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Hello there Eric, My daughter, a PhD in tephrostratigraphy - the study of ash eruption layers from volcanoes - had a collection of about 3,000 35mm slides from her studies back in the 1980's, and wanted to scan them as the slides were beginning to fade and shift color, so she asked me about a suitable scanner. As even a good scanner will take more than a minute to scan a slide, it would be a lot ot time to scan all her slides, and a better idea would be to use her Canon digital slr and a proper macro lens - which she has - to re-photograph the slides illuminated with a suitable backlight, in her case a slide viewing light box, suitably masked to illuminate the slides. I advised her to set custom color balance using the light from the light box, then shoot the slides letting the camera decide the exposure in evaluative mode. It was then just a matter of positioning a slide, click the shutter, position the next slide, and so on. She was able to get through the entire approximately 3,000 slides in just a few evenings, and they turned out spot on. So, after that, forget scanners and use your camera. A suitable light box should be within your capabilities, preferably using a continuous-spectrum light source like a halogen or LED light source. Custom balance the camera to the light source and you're away laughing. Regards, Colin

Trademe has a few available - http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/SearchResults.aspx?searchString=17-40mm&rptpath=124-&type=Search&searchType=3421&generalSearch_keypresses=5&generalSearch_suggested=7

Just a small point, most of the last several posts have been about cloning the C: drive whereas the original discussion was about imaging the C: drive to a backup file. Has anyone any experience of imaging a window 7 or 8 drive and then restoring it? Are there any curlies like the drive letter problem linked to by Lin? I think if my new win 7 machine crashed with a u/s C: drive, I would probably walk away from computing, such was the hassle in getting the machine to use a mixture of 32-bit applications that were on my old XP machine and 64-bit application updates for some of them. And, I have to say that my old XP computer was comparatively simple and hassle-free compared to this win 7 device. Colin

I vote for - and use- ImgBurn, http://www.imgburn.com and that's after trying Roxio and other pricy burners. Ashampoo I tried too, but I was literally blasted by almost daily emails from them. I got so sick of their emails I uninstalled the program and unsubscribed to their website. It wasn't an outstanding program either. ImgBurn is well priced, that is, free.

Well Barry, I sincerely hope you never have a disk crash and instantly lose everything on your C drive. Should that happen, you'll wish you had a recent image backup. I've seen that happen, and great was the wailing and gnashing of teeth (figuratively, of course!) Colin

Hello Barry, It's not stressful at all, it's just a program that guides you to making a copy of your C: drive on another safe drive, like a second drive in your machine, or more commonly these days a usb or firewire external drive. I make routine image backups more or less monthly, and I have had to restore from the backup at least twice I can remember, because of difficult-to-remove malware infections. The problem with your approach is that the C: drive contains not only the operating system, but also the registry and other secret areas that are accessed only by the OS, and these areas, especially the registry, contain information necessary for your programs to run, like product keys, validating data, file associations, etc. without which your programs are toast. So, a new drive and a new installation of windows will not allow you to run existing programs, you will have to install and validate or activate every program you use, in other words a clean install, including all the windows updates to date, dozens of them. There's no way you can reinstall windows while retaining existing programs. Acronis or Paragon or other imaging programs (the original ground-breaking program was Ghost) will make a complete image backup of your C: drive; the partition table, OS and all the updates to date, secret areas, registry, programs, emails, everything. It takes typically 15 - 30 minutes to do the backup, and, if necessary, a similar time to restore the backup. You can do a partial restore if you want. Some imaging programs will restore only to the same size disk or partition that the backup was made from, which can cause headaches if restoring to a partitioned drive, but later and better programs can handle restoring to a different-sized drive, usually larger. I have two 1-terabyte mains-powered usb outboard drives I use for storing my Paragon backups as well as data backups. These usb-powered drives are nowhere near as robust as mains-powered, while they may be ok for data backups I wouldn't trust them with image backups at all. The repair man. Boy, the horror stories I have heard and read about 'repair men'. Fitting new hard drives because of malware infections, losing all the customer's data and programs - claiming that backups are the customer's care - well maybe they are, but would it hurt for them to check? The problem is it's an unregulated business, anybody with a screwdriver can call themselves a repair man. They are a last resort in my opinion. Regards, Colin

There's another program, put out by Paragon, a German software company that I have used, it's a bit like Acronis, but I have had Acronis fail with corrupted image backups, I haven't had that problem with Paragon. From a desperate recovery position, freezing the bad drive can sometimes enable the recovery of data. I have done this once, to enable an image backup from a supposedly dead drive. I put the drive into the freezer at -18 degrees C, and was able to read the drive while it was very cold. And I just remembered there's another program, xxclone, a companion to xxcopy, that will image copy direct to another drive. It has a great writeup, it will clone to different-sized drives, and it's free for personal use. have a peruse at http://www.xxclone.com/index.htm

I see that Microsoft have released a patch for IE that is available even for XP, such is the severity of the hole in IE. If you need any proof of the need to use a different browser, this is it. I use Opera almost exclusively, only going to Firefox if opera has trouble with a website - which isn't often.

