Just got a new phone courtesy of work, a Nokia N73, but with no memory card, so I decided to invest in a decent-sized mini SD card for it. MyMemory.com are doing their own brand 133x 2GB cards for £17.99 + P&P, which seemed like a good deal. I know their claims about speed are extremely optimistic (I've got a 133x MyMemory CF card, which is noticably slower than my 120x Transflash cards), but speed isn't a major concern in this case.
Well, the card arrived promptly, and worked when I put it in the phone, but when I formatted it (I like memory cards to be formatted in the device they are to be used by), it wouldn't format. I managed to get it formatted on my old Minolta camera (which takes SD cards), and used it over the weekend with no problems. However, today when I tried to copy a large amount of data to it, it was being really slow, and then started causing IO errors. Clearly not a good sign. I can't format it on the phone (still) or under Win XP, so it's going back to MyMemory for a refund. And next time I'm going to buy a decent brand.
Meanwhile, the Nisis graphics tablet has been a touch tempermental again. Although it was apparently working fine, when I tried it in anger with Photoshop, the cursor stopped responding to the pen input after a minute or so or use. I think that following a reboot of my PC and a few harsh words, it seems OK now. Annoyingly, for another £20 or so, I could have bought the cheapest Wacom tablet, which I'm fairly confident would have been a lot less trouble.
The moral of these tales? You get what you pay for. I should know this - I stopped buying cheap outdoor/walking stuff and cheap tools a long time ago for exactly the same reason!
Well, the card arrived promptly, and worked when I put it in the phone, but when I formatted it (I like memory cards to be formatted in the device they are to be used by), it wouldn't format. I managed to get it formatted on my old Minolta camera (which takes SD cards), and used it over the weekend with no problems. However, today when I tried to copy a large amount of data to it, it was being really slow, and then started causing IO errors. Clearly not a good sign. I can't format it on the phone (still) or under Win XP, so it's going back to MyMemory for a refund. And next time I'm going to buy a decent brand.
Meanwhile, the Nisis graphics tablet has been a touch tempermental again. Although it was apparently working fine, when I tried it in anger with Photoshop, the cursor stopped responding to the pen input after a minute or so or use. I think that following a reboot of my PC and a few harsh words, it seems OK now. Annoyingly, for another £20 or so, I could have bought the cheapest Wacom tablet, which I'm fairly confident would have been a lot less trouble.
The moral of these tales? You get what you pay for. I should know this - I stopped buying cheap outdoor/walking stuff and cheap tools a long time ago for exactly the same reason!
OK, strictly this isn't a review, more of a support guide for the Nisis Easypen G3 USB graphics tablet as I had some major problems getting Photoshop to recognise the pressure-sensitive stylus.
Scan had them on special offer (again), and I finally decided to get one. They were reviewed in one of the digital camera magazines recently and faired pretty well, so for about £10 (OK, more like £18 with P&P!) I thought I'd give it a go and see if it helped with photo editing.
It arrived, I installed the drivers, and it appeared to work. The systray icon fires up a configuration control, letting you set the working area of the tablet, the speed of the mouse (it comes with a mouse and a pen) and the sensitivity of the pen. All well and good. However, upon firing up Photoshop CS2 and trying to configure the brush dynamics to use the pen pressure to control size/opacity/flow of the brush, I discover Photoshop doesn't recognise the tablet!
Anyway, to cut a long story short, get yourself the latest drivers. Unfortunately, Nisis's website (http://www.nisis.com/) was non-existant (perhaps that's why Scan are selling the tablets cheap...). Fortunately, the Internet Archive has copies of them from their archived copy of the G3 drivers page (or try to download direct). Note that the drivers packaged as version 3.10 do enable the pen pressure control to work with Photoshop - other (earlier) versions I've tried don't.
For reference, the Nisis products appear to be re-badged Aiptek tablets, so their drivers should work. However, they only appear to have version 3.08 drivers, which didn't enable pen pressure control in Photoshop for me.
Finally, I ought to plug Adobe Forums. There's a few threads on there about Nisis, Aiptek and other branded tablets (which seem to be the same models), and the problems associated with them. Expect lots of comments about "you should have bought Wacom". It's clear that Wacom tablets are the most reliable, but they are several times the price, so I guess the Nisis G3 was worth a couple of late nights tracking down the right drivers to get it all working.
Now all I need to do is actually try using the tablet for photo editing!
Update (11 September 2007):
As has been pointed out in the comments, the Internet Archive link no longer works. Please check my more recent post for links to the Aiptek V3.15 drivers.
Update (18 October 2007):
Surprisingly, there still seems to be some demand for the v3.10 drivers. Due to a lack of time, and giving up caring whether it's going to cause me problems making it public, here's the link to the drivers.
Download and use them at your own risk. I got hold of these from the Internet Archive's archive of the Nisis website. I believe them to be free from viruses (virii?) and other nasty things, but please feel free to check them yourself first. Also see the note above that more recent v3.15 drivers are available from Aiptek.
Finally, I haven't actually used mine in a long time. Between various issues with drivers (lack of pen pressure sensitivity in older drivers, newer drivers crashing after a couple of minutes) and general poor feel, I can't be bothered. Once upon a time a graphic designer told me to buy Wacom or I'd regret it. He was right, and I think my G3 is going in the bin/on freecycle/on eBay. Whether I'll get a Wacom or not to replace it, I don't know. To everyone else still persisting with the G3, good luck!
