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JimmyC
For those of you who love photography and SLR’s - here is a good option. Leica has a fantastic camera that acts like an SLR with removable lenses. The Leica V-Lux 1 is an amazing camera that has a tremendous 12x zoom (equivalent to 35mm to 420mm on a 35mm film camera). What is more you can shoot video which my wonderful D200 cannot. Its a great compromise for those who want SLR quality but not the hassle of changing lenses and the limitations of shooting video. Don’t get me wrong - it won’t do what my D200 will do but it is a great camera. http://en.leica-camera.com/photography/compact_cameras/v-lux_1/
But wait, there is more. Don’t spend the money on a Leica branded camera. Get the Exact same camera from Panasonic - with the Leica lens. The Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-FZ50 is the same camera for half the price (well, maybe not half but hundreds less Yes - Leica purists will say its not the same due to quality control but the Panasonic is an amazing camera. My Mom and Pop got one and took it on a Safari in Africa - amazing shots. More at http://panasonic.co.jp/pavc/global/lumix/fz50/index.html
Daniel is computer animation.  Took a class this summer in camp. He also wants to use his Lego Bionicles to do it.  I told him about stop motion and his friend has done it with a small camera.  I found JoJo’s website and this might do the trick for him.   Photojojo » How to Make Stop-Motion Video Shorts with Your Digital CameraIt gets better - with my nikon and my new mac-pro this will be a breeze.  I have Final Cut Express and it has Blue and Green screen filters built in.  As described on Final Cut Pro QuickTips via Digital Media Online this is very possible to do. We can do the stop motion as JoJo suggests but on a green screen and have it on any background we like.  Here is a cool site from a DIY site that describes a low-budget way to make backdrops. And another Down and Dirty Greenscreen. Researching paint color to just paint a wall revealed you just want to get as close to true green or blue (like on the test pattern on the TV).Â
Swift Sweet Rush by Jim Charanis
Took a bunch at Maia’s recital but this one of her and her friend running across the bridge in euphoric enthusiasm before the performance was candid. Funny how things work out - life is what happens when you are making plans.
I love reading tidbits during my lunch break. This is a great idea - esp when I’m hiking.
I can’t stand it. I’m getting a Mac Pro. I have a Compaq Presario Intel Win XP box I’ve been running for over 5 years and my trusty PowerBook G4 1Ghz. It just takes too long to process the RAW photo’s from my Nikon D200 (10MP) on the powerbook and if I’m going to upgrade my Win XP box I might as well run it on an Intel Mac now that I can. It also takes too long to process movies even in iMovie. I like my transitions and titles, pan and scan. Every time I change something it renders for a good 5 minutes. Sure iMovie is smart enough to do that in the background but on a Quad Core Intel box it will tear through this stuff. No I don’t need the 8-Core. I’m researching a Mac Pro to run Final Cut Express, Aperture, Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash. I’ll upgrade FC Express and the Adobe Web suite and buy a new copy of Aperature.
I spoke with a Mac guy at the Apple store and he confirmed that the processor speed isn’t the challenge for me. I’m not doing heavy engineering or gaming that might require intense calculations. So figure a Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon (that’s 4 2.66 GHz processors!). $2,499.00
Upgrading the memory both Ram and HD is the key. I have looked into it and I think getting the RAM from Apple is probably the best bet. When they configure the box they will fill all of the memory slots so getting 1GB will fill 2 slots with 512MB RAM, 2GB will fill 4 slots. I have also heard the Apple memory is built to be cool in a box that doesn’t have many fans. So figure a $699 upgrade to 4 x 1GB 667MHz DDR2 fully buffered ECC RAM in 4 of the FB-DIMM slots.
Then I take the standard Hard Drive in Bay 1 – 250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s. The upgrade to a 750GB drive is $299, for that price I can get two 500GB drives and create one RAID 0 volume. That’s right – these drives are now selling for as low as $0.23/MB! This type of RAID, also referred to as a striped array, reads and writes data to and from all the drives at the same time, which can really speed things up. In fact Macworld tests show that this gives more critical applications almost as much throughput as moving to the 3.0MHz CPU costing hundreds more. Add the RAM upgrade and my photo and movie editing should fly. Less waiting, more creating.
The Apple rep also suggested upgrading the Graphics card to the ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI) for $249. This doubles the onboard RAM and the ability to support two 30†HD Displays. Not that I’ll ever afford such eye candy. In fact I will probably have to keep my SyncMaster 20†for now. But when we build the home theater – POW! Another reason to upgrade is that it uses a special double-wide slot designed to accommodate its on-board fan and vent. If I got the standard Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT it would be in this slot and really a throw away if I ever needed to upgrade – unless I wanted to drive more then two monitors. Doubt it. Having said all of this there was a comparison done by Christoph Vonrhein for Final Cut Pro. Based on this review and the kind of work I’ll be doing it probably won’t make much of a difference and I should save the $249 upgrading later if I need to.
In fact, I should put the $249 towards AppleCare to protect the purchase and provide onsite support for 3 years. Not that I expect problems but it did help with my PowerBook for a power supply and great tech support. In fact, if I purchase a monitor with it that will be covered too. And I’ll include an Airport Extreme card with Bluetooth.
Grand Total $3,526.00
With a 24†HD Flat Panel Monitor $4,425
Add the two hard drives (2 x 500GB @ $125 each) $4,675
Add Aperture ($299) and an upgrade to Final Cut Express ($99) $5,073
Tax at 7% ( $355) $5,428.11
Add Windows Vista to run my old stuff (or I could just install my old copy of Windows XP). $99 to $150 more.
