EDIT: Yay.. I just noticed I passed 500 posts.. of course that means nothing to me obviously.. ahem.

Hi Will,

never thought of dust, but I blow mine out occasionally anyway. It shouldn't (in theory) get too much as it's a sealed casing, so there's no dust sucked through the ports themselves.. again theory..

Cheers

Liam

Hi all,

I mentioned in another thread, this..

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-2-0-3-5-Internal-Card-Reader-Writer-SILVER-I3SB_W0QQit...

There's bucket loads of them for sale at £6 including postage, and as I've just got mine today after pointing it out, I thought I'd let you know what it's like. It does what it says on the tin.. it's obviously plug'n'pray with XP, and introduces 4 new drives to the My Computer line up. If you still use W98 (first edition, as I think SE should be fine anyway) then it's supplied with a driver disc.

For those that have K10Ds or a D and a DL etc, where you need readers for both CF and SD cards, it's got the slots.

Installation.. it took me about ten minutes, although I'm more than happy to bugger about in the innards of a computer. It connects to a 9 pin USB plug on the mobo (I just disconnected the one for the 2 front USB ports, as I use a hub anyway) and is mounted in a spare 3.5" bay. You should find a spare one either just above or below the floppy disc drive, with a blanking plate over the front.

The only bugbear I found was that one of the chassis mount screw holes wasn't aligned properly, so the screw's a bit of a tight fit. As there's no moving parts, as opposed to an optical drive though, there's no vibration to worry about, so it doesn't really matter..

One note; you'll see that there are two rows of card slots. To keep it compact, the contacts are actually set in the layer that separates the rows, so the SD card goes in with the contacts pointing up, and the label down, whereas (I'm assuming, as I've never used a CF card) your CF card will go in with the label face up (and the contacts down)

The handy LEDs are quite good, as it means that even if you miss the fact that there is 1/2 a square inch of blue plastic hanging out the front of your machine the LED is there to let you know this..

End of equipment review.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Colin, and welcome to the forum..

Just a thought, but if you look around the forum you'll find many threads on monitor calibration, a crucial part of digital photography if you want to view the results you'd expect on screen. Most televisions will be adjusted to be slightly darker than normal, as there is always generally going to be ambient light to contest with. Monitors can also be set too dark, especially for someone who is sitting in front of one for any period of time.

I'd suggest popping down to your local photo printer, and getting a couple of typical 'underexposed' (and unprocessed) images printed. That way you will have a far better idea of how dark your monitor/TV is.

It may well be that both are fine and the prints are indeed too dark, but it's a simple thing to check.

There is a program called WIZIWIG, a free monitor/printer calibration tool, that will get your monitor output pretty acurate. Here's a link.. any questions about setting up will of course be answered.

http://www.tucows.com/start_dl/207333_85190_758/dlp/

Hope that helps,

Cheers
Liam

I agree.. and as a poster of two of the last jokes myself...

Cheers

Liam

Hi Pete..

Nooooooooooooo.. you can always sharpen up a soft image. The sharpening technique I use (but there are other ways of doing it) takes about a second, but I have the option not to if I want it a little soft.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Pete,

once you've set up the monitor, it will be different to what you used to have.. otherwise there'd be no point in doing it.

If you've set up WIZIWYG correctly, then the colours, contrast and brightness will be correct, although it may take some getting used to. If in doubt about that, pick a picture that you've adjusted with the current profile and take it to your local photolab, and get a 6x4 print done.. it'll probably cost about 5 pence. If that looks okay, then you've set it up properly. You have to remember that you may have never seen a properly calibrated monitor, so you're used to everything being different to what it should be.

You then have to set up the printer to match the screen. Follow the instructions for printers/scanners in WIZIWYG for that.

Hope that helps..

Cheers

Liam

????????

Focus is just about spot on, straight at the eyes..

Nice pic

Cheers

Liam

Yep, I agree.. great pictures Josh.

Cheers

Liam

It will, or at least it does in my case. I liek to have a bright screen, so the calibrated version is darker than I usually use, but I've calibrated the monitor to wiziwyg for zero brightness, and I just switch it to that when working on or viewing photos, keeping it brighter for everything else.

Cheers

Liam