Good for you Nimrad!

And welcome to the forum.

Even though I already have the FA50 1.4, I'm still tempted by this new lens, and will definitely be looking to try it out. I love this focal length, and the weather sealing would be great. I wonder what its minimum focusing distance will be?

Dan

I asked them what profile they use, and they've replied:

"We use a company-internal profile. So it would be the best if you do not embedded any other profile. We will do this for you."

Hmmmm. What do you reckon? I'm going to ring Inky Fingers and have a chat with them. May be worth spending the extra if I feel I'm going to be sure of a good print.

Dan

Thanks Matt, that would be great. I could send you a small version of the file, as there's a range of colours in it. But I'll try to find that profile first. I'm sure I saw it on there before.

Dan

Damned K20Ds, more and more reports of them wandering off! Have you tried nylon string, I understand they can't chew through that?

Dan

P.S. I've not tried it with my K10D, but there is this thread here which I would imagine would apply to the K20D too - you need to use Pentax Remote Assistant anyway. Depends what you're actually trying to achieve by shooting tethered.

P.P.S Welcome to the forum, by the way!


Edited because I obviously can't spell 'Remote Assistant'!

Thanks for your help so far!

To clarify, I'm producing some leaflets (about my workshops and one-to-one tuition ) and have found by far the best price is at www.saxoprint.co.uk . I've had samples from them and they seem fine. Price is less than a third of local printers, and the only other printer I'm tempted by at the moment is www.inkylittlefingers.co.uk , although I haven't had samples from them, as far as I can see they do accept RGB files (but at twice the price).

Saxoprint have had some bad reviews, but some good ones too. It looks like the bad reviews are mainly from people who haven't prepared their images properly before they've uploaded them. I'm prepared to punt £45 on 1000 leaflets (DL letter fold) on the assumption that the vast majority of customers are the silent, happy type.

Matt, I have seen that Little CMS utility, but as you say, I have no way then of checking that the colours haven't gone all skewey. And buying old copies of Photoshop off the net could well be a bit dodgy - I don't like piracy, and wouldn't want to end up with a ripped off copy.

From a quick ebay search, I've only been able to find CS3 (or similar) for a fiver. Well, not quite, but several of them are distinctly dodgy looking, from different sellers, all using very similar techniques. It's something I'd use as a last resort I think. Of course, if a forum member has a genuine, spare, old version they could let me have for not much money...

Peter (Smith) - I don't think that would help, but thanks for looking.

Peter (Bargh), that's exactly why I need to be able to see the results. I'm guessing that Saxoprint can keep their prices so low because they do as little as possible, other than the actual printing. You have to pay extra for data checks, or proofs, which I'm happy to forego if I'm confident that the image is right in the first place. I'm sure that they had downloadable profiles on their website before, but I can't find them at present. They clearly stat "NO RGB".

I may well download GIMP and have a go with that, with the plug-in. Any other help or thoughts still appreciated though.

Cheers,
Dan

P.S. Matt, I thought jpegs didn't support CMYK, but I've seen it mentioned a number of times on various printing sites. I also found this quote... "Adobe Photoshop and some other prepress-oriented applications will produce four-channel CMYK JPEG files when asked to save a JPEG from CMYK image mode. Hardly anything that's not prepress-savvy will cope with CMYK JPEGs (or any other CMYK format for that matter)." ...on this website.

I use Photoshop Elements 4, and am very happy with it, so don't feel the need to spend on full Photoshop, or change to GIMP or anything else.

However, I need to save a file in CMYK rather than RGB, and I can't do this with PE. So I'm looking for something I can use to convert the colourspace to CMYK, and preview the result (to make sure it's gone okay). I don't want to spend much, as it's something I rarely do.

GIMP is an option I think, as there's a plug in (Seperate+) that seems to do it - has anyone used this, does it work okay?

Is there a way I can do it in PE, and still view the result?

Any other ideas?

Thanks!
Dan

I don't have a battery in the grip, so can't help you. I just prefer the feel of the camera with grip in place.

Dan

Thanks Ken, portrait was just with my K10D at arms length with the diffused flash on, and only taken (in a hurry) because I thought you had to have a photo on there.

Just had another look at the image guidelines, and number 9 says "The PENTAX Photo Gallery does not currently support photos with non-standard aspect ratios (eg. panoramic photos)." I wonder if it ever will...

Must get round to uploading some more pics.

Dan

I agree with Peter, but would go a step further. A top and bottom crop of No. 3 that takes the muddy corner off, and the white stripe bottom left, works well - makes the most of the rich colours and nice light. Nice shot.

Dan

Well, after all the rush of "we need this cover shot yesterday!", the brochure got published this month (yep, six months later :roll and they used the lo-res version I sent them as a proof!?!

So annoyed, it looks absolutely crap. What a waste of money and time. Would have looked better with a camera phone tied to a kite.

AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Dan