Lin Evans

Hi Mike, As a wildlife photographer these days (I formerly made my living photographing fine art) I can give you some hints about the advantages and disadvantages of each system. Essentially there are a range of so called "crop factor" cameras ranging from the 2X factor of the 4/3 (Olympus) dSLR's to the 1.7x of Sigma, the 1.6x and 1.27x of Canon and the 1.5x of Nikon. Then we have the full frame models by Canon, Nikon and Sony. The advantage really goes to the crop factor cameras for the majority of photographers who must carry their equipment literally on their backs into remote and often physically difficult terrain. The essence is that the crop factor systems have greater pixel density in general, so that they paint the subject with more resolution than most of the full frame systems. Let's look at this quickly. For most serious wildlife you will be needing somewhere between 600mm and 800mm focal length. To get the full pixel density (vesting the full resolution) on a 2x crop means that a 400mm lens gives the Olympus dSLR the same as one of the so called full frame (24mmx36mm sensor) with an 800mm lens. Add a 1.4x teleconverter and you are up to 1120 mm with the Olympus versus 560mm with the full frame sensor. 560 mm is still quite short for many serious wildlife photographers. Yes, the full frame gives a bit better image quality at 560 than the Olympus at 1120, but if you want enlargement, the 2X still way outperforms the full frame. I took the extreme example to demonstrate this principle. If you crop a full frame 24 megapixel capture to the 2X crop (frame content) of the Olympus, you have only 6 megapixels painting that subject. This may seem odd because most people intuitively think that you would have 12 megapixels (half of 24) but indeed you only have 6. So your 24 megapixel full frame camera using the identical lens with the image cropped to 2X gives you a whopping 6 megapixels. To get the same number of megapixels painting the frame as with the crop factor Olympus, you must go to much longer, heavier and incredibly more expensive lenses. Now let's look at the Canon 1.6x crop factor sensors versus the full frame. The effective focal length for a 400 mm lens becomes 640mm. When you crop the 24mm full frame to the 1.6x factor you loose 60% of your pixels. This means your 24 megapixel full frame becomes a 10 megapixel (24mp x.4 = 10mp). So if you are using a 15 megapixel Canon 50D, you have an additional five megapixels painting the subject with the identical lens. Now let's look at the Nikon 1.5x crop. So cropping the 24 megapixel full frame to the 1.5x crop paints a 12 megapixel subject. This, in effect, is virtually identical to what I believe is the "best" of the Nikon values for the wildlife photographer, the newest version of the Nikon D300. When you look at costs, the least expensive of the full frame models is about $2500 from a legitimate dealer. Nikon D700 prices are very similar or perhaps a hundred dollars or so more expensive. Nikon D300 prices are around $1500 on average right now (USD). I have purposely omitted the pro models such as the Canon 1D Mark III and Nikon D2XS, etc., because they are around $4,000 or so. I've also excluded the Sigma 1.7x dSLR's because even though I often use one of these myself, they are not nearly as well suited for the wildlife shooter. The shot to shot time is low, the high ISO is mediocre and lighting needs to be very good to make them shine. So for Wildlife, my opinion is that your are better off with something like the Nikon D300 (my first choice) or the Canon D50 (my second choice). The Olympus E3 is quite good, but not quite a good an image with slightly less high ISO and more expensive lens choices. The Olympus has in-body stabilization (important when hand-holding) but this is somewhat offset by better high ISO performance on the Nikon and Canon which "neither" have in-body stabilization. In any event, you will probably want to purchase a stabilized lens for either the Nikon or Canon. Now for landscapes, the Canon 5D Mark II and the Nikon D700 are extremely good. But if you purchase one of these, be prepared to spend "lots" of money for a good wide angle lens. These cameras simply don't function well with even some of the very expensive wide angle lenses. There is chromatic aberration in the periphery of images and it takes a really "top notch" (read expensive) lens to give you excellent, chromatic aberration free and edge softness free images at wide angles. Frankly, if I were "only" shooting wide angle and landscapes, I would be inclined to look long and hard at a Sigma SD14 or even one of the tiny Sigma DP1 or DP2 models. They take superb landscape images. I have displayed some of my images at Photokina and at the PMA (Photographic Marketing Association) shows (Las Vegas, NV and Orlando, FL) which were printed at A0 and larger sizes from the Sigma 4.7 megapixel X3 captures which were every bit as good as images printed from Nikon D2XS 12 megapixel captures! So what you must do is decide how much you will shoot wildlife, how much you will shoot landscapes and architecture and how much you can spend for camera body and lenses. Note: The "crop factors" are always percentage "approximations" so the amount of relative "megapixels" is a close "estimate" and not a mathematically "precise" number, but it will be close enough to give you a very good idea of the relevant differences. Here are some quick figures for those who want to do their own math: Full Frame 24x36mm sensor = 864 sq mm of sensor surface Canon so called 1.3x crop sensor (APS H) = 548 sq mm Nikon so called 1.5x crop sensor = 370 sq mm Canon so called 1.6x crop sensor = 329 sq mm Sigma so called 1.7x crop senor = 286 sq mm Olympus 4/3 so called 2x crop sensor = 225 sq mm To compare let's use an example. 864mm is to 1 as 329mm is to x Solving for x gives us 329/864 = .3807 or converting to a percentage - 38 percent. This means the Canon 1.6x crop factor actually has 38 percent of the area of the full frame sensor. So to reduce the image acquired by the full frame sensor to that of the Canon 1.6x crop we loose 62 percent. So 24 megapixels times .38 equals 9.2 megapixels. The full frame when cropped to the identical frame content of the 1.6x Canon give you 9.2 million pixels painting the image. You can use the above accurate sensor area to determine how your full frame sensor might perform with an identical lens versus a crop sensor for telephoto use. So which is the better instrument for the task depends primarily on your circumstances and subject matter. Best regards, Lin

