Went for £50, still not 100% happy, with the performance, it was a gamble that I may have lost? At 6 years the computer realy is living on borrowed time anyway. Then there is the issue of a program to run RAW. I use PhotoShop Elements v4, realy need versions 5-6 or 7 with apropiate plugins. But Elements 5 crashed the venerable computer, however with the 2BG upgrade of mermory, I am able to run v7 and down load the free plugins from Adobe. Elements versionn 7 is less than £30 inc pp from Amazon. Thats the hardware sorted, nearly, I'm still debating on, chasing the old a little more or 'New broom' and take advantage of some deals that will obviously be out ther after Christmas??? The software, thats something again. First, do we want to worry about the extra work required to 'develop' a RAW file and then convet it to JPEG? Is the RAW picture genuinly better than a JPEG picture, if you only view on a computer, its debatable? For me if I could not shoot RAW-JPEG as one shot, the camera storing two pictures, I think I would get very tiered of remembering to switch each time I wanted the two files. I have JPEG processing down to a 'T', learning a new system is a headach. For me it will be a slow process, however if some one does 'spot my work', I will have Virgin RAW files they can buy, because of the facility on my camera to shoot RAW-JPEG at the same time. As my computer is old, I am driven by the fact that it realy does need some sort of reberth or laying to rest and renewing So I'm making the best of what is avaliable, hedging my bets. It wil be satisfying eventualy to have RAW pictures on show, but it is not number one on my priority list, £400-£500 will buy a nice 10-20 lens? Good and bad points there Snatcher, long term, it looks like fun, I wish I had that Sunrise-Sunset session as RAW files, I would have enjoyed playing with them. Which says it all, get out there and take some good pictures, never mind if they are RAW or JPEG. If I only had one option, I would choose JPEG, cos I'm not comercialy minded, processing is quick and the programs are simple, the way I use Elements is any way, and 95% of my work will always be viewed on a computer. RAW files are said to have better colour coverage and saturation, highlights dont burn out, and of course RAW files are loss less, a JPEG file does lose infomation every time it is 'saved', although, I cant say I have noticed it Others will have much more to add on the technical side, but thats my feelings so far, 'onward and upward' SW

Quite honestly Snatcher, the 18-200 is a great lense, if your 'Auz' pics are anything to go by, I use my Nikon 18-200 99% of the time, I do have a Sigma 70-300APO, but thats recently new, and I expect to be using it on my tripod more in the summer. You have seen the 'Surise-Sunset' photos I posted, they are all with the 18-200VR, I made a lot of use of the 'Vibration Reduction Facility' in that session, as well as the wide angle and zoom facility. At present I'm happy enough, and financialy, I will wait for a 10-20mm type wide angle to jump up and bite me, quite likley in the forth coming money climit? In the meantime, enjoy what we have!!! RAW, Talk you into it?? far from expert, but I have learned a bit? Ill put a new thread up, generate a bit of interest SW