Wednesday, 30 July 2008

Painters with Light featured in Suffolk Magazine

I have just been sent some scans of an article in http://www.suffolkmagazine.co.uk/ about The Painting with Light Photographic Society, of which yours truly is proud tobe a member.

The scans are not perfect but I thought I would share them with those of you who are too far from Suffolk to buy yourselves a copy of the real thing:

Page One (pdf)
Page Two (pdf)

They are pdf files so if you don;'t have it you will need to download the Adobe Accrobat reader.

Monday, 28 July 2008

Photographers - You should be ashamed of yourselves..

Is there no depth you weirdo photographers will sink to. It now seems some perverts (for want of a better word) have been out taking pictures of an empty swimming pool - they should be locked up!

Some of you have been assaulting defenceless young children with your cameras and even upsetting the mayor of London.

You aren't even safe with ducks these days:


www.whattheduck.net

Fun in the Park

Is there no depth you weirdo photographers will sink to. It now seems some perverts (for want of a better word) have been out taking pictures of an empty swimming pool - they should be locked up!

Even ducks arn't safe these days:


www.whattheduck.net

Friday, 25 July 2008

Adobe Rumours

Being the sort of chap who has his ear to the ground and his shoulder to the wheel, I am picking up a few rumours about Adobe:

Word on the street is that the full version of Lightroom 2 should be released next week. This should be a very exciting release, now that Adobe know how the system is actually used and that there is a huge market for it this should be a release well worth paying for. I might even move over to lightroom myself....if I can ever get a decent result out of ACR :)

I am also told that photoshop users should invest in a decent graphics card. Photoshop CS4 seems to be tuned for good cards and is blisteringly fast off a decent one.

Further rumours abound about other surprise announcements that the imaging giant has up its sleeve. It is certainly an interesting time for Adobe as they use their base in imagig and web tools to go head to head against Microsoft in the battle of AIR versus Silverlight.

Thursday, 10 July 2008

New Forest Location Guide

As Editor of the photo locations section in Ephotozine, I am always on the look out for new location guides. I have just come across The new Forest Explorers Guide being produced by Andrew Walmsley.



Pony in Snow
by Andrew Walmsley

It includes walks from village centres, and loads of information on wildlife and the landscape.
Well done Andrew looks likes its becoming a great guide to the area.

Monday, 7 July 2008

Epson Stylus Pro 2880 vs Epson Stylus Pro 3800

So having decided to continue printing my own photos I have been waiting for a replacement of the Epson 2400 to appear on the shelves. Finally the Epson 2880 has appeared.

Is it any good I hear you ask? Well the best place to see a full review is photo-i - I have to say it looks pretty good to me. But, knowing the volumes of printing I do, I started to wonder about the costs of those tiny ink cartridges and how it compared to the Epson 3800 Stylus. First I checked out the review, well it looks good and robust with high print quality and it does A2!

Hmmm, A2 now that's a nice-to-have but how much extra will I be paying for a feature I am unlikely to use very often. Time to do some maths.


Isle in the Storm
(Bet this looks good in A2)

So before we launch into the comparison, let me say that these are the prices I found first when doing some Googling. They probably aren't the cheapest around but I think the comparison is still valid.
In addition I have not included P&P, if you order your print carts on-line or, the cost of money when you buy a lot of ink up front. I leave you to decide if these elements will affect your pricing decisions.



2880strong>3800
Purchase price with additional 2 year Warranty£629.00 £1,062.18
Epson Trade Up Discount £- £150.00
Purchase Price £629.00 £912.18



OK so its an extra £290 of the queens pounds which is not to be sniffed at (even if it does do A2), but out of interest I thought I would take a look at the price and size of ink cartridges.
Cartridges

Individual Cartridge Price £10.95 £35.80
Price for a full set of cartridges£87.60 £286.40
Cart size in ml1180
Price per ml £0.9955 £0.4475

Well that gets a little more interesting 2880 ink is twice as expensive as 3800 ink (and the 3800 does A2).
Now here is a thought - each printer comes with a full set of inks. If we subtract the cost of the inks provided we should get an indication of the actual price of the printer. This gives us:
Price without ink £541.40 £625.78



So in effect you can go from an A3 printer to an A2 for only £83!



I'll assume that ink usage on both is pretty much equivalent and I will pick 100ml worth of to represent my usage for a year or so.



Prices for 100ml worth of printing

Price for a full set of cartridges £87.60 £286.40
No of sets in 100ml 9.09 1.25
100ml price £637.09 £286.40
Total price to print 100ml worth of prints £ 1,266.09 £1,198.58


So it seems that when I take into consideration my normal running costs the more expensive printer is cheaper! Oh and did I mention it does A2 as well!