Local Gas Prices

[Stuart Moore]

Local for me means the Midlands in the UK and prices here a just 
starting to touch 1ukp per litre, there are 3.785 US Gallons per litre 
and the exchange rate gives us 1 UKP = 1.78930 USD thus we have a price 
of around $6.77 per gallon!! A lot bigger proportion of that money is 
tax than in the USA of course but it hits the pocket just the same. Good 
job we have a smaller country and do not have to travel as far :-)


You might also like to note that any driving large cars especially 4x4s 
is starting to be treated as if they have the plague on environmental 
grounds. Engine sizes over 2 litres are considered excessive by most 
people (and even 2 litres is a bit of a luxury). Still, even with 
smaller engines, most people seem to average over 80 miles per hour on 
the motorways.


Stuart

Visiting New York city in June - which camera shop should I visit?

[Stuart Moore]

Hi all,

I am taking my wife to Ney Work city for a birthday weekend in June and it 
seems a good opportunity to buy some additional odds and ends for my Pentax 
*ist D. I could do with some prime lenses and a battery grip. I am also 
thinking of something to bounce a little light off. (I am a bit new at this.)

Generally USA prices are a lot lower than UK prices so it is worth me stocking 
up a bit.

By the way, as I shall travelling out of the country, will I be excused the 
local sales tax? Perhaps only certain shops?

TIA,

Stuart

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Stuart  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re[2]: Photoshop *istD RAW files?

[Stuart Moore]

>> Does that mean PS CS will read Pentax's RAW files?
Yes, as does Paint Shop Pro 9 (built in capability). Note that PSP9 does not have the 
colour space capabilities of Photoshop though.

-- 
Stuartmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Sigma EF-500 DG Super flash for Pentax *ist D

[Stuart Moore]

I have just acquired the Sigma EF-500 DG Super flash for use with my *ist D. My first 
external flash. I have to say that it is superb. The manual make specific reference to 
the *ist D in several places and the gun is very much designed to work closely with 
the camera.

The wireless mode is amazing. I have seen so many reports of the joys of wireless and 
I confess to being bowled over by this approach.

There is a small pull out wide-angle "lens" on the flash and the flash unit senses you 
have pulled this out and changes the internal "zoom" setting accordingly (17mm). The 
flash does of course alter itself to match with the focal length of the camera. 

There is a distance meter shown on the LCD panel telling you (with a bar against a 
scale) both in metres and feet the range within which you should have your subject. 
(This may be standard on flash units, but it is all new to me and helps me a lot.) 
This works with post-A lenses.

You can take around 15 full-power flash photos in a row (no recharge time) but then 
need to allow the unit to rest for a while.

We have high ceilings but the flash is powerful and I had no trouble bouncing off of 
the ceiling.

I paid 149 sterling for the flash from Bristol Cameras. (I originally ordered from 
London Camera Exhange but they sent me the none-DG version despite the invoice/receipt 
clearly stating that it was supposed to be the DG version. When I phoned them they 
initially claimed that it was the same model and that there was no DG version for the 
Pentax. I spoke to Sigma in the UK to confirm my facts. LCE were unable to source a 
flash from their distributors. They refunded my money. BC had to order the flash from 
Sigma which they seemed to do direct rather than through a distributor.)

When I have had a decent play, I shall make a few examples available.

-- 
Stuart  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: *ist D purchased on a whim

[Stuart Moore]

Angel,

I have replied to you on the list but wanted to add that we were only in Puerto Rico 
for a few days - largely to break the journey home from Dominica - and did not do the 
place justice. If you ever post your photos of Puerto Rico online, we would be very 
keen to see them.

Regards,

Stuart

Re[2]: *ist D purchased on a whim

[Stuart Moore]

Hello Angel,

Friday, September 10, 2004, 6:17:35 AM, you wrote:

AR> Hi Stuart!
AR> I am in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, I also have a * ist d .  You where at 
AR> Plaza las Americas?  Can you remember the store?  I did not know there 
AR> was still one Pentax dealer around.  The last 2 we had  closed down some 
AR> years ago.
Yes, I was at Plaza las Americas. Store was called Fotomatic; more like a regular 
consumer photo-print shop than a true photography store. On ground floor below cinema 
if I remember correctly. I was a little surprised to find the camera there but 
compared to UK prices it was too good a deal to miss.

As soon as I had it out of the box and assembled I took this shot
http://www.lamdesign.co.uk/photos/displayimage.php?album=15&pos=87
(actually the 4th, the first one to use the flash) whilst still in the mall. (Had to 
go into a hardware store and "borrow" a saw to break into the sealed plastic packaging 
of the memory card!)

-- 
Stuartmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re[2]: Hitachi 4Gb microdrive not working in *ist D

[Stuart Moore]

Hello Cotty,

Thursday, September 9, 2004, 10:19:01 PM, you wrote:

C> I was doing some pricing up of CF cards and was planning to get a 2GB
C> card. Then I read this:

C> 

C> Which did make me think. I've got a couple of 512k cards, both slow. I've
C> just bought a Lexar 40X 1GB card. That'll do me for now

Very useful article. I have ordered a couple of 80x Lexar WA 512Mb cards from a 
regular dealer (having learnt my lesson with the Hitachi).

