kja

Thanks for the head's up on the spelling mistake! I'll get in there and change it - there's quite a few changes that need to be made, so I'll add it to the list! Storage for clients is another ball game to storage for personal use, for me, though many of the ways I do things overlap. I have back up DVDs of certain things, too. And I check and/or reburn my disks every so often as DVDs/CDs do fail after a time and I'd be bummed if I had taken the time to do it in the first place then five years later couldn't open stuff LOL

You should be able to get action shots with either of your lenses, just depends on what perspective you want. What was your aperture? Remember aperture gives you depth of field, so you don't want to open up too much unless you are sure you can nail precise focus - which with a moving dog is tough! You shouldn't need to go to 1/3200 to stop action. 1/800 should be more than enough. Lowering your shutter speed will give you more options for apertures and ISO. Try dropping the shutter down a bit each time as you practice your technique as you should be able to hand hold the big lens at it's focal length (1/320 - 1/400 or so) without camera shake being a factor. You may want to try AI server on your camera, too, as this can aid in getting the focus right where you want it on a moving subject. Are you using the centre focus point? You can try using the whole focus grid as long as you don't have something with huge contrast in the bg (coz the camera will grab that instead of what you want it to grab). Sometimes brindle/dark dogs can be tough to grab a sharp eye on because there is little contrast right around the eye itself - they tend to be very dark/black. Your camera wants contrast to focus - especially if you are not using the centre point (which is the most sensitive). Practicing your panning technique will also help. Instead of trying to grab the focus at the height of the action you get your focus and move with your subject (just the camera usually, but sometimes with your feet, too) anticipating the height of the action and taking the shot (shots). You can also try burst mode on your camera. For heavy action taking a burst of five or six frames (or whatever your camera does) can help ensure that one of the series is in focus! It eats memory and is a pain to cull sometimes due to the volume of shots, but it's another tool you can try...and sometimes you get an awesome series, to boot! You're doing great - I like your action shots Hope some of these things at least give you some ideas!

That's so great that you still have all those photos! Good price on the drive I hit Black Friday in October - had a friend go down and pick up two drives for me. Worked well coz I was in the US and just picked them up from her house, but had I not been, shipping is nothing so I'd just have them posted to me for another $30 or so...still a good deal. I'm betting the 1TB ones are dirt cheap this October and may upgrade to them and ditch some of the smaller drives.

LOL on the culling. Why? Sometimes the best exposure or frame isn't the one that brings tears of laughter to your eyes or maybe the "best" frame is a really nice but the frames on either side have one of your friends or a sister pulling a dopey face? Or maybe those that missed the mark will help you look back and learn to get it right next time, so they provide excellent reference resource. I toss OOF stuff and I toss most stuff that is WAY dark (dang compacts and their baby flashes anyway), but other than that I keep a lot of stuff that isn't good photography, just because storage is cheap and on rainy days when I have nothing else to do I like to pick a random folder and just flip back through Storage is cheap, so if I have any interest in a frame, I just keep it! Of course, I keep every letter from my family, too...

I bought my last two 500GB drives for under $120 total. They'll last me a while, so for me, that's cheap.

Lots of ways to skin a cat, as they say This is probably beyond this thread topic, but that's not why I shoot RAW images. The goal should always be to get your exposures and compositions as close as possible when you shoot - that's the challenge that makes this so fun! All images need to be processed - film or digital. In camera or out of camera; no right or wrong way to do things. Everyone just needs to find the methods that suit particular needs for various things. I shoot a ton of jpeg (mostly of my puppies!) every week, too, on my various little compact cameras. It just seems to add up. If you're asking me specifically, I have different drives for different things and it's easier to leave them hooked up. I also have drives with fairly old images and files on them that I don't access all the time but that do seem to need accessing a few times a month; just easier to leave them on the desk. I have drives for my laptop on the desk, too, as I run a two system office - laptop and main PC. There's lots of ways to do things and I happen to have enough desk space at the moment to set things up this way (and my office in my new house will be even bigger- yay!). Makes life a lot easier to have all of one thing on a particular drive instead of in more of a date order filling a drive, for my needs. Lots of my friends have hot swappable caddy-things so they keep their extra drives stored until they are actually needed and then just pop 'em there. Great solution if you don't have the space in your immediate work area as you don't have extra cords and stuff to muck with. I don't see a problem with this method, if it works for the person. As long as people realise that media does fail and it's always unexpected and it's always the stuff you really want! I also want to store more than 4GB of certain things at a time so find the multi-disks are just a pain and slower to use than HDs. Plus not as environmentally friendly (if there is such a thing with computer stuff). Lots of people just getting into storing images and files for the longer term don't know all the ins and outs that those who've been doing it for years know - that's the beauty of the message boards, no need to reinvent the wheel or keep making the same mistakes others did! I know I keep my eye out all the time for better and better solutions for long term storage so I don't have to wonder ten years later if those family photos are actually intact or not.