LOL - Maybe if someone posted pictures of that Colorado Driftwood it would spark another fire? Nah.... Lin

Hi Dave, The way we have handled this is to create tutorials and place them in the Tutorials and Articles section of the forum. For example, the "how to rotate" has been pretty thoroughly covered in my PTE Made Easy series, along with a number of other "How to" categories. Actually, I couldn't imagine anyone who had actually looked at the series having any problems rotating one object around another. The AVI tutorials take the user from the very simple "on-center axis" rotations through rotating an object in a circle around the screen and even show how to make the object stay in one orientation while following a 360 degree circular orbit around the screen. This is followed by a demo of multiple objects rotating around a central object - all of which the user should be able to do after watching the tutorials. Following the advance tutorials, the "Uber Rotation" tutorial even show the user exactly how to make an object rotate on the Z axis! The demonstration uses a helicopter with the tail rotor rotating in a vertical position while the main rotor rotates in a horizontal plane. Just point club members to the "Tutorials and Articles" forum section and if there is something they still don't understand, have the ask on the forum and one of us will be more than happy to help. We try to cover all major areas of interest in animation (Pan, Zoom and Rotate) in the Tutorials. If we were to try to put this all into a user guide it would be impossibly convoluted. As it was, even with PTE 5, it took about 130 pages to adequately cover what we did. If we were to make a new User Guide covering everything today "and" try to include tutorials on "how to" within the guide, it might be a gigabyte and have 500 pages! The only sensible way is to cover the basics in the user guide and handle the how to in a series of tutorials. The "majority" of things which are not pretty much self-evident were pretty well covered in the tutorials which I and others have placed in the Tutorials section. There will be some new things when the next release is out and we will try to cover these new items with more tutorials, but I don't think we can do it under a single User Guide - it's just too complex. The problem is that we have a pretty diverse group of people who use PTE. Some just want to make simple slideshows with simple transitions and really don't care to do much more than a bit of pan or zoom. Some want to learn complex animations. Some have very limited aptitudes for understanding complex animations while others can easily master the most intricate concepts with ease and go beyond to devise their own amazing contributions! This makes it quite difficult to create a "one size fits all" user guide. This is why I suggested doing it in a modular fashion with each module handling a different aspect. Categories such as: Sound comments, timeline, pan, zoom, rotate, 3D transformation, music, opacity, parent/child, etc., etc. can all have their own "user guide" plus a series of tutorials. Many of these are already adequately covered while other still need to be generated after the next release is launched. The bottom line is that people need to be reminded that we already have a number of very useful tutorials, but people do have to actually come to the forum and if they don't have time to look around, at least ask and we will point them in the right direction. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jeff, I'm not certain what the problem is, but here's a possible solution: Rename the avatar or photo file on your source drive. Place the "new" avatar or photo in the same folder as the old one and rename it to the former name of the one which you can't seem to remove. Try to upload using the same file name and see what happens. If the problem is resolved, then the issue must be in the forum software. If it's not resolved, then we could assume that the avatar or photo is being stored elsewhere after being uploaded from your system, etc., perhaps on Igor's server. It's difficult sometimes to work out these issues, but if the forum software is just reloading the old photo each time, this approach should work. Best regards, Lin