Okay, maybe I’m not. For a while.
Alternatives:
Other World Computing for the memory and Newegg.com for the drives. I have purchased drives and batteries for my power book from them before. Should be able to get the 1GB RAM model and then purchase 4GB RAM from these guys for $430.
For the CPU - mail order saves tax and shipping less then $70: Small Dog, Power Max ($200 rebate with AppleCare, $75 with RAM), MacConnection ($150 rebate), MacMall ($150 Rebate, free printer, bundles).
MyPublisher | Design your own Photo Book to be printed as a beautiful hardcover book!
I have used this service and commented here in the past. They gave me the chance to Beta Test the new software for Mac. I have used the iPhoto Plug-in before. This is a stand-alone program that allows you to create a book, using photos from any source including iPhoto.
Thanks for letting me participate in the beta of the Mac OS X Beta program. I did the survey but not sure if all comments will make it though. I’ll do a full review after the final release.
When adding pictures from an iPhoto Album it would be better if you could drag and drop the album and have it add the photos in that album in order. Or if when you select all photos in an album it drops them in the same order. You can much easier order pictures in iPhoto then on the add photo bar.
The only way to add them in a specific order is to drag them one by one.
I like the big picture view that lets you organize the photos. I like the unassigned feature too. But you can only multi-select and select many by stretching the mouse over. A shift-select would be good. In other words click one then shift click one further down the line selecting all in the middle.
When working in the page layout I like the double click to get to the image controls. That gives comfort and control over pictures as you work on layout.
There seems to be a bug in the image control window. I forgot to click done after editing a picture and then going to add another picture to that page. I went up dragged the new picture down and it worked but didn’t close the image control menu. Then I clicked done on the image control menu and it wouldn’t go away. I saved the book. Then I went to the next page, okay, but when I went to drag a picture down to the page the application crashed. I had to restart and good news the book opened to that page again.
The zoom in on text is cool, would be good to incorporate the spelling check feature of Mac OSX.
It would be nice to move composed pages around. In other words, when you go to the pages film strip view up top, you cannot drag and drop pages back and forth. You have to unload and reload pictures. Or am I missing something.
For example, the All pages view is nice to move pictures around the entire book, it would be good to be able to move pages too.
I moved a picture to a page that had a black background and the text didn’t change to white - so it didn’t show up.
When adding and deleting pictures from pages, moving them around there seemed to be some random placement of pictures at the top film strip. I lost track. But when I went from pages film strip to photos film strip (or whatever its called at the top) the pages were okay.
I changed the layout background from white to black and it ended up replacing a picture on the page. I also noticed that at these glitch/random events it leaves the picture up top. Actually it grabbed a picture from the next page, because when I tried to replace it back it replaced one on the next page. Maybe its trying to autofill but its acting strange. Now its locked in a picture and when I try and delete or correct it sticks, won’t let me delete. I’m quitting and restarting. Didn’t help.
I went back and did some reworking, not sure if pictures disappeared or not. I then ran into the same image control bug - window stuck. So I saved and quit and restarted.
You cannot seem to go back and get photos - well you can but when you do, any unused photos in the filmstrip disappear. I did go back to get more and when I went to the pages view it only had the 4 I added. Well I went to the organize page and it had put all the unused pictures on page 15, not sure what that means. There isn’t a page 15 yet.
I deleted all the empty pages and they went back to unassigned.
Login and upload went fine. More options here then with iPhoto plug-in. That is a bonus.
In the end, I think it is easier to use iPhoto’s book maker, except for these publishing options.
UPDATE: They emailed me a coupon for $180 and free overnight shipping to cover the cost of the order - I just sent in a new order that cost me nothing - didn’t have to send back other one, so I get one book for free (woopie); 11/12 were unusable. lets see how these come out! I lost two weeks and these won’t make it for Hannukah but if this one works I’ll keep using the service.
Original Post:
Hi - all search engines see this. http://www.mypublisher.com. I posted here on this website;
Photodoto » Blog Archive » Has anyone had a good experience with MyPublisher.com?
others have had problems.
Here is my opinion of the service.
I have had great success with mypublisher.com until today. I use the iPhoto Plug-in. The first two orders were for hardcover books - they came out great and color was pretty good. I had the coupon they offer for iPhoto users to publish directly and that made the cost reasonable. I haven’t priced shutterfly but Apple’s standard pricing is too expensive.
Today, however I received an order from them that was for the smaller 6×8 books - these books were poorly packaged and the packaging was torn up and re-taped - this appeared to be before the post office got to it. It actually looks like someone in the finishing room pulled it out of a finisher and them wrapped tape around it.
I ordered 12 books - all came in one mediamail cardboard envelope, not a box. The books were also not usable. Because of the packaging many were pressed against each other - there was no padding in the envelope - so there were creases and folds in most every one. Then 5 of the books had pages printed off center, upside down, with a barcode showing and folded up - (like when you have a page go through the printer bent). I don’t know if it is the Christmas rush or what but this is messing up my gift plans. I have emailed customer service twice - they don’t take phone calls.
I agree one of the posters on photodoto- with what they charge for shipping they shouldn’t be this poorly packaged or printed. And the hardcover books are nicely packaged - pre-made boxes and all. This must have been a bad day for them.
So good and bad experiences with www.mypublisher.com for me.
my irish eye is a Photoblog from Michelle Mitchell in London & Ireland - I’m not sure where she is now. But she has a great website and just gave me a great idea for building a photoblog within this site! And The Site to help me do it. Excellent….. Thanks Michelle!
