Even use of "good" trigers (e.g. Elinchrom Skyport) can result in black banding at X-Sync speed.
There is to some extent a requirement that both the camera and trigger are well within specifications...

My K7 would not sync without black bars until I went down to 1/160 or even 1/125 with the Skyport remotes.
Yet my K5 syncs just fine at 1/180 with the same equipment.

The K7 of course works just fine with wired and PTTL and even when a dumb flash is in the hot shoe and remote flashes are slaved, so it is definitely some interaction of the radio remote and the camera reaction timing.

If you're getting black bars form the shutter timing being off a bit, see if you can rent or borrow a set of PocketWizards. Pocket Wizards are not perfect, but they really are the defacto-standard for the lowest rate of failure amongst any other brand.
If they resolve the issue, your remotes are probably just not fast enough or out of spec (or on the edge).
If the issue is not resolved, then your camera may have an issue.


My K7 was repaired, motherboard replaced, and the problem persisted. I know other people have no problems with their K7... so again, maybe a combo of devices being in spec but at the fringes and just compounding to an unsatisfactory situation???

Dunno... never will. Both Pentax nor Elinchrom point fingers in the other direction and neither are willing to investigate the issue.

Can anyone suggest proper usage for Argyll? I've heard it mentioned here a few times and heard that it produces better results than the software that comes with the eyeOne device, so I went and gave it a go.

Sadly, when done it created a profile that Photoshop reported as being corrupt, and Firefox renders no blue channel.

I used the Matrix & Curves mode of Argyll to create profiles, which is apparently "wrong" although I thought I read that it should create the best profile.


Any suggestions for proper command line or proper usage of the dispcalGUI?
I am using a Macintosh (27" iMac w/ ATI Radeon HD 5750 to be exact).


In the end, is it really worth the trouble?

Thanks

My problem was the K7 was simply over-hyped. Its image quality is not up to the K10 or K20 and the ISO performance is barely anything to write home about, although that was a major feature bullet-point.
It was a major let-down after passing on the K20. Basically the K5 truly is what the K7 was hyped up to be.

I'd rather have spent the yea, saved my pennies and skipped the K7 than wasted my cash on that model.
Sell your kidney if you have to, but get the K5. It will not disappoint.

I am taking photos almost daily at ISO 2000 and higher and getting perfectly acceptable photos. ISO 12,800 will do in many cases, and ISO 52100 at the top end is not always a lost cause.
I could not say that ISO 1600 or 3200 is even usable on the K7 in all but the rarest cases. (with high enough light it can be good, but then I would use lower ISO anyway!)

I see all these cool videos, many in low light that were taken with the K5, but even in decent light (indoors with daylight coming through windows) my videos are grainy and/or washed out. In low light, the video is utterly unusable. Outdoors in bright sunlight seem to be useable, but I would not say quality is as high and sharp and vibrant as I've seen elsewhere.

Are these videos made by someone with mystical powers or are they post-processed with some high end software that does noise reduction on video?
Most likely I'm doing something wrong, but I've heard other people mention the same thing with regards to getting quality video results.

I'm using HD mode with high quality settings, and importing at full resolution.
I've tried with auto and manual aperture.

Just not sure where to begin looking for how to get clearer, less grainy video even in decent light.
Any suggestions?

Thanks! that is a really elegant (and much too obvious) solution.

I got gift certificate for having some large metallic prints done for free. (on metallic paper, not on metal)
They look fabulous, but not sure how to frame them, as I'm afraid the unique look of the metallic print won't come through once behind glass.

Any suggestions on how to mount these?
Non-reflective glass perhaps? Would that kill the reflectivity of the paper?

Not much on thoughts. It seems each has their own set of pluses and minuses. For a free product it holds up pretty darned well.

For the paid products... well, lets just say that a few years ago I had done tests against popular malware toolkits created five (5) years earlier (things that script kiddies find abundantly and probably don't even use any more because their antiquated). The top of the line paid programs caught less than half of them. More sophisticated developed malware applications installed and hid silently against all paid and free malware detection software I tested (about two dozen different applications - e.g. Kaspersky, Sophos, McAffee, Norton, TrendMicro).
This was about three or four years ago. Things have gotten better - on both sides.

My suggestions...
1. Keep your OS up to date with latest patches.

2. Have some sort of malware detection, if only to give that little extra protection in case you fat-finger a web address and go to "faceboob.com" by mistake. (or if your favorite website gets hacked).
I've only gotten a virus twice in 20+ years. One I installed myself. The other I got because I mis-typed a web page URL.

3. Never run more than one anti-malware program at once.
Sadly, none are perfect and none are equal to another. Roll the dice and pick one.

4. Avoid software firewalls unless you have the patience and knowledge to use them properly.
Software Firewalls are great, as they can keep unwanted programs from calling out!
Sadly, they become so overly annoying that they tend to train the user into accepting every message just so that they can get their work done. I mean how many people know if SVCHOST should or should not allow the current unknown connection??? So they end up being counter productive, and damned near useless.