Hi Guys, I think perhaps that the question of animate or not actually reaches toward the philosophical heart of why people create slideshows and why others watch slideshows. Life itself, by definition, is animation. A photograph is a "slice of life" where time is artificially frozen. and we have more time to examine that artificial segment of a true continuum. The popularity of movies and videos demonstrates, at least in part, that people like to see both that with which they are familiar, but in new context, as well as those things which are novel, imaginary, or unbelievable. Thus we have movies about people or events (lives, strife, war, conquest, contributions to humanity, etc.,) as well as the totally fictitious and unreal. The amazing popularity of books which have been made into movies such as the Harry Potter series, indicate that the human mind is quite versatile and that entertainment can, and should, be just as versatile. This brings into question the purpose of presenting our still images to an audience.There are numerous reasons why we may want to display our photographs. It could be that the presenter is greatly skilled at capturing life or nature on film. The subject matter could be human, animal, God's creations (nature, landscapes, etc.) or human creations (architecture, cities, constructions, etc.). In such a case, the purpose of the presenter is to have others appreciate the photographer's vision or insights into the subject matter. The presentation is then a series of "slices of life." The purpose may be to tell a story, reveal hidden truths, evoke emotional responses, provoke thought or simply entertain. Whether or not to "animate" these images depends greatly on both the image content and the intended purpose of the presentation. There will frequently be a dichotomy of opinion over not only animation, but animation (or not) of what? There will be those who simply become bored with viewing a still image for more than a few seconds and who prefer that image to be in motion. Whether it be zooming in, out or panning or a combination. Others want to see parts of the image in motion such as a winter scene with snow falling or a waterfall with continual motion or the ceaseless motion of waves on the sea. Others will want to view those scenes as that frozen slice of time, without any embellishment by the presenter. So the question then becomes why animate at all when one "could" simply take a video or movie and present that? There is a certain logic to this argument. I believe the reason some are inclined to animate is that with a movie or video, we can only present the motion provided by nature while with animation the author has control over that nature by amount, texture, position, timing, etc., of the animated part or whole. What works for one observer may be folly for another. The very fact that virtually every presentation slideshow software offers multiple "transitions" between slides is objective testimony to the fact that the human mind can quickly become bored not only with senseless motion, but also with the absence of motion. Whether that motion be in part or whole within the image itself or as a break from boredom between images, there is a place for animation. And just as there are countless different subjects for our photographs, there are countless different opinions and preferences concerning how those photographs might be best presented to an audience. One size definitely does not fit all! To animate or not; the eternal question. There are perhaps as many answers as petitioners. Best regards, Lin

I'm pinning this because there are lots of questions about whether this or that video card, system, CPU or laptop will have enough GPU power to run animations, pans, etc., smoothly. Here is a very complete set of benchmarks, updated frequently, where you can get a feel for how the video card in the computer you plan to purchase will perform. There are also benchmarks for systems, CPU and hard drives! http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ Click on the link above and find your card. These are divided into top, middle and low performance charts. Click on one of the charts to see closeups. Go to the white reference chart, enter the video card manufacturer name and number in the search field. Once you have it located, copy down the G3D performance rating and report back and someone here will help you determine how it fares. You can also see the video card's "ranking" among all tested. The lower the number, the better performance you may expect. As of today (September 5, 2009) 694 different video cards have been tested and results posted. As of July 2018 over 1,000,000 different video cards have been tested and results posted. Best regards, Lin

Hey Dom, Cool! She has nice hands too! Lin

Hi Peter, This may be of interest: --------------- by Thomas Ricker posted Jan 6th 2009 at 12:01AM And here you thought AMD's 45-nm Conesuswas its next generation netbook / ultra-portable processor. Sorry, forthat you'll have to wait until the beginning of the second half of 2009according to Bahr Mahony, Director of AMD's mobile division who we justspoke with here at CES. Instead, AMD's Athlon Neo ultra-portableplatform built around existing 65-nm processes is scheduled to make itsretail debut in the US in March. Remember, AMD won't be challenging Intelin a race to the bottom so Neo is aimed squarely at that soft, chewymarketshare nestled between the underperforming $499 netbook andover-the-top $1,499 ultra-portable. Neo boasts more processing powerthan Intel's 45-nm Atom at the cost of a higher load on your batterythanks to the 35W thermal envelop of the Neo chipset combined with adiscrete, ATI Mobility Radeon Hd 3410 graphics. The result however iswhat AMD calls balanced performance from ultra-thin notebooks capableof smooth 1080p playback of your HD media -- a feat that Atom-basednetbooks saddled with integrated graphics struggle with. Interesting,now let's see the 3rd party benchmarks. AMD's data versus the Atomposted after the break.Continue reading AMD kinda sorta takes aim at Atom with Athlon Neo -------------- This would indicate that the Atom-based systems with integrated graphics probably won't be suitable, however the HP system may be quite sufficient. One thing you might want to do is to take some samples of difficult graphics to see how the card handles them. Let me know if you want a link to a test file which challenges graphics and I'll post a link for you. Quite a while ago I made a couple puzzle shows which look very similar but are quite different in terms of loading a video card. If a system can play the difficult one smoothly without excessive "stutter," it "should" be sufficient for almost all PTE animations. Best regards, Lin

