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Anyone out there using their 51m for photo editing?

post #1 of 25
8/8/04 at 12:31am
Thread Starter 
Hi all,

In addition to gaming, one of the things I want to do with the 51m (I'm in phase 9) is use it to do mobile digital photo editing and storage using Photoshop. I shoot photos as a hobby on the side (digital SLR), and have two specific questions:

1) How well does the 15.4" screen do in terms of color consistency and hardware profiling (e.g., using an Eye-One spyder colorimeter),

2) How fast is the PCMCIA cardbus - is it faster to download large CF cards (512MB or so) via a CF-to-PCMCIA adapter, or via a USB2/Firewire CF reader?

FWIW, I did a forum search and couldn't find anything. Even if it's just so-so on the above two, that's probably sufficient for my purposes.

ed

PS. If you want to see one of my photos, here's an example.
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post #2 of 25
8/8/04 at 1:14am
Howdy Ed and welcome!

Beautiful work on that pic!

I have done a fair amount of photo editing using a Nikon 5700 and a AW laptop. As you can tell, both are equally capable.

Here's an example. Sorry its so big. I wanted to give you the full effect. BTW, this is a saltwater coral named Acropora Cerealis. My wife and I are into to SW aquariums.

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post #3 of 25
8/8/04 at 1:30am
Another.

No it's not me. I still have most of my hair

As you can see, your SLR and 51M have very good things in store for your editing needs.

I've also done a little video editing with a Sony HC-40 and AW. The AW was able to keep the pace up quite nicely. For those that dont do DV editing. It is very demanding on the machine. It takes a pretty fair computer to keep the fps count high enough for smooth editing/playback.

I like to use USB/2.0 for my external HDDs. In fact, they work so well at keeping the pace that I have installed most of my games on them. Then play the game right from the HDD. Really frees up alot of HDD space on the lappies.

You menyioned some eye color thing for measuring colors. Sorry bud. I do this stuff as a hobby too. I try and not let it get too complicated. More complicated=less fun. Works for me.

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post #4 of 25
8/8/04 at 1:30am
I like aquarium pics better when there is a set of hooters pressed on the other side.
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post #5 of 25
8/8/04 at 1:31am
Oh, god. Not that bald guys tits. I am going to **** myself.
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post #6 of 25
8/8/04 at 1:37am
Oh no......guess who back....
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post #7 of 25
8/8/04 at 12:57pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the report!

ed
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post #8 of 25
8/9/04 at 2:49am
You will need to calibrate your monitor to get the best color settings if you want to go to print. When run dual monitors LCD/CRT I notcie that the color is way different so I would assume as much for print work, It's kinda of a pain in video to.
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post #9 of 25
8/9/04 at 6:25am
Hi Darkfire,

I use my AW a lot for digital photo processing. I use photoshop CS, C1, BreezeBrowser among others.
I use a Eye-One Display calibration tool and I can tell you that you will get very good results.
Regarding the PCMCIA cardbus if you use the Delkin PRO CardBus 32bits adapter it is very fast! Use diference for the normal adapters!!! I use it for CF of 1Gb and 2Gb.

I hope this helps!

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post #10 of 25
8/9/04 at 8:48am
Thread Starter 
Riktor/DarkEagle - great, thanks! I have an Eye-One already, and will look for the Delkin cardbus adapter.

ed
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post #11 of 25
8/10/04 at 5:51am
DarkEagle what is Eye-One, and how does it work? I do a lot of video, animation and compositing and I really want something that is going to make what I see on my LCD be what's going to film or TV (given that NTSC can't display the range of colors that CRT and LCD's can but the closer the better.)
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post #12 of 25
8/10/04 at 6:06am
Hi RiKToR,

Eye-One display is a device that helps you to calibrate your monitor (LCD, CRT).
It is probably one of the best tools you can have and it will help you to get your colours as much accurate as possible.
Take a look at this link and if you need more information please let me know!

http://www.gretagmacbeth.com/index/p...ne-display.htm

I hope this helps
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post #13 of 25
8/10/04 at 6:15am
Hot damn, $250, I'll think I'll just trial and error the color corrector until I get into position that it becomes my job to match colors. I don't really use pantones any more. Thanks for the speedy info though.
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post #14 of 25
8/10/04 at 6:26am
you are welcome!

but believe me it is worth the money
and the good thing is that you can use it in any of your future LCD/CRT. This means you don't have to spend more with it!

good luck with your work!
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post #15 of 25
8/10/04 at 10:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkEagle
you are welcome!

but believe me it is worth the money
and the good thing is that you can use it in any of your future LCD/CRT. This means you don't have to spend more with it!

good luck with your work!
You got that right. I use the Colorvision Spyder Pro with fantastic results. This is on a Sager 5690. It not only saves me a great deal of time calibrating the monitor, but saved me the cost of buying a new CRT. I really thought I would need a new CRT when I got my laptop, after seeing how well it works, I decided my LCD would be more than sufficient.

http://www.colorvision.com/profis/pr...iew.jsp?id=241
It can be found at Compusa for $199
It is a lot of money for calibration, but if you need accurate color for Photo Editing, it is a cheap investment
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post #16 of 25
8/10/04 at 6:37pm
Since y'all seem to know what you're doing, do you know if I can import video into my Area51-m using the S-Video port or do I need to do it some other way? I'm not planning on doing a great deal of video work, mostly just copying mission video to DVD.
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post #17 of 25
8/11/04 at 10:47am
firewire will be faster.
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post #18 of 25
8/12/04 at 4:42am
S_video is output only. firewire or usb capture devices are the only hardware options besides ripping of dvd.
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post #19 of 25
8/12/04 at 10:32am
what video capture device do y'all recommend?
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post #20 of 25
8/12/04 at 2:55pm
Pinnacle makes some good capture devices, any device will do as longs as it capture standard PAL or NTSC resolutions without puting heavy compression on them. Also make sure it captures at the respective frame rate (25fps for PAL and 29.97 for NTSC)

Also the resolutions are for PAL and NTSC are above 700 x 400 so if you see any lower than that it's not good enough.
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