PentaxManuals

Hi All,
I am after canvassing some opinion and perhaps asking for some help!

The facility on the Pentax USA site to download any of the old manuals is very useful and has saved many a person. However the quality os the images is not the best

I have obtained an amount of webspace and I am trying to produce as many of the manuals as I can in colour and a reasonable quality. There is always going to be a trade off in quality versus size. I can also produce them in a couple of formats. First of all the survey part :

For the smaller manuals ie KX, MX, LX etc - I can put 2 or even 3 images on a page and then convert to PDF. this makes it better for printing. On the other hand if I put just the images into PDF format it is easier to access on line. If you download a manual, would you print it off or view on line?

What do you think is a reasonable size for download? My feeling is that 5 Mb is about right. To go much smaller would mean poor quality and then you could get the Penax USA one. My first trys came out at about 10 MB. This gives very good quality but the download would take forever on dial up access.

Now the begging part I have manuals for

SP, SPII, SPF, K1000, KM, KX, K2, MX, ME, MES, MEF, LX, Super A, P50, MZ3 and MZs. I also will try to do scans of all the assessories such as drives, flashguns and bellows etc. If anyone is willing to scan their manuals for the project and send them to me I would be very grateful.

Many Thanks
Kim

I've got a manual for my SFXn which was stolen. Where do you want it sent to (The original)? FOC as long as it's made available to others.

Hi Gordan,
Many thanks for the offer. Can you send me a private message with your email address and I will send my address. I would rather not put it on a public board.

Regards
Kim

Kim,
I too have an SXFn manual and also one for the MV.
I'd like to hang on to the SFX for now but I'll drop you a PM when I dig out the MV one - you're most welcome to it!

I think I've got a winder MEII manual somewhere as well.

I've no idea what the actual figures are, but I would expect that a majority of those who would be interested in this either have broadband (or access to it) or fixed rate dial-up, so that in the last case a large download might take time, but would not necessarily be expensive.
My feeling, therefore, since the aim of the exercise is to improve quality, is that you should go for the larger file size. Those for whom this is impracticable can still use the Pentax site.
Good idea, by the way, and very public-spirited.

Hi George,
Those were my thoughts. I wanted to produce manuals that you could actually see what was on the diagrams! I also have to balance server space and bandwidth which is why I came out at about 5-10 Mb.

I was more undecided about the format. I would tend to print the manual off so I could use it anywhere. In this case incorporating the scans into say a word document would make it quicker and easier to print especially for the "mini manuals" like the MX. On the other hand it is much easier to view and read them on the PC if the scans are incorprated into a PDF file as such. However this means, you can only print one page at a time. The best answer would be to do both but I haven't got the space for that!

Regards
Kim

I'm not a great fan of Acrobat (or Reader, as they seem to call it now), which gets more bloated with every release, but it is probably a better bet than Word, which is expensive and far from universal. At least Reader is free. And you can certainly print every page in one go.

Hi,
I probably phrased that wrong. If I import the jpg's straight into a pdf, then it will print all the pages but with only one image per page. For the thinner manuals like the MX, I can import 3 images into a word page. When this is incorporated into the pdf format and printed, it prints the equivalent of the word page ie 3 images per sheet. For most of the others, it's 2 images per page. Another alternative would be just to zip all the images together and then the recipient could do what they want with them. However, this couldn't be viewed "online". I can't please everybody, hence my quandry!

Kim

PDFs are the better bet - you can open them on any current computer platform. However, as George mentioned, things can get bloated quickly. But (big but here), it depends on your distiller settings as to the results.
Acrobat 6 includes some wonderful features for prepress work, and much of the "out-the-box" settings work with this in mind. With some careful settings in the job-options, the resulting PDF can be slimmed down.
It's just a balancing act between output quality and file size. For the Z1 manual I did a mono version that PDF'd to just under 4Mb (better quality than Pentax's scan, IMO).
It's a very time consuming exercise - and I hope Kim's efforts will be appreciated
Matt

Matt,
Thanks for that. I am using Acro 6 (or at least trying to!!!!!!!!). I just hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew. Each manual is taking about half a day to scan and I still have to sort out the website
Kim

Kim - no problem. I've been using Acrobat Pro since version 3 - and learnt a lot of stuff the hard way
Make sure you assemble the scans in the best quality you can save to. If you use Acrobat 6, save as a high res (around 300dpi) with ZIP image encoding (not JPG). When you are done, print within Acrobat to PDF or to Distiller, or resample within Acrobat to a lower quality, being careful not to overwrite the highres version.
In trying things out, assemble a few pages as a test manual, and try the steps out until you work out the best Acrobat/Distiller job options. Then save the job options for use on all the real manuals

Don't forget, too, that if you print within any application to a Postscript file (so you've got a collection of .PS or .PRN files), you can then drag and drop the files onto Acrobat Distiller and it will job the lot into PDF

I've sent you an email with the Z1 links. If you need any Acrobat assistance, drop me an email
Matt

Matt,
Thanks again. I was scaning at 200dpi and then playing with the compression of the jpg's to get a smaller size. I'll have a play with what you suggest and let you know how I get on. It certainly sounds a better method
Kim

Kim,

email received - MV manual on it's way to you shortly.

Kimbo,
Many Thanks

Kim

Kim

If your comfortable making the documents in Word as against Acrobat, carry on and do it that way (although as previously stated Word gets blotted very quickly) and print the final document to your PDF printer (part of the Acrobat install). This will create a document in PDF format. Personally I would use either Frontpage or Pagemaker to create the documents. I also have surplus origonal manuals for MZ-5 and MZ-5n, I can either send them to your or have a go at making the final documents if you want some help.

Regards

Brian