I am sitting here with meds slowly kicking in to knock down wisdom teeth pain, and I have been researching printers, and I think I found a winner, the R2400 from Epson was highly suggested, however it’s nearly $900 - and while I “could” afford it if I really really really needed to, I kept looking today at CompUSA and found the i9900 from Canon, big print sizes (up to 13×19 full bleed (aka borderless prints) and its $499, but has a $100 rebate, so $399 all things said and done.
Needless to say I am of course though still looking around, trying to find the pro’s and con’s people may know about the printer, if you have any information about this printer either good or bad, please post a comment but it’d be nice for doing prints, and working on some various goodies for a crazy project I have in mind for a friend (not gonna name them here, wouldn’t want them to know my secret evil plans! muwhaha!)
Don’t tell Jake, I am on the buying path again… I am just looking at printing options, while I have a great LaserJet 1000 which has served me well for years now (like 3 going on 4) it’s not Mac compatible, I do have a HP PCS1200 at the office, which I “could” bring home, I know it’s mac friendly, just not if it’s Intel Mac friendly - plus it’s no where near the resolution I want for photo printing I have been hoping for - I have been suggested some of the high-end Epson inkjet printers, but honestly inkjet of any caliber kind of scares me - so I am honestly looking at Color Laser - not as expensive as it was a few years ago, plus it’d let me have some color printing ability in some of the things I am working on for business related things.
So anyone have any ideas on printers? Anything you’d suggest for printing photos? Plus the ability to do quality black prints for letters/billing?
I have been playing around with various apps that are now “Universal” in other words built to work on the PPC mac’s (G3/G4/G5) as well as Intel based mac’s and while it doesn’t “feel” universal and I couldn’t find anywhere that said it was or wasn’t I grabbed the Lightroom Beta from Adobe - must say very happy with the results in dealing with Digital Negatives:
The left is the original “as taken by the camera” so what my settings at the time for color balance, white balance, etc. all my settings on the camera applied - the second is from the digital negative I took along with the original shot (Camera will Take Negative + JPG) - negatives are just like what’d you would have in a standard camera, raw image data, everything through the lens no processing of any kind - it does record the settings I took the picture at, so upon first viewing in Lightroom - looked just like the left, then after 3 clicks, it looked like the right - much cleaner, better white balance and saturation of some colors came out a lot better.
Very impressed to say the least, a nice way to wind down the morning/evening - whatever this time is Man I love it when my sleep schedule is upside down and backwards - but for a larger view of the difference see my flickr for the full deal. Okay - this time for sure, sleep…. I hope.
Well things are progressing well, need to find my USB cables for the CF/SD card reader, so I can get my e-500 photos & A510 photos in quicker, I am currently uploading using the Flickr Uploader - which I missed, just the iBook was running out of space and the E-500 default shots average 5MB and 11+ for the digital negatives, but for now it’s working.
Must say though I really do enjoy Frontrow, really it’s cheezy, but it is nice, I do want to intergrate a TV tuner on this so I can get some love from the large screen and use it as a TV as well, granted a 20inch TV is small in some regards, but larger than nothing! So very happy - I have been having fun with Photobooth… Brace yourself:
Yeah - I’m definately having fun, some early AM work starts in about an hour though, have to start writing a email or two, as my weekend is offically over, but at this rate too my body will be ready to crash in about an hour, so emails may wait till the morning - but it’s going good - if you want to see some random photos taken today here are two sets to view, one outdoors, and one unpacking the iMac - enjoy em! Night!
Well I had been toying with the idea of a MacBook, the MacBook Pro would of been nice too - but then I got to thinking, it’d be nice to have a desktop mac for once, granted the Mac is great on the road, but I wanted a powerhouse on the desk, with the midi keyboard, so I could make music, work on a project I started DVD wise like a year ago, and various other tech type things.
So without further waiting, the new iMac 20inch 2ghz Core Duo is now on my desk (and I am using it to type this) - very excited alone about the Garage band potental, the Audio/Video on this are awesome, so crisp, definately plan to get bigger speakers though for the audio end of things, but so far so good - getting my 17GB iBook profile I backed up off and moved over - the iBook is already sold to my cousin, so she should enjoy that, this will allow me to also have a Mac in-house for support stuff as well as always - so all 3 major operating systems are now once again fully working in my room - very jazzed about this, once things are copied over, iPhoto is up and working and such, I’ll upload the photos of the unpacking, and once I get the desktop cleaned up, some screen shots if this bad boy in action, still need a name though, I have Grace (HP Laptop), BeautyfromPain (Windows Desktop), BigBoy (Linux Desktop) - what to name this though? iMac seems too simple of a name, like naming your Tabby cat “Tabby” So must come up with something clever.
Also got some new organizational tools for projects, and client interaction, very excited about them, considering them as part of my purposal for staying on at CMC, some strict Guidelines for how I interact, and ensuring that EVERYONE is on board vs. me having to play catchup with Brenten when he learns something is going on I don’t know of, or vice versa - lots of restructuring, but it’ll also come in handy for other projects as well.
Anywhoo - back to getting things setup, tweaked, configured, etc. Very very excited, Photobooth should offer some fun:
I have never claimed to know what I am doing when it comes to photography, I just know what I have learned by trial and error - I mean 1GB SD/CF cards can let you practice a LOT! So when it came to ISO settings, white balance, etc. it was a lot of trial and error, what looked natural, what didn’t blur, what looked good! But today I saw a great tutorial listed on LifeHacker which pointed to a great article on PhotographyJam.com I gave it a read - and must say laid things out in simple terms, no “The camera needs to be held at a 23 degree angle so your flapper lens can capture as much photons and leptons as possible, in turn providing you with the perfect shot” - simple, easy, good explination and good visual example of the terms at work. Definately helps me a bit more in getting the most out of my E-500 which did get un-dusted the other night, but need to work on my late night shots and it heating up pixels in the black areas.
…. it’s like that old line “you’ll put your eye out!” or “don’t touch that its hot” a few years back I had been playing with CafePress.com, makin shirts, hats, etc. Sold like 6 things total, but when CMC saw I had made a bear, they used it at GMA Week time and time again.. this year no different - but thought it was cool that my more or less arrangement of this silly bear has got to visit with various CCM artists:
It’s pretty cool however GMA week as a whole probably caused me more headache this year than any… lot of strain on the server, lot of blips, and irritations from piddly to fun stuff like the hotel blocking CMC’s server entirely… go figure - needless to say I feel like it’s time for a vacation from CMC, more or less have left various things at a stand still while I rest, have a wonderful day planned, even have a fancy movie day with friends all lined up, and trying to avoid as much work as possible, but I am sure someone will have something for me sooner or later in the day.
Anywhoo - that’s my rant for the evening, if you want more CMC GMA photos, they are raw, and online at
Sure sure, we have a whole gallery in the works on CMC, just need to change some path’s and it’s all live and online - may even do it before I crash, in which case, just hit the photo gallery link and you’ll see anything and everything that’s on the flickr account.
but it’d be nice for doing prints, and working on some various goodies for a crazy project I have in mind for a friend (not gonna name them here, wouldn’t want them to know my secret evil plans! muwhaha!)