LOL - They would be in for a BIG disappointment if they knocked on my door!! They wouldn't find a thing - HA! Lin

Hi David, Yep, there's a bug - I just tried to save without making any changes and got a similar error message. Lin

Hi Lennart, To get perspective change during motion requires 3D transformation which is coming soon in PTE but not yet released. Otherwise to simulate a page turning appear correctly as in real life, it would require use of masking rectangles which would detract a good deal from the very nice image. In version 5.6 it's not possible to have true perspective changes. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, Looks great! The only suggestion I have would be to put a check mark in the "anti-shimmer" (mipmapping) block to eliminate the flicker on zooms. When Igor releases the 3D transformation feature, you can get the perspective for the page flips and this will add a great deal to the authenticity of the effect. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Download these two screen shots of this entire thread. One made with IE 6 and the other with Mozilla 3.5.2. Notice at the bottom that the word (Fast Reply) and the black bar it resides in are missing from the IE 6 version. I suspect that's what's happening with yours. http://www.lin-evans.net/temp/ie6.jpg http://www.lin-evans.net/temp/firefox3.5.2.jpg Open these in Irfanview and expand to full size and scroll to the bottom where I've marked with red arrows, etc. Lin

I have IE 6 on both as well - I'll try it now: Lin O.K., editing on IE 6 now and testing word wrap below: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time..... Word wrap working normally at 1024x768 with I.E. 6 and XP Home Edition.

Hi Dave, I have two systems up and running right now. Word wrapping works fine on both. The first is set to 1024x768 and the second is set to 1280x1024. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Actually, though IE is by a considerable margin the most popular browser, there are no other "biggies like IE etc., etc." IE is the only "biggie." Firefox is the world's second most popular browser with about a 22.47% market share compared to the 67.68% of IE. The remaining share is divided among variously Safari, Google, Opera and others. So by definition, Firefox is not a minority browser and is only dwarfed by IE because IE is shipped with all Windows operating systems. If statistics were done on swaps, I suspect the gain by Firefox on IE would be absolutely amazing. Source: http://en.wikipedia....of_web_browsers Best regards, Lin

Hi John, You might have a look at this one: http://www.softsea.c...cate-Files.html Best regards, Lin

Hi Ed, Not to belabor a point, but depending on the length of the clip it's not difficult to do with my template. You just need to decompile into individual frames and rename them according to my instructions and the rest takes care of itself. There are a number of inexpensive and even free decompilers which will decompile an AVI into individual jpgs or png files. The template takes care of the animation to return the frames to movie or video. Obviously, this is more work than inserting an AVI but it's really not all that difficult. On the other hand, if you want to run an AVI you can use Boxig's utility which runs video from PTE. There is much less control than doing it with the template, but it works fine. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dom, Excellent examples! Thanks... Lin

Hi Eric, Slicing is not for panorama construction, but rather for panorama simulation with individual images which have been made by "slicing" a panorama into multiple images which fit perfectly together. By using the "push" transition, it's possible to create panorama pan simulations which will work smoothly on very low resource computers which are not able to pan a large panorama smoothly. There are numerous reasons why people want to slice images for animation purposes or as webmasters often do to prevent theft of images. The slices are joined on the web and appear to be a single image, but when a thief right clicks and saves to clipboard they only get a small segment of the whole. Animations of puzzle types use multiple "slices" to join together in the animation. Not everyone is interested in slicing an image, but there are many who are. Best regards, Lin