I have dvd backups of certain things, too (minimum 2 dvd copies each for important stuff). But disk media is pretty risky and disks fail all the time - even the high priced archival ones - so I don't keep dvd as my only backup. Hard drives are super cheap, don't take up much room and are easy to store. They are also easy to use and I never worry that a drive won't play nicely with one of my computers - sometimes dvds/cds get temperamental. One of my next purchases will be a small hd for lugging around when I want to go mobile. I have a couple that are OK, but a friend has just the cutest little 320GB thing and it will be perfect for my big trip to South America/Antarctica next year when luggage is tight thanks to all the other photo gear I'm dragging! I shoot 5-20GBs a week and I also keep a bunch of processed files from those RAW shots. I'd have to build a new house to store all the disks if that was my sole backup!

You're welcome Thanks for the kind words...Diva died last February so it's been almost 15 months and my heart still hurts so much it takes my breath away. She was that one in a billion.

You can buy both the 100 and the 60 for well under a grand I think the 100 runs around $470ish and the 60 about $380ish. Canon has a rebate on both lenses starting on the 18th in the US so now is a perfect time to buy!

I'm a packrat so add me to the list of those who just buy more storage. You don't want to know how many HDs I have on my desk

Photoshop has Elements, which is a scaled down version of the whole program. It is incredibly powerful and more than most people will ever need - it's a lot cheaper than the full scale Photoshop. The newest version of the full Photoshop is CS3, but it's pricey.

You know, I find the 100 macro feels heavier than my 70-200 f/2.8L IS - I have no idea why but it does LOL

If you are shooting a Canon dslr either the 100 or the 60. Both are amazing lenses. Differences in a nutshell: 100 - longer working distance, you can be further away - harder to hand hold steady, she's pretty heavy 60 - shorter working distance, you can get right up close and personal (which may not be ideal for your needs and can be harder to light properly if using external sources, also for skittish creatures this might be frustrating) - very easy to hand hold - EFS lens so it only works on the 1.6 crop sensor cameras (20D, 30D, 40D, 400D, 450D etc - not the 5D or Mark IIIs) Personally, I can't live without my 60. The 100 has it's uses, but mostly it's too big and bulky for most of what I want to do so I grab the 60. Both will give you 1:1 reproduction, both are 2.8, both are fast to focus though the 100 will hunt more in low light or low contrast situations. I think the 100 is more expensive. Both can actually be used as portrait lenses with good results - I always forget this I find I get more keepers with the 60 than with the 100, but this is probably due to technique...I'm a wuss, I like smaller and lighter wherever possible

Photoshop - and Elements is very powerful if you don't want to spring for CS3. Photoshop is really the gold standard in photo editing. There are quite a few options if you don't need the full power of Photoshop, though. I have a couple of friends who have Paintshop and do like it, but often get frustrated with it. One had just made the plunge and bought CS3. Can't help more than that as I've not used Paintshop.

Have you fixed this yet? You should be able to downsize photos in Vista much as in previous versions, I think. Here's a thread on downsizing for email. If you right click an image you should have an "Open with" option - you can then open in your software of choice and do whatever. Picasa is free from the net and lots of ppl use it - I'm not one of them so can't help much, but know it does a lot or a little and most of it is very very easy to do.

