Right place, right time, right product! Cool!
If you haven't already done so, you might want to consider getting one
of Scott Kelby's books on Elements. He consciously takes a somewhat
different and, IMO, refreshing approach than other books. There's
even a bit of that humor stuff sprinkled throughout.
Also, Wacom has a LOT of educational material both at their site and
via by request CD/DVD. You might want to give 'em a call -- nice
folks!
Enjoy!
ScottGee1
On 11/7/05, AG Schnozz <agschnozz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The other thing that happened this weekend was the purchase of a
> new computer. Ended up getting one of those nifty (but large)
> laptops that are classified as "workstations". Definitely a lot
> of horsepower and a bigger, higher-quality. Also picked up a
> WACOM tablet while I was at it.
>
> I went with a Gateway (7330GZ). I know, I know, but these days
> no choice is safe. I've got Compaq and HP laptops here at work
> and their failure rate is pretty brisk. Dell was probably my
> first choice, but I wanted to do a little comparison shopping.
> First went to C*mpUSA and they tried to jam a $2300 beast down
> my neck. Like that was going to happen. Next, went over to
> B*stBuy and looked at the shmuck that they had there. But
> lo-and-behold, here sat one lonely beast of a laptop that was
> priced really well. Oh, and that screen was sooooo bright and
> contrasty and sharp! (it also displayed the test images from
> dpreview the best too) No other laptop (except for a high-end
> Mac) had a screen anywhere as good and the screen was much
> better than nearly all of the desktop LCDs. Spec-wise, the
> thing just blew away the T*shibas and H*Ps laying there.
> Something's wrong here with the price. I checked it over and
> saw that it had a built-in Compact-Flash slot as well as
> FireWire.
>
> Ended up snagging one. We took the unopened box over to the Geek
> Squad (really!) and had the guy with the broken glasses,
> misbuttoned shirt and greezy hair do the system checkout.
> (seriously, I'm not kidding). My major concern was that I
> wanted a screen with ZERO dead pixels. That seems to be a
> rarity these days. Every LCD in my department has multiple dead
> spots as well as my wife's laptop. So, I really wanted to make
> sure that mine was as good as possible. Nadda, not a single
> dead pixel. I didn't use a magnifying glass, but came pretty
> close to it.
>
> Got home and looked at the receipt. Bummer. The WACOM was
> supposed to have a $25 instant rebate. I didn't catch that at
> the store. Well, the next day I went back to the store and got
> that taken care of. Just out of curiosity, I walked over to the
> laptop displays and did a double take. The price changed on the
> laptop. Overnight it went up $150. Talk about timing!
>
> Anyway, to the important stuff...
>
> The new laptop is a real dream for working with images. The
> screen's extremely-wide viewing angle has very little gamma
> change when moving your head around. The colors are quite
> accurate and the depth of detail is uncanny. I'll do some
> additional profiling on the screen, but from what I've seen so
> far, my onscreen test images are very close to the printed
> output. I only had to do very minor tweeking of the gamma. I
> could stand to put in some more RAM, but this thing is easily 10
> times faster than my desktop it replaces and for processor
> intensive things, it's probably 20-30 times faster. Never had a
> computer with 1GB of processor cache before. (Pentium P4 mobile
> 3GHZ something). RAW file conversion went as fast as three
> seconds per file, but averaged about five seconds each. I can
> live with that. This computer processor is a power-hog and I
> can see that cranking through a few hundred RAW file conversions
> could really toast the battery in a hurry. Probably should get
> a couple more batteries...
>
> The WACOM will take quite a bit of getting used to, but I've
> wanted one of these for a long time. It also came with
> Ph*toshop Elements 3.0 (I know, 4.0 is now coming out). I
> didn't know that 3.0 could convert both Minolta RAW files and
> Olympus RAW files. Doesn't do too bad of a job except the
> colors look a little pasty in comparison to Olympus
> Viewer/Studio. They are a bit sharper, though. That
> shadow/highlight and noise-reduction aspect isn't bad either. I
> just need to figure out how to get the colors a little snappier
> and skintones back where I want them. No biggy either way as
> I'm pleased with Viewer, except for the fact it won't process
> Minolta files and I typically shoot events with the cameras
> interchangeably.
>
> Speaking of the Minolta A1 files, I did try Elements 3.0 at
> converting a couple of my Grand Canyon shots. Very impressive!
> The noise level (even with the noise-reduction turned off) is
> about half that of the Minolta converter. When pixel-peeping, it
> looks like the alignment of the bayer pattern is more accurate
> with Adobe's converter. The colors are yucky, but the sharpness
> (at least a full step on an USAF lens res chart) increase and
> noise reduction are definitely a nice offset. Talk about
> breathing new life into an old camera--this might delay a new
> camera purchase by another year which by itself would pay for
> the laptop.
>
> Ok. I don't want to ramble and this definitely isn't a "brag"
> post. I just wanted to pass on some info on a purchase that I'm
> very pleased with for photographic applications. I thought it
> represented an acceptable "bang for the buck". It met and
> exceeded my expectations and requirements. My only beef with it
> is the rather whimpy feeling case. Must be a little more
> careful than with one of my old bricks.
>
> AG
>
>
>
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