Hello Eric, The security flaw is in fact not with XP per se, but with Internet Explorer. This browser has always been suspect from a security point of view, which is why many use alternative browsers like FireFox, or latterly Chrome. Personally I use Opera. Although apparently with a market penetration of only about 2%, I think it's one of the best browsers out there, a clean GUI and very fast. XP itself is not affected by IE's problems, and continues to be a viable OS, especially with a good anti-viral program installed, like malwarebytes. The most likely problems to arise with XP are upgrades to existing programs which will no longer cater for XP, like DxO Optics' Viewpoint program, version 1 runs happily on XP, version 2 requires Vista or later. This was the tipping point which forced me to go to Win 7 on my desktop - but my lappy remains on XP. Regards, Colin

Me again, I should have pointed out that Windows laptop screens are usually 6-bit, while stand-alone monitors are (mostly) 8-bit, and anyone claiming their laptop is is right, or the standard they go by, is talking nonsense. While calibrating a laptop can improve the image quality, they cannot compete with a good 8-bit monitor. Some very high-end monitors are actually 10-bit, but they cost into the thousands, like Eizo screens. Since most people shoot jpegs, and jpegs by design are 8-bit images, 8-bit monitors are a good fit. Note the graphics cards in lappys are generally 8-bit, it's just the screens are 6-bit, so a lappy can drive an 8-bit external monitor or projector with no problems. Colin

Hello Ray, I am in the same position as you, as I was the one in our club who chose and purchased our projector, a Dell 4320 DLP machine, reputedly better than LCD, but that's a matter of opinion I think. I calibrated it with a Spyder pro II colorimeter with, I think good results. Those who comment on image quality are invariably comparing it with their own monitor, which is usually uncalibrated anyway, so their opinion doesn't count for much with me. Judges are some of the worst, they say things like the image looks different to their view on their monitor at home, clearly implying that projector is wrong and their (usually uncalibrated) monitor is right. For what it's worth, here is how I did the projector and laptop - a Windows machine. First, make sure that Adobe Gamma is not active on the computer. If Photoshop is installed, you will have to get into the startup program list and disable Gamma, or else it will upset any calibration attempt. Set the projector to factory specs and sRGB. While one is supposed to let the Spyder look at the screen to do the calibrating, I actually mount the Spyder on a tripod about 2 metres in front of and looking at the projector. I have an ExpoDisc white balance filter for setting custom white balance on my Canon camera, and I sit this in front of the Spyder as a diffuser for the light from the projector, and to calibrate the projector for a white screen. Then I run the calibrating program. The usual method of aiming the Spyder at the screen is to take into the calculations the colour of the screen, but I find substituting the ExpoDisc works well. I also do not use the ambient light setting, and I set the calibration at a gamma of 2.2 and native colour temperature. The results seem to please most people, and I know the images are much closer to correct than any empirical adjustment by eye can be. The projector profile, of course, is in the laptop graphics card, so the projector is only correct when used with that laptop. I get trouble with members who insist on using their own laptop and can't understand that the projector is uncalibrated when used with another lappy, especially the Apple aficionados. However, I believe some macbooks can have dual profiles going, for computer screen and projector at the same time. If they wish to calibrate the projector with their macbook they're welcome to do it themselves. Colin

Hi Dave, Yes, that's probably right, I didn't check that, I just dumped a pic to check it worked, which it did. Regards, Colin

Yes, you can do that. Open Pixbuilder, choose File/New, set your sizes etc in the dialog window, click ok and get an empty box on the pixbuilder screen. Now, ctrl-V to paste and your image will appear in the box. This is exactly how Photoshop works. Cheers, Colin

