wildscenes

I clean my CCDs regularly on my Nikon D2X and D2H using a Eclipse fluid, a 100% lint-free cloth (Pec-pads I think) and a spatula I made from a plastic fork from which I cut off the tynes and filed the edge down. If I wrap a pad around it, add three drops of fluid, give it one wipe - hey presto! Clean as a whistle. You can't damage the CCD as there's an anti-alias filter in front of it and the Nikon Technicians assured me that it's all they do anyway when I spoke with them at a Nikon day the other week (they were cleaning the Nikon bodies free on the spot for people so no complicated equipment there). I did buy a copperhill spatula but it's too narrow so you have to do two wipes, my patented plastic fork is exactly the same width as the sensor so one wipe and it's all over. If you do use a blower (and this will only remove some dust particles), make sure you turn the camera body so that the lens opening is facing downwards so that the dust blows out and not just around if you see what I mean John

Thanks for all the input guys. I understand the complexities of programming, I worked at a large bank as an IT technical specialist for the past 20years but have given it up to do photography full time I perhaps shouldn't have called the manual control 'basic' functionality, I meant 'original' functionality - I need this expressly because I use PTE for giving lectures so I use a remote pointer to move the slides on manually. Introducing pan, zoom and rotation should have no bearing on the complexity of this as KSF implies, I merely want to tell PTE when to change a slide. Any motion built in should just happen as planned. I've only just really started to do AV talks having bought some Bose speakers, but I have to confess that I am using Proshow Producer to do the intro with all it's motion effects and multi-slide layering etc, this then kicks off a PTE main body of the talk and PTE in turn kicks off a big AV finale using PP again. The only glitch is when PP kicks off PTE as there's a brief flash of the desktop. However, when PTE kicks of PP it is seamless I just figured that rather than simply have the static nature of the slides in the main part of the talk, I could throw in a few slides that zoomed and panned etc. Lin - any chance you can link me to the Proshow forum? I have some complaints of my own I'd like to throw in. Nick - send me a mail re studio flash at any time. I'm a Bowens man FWIW. John

Thanks for the response Al. Not sure why the mouse controls aren't activated in v.5 as this is basic functionality in the previous versions and I would have thought that a new version would do everythinbg the old version does and more besides Oh well, guess the audience will have to wait for the complete version of v.5 to be released. Your suggestion of the push effect would work for pan but I also wanted zoom etc. so too much effort for now. John

Hi all I may be missing something simple here but using Version 5.00 I can't seem to make the manual control of slides work. I have set the mouse buttons to be left=next slide, right=previous but it doesn't work. I use PTE for my lectures as a wildlife photographer and rather than simply create AV's, I set all slide timings to 6 mins which allows me to move on at my pace as I talk, so could be a few seconds per slide or a minute or so if I'm telling a tale. Any ideas? I'm wanting to introduce some panning etc during the talk but still have full control of the show. TIA John

Thanks for this guys. There's a shop very close to me listed as being a stockist for the AEGO speakers so I'll pop over and try them out in the shop. I do loads of lectures each year and have used P2E in a basic form for all my digital lectures, but now I want to stepo it up a gear (and hike the lecture fees at the same time ). Thanks again John www.wildscenes.com

Hi All pretty basic question so forgive an AV newbie, but what kind of amplifier do I need to get the sound out of the laptop and across the room? Can anyone recomend one, where to buy it and what kind of speakers? Thanks in advance John

Indeed it does. I hadn't spotted that Thanks Igor

Hello Can anyone tell me if it is possible to mark the thumbnails as having been used (similar to ProShow Gold) once you entered them into the show? I think this would make life so much easier when sifting through a couple of hundred slides during the preperation of a show. TIA John http://www.wildscenes.com