I suppose, to twist an old adage "You can never tell a shop by its website"

Didn't you get a photo of it? Sounds like it'd make a great image
Matt

These are a few of the companies I've dealt with...

Second hand:
www.mxv.co.uk - often a good stock of older lenses
www.ffordes.co.uk - can be a little pricey, but worth checking out
www.lcegroup.co.uk - always phone, their website is often out of date

Others:
www.ephotozineshop.com (actually Warehouse Express)
www.speedgraphic.co.uk - some great deals on filters etc
SRS Microsystems on ebay
www.srbfilm.co.uk - for anything filter or adapter related

I'm sure there are more!!
Matt

In my book a professional is someone who earns more than 50% of their income from photography.

And therefore a pro camera is a camera used by such a person

Exactly what that camera is depends on their needs and their chosen segment of photography. Stipulating that they "must" have camera X or Y or Z is complete nonsense - because as has been said it is mostly down to the photographer.

Matt

I reckon is was compatible with Ed Hamrick's excellent VueScan package under XP

If you need to do any film scanning, then VueScan is definitely the way to go, especially when you have a large batch.

Matt

This lens is a cracker AFAIK the Samsung is identical to the Pentax (except for the name).

Here are some samples with the Pentax version:

Railways:
http://www.ephotozine.com/u16488/gallery/651853
http://www.ephotozine.com/u16488/gallery/647695
http://www.ephotozine.com/u16488/gallery/647142
http://www.ephotozine.com/u16488/gallery/646534

Flowers:
http://www.ephotozine.com/u16488/gallery/534837

It's incredibly small and light (not much different to the 18-55). So it's the kind of lens you can carry around everywhere.

For the price you absolutely cannot go wrong
Matt

Your webpage is not right
The images still link to C:... etc
Matt

Liam,
Yes, it's a bit washed out
You've clipped the blue channel, especially in the sky region (check out with an eyedropper on the sky and the blue is at 255 or 254).

One thing with doing stuff at home is to watch the ambient light, especially if you're using a laptop. If the ambient light is too high, and you opt for D65 in WiziWYG, you may find the LCD can't deliver the goods - and you end up getting "bleurgh" images.

Keep the ambient light really low (not far off dark), and use D50. You'll probably get a better match.

BTW, this applies to Spyders as well as WiziWYG.

In the end you begin to realise why some monitors are £130, and others are £3500, even though the specs may appear close It's down to contrast, white point, and colour gamut (ie what the display can actually reproduce).

Believe me, colour management will get you pulling your hair out and banging your head against the wall... sooner or later

Matt

According to the news items, the new K100D & K110D will ship with SilkyPix3.

www.isl.co.jp/SILKYPIX/english

I've just searched it out and given it a quick run. Not sure if there'll be other differences between what's shipped with the Pentax and what's currently available on the web, but I thought you might be interested to know:

* The output quality is very nice indeed. Free of artifacts (that RawShooter produces for instance). Very "silky". They have built in noise reduction which seems to do the job very well.

* There's not the degree of professional profile control that Capture One provides, but they do have several contrast styles and colour styles which can give very pleasing results (e.g. Tone = "a little low contrast", Color = "a little light", Color mode = "Portrait color 2" produces a nice output for wedding shots)

* It has lens adjustments for vignetting, distortion and CA

* The screen update can be a little slow, but it's passable.

* It can output to any size - so you can upsize without any trouble

* There's a curve editor, and fine colour controls

* You can copy and paste parameters from one shot to another, but it's not as quick as C1 at applying a whole batch. They also have a "Cloakroom" facility where you can save the parameters and recall them at will onto another image (there are 4 "rooms"

* Unlike C1 you can't work on another image while the processing is going on, but the developing into TIFF or JPG is reasonably fast.

* Output is to either sRGB or AdobeRGB, in 8-bit or 16-bit. (No extra colourspaces though).

There's a two week trial, and a "free" mode (there's a list on their website). But it looks quite a capable program, and definitely worth investigating if you're starting out with RAW.

It's about the same price as Capture One LE... but I still prefer C1 for speed of development. But this is the first serious contender I've seen for image quality, IMO. So, I'm going to sit and wait to see what happens when the K1x0D ship...

Matt

Windows XP and SCSI - you just need a decent device driver for it. I'm sure I've used BusLogic and an NCR810 based (I think) SCSI card and they have XP support out of the box (ie no need to third party device drivers).

If you run VueScan then you don't need to worry about the software supplied with the scanner

e.g. ebay 260058957150, 250055101316, 170056177786, 180057085869

Hope that helps!
Matt

Actually, I'd recommend the following:

* Get a Nikon Coolscan IV (or even an old Minolta Dual Scan - worth almost nothing, and ok if you can run SCSI on your PC)
* Buy VueScan - in fact I'd suggest this whatever scanner you choose to use!

I've batch scanned thousands of slides using both those scanners and VueScan which has an "auto scan" function. I set up VueScan and just fed the slides in while doing other work - it autoincrements the filename, does all the focus etc.

Don't get over-hung up on resolution! You're better off with a good quality, older slide scanner which has a good dynamic range, is well built, than a cheap scanner that makes great claims about resolution and so on

For flat bed stuff, I like the Canon LiDE scanners which are USB powered so you don't need any extra powersupply. There're not amazingly fast, but the quality is great and (more importantly) consistent).

Matt