It's been my experience that monitors, especially LCD monitors, are not too bad for colour accuracy, but are generally much too bright The older CRT tubes had the same problem, but generally had gamma correction built in. Hardware calibration will set the gamma* and brightness range correctly so that shadows and highlights are properly rendered. A too-bright monitor will possibly lead to people under-exposing their images to get a better tonal range on the screen, and will lead to prints (if they print) that are too dark when compared to the monitor image. My uncalibrated Dell monitor was almost blindingly bright until calibrated. I would recommend calibrating more for setting gamma and brightness range than for actual colour correction. Don't be fooled, calibrating by eye does not work well. Also, if you have and use an earlier Photoshop version you will have Adobe Gamma Loader in your Windows Control Panel (I have no experience of Apple machines). Gamma Loader is loaded at computer start-up automatically, and you will have to disable auto start in the start-up list, or else it will render your hardware calibration useless. Wrong gamma settings will affect the relationship between shadow, mid, and bright tones on your screen, leading to colour density problems. * See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction Regards, Colin

Well, I'm not sure how you would 'calibrate' one's eyes, but a test procedure like Isohara Charts (nothing to do with ISO sensor speed) will tell if there is any imbalance in colour vision. I did a round with those charts for aircrew medical with no problems, my colour vision is good as far as they could tell. At any rate, Kodak (I think) said that their aim was pleasing colour, not accurate colour - probably a way of saying that the film dyes had limitations. I think digital colour from my Canon is near perfect, and streets ahead of any colour film.

I have a Spyder2pro, a bit older than the latest 4 but works quite well. I calibrate my Dell laptop and the Dell 23" monitor on the desktop. The results between lappy and desky are not too bad, given that the lappy is a 6-bit screen while the Dell is 8-bit. Most of my work is for printing, and I get pretty good agreement between prints and monitor, as far as one can compare print with screen. The Spyder works with my 64-bit win7 machine which is a bonus as well. I gave up measuring ambient light, which I thought skewed the results depending on the light, whether subdued daylight or artificial light at night. I also calibrate for a gamma of 2.2 and 'native' colour temperature, trying for 6,500K didn't work too well with LCD screens. Actually, I take care with the white balance within the camera, so as not to rely too much on correction during post-processing. I bought an ExpoDisc for setting custom white balance in the camera, and I set sRGB in the camera as well. I realise that Adobe and other colour spaces embrace more hues, especially in the greens, but my monitor gamut, like most consumer-grade monitors, cannot display the full range of aRGB, so there's not much point in using aRGB. The ExpoDisk is excellent at balancing the camera for the ambient light. I am engaged now and then to take photographs of choirs, usually in a church setting, and the light in the church building is generally a mixture of incandescent, fluorescent, sometimes mercury vapour, and daylight filtered through stained-glass windows. I had endless problems balancing the prints until I got the ExpoDisk. After that the images just fell on the paper, already white balanced with no after-work needed. I have come to realise that it's dangerous to rely on the monitor to adjust white-balance, one must have the camera image correct and then the monitor doesn't matter too much. Providing the gamma and brightness is ok, then trying to micro-manage the colour, relying on the monitor colour balance doesn't work for me. Of course monitor balance is required when showing a slide show, likewise a projector should be calibrated, and I have calibrated the club projector with the Spyder. The colour profile of course resides in the driving computer, a fact that some members find hard to understand when they want to use their own lappy to drive the projector. They say "the projector is calibrated, right?", and I say "yes, but not with your computer", and they don't get it. Sigh.

It is a mistake to think that aRGB is automatically better than sRGB. sRGB is the world standard, aRGB has theoretically a wider color space, almost entirely in saturated greens, but it is not suitable to use unless the image has been recorded and color managed throughout as an aRGB image. If an aRGB image is shown on sRGB equipment the result is a flat poorly-colored image compared with sRGB. Your link refers to what appears to be a review piece written to extoll the virtues of a Canon projector but is not a recommendation to use aRGB. Have a look at http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/adobe-rgb.htm It may change your mind about aRGB. Meanwhile, here are some quotes from articles about the two color spaces: "sRGB came first, and almost everything on a computer is built around sRGB. The internet, video games, applications, personal devices, and most everything else has adapted sRGB as their standard for color space. Even the monitor you’re using likely cannot display all the colors of AdobeRGB. That’s right, most traditional computer monitors can only display about 97% of the sRGB color space, and only about 76% of the AdobeRGB color space. Even screen calibrators will often tell you how much of the color gamut you’re able to display, and since most web browsers have adopted sRGB as its color space, if you upload an image to the internet with the AdobeRGB gamut, the browser will convert it to sRGB, and it’ll do a terrible job at it." "If you’re not printing your work often, sRGB is the choice of color space for you. It’ll be the surefire way to guarantee that your photos look great on the web, and still look accurate in print. However, if you’re often printing your work, and looking for vibrant colors, AdobeRGB may be the choice for you, it just adds a few steps to your workflow process, as you’ll need to save them as sRGB to correctly display them on the web." There are about 144,000 articles on color space on Google, so read on if you feel the need. But my strong advice is to use sRGB.

