Epson Stylus Photo 1280 woes, part 2

The saga continues.  This is frustrating.  The yellow ink is not coming out.  Once or twice, I was able to print an image of a full yellow square but every other time I tried, lines of reddish colour would appear instead.  I have tried the wet paper towel trick to clean the print head many many times and could see yellow ink transferred onto the paper towel but the darn thing is still clogged!  This is a real pain.  Only if I could remove the print head and soak it in hot water to dissolve everything!

Epson Stylus Photo 1280 woes

I spent nearly three hours yesterday trying to fix a problem with my Epson Stylus Photo 1280 printer.  What was the problem?  As everyone that owns an Epson knows, you should never leave your printer to collect dust for too long.  In my case, I left it on my computer desk alone for a few months.  When I first ran a pattern test yesterday, I knew right away I had a nightmare on my hands.  The print nozzles have clogged up!  So, I did what everyone does with their Epson--ran the head cleaning routine and reprinted the pattern test page.  The first cleaning did little to the print head.  Many of the lines in the pattern test were missing and the yellow was totally absent.  Well, twenty head cleaning and pattern test printing later, some pattern lines were still missing and the yellow still absent.  I gave up for the night but around midnight, I had to try something I read from somewhere.

I used a paper towel and folded it many times into a thick strip of half an inch wide (so it looks like a long rectangle), dampened it with hot water (I do not have distilled water), and placed the strip in the groove where the printer head assembly slides over.  I then manually moved the print head assembly over the strip and allow the damp paper towel to dissolve and clean whatever was clogging the nozzles.  After a dozen or so attempts, I started to see some yellow patches on the paper towel.

I was quite excited that I wanted to do a print test right away, but only to find out I was then out of ink.  I have a stash of colour cartridges but none of the black cartridge left.  So, I ordered twelve new black cartridges.  I hope they will arrive in a couple of days so I can see if the cleaning worked!  I am counting down the days now.

I have three photos to print on 11"x17" paper.  I could take them to Kinko's with all the time I have wasted so far, but printing at home is more fun, somehow.

D7000 mode dial, again

This darn problem has come back to bite me in the arse more than a couple of times now. It happened yesterday. I was shooting with my D7000 and SB900, in auto aperture mode when by accident I knocked the dial off position to manual mode. Because some time passed before I shot again in a darker area, I originally thought it was because of lighting. I was shooting slower than usually. I thought that was odd though, so after a handful of shots, I checked all my settings. True enough, this darn dial did bite me in the arse yet once more.

Again, I wished Nikon built the dial like the Canon--I'd send my camera in for a dial replacement any day.  (See:  Photon Farmers: D7000 mode dial)

Addendum:  After writing this blog, I found a solution that someone implemented using heat shrink tubing.  I do not have such tubing nor do I have gaffer tape that some other people suggested, so I will bear with the annoyance for now.  Here is the link for anyone interested in a DIY solution:  http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1024765

A new disruptive technology, or not?

Just recently, a friend sent me an e-mail that read "Light Field Camera".  My first thought, "what?".  What is a light field camera?  Is that a field camera that is lightweight?  I clicked on the link provided and start reading the article and all the ugly comments people started posting about the new camera.  I suppose this is where people get annoyed when something new is about to displace the old.

So, apparently, someone just invented a new way of recording light by capturing the direction that light rays pass into the camera.  What you say?  In theory, if we can capture all the light rays (i.e. directions of light) passing through the lenses, we could recreate a scene at different focus points.  This is cool because no longer would one have to focus correctly.  Just shoot and refocus in post-processing.  It does take away the art of photography but I can see many benefits of this new technology including 3D imaging--some argued that you need two eyes to create a 3D image but forgot that there are an infinite number of focal planes in this new image capturing technology.  By sampling the image on different focus planes, it should be possible to create a 3D model.  Neat.

Check out Lytro at  https://www.lytro.com/living-pictures

Urban photography

At the Exposure 2011 photo show yesterday, I listened to Sam Javanrouh speak about street photography.  I have an interest in street photography but apparently not strong enough for me to go out there and take pictures everyday as Sam does.  A few tips I recall he mentioned were the following:

1. Shoot first, then ask--if you see action in front of you, just shoot it first then (if the subject is a person) ask for permission to post online.  Do you really need to ask for permission though?  If it is a public space, everything should be fair game but this is a hot topic on the web.  Some would argue for asking permission and some would argue against.
2. Wherever you go, even if it is to a local variety store to pick up some milk, carry a camera with you.  It is easy enough to carry a phone with a camera these days so this should not be difficult for anyone.  If however you have a DSLR, pictures can turn out better.  Would you carry a DSLR wherever you go?  I used to carry my DSLR in my backpack everywhere I go but decided to leave it at home after a while as it started to feel heavy on my shoulders--however, if the purpose is to take photos everyday, I would say go nuts and carry the DSLR (almost) everywhere you go.
3. One of the best time to shoot is just after the rain.  It is interesting that he should mention that because one of photos I took of a building right after the rain happened to be used as a banner on a university academic department website.  The lustre created by the rain can be very beautiful.
4. Always expose for the sky.  This is the same tip that this author also gave in a book Chris suggested (I cannot remember the title or the author's name offhandedly).
5. Images are "made"--if you can, shoot RAW all the time. Images with blown highlights might be recoverable.  Your camera in RAW mode captures a lot more data than in JPEG mode.  Sam would photoshop the image by bringing out the details of parts of an image by using layers and bringing all the part back into a final composite.

This year's show was interesting because of the special speakers they brought in.  The usual speakers were there too.  Chris Bogner is always at the show, although I did not hear him speak yesterday.  The Star always has their photojournalists speaking, etc.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30 in the field, part 3

I had a chance to bring out the FZ30 one more time, this time, to the Henry's Exposure 2011 photo show at the International Centre in Mississauga, ON.  The event was a bit more special that the other years.  Les Stroud was invited to speak (and promote a Slik tripod).  I am a big fan of "Survivorman" so this was a no-brainer.  I had to go (and it's unfortunate Chris could not.)

I decided to bring a light camera and hoped that there would be enough light to take some pictures of the Survivorman.  And so I did.  There were some pictures taken at a book signing booth with Cesar but I'm posting below those more public photos only.  It's not too bad.  Grainy and fuzzy but not too bad for a $65 camera.  Both at ISO 400, no flash.

 

Picasa vs. Flickr

I wrote about this before, I think.  I am going to do a quick revisit on this subject now.

Flickr has been a great tool for sharing pictures with families, friends, and the world.  It has an online tool for image manipulation and it has a batch file uploader that can resize the photos to a maximum 2048x2048 pixels on the fly before uploading--this is a great feature because my Internet connection is not fast.  I have been paying $25 per year for a Pro account so that I can upload any number of photos to Flickr with no limit.  The free Flickr account offers 300MB per month.  The photos resized to 2048x2048 are still pretty big--at least 500KB big.

In talking to Chris yesterday, I think that Picasa will actually work well for me.  It has an unlimited space capacity for images under the 2048x2048 size.  Since that is the same image size that I upload to Flickr, this is perfect.  I will look more into Picasa tonight and might start using it then...