-- 
Stuartmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Regular expression help - a simple filter - Argh!!!

[Stuart Moore]

I need help with a filter using a regular expression in v3. I have tried many many 
times and failed completely. I think I am following the rules but The Bat does not 
seem to follow them.I am not experienced in PERL so hope I am just being very ignorant.

I want to find any posts that have any of the following complete strings (case is not 
relevant):

*ist
*istd
*ist-d
ist
istd
ist-d

(In case you are wondering, the ist refers to a particular Pentax camera and I want to 
filter out messages about this camera from a broader mailing list.)

I do, of course, want to avoid matching on any longer words that have ist or istd in 
them (beginning, end or middle).

Firstly, searches on "message source" do not seem to work at all. Anything in the 
regular expression other than a simple string seems to cause no messages to be parsed. 
I have therefore had to use the same regular expression twice linked with an OR to 
search both "subject" and "text".

Secondly, many many attempts seem to fail if the string falls at the end of the 
subject line.

I thought something like this would do the job:

((?i)\b\*?istd?\b)

which seems to do the trick in The Regex Coach. (I note I can drop \* as the * marks a 
word boundary anyway.)

However, The Bat does not seem to like the (?i) construction so I have replaced this 
thus:

\b[iI][sS][tT][dD]?\b

Still very limited joy. A few messages are selected but nowhere near as many as should 
be. (I have about 6000 messages to search around 2000 of which should be targeted.)

Please can anyone point me in the right direction. I am getting very very frustrated 
and do not find The Bat's help at all useful. (It does not look like it has been 
updated for version 3 either.)

TIA.

-- 
Stuart  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Hitachi 4Gb microdrive not working in *ist D

[Stuart Moore]

SM> This drive came out of an MP3 player - not sure if this means it is a
SM> slightly different model. Model number HMS360404D5CF 00 P/N: 13G1766. Anyone had
SM> success with a 4Gb Hitachi? Is it a very different model/part no? According to
Since discovered that Creative (the makers of the Nomad MP3 player in question) have 
modified these OEM hard drives in some way so as to prevent them working in other 
devices (other than PCs and Nomads). Older models., serial numbers ending 43B seem 
okay, but newer ones (mine ends 45C) do not work.

-- 
Stuartmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Hitachi 4Gb microdrive not working in *ist D

[Stuart Moore]

I bought one of the above on ebay. Works fine in my multi-format card reader on my PC. 
Formatted to FAT32 without problems. Transfered files to/from it fine. Put it into my 
*ist D and it just says memory card error - will not even try to format the card 
itself.

I have latest firmware on *ist D. I thought the camera was fully capable of using 
microdrives and was happy with FAT32 for the higher capacities. It would seem not.

This drive came out of an MP3 player - not sure if this means it is a slightly 
different model. Model number HMS360404D5CF 00 P/N: 13G1766. Anyone had success with a 
4Gb Hitachi? Is it a very different model/part no? According to the Hitachi website, 
this is compatible with the *ist D:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hddt/situdtest.nsf/24680c479c057d5c862568f7005911d6/5b82f25d987cef3288256dfd006ea1d8?OpenDocument

(Perhaps I have a fake - looks like the real thing though, do not really want to break 
the seal to find out.)

-- 
Stuart  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re[2]: Paint Shop Pro 9 built in RAW support for *ist D

[Stuart Moore]

Hello Frantisek,

PJA>>> Or else it's a phantom feature, a proposed feature that (was never)/(had
PJA>>> yet to be) implemented.
S>> My guess would be that it will simply follow the Windows color
S>> space and reflect this so if you invest in color space management
S>> for Windows and select an alternative to Bill's default of sRGB
S>> then PSP will use it.

F> In Windows, I think you can only choose your monitor colour space.
F> This is used to display properly the graphics. This gets passed to the
F> application. It's up to the application to choose its internal working
F> space, which it is quite useful to have a wider gamut one than sRGB.

I spent some time on the Microsoft website. As far as I can work out, sRGB is the 
built in default and indeed it is "based" on monitor capabilities but Windows is 
colour space neutral in that it will use any colour space properly provided and there 
are published APIs (amongst other things) for this. However, the market for 
alternative colour spaces is small and specialist so there are only a few alternatives 
out there and they tend to be expensive. A number of programs including Photoshop 
bypass the Windows management and implement their own colour space (not a huge risk 
for the market leader in graphics to take as everyone else will make their products 
work with it anyway regardless of Microsoft standards).

Looking through various postings about the latest PSP, my view of the consensus is 
that JASC decided not to try and hack Windows themselves or license an existing 
alternative colour space model on the basis that there is not much demand for it from 
the target customer base (those with more sophisticated requirements assumed to be 
using Adobe Photoshop I guess).

That aside, it is not clear to be what I am losing out on as the RAW images from the 
*ist D seem to be only 12 bit (16 bit with 4 bits zeroed) let alone 24 bit. What might 
I want to do to the images that would only work with increased bit depth?

(I appreciate that I can scan from film at a higher density - my Perfect 3200 is well 
capable.)


-- 
Stuartmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

RE: Dreams can come true ;-)

[Stuart Moore]

>Is there a similar offer going in the UK anywhere?
Don't be daft ;-) - when do we ever get decent offers?

-- 
Stuart  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]