Your understanding of the problem is very good despite being 'non-techy'. We had the same problem with our club, we bought a new DLP projector and had complaints about the colour. When questioned, the members complaining did not have their own monitors calibrated and so had no basis for complaining about the projector. However, The projector wasn't all that flash anyway, so I calibrated it (Colorvision Spyder) with the club's Dell laptop. Some of the members had the same problem of getting their heads around the fact that the lappy screen was wrong when the projector profile was chosen.Another problem was with judges who viewed the images for their comments. Almost invariably they would look at the projected image and say it looks different to what they saw on their own machine, so comments on blown highlights or blocked shadows or odd colours weren't supported by the projected image. This is a problem the club has to deal with this year when we restart in February (summer holidays in NZ). For a start, we exhort all members to use sRGB exclusively and will inform the judges that all images are in sRGB. If they view them in an aRGB or other color space that's their problem. I understand that PTE does not manage colour, it expects images to be in sRGB, which is perfectly ok with me. Have a look at http://johnwiddall.wordpress.com/technical-notes/test-cards/ for more information, and the use of test cards.

That's fine Eric, I did say 'most' though, and I do have programs with free upgrades like Goldwave, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that most programs do charge for upgrades. The program purveyors like all of us have to make a living. I guess what I do not like is the assumption or expectation that programs should be free for ever, and then complaining when they aren't. Regards, Colin

I guess you don't buy many programs then. Most program upgrades have a cost, like Adobe programs - Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements all have upgrade charges, as do DxO Optics and Viewpoint, Microsoft's Office, and others. The only programs I can think of that are free are browsers and mail clients like FireFox, Thunderbird, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Google etc., and that is because they carry advertising that pays for the free programs (and annoys the heck out of users). Wnsoft and PTE do not and will not carry advertising, and have no other way of generating an income stream. So I consider your complaint about a small $34 upgrade cost is out of order. Please rethink your position.

Eric, I would be very happy to get away from Yahoo email. New Zealand Telecom some years ago outsourced their email services to Yahoo, and there have been on-going problems ever since. Recently Yahoo were hacked, and over 80,000 email addresses and passwords of Telecom Xtra clients were stolen and used for spam messaging etc. Clients were forced to change their passwords and until they did so they were blocked out of their emails, and Telecom Xtra were forced to spend many hours checking just which clients were compromised. Then after that ballsup died down, it happened again, and Telecom finally told Yahoo to get their ducks in a row or lose the Xtra contract. In my humble opinion they are well named - they are just a bunch of yahoos: (yahoo1 /ˈjɑːhuː,jəˈhuː/ nouninformal noun: yahoo; plural noun: yahoos 1. a rude, noisy, or violent person.synonyms: barbarian, philistine, vulgarian, savage, brute, beast, boor, oaf, ruffian, thug, lout, hoodlum, hooligan, vandal, rowdy, bully boy, brawler;) Count your blessings, Eric, BT cannot be as bad or worse than Yahoo. Regards, Colin

Perhaps the relative value of the scanner might be the problem. I have a Canon 9950F scanner, a top-of-the-line model, and had no trouble with either software or running the scanner under win 7 64-bit. Mind you, the scanner cost me about $NZ 1,200, around 600 pounds Sterling about six years ago. It scans negatives and transparencies, 30 35mm images at a time, or 9 6x6cm or 6x9cm, or one 5x4, plus odd-sized negs with movable masks. It scans at a maximum of 4900 x 9600 pixels, no interpolation. a brilliant machine.

Hi all, Do I have the temerity to point out that in your delightful image of chocolate etc. that cholesterol is not the problem with that delectable treat, it's the sugar! Sugar is worse than cholesterol for heart trouble, but not many know that. Happy Christmas, Colin

Yes, you can, Barry!! A paging file is simply a file set up by Windows as 'virtual memory', so that if the operations happening on your computer demand more memory space, Windows will shovel some of the lesser used RAM memory contents into the page file, thus making more room in RAM for whatever operation needs it. If subsequent operations want whatever is in the page file back again, Windows does another shuffle and puts the wanted bits back into RAM memory. A typical page file is 1.5 to 2 times your memory size, so typically 5 or 6 GB for a 32-bit system. The requirements for Win 7 and 8 are a bit different, it would pay to google it if you want to know. Regards, Colin

Hello Gérard, Many thanks for the information, for some reason I couldn't find it for myself. getting old, I guess. Regards, Colin