Thanks,
Kev
Update (21 January 2008):
Seeing as there are still lots of people asking about the drivers for the Nisis Easypen tablets, I'll re-post the links here, even though they I've already posted them on the article linked in a previous update (above). These are for the Aiptek HyperPen tablets, which appear to be identical to the Nisis ones apart from the branding (at least, the Nisis Easypen G3 and Aiptek HyperPen 8000U look physically identical). So, as stated previously, the latest drivers are version 3.15 for Windows XP and Vista (or 3.08 for Windows 98, ME and 2000):
- Download page: http://www.aiptek.com/drivers.htm#hp8u
- Direct link to Aiptek v3.15 drivers for Windows XP and Vista: http://www.goaiptek.com/drivers/driverfiles/DriverTabletV3.15.zip
- Direct link to Aiptek v3.08 drivers for Windows XP and Vista: http://www.goaiptek.com/drivers/driverfiles/USBTabletV3.08.zip
Once again, good luck!
14/11: Strobist.com
Sorry, meant to give a plug to strobist.com with the article on product photography. Strobist.com look at how to use standard on-camera flashes instead of more expensive studio gear, and there's lots of info and articles on DIY equipment. The reason for the plug was that the mini studio I built was slightly modified from my original design after reading their DIY $10 Macro Photo Studio article. Instead of keeping it as a solid box, I cut the sides out and covered them with tissue to give me more of a light-tent instead, which improved my original idea no end.
13/11: Product Photography
I was having a play at the weekend with doing some product photography. I put together my own version of a light tent/cube to make my own mini studio. This is built from 5mm thick A2 foamboard, with the top and sides panel cut to give a frame over which is mounted white tissue paper to diffuse the light. The edges are joined together using right-angle plastic sections (from my local model shop), glued (with Plasticweld) to 60-thou plasticard (also from the model shop), which in turn is glued (with a hot-glue gun) to the foamboard, in effect producing a 5mm channel that the sides can slot into.
Lighting was courtesy of a tungsten incandescent desklamp, a halogen desk lamp, a flourescent-tube desk lamp and my Nikon SB800 (with the tungsten gel on it), and using some of the foamboard off-cuts as gobos to keep the side lights on the background and not the "products". The setup was as follows:
Lighting setup - overhead view
Lighting setup - front view
All the different lights, with different colour casts/temparates and intensities made it difficult to get it perfect. I've also found that when working this close, the control flashes from the on-camera flash (used to wirelessly control the SB800) cast a slight shadow.
The following is processed from the RAW file, but not edited in Photoshop or similar (which might fix the annoying extra shadow).
The finished shot - Wine glass and flower
Lighting was courtesy of a tungsten incandescent desklamp, a halogen desk lamp, a flourescent-tube desk lamp and my Nikon SB800 (with the tungsten gel on it), and using some of the foamboard off-cuts as gobos to keep the side lights on the background and not the "products". The setup was as follows:
Lighting setup - overhead view
Lighting setup - front view
All the different lights, with different colour casts/temparates and intensities made it difficult to get it perfect. I've also found that when working this close, the control flashes from the on-camera flash (used to wirelessly control the SB800) cast a slight shadow.
The following is processed from the RAW file, but not edited in Photoshop or similar (which might fix the annoying extra shadow).
The finished shot - Wine glass and flower
13/11: Mega Machu Picchu
Someone at work just passed me this link to a 1500 MegaPixel image of Machu Picchu. There's some technical detail to how the photo was put together (camera, lens, software), but some more detail would have been nice (mostly what sort of tripod mount was used - ie a proper panorama mount, or just a standard head?). Anyway, a very impressive picture - worth lugging the 10kg of camera gear up the Inca Trail for!
08/11: After Lunch
After many years working for what used to be the UK's No. 1 ISP, my mate and co-worker has finally set himself up a website called (for reasons I know not) After Lunch. It's not very interesting just yet (I know, that's the pot calling the kettle black), but he's charting his brother's progress accross the Atlantic on a boat called Mango II, and has been playing with some interactive maps to show the progress.
Had a quick trawl through the weblogs toady, and once again noticed that the "Bookmarking icons for MSIE 5.0" show up in the broken links section, as usual. Anyway, I finally got round to doing something about it, so you'll probably notice an icon appearing in the address bar of your browser. It might change sometime (when I can be bothered to do something properly), but for now this was generated courtesy of http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/.
08/11: More Kenya photos...
I've finally had a quick run through the photos from Kenya, and here's a few of the best straight off the camera (no processing, other than resizing them).
Shooting RAW files gives you lots of flexibility in post-processing, but they don't half take up a lot of space on memory cards. Typically, a 2GB card holds 100 RAW files for my D200. For day trips, I've enough memory cards to get by, but for longer trips I need something else. A laptop is one option, as would be something like the Nikon Coolwalker or Epson P-2000/3000/4000. However, I found the Thecus N1050 "nano" 2.5-in drive enclosure together with an 80GB Fujitsu drive on offer from Scan. Having used it in anger a couple of times, I've now got a good idea of it's pros and cons.
04/11: Back from Safari
Jambo!
We've just spent 11 days in Kenya, and arrived home yesterday. I'm just checking through my photos, and I've got just over 2100 pictures to sort through!
Having had a bit of a think about what I'm doing with this site, I'm going to put together a few reviews of equipment I bought or borowed for the trip, and also some thoughts on the different places we stayed whilst in Kenya - so watch this space!
In the mean time, until I find time to properly sort out all the pictures (which could be months...) here's one for starters:
We've just spent 11 days in Kenya, and arrived home yesterday. I'm just checking through my photos, and I've got just over 2100 pictures to sort through!
Having had a bit of a think about what I'm doing with this site, I'm going to put together a few reviews of equipment I bought or borowed for the trip, and also some thoughts on the different places we stayed whilst in Kenya - so watch this space!
In the mean time, until I find time to properly sort out all the pictures (which could be months...) here's one for starters:
