Future
Meetings
Below is a list of dates for 2007, these dates have been confirmed.
June 13th
August 8th
September 5th
October 3rd
October 31st
November 28th
December 19th
Last
Month….
Saw
the return of Steve Orrell with his impressive Multi-Media Centre.
As some of you will probably remember, Steve introduced us to
his media project some time ago when it was really in its infancy.
Well Steve was back with the finished product and it has been
well worth the wait.
Steve’s
desire to have a stand-alone media center was driven by the increasing
size of his music collection that consisted of a large collection
of vinyl lps, cds, cassettes and mini discs. Of course, to play
all of this, he needed a record turntable, cd player, cassette
player and mini disc player, all of which were taking up increasing
amounts of valuable space. Enough was enough and Steve embarked
on his project.
For
his Media Centre, Steve needed a small mini computer with a minimalist
specification. The unit chosen houses a large hard disc drive
to hold all the media, a small processor and ram, a laptop cd/dvd
drive and an operating system to manage the media player and network
backup. Originally Steve hoped to use Linux as his operating system
but ran into a series of problems that were difficult to overcome.
He had then, to return to a Windows operating system.
The
motherboard is a 6½“ square, low energy VIA EPIA
mini ITX board housing an Eden processor. There are also 4 USB2
ports and to save space and reduce heat generation, an external
power supply. To emphasise the compactness of the unit, Steve
was able to show us some images of the inside of the computer.
Finally the icing on the cake was the touch screen that had been
integrated from a car entertainment system, complete with a large
umbilical cable of which 90% was redundant to Steve’s requirements.
Once
the system had been built, Steve’s next decision was to
consider what software would best accommodate his collection of
music. He needed a piece of software that could recognize and
play the numerous file extenders he was using, such as .mp3, .wma
and .acc. His final choice came down to the Windows XP Home Media
Centre. To operate this outside the windows environment, he needed
to buy a license for £100. He did dabble with Winamp but
found that the Windows Media Player had the flexibility he was
looking for.
A
quick demonstration showed how easy it was to select and play
the music. The user is able to choose by title, artist and even
genre if required, all from the front end touch screen. Steve
explained that to improve output on some of his recordings, he
used Audacity, (a free package we looked at last month), to normalize
the low quality and enhance the output. This he demonstrated with
a before and after. The results were very acceptable. Getting
all that music onto his system is another story and perhaps a
topic to visit in the future.
I
am sure that like me, all those present were extremely impressed
and our thanks go to Steve for unending his lounge to get at and
bring down the Media Centre for us all to see and appreciate.
Dave
Robb
Subscriptions
It’s the time of year you have all been waiting for, yes
it’s subscription time. The rates have again remained unchanged
at £ 12.00 for full membership and £ 1.00 for associate
members. At the next meeting Derek will be available for you to
pay your subscription. If you are unable to attend the meeting
you can post a cheque for the correct amount to Derek Taylor.
All cheques should be made payable to Melton Computer Club
Digital
Corner….
Hopefully
this is going to be regular column that will look and the latest
news on anything to do with the digital photography and software.
Of all the many areas of computing interest, I guess digital photography
and photo manipulation has seen the most advances in the last
few years. I remember well, when Geoff Walsh was the first club
member to bite the bullet and invest in a digital camera. His
demonstration of its capabilities whet everyone’s appetite
and now digital cameras seem to be as commonplace as the television.
So
what’s new on the digital front at the moment? In the camera
world, the latest mid range non-professional SLR models offer
a massive 10 Mega Pixel resolution and more bells and whistles
than a Mardi Gras. The two front runners in this bracket are the
Cannon 400D and the Nikon D80. Both excellent cameras aimed fairly
and squarely at the amateur enthusiast market. Others in this
range include the Pentax K10D, Samsung GX-10 and the Olympus E-400.
They can all be bought with a range of standard zoom lenses or
just body only if you already have lenses that will fit. Prices
are falling all the time but one of these cameras will cost in
the region of £700.00 depending on the lens bought with
it and around £500.00 for the body only.
Why 10 Mega Pixels? You may ask. With such a large sensor available,
a standard A4 image will print out at 300 ppi without any interpolation
manipulation. An A3 image will only see a small resolution drop
to 240 ppi. Hence very high quality prints with no interpolation
adjustment. Secondly, a cropped section of an image can be taken
out, enlarged (within reason) and reproduced without losing picture
quality.
Many enthusiasts who buy these cameras have been using film SLR
cameras and the digital SLR is the natural progression. Often
they have invested in lens for their old camera and this will
have a direct bearing on which camera to buy. Very often, for
example, Nikon or Cannon AF lenses will fit their respective digital
SLR camera range. Due to the size of the imaging sensor in the
digital SLR camera there is usually a focal length conversion
(or magnification factor) in the order of x1.5 or x1.6 depending
on the manufacturer. For a 1:1 conversion you better be prepared
to take out a second mortgage as only the very high end professional
digital cameras offer this.
Start
up speed was always the limitation of digital cameras and often
the main criticism by film camera buffs. However, the latest models
now boast start up speeds of much less than 1 sec. They all offer
the standard file formats of .JPEG in a variety of quality sizes
and also .Raw. These .Raw files are a lossless format and tend
to be huge, preserving all the image detail from the original
shot. Unfortunately there is no one standard for .RAW files as
yet with Nikon using .NEF and Cannon .CR2 for example. They do,
however, offer greater control over the finished image when enhanced
in a graphics package like Adobe Photoshop or Elements. You do
have to have large memory media to accommodate them – 1
Gbyte cards probably being the minimum.
All
these cameras offer the usual exposure modes such as aperture
priority, shutter priority, Manual and auto for those who are
happy to let the camera do all the thinking. Shutter speeds tend
to range through 30 sec – 1/4000 sec and Bulb. They can
usually fire off 3 shots per second and write speeds are in the
range of 1 to 2 seconds with adequate buffers to allow continual
shooting. The standard memory card for digital SLR cameras was
always Compact Flash (CF), however, Nikon and Pentax have opted
for the smaller Secure Digital (SD) cards. There is virtually
no difference in performance but something to consider if you
have invested heavily in one type already.
In
summary, what do you get for your money? They are all excellent
cameras with extremely high resolutions giving superb picture
quality. The Cannon offers a sensor dust removal system that does
limit its start up time if switched on. The Nikon sports the 11-point
focusing area and metering system taken from Nikons more expensive
range of cameras and the Sony and Pentax have anti shake mechanisms,
great for low light photography.
I
have bitten the bullet and gone for the Nikon D80. I have had
it a month now and am very impressed with its build quality, features
and all round handling. We will have to see if it helps makes
me a better photographer. I suspect though, that it is me and
not the camera that is going to be the stumbling block on that
score.
Dave
Robb
Apple iTunes
Microsoft
released on Tuesday what it called the "final" Vista
fix for a problem that iPod owners had been having with the new
operating system since its Jan. 30 launch.
This works with the latest version of Apple iTunes to correct
an issue that caused some iPods to become corrupted when ejecting
them using Windows Explorer or the 'Safely Remove Hardware' function
in the System Tray, a Vista program manager, said on the team's
blog. "Apple and Windows have partnered together to ensure
a great experience in using Windows Vista with iTunes and the
iPod, and both companies recommend you download this update."
In March, after Apple update iTunes to patch several Vista-related
problems while leaving the Safely Remove Hardware bug unfixed,
Microsoft posted an iPod fix of its own. Today's fix is an update
to that March patch.
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