FYI, Very Smart!!

After re-reading your comments, if this file was detected upon initial installation, it is probably safe to say that your machine is safe. This is assuming the description I read on it is correct and that it simply configures your registry to run further software on startup. If the file was cleaned before you rebooted, you are likely OK. (hopefully the registry is fixed upon detection and cleaning)

Most of the fake virus alerts are not actually capable of doing anything as long as you do not click to allow them to install. (again, smart decision!!) Although without knowing exactly which malware was reporting the notice it is hard to say. (it is possible to be infected without actively running an executable).

My comments above still stand, and if you're paranoid I'd wipe the machine... but I'd suspect you're *probably* OK on this one.

The software (malware) itself seems to be described as setting up the registry to run other programs on startup.

Some things to keep in mind...
ONE: VMs are great. You can roll them back to a known good state and pretty much ignore ill effects by viruses.
1. Assuming you know how far to roll back and that you have a clean state.
2. That the virus has not found a vulnerability in the parent virtual machine environment itself and allowed access to the parent (REAL) system.
3. That the VM has no network or shared file access to your parent (real) machine or other machines on the network.
If the VM was not completely isolated, you have absolutely no guarantee that the rest of your network connected machines are not now infected. (This includes the host which is hosting the network device for your VM) It is very difficult to isolate the host from the guest if you allow network and file sharing!!


TWO: Most viruses do not do actual harm. Their goal is to remain hidden while they do their nasty stuff. The worst are not even detectable because they actually disable all known anti-virus programs when they start. (not easy, but not a single virus scanner is currently immune to being turned off or being disabled by malware)

THREE: In this particular virus, you do not know what was configured to be run. With the above in mind, it is VERY VERY LIKELY that you have something running that cannot be detected by current anti-virus software (including anti-malware, anti-rootkit, and whatever else you might want to call it)

FOUR: In a matter of about 1/250 second, a program can call out to a malicious host site, download more complex software and start raging severe medieval havoc on your machine. In fact it may install software that allows a person to take screenshots, install more software, upload and download software, and even search our and contact and infect nearby machines on your network or on the Internet!
Again, I do not insinuate that this is destructive!! The goal is to remain hidden and scan for data or even use your machine to further propagate their agenda.

This is a short list of important things to keep in mind.
With these in mind, once you have detected a virus... you can pretty much rest assured that you machine is OWNED! Malware is now a huge monetary business and having control of someone's machine can lead to a goldmine of information. (Read up on how Stuxnet spread until it finally reached its intended victim. That may be high profile state funded example, but script kiddies have malware toolkits that can do 90% of that and they take no real skill to implement!!!!)

NO MATTER how hard someone tries to convince you that their tool is capable of cleaning off all viruses known and unknown, they are FULL OF *shoepolish*.
Sadly, I see people try to hide their head in the sand and hope that all is well... but to quote from Aliens, "Nuke it from orbit. Its the only way to be sure". i.e. back up your data, reformat your machine, reinstall the OS and all apps and then reinstall your data from a clean source. You have been backing up your data, right?

It is very wise to back up your data in several places, and anything that keeps a historical backup helps.... Something offsite such as Carbonite or BackBlaze is great as it would be well isolated and you can restore from, say a week prior. Something like Time Machine for the Mac is directly connected to your machine... if Mac was to get a virus it is highly possible that it would attack the entire Time Machine history. If something similar exists on Windows, it is almost certain that the entire connected file system would be affected over time. Direct connected storage is not necessarily to be trusted. Install all applications and the OS from a clean source!!!!


Also as far as future protection... it seems Microsoft's free Security Essentials is about as good as anything else. Your main line of defense is to get patches the day they come out. A good number of attacks occur against known and FIXED problems!


FYI, I've worked in various software security companies over the past few years and none of this information is secret or new... (heck I have friends who used to write this sort of stuff 20 years ago -- albeit you could only get so sophisticated in a 640Kbyte machine ).
Sadly many people don't know the extent of what the current stuff can do.
I hope I'm not repeating things you already know and treating you like an idiot... not my intention. I just want to give a straight up, fact based assessment of the state of technology today and make sure you know what you may be involved in. Take it for what its worth.

And the problem is, if you're like I used to be and want to organize your photos after the fact, it is easy to move the image without the sidecar file... With the likes of Lightroom, this is not so much of a problem. If you move a file within Lightroom, the sidecar file goes with it (plus organization from the start is much easier).

When I was using SilyPix, I would often try to move my images and forget about the sidecar files and thus lose all my edits. SilkyPix was also a bit more irritating as the sidecar files were in a subdirectory, so moving all of the corresponding files was more tedious.

Other than the relatively minute disk space they take up, there probably isn't much downside to having the files any more.