I'm sure you can - I'd check out the bigger camera stores (real camera stores, not Harvey Norman et al). I'll see if I can find some info for ya... OK, Kayell or I found this with a quick google sydney canon lens rental http://www.rentacam.com.au/canon_lenses.shtml

As I understand it, she will only be on the s/d diet for four weeks. She does not have any stones. She has/had crystals and again as I understand things, this four week period is to dissolve any remaining crystals. Then she is to go on the c/d diet for the rest of her life. The high fat and salt worries me a bit. We are trying hard to drop Dora's weight and she is on the right path - she's now 44.28kgs so we have about 8 more to go.

I can't seem to find anything specifically related to Rhodesian Ridgebacks at the moment. There is a lot of info out there and I'm trying to sift through it all!

Thanks, Miranda! She seems to drink a good amount through the day. We also add a cup - two cups of veggies to her kibble each night (the mix from the freezer - carrots, peas etc). We did change her to a lower type of kibble about six weeks ago as we couldn't get the Advance Fat Girl food up for a while and had to go with Supercoat. We now have the Advance here, but if we have to use this other diet we won't start her on it. She has no stones. Has not had any stones that we know of. She did have crystals in her urine. I keep reading that the Hill's stuff is actually not that great so would love to find some alternatives.

Thanks! I've just reread the stuff the vet gave me and it doesn't say anything really: "Xray abdo to check for bladder stones NAD on xray Change to s/d diet, for four weeks then change onto c/d diet" The other papers, that she kind of implied had more information turn out to be all about the GA after effects and some generic pet stuff. She told me that she'd never seen urine results like that before and that it meant that Dora was now predisposed to problems like bladder stones and this was the only course of action. I have a call in and am waiting for a call back to try to get some more specific info to help with my research and to add here. OK, just got off the phone: she has crystal urea (I apologise now for the spellings, I was jotting notes as the vet talked) with calcium oxylate and struvite crystals. Vet says four weeks on the s/d diet to dissolve the remaining crystals then anther urine test. Dora did not have a urine test on Wednesday; the results the vet was referring to were from a couple of weeks ago before we put her on antibiotics because she also had a bacterial component. Vet says her urine is too basic and needs to be more acidic. Probably a diet issue, but she said there really isn't anyway to tell exactly what causes the crystals. Says the s/d then c/d diet is the only way to keep her urine where it needs to be and avoid more crystals forming.

We just got back from our road trip to the vet's and the vet says that Dora's urine was all screwy (weeks ago when she did the test, then we put her on antibiotics)...her ph was 9+ when it's meant to be 5. I understand acidic and alkaline, but not 100% on how it all works. Anyway, the vet has said she needs to start a four week strict diet of a special Rx food - s/d for four weeks then c/d forever after that. I'm just starting to do research on the whole thing and would appreciate any input you all have! She said it was dog specific and just changing her diet wasn't enough and there was nothing else to do except this diet. She said it was very serious and that we couldn't feed Dora anything else at all, no matter how small, once she switches to the new regime.

I use a card reader. They are simply must faster than connecting the cable to the camera. I also like that the computer just sees a drive. I don't install the software that comes with the cameras, either. They are so cheap now that it's totally worth spending a few bucks - mine reads a whole range of card types, which is nice coz it seems like I use about 100 different types of media cards LOL Mine's tiny and light so I just pop it in the laptop bag when I go. Which camera do you have and are you running Windows? Not a dumb question at all. This is a recovery program ... if you accidentally erase the images from your memory card before you have them downloaded and saved on your computer/hard drive, you can run this program to recover the files from the memory card. You must use this program BEFORE you reformat the card! It's been a lifesaver to several people that I know and is a good thing to have, for sure!

LOL no problem. I had no idea until you asked, but I thought good ol' Bill must have built something in to make life easy and all internal to his OS

I thought picasa was not only free, but super easy? I don't have it but I thought that was it's claim to fame... I thought there was something that came with Windoze, too... OK, how's this if he's on Windows... right click the photo, Send to, Mail recipient, make all my pictures smaller, Show more options, tick Small, OK - goes right to the mail program already as an attachment

I love when they do things like that