Sometimes, for special effects or for convenience we need to split or "slice" an image into a number of pieces. For doing special "puzzle" type effects, for slicing up large panoramas so they can be used as multiple images with "push" transition to accommodate low resource computers and simulate panning a large panorama, etc. Of course we can do this with Photoshop and Image Ready, but it isn't straight forward and does require a good bit of understanding of Photoshop. I've found that many people either don't have Photoshop or just give up trying to get jpg output instead of gif slices. Truth be known, the real intent of Adobe was probably doing the slices for web purposes and not for the purpose that we slideshow enthusiasts intend to use it for. Then there is always the expense of Photoshop and the fact that not everyone has it. So how do those who either don't have extensive knowledge or Photoshop or the finances to purchase Photoshop manage? One way is a very nice little free program (donations accepted) called PhotoScape (link below): http://www.photoscap...in/download.php It's extremely easy with PhotoScape to precisely slice up an image into equal sized pieces. PhotoScape does much more as you will see, but I find it a very good tool even if one uses it only for the slice feature. Best regards, Lin

Hi Sari, The multiple files and subdirectories will appear on the MacIntosh as a single file which when the Mac user clicks on, will play the slideshow. The "easiest" way to distribute this is to use the "Create in Zip" feature which is one of the choices offered when you select the "Executable File for Mac" from the "Create" menu choice. Just send your friend the zip file and everything will take care of itself when they unzip. Best regards, Lin

Hi Abdol, Does the link I provided in my post above not work for you? I am able to download the PDF files for all languages listed by clicking on the links? On the first help choice from each language (help - user guide online in English) you can load the PDF file of your choice of languages available (English, Russian, Italian, French, German) then once the file is loaded, there is a choice to save the file to your hard drive. This is a PDF function rather than a PTE function. Different versions of PDF readers have different menu positions, but they all "should" have a menu choice allowing your to save the PDF file. Do you mean that the user guides are not available by clicking on the "help" menu from languages other than English or Russian? They are all available from the links I provided, but I'm not certain how they (PDF Download Choices) are linked when other than English (the default) is selected as a language. It probably is difficult for the developers to get everything linked via the menu because they don't speak all these other languages and perhaps those who translate have taken liberties with their positions on the "help" window. I will try to find out. Best regards, Lin

Hi Abdol, 5.7 is a beta - not a release. The features are not even completely released in the beta so it's very premature to expect a user guide translated into multiple languages at this time...... The user guides for 5.6 are available here: http://wnsoft.com/apr/help.htm They are available in English, French, German, Italian and Russian Best regards, Lin

Hi Xaver, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. The point I was trying to make concerns cultural differences in what might be considered "off-topic." You seem to have a more narrow definition of what might be considered "off-topic" in comparison with how most other forum members define off-topic. On multiple occasions over the years you have interjected comments and done what is commonly called "hijack a thread" to further your apparent desire to have an off-topic category implemented. The better way to accomplish your goal, in my opinion, would be to email or PM Igor and ask for a new category to be implemented on the forum for off-topic conversations. Doing it this way would be much less disruptive to the forum and there would be fewer opportunities for "name calling," insults, or perceived insults. I'm not certain what precipitated (caused) the "Lèche-bottes" (translates in English as "boot licker") incident you refer to. In any event, such behavior should not be tolerated on the forums and such a comment should be removed. Had I seen such a comment myself, I would have removed it but I was not aware of it. But you also have been guilty of at least implied insults. In one thread you responded to Ken with the comment below: The above is an unfair assertion which, though perhaps based on your perceptions, is not accurate. There is no bias toward those who are not native English speakers by Ken or anyone else here. In fact, the vast majority of us who are native English speakers have the utmost admiration for those who go above and beyond to carry on conversations in a foreign language. Speaking for myself, I would find it most difficult to converse in German, Russian, Hungarian or Chinese as examples even though we have forum members who contribute here in English when these other languages are their native tongue. Though I do speak and write Spanish, and can comfortably read French, Italian and Portuguese, it would be extremely difficult for me to carry on forum conversations in other languages. So please don't confuse Ken's sometimes short (perhaps impatient) comments with intolerance for non native English speakers; that is certainly not the case. So in answer to your question. I do not regard such name calling as only being "French." Rude behavior is rude behavior regardless of one's nationality, culture, historical connotations or culture clash based on past events. Again, my point was that until we have an off-topic forum category, we should all be much more tolerant and less disruptive. I have myself been guilty of posting off-topic on a number of occasions. Sometimes by accident and sometimes because I believed that the information was important and that there wasn't a category into which it conveniently fit. That's just the nature of forums. When a poster plainly identifies the post as "off-topic," then please don't hijack the thread to point out the obvious. That behavior is more disruptive than an off-topic post. Best regards, Lin