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Contax ND

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Hi Diane,

you will get more response regarding your software and printer question, if you post the question in the appropriate folder "digital corner".

Thanks for your understanding

Dirk
 
Hello Diane,

I may suggest that you check out a dedicated video card for whatever computer you decide to input the images. Dual head video card, so you can have the pop up photo imageing menus on a seperate monitor. Also good for making a side by side comparison of the changes you make.
Get a SCSI II or faster adapter or a firewire over the USB.....
I don't have any faster image aquisition (scanner on a SCSI II) using an old pentium 120mhz as compared to a P III running at 900Mhz.
The biggest problem I've had is running out of ram (currently 512Meg).
Perhaps upgrading from win98 would alleviate my problem, however it only crops up when I create thumbnails. Seems that the OS doesn't release ram when I'm done whit an image. Starts to swap to disk.
***Get a fast disk drive****
Writing to disk is the biggest bottleneck in my system. Big change from 5400rpm to 7200rpm and looking toward a 10000+ rpm drive.
IF your really serious.... get a multiple disk system and run striped disks. What this means is to write or read data from more than one disk at the same time; I haven't done it but am thinking of it. (take this suggesting as here say)
Not wishing to start a flame war but consider using a photo print service rather than buying a printer for large prints.
If your video card or imaging program allows custom RGB settings, you can match the s&le print the print service sends you to calibrate your monitor. Remember to use the same light that the prints will be viewed with to illuminate the calibration print. If you calibrate with fluorescent and display under natural or incandescent the results will disappoint you..
Hope this helps...
Joe W.
 
I need your help. I was about to purchase a Contax N digital camera until I read the article ( http://luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/1n-non.shtml

I have been a Contax user for many a year, currently using RTSIII , Contax AX and a collection of CZ lenses. My question to all of the Contax N Digital owners,"If you had it to do over again would you purchase a Contax N Digital Camera as of this moment?"

I appreciate and thank you for any amount of information.

Bill Propper
Dana Point, CA
 
> Simple answer.Yes. No other current full frame CCCD on the market. The ND takes great shots. A quality camera.

michael.

>
 
> Hi Diane,

Great to hear you are going the ND route. I think you will be really pleased.

Firewire: The cards are only 20 to 30 bucks. Go ahead and get one, although it is really more convenient to use a 40 dollar USB card reader! And really, the speed of the USB reader is relatively fast, just taking a few minutes for a 256 m.b. compact flash card.

System: I just bought another imaging system. W/O the monitor the cost was around $1,600. This was for:

Dual 160 M.B hard drives at 7200 RPM w/ 8 m.b. of cache. Windows XP professional Pentium 4 2.2 GHZ Cpu 1 Gigabyte of Memory Video card w/ 64 megabytes of memory Firewire Network card. 56kbs modem Wireless keyboard, mouse (Logitech) DVD/CD-Rom,Rewritable Case, Floppy, power supply!

The system is pretty fast ....

the faster the hard Drives the better, and having dual hard Drives is a really good idea. and of course, spend a couple more bucks for bigger drives!

Software - I use a 49 dollar product called PhotoRecall. Works great. There are other very good lowend products.

Printers -

Go for the Epson 2200. Great reviews, and yes you can print an 11x17. Expect to pay about 700.00

Good luck to you!

michael.



>
 
i guess contax has dropped the price on the ND substantially, usa versions are selling for 3.9~4.4k plus an additional 10% rebate back from contax. this makes this camera around 3.5~4k. there is nothing that can match it at this price. this is a significant drop which means that the camera's price was set too high
 
Mehrdad,

I wonder about those cameras on e-bay. Might be to avoid getting cursed by Contax. Their web site is selling them for $6999 - go figure.

Diane,

I just tried and ended up buying a program called ThumbsPlus that works great for organizing and basic manipulation. Very well engineered UI, it even recognized my dual monitors. It is more pricey ($75) than PhotoRecall. You can try it for free (at http://www.cerious.com ), along with the various others available, and decide which best suits you.

As Michael says, there's no substitute for speed. If you can spend it, go for a PC1066 based Pentium 4 with Rambus, at least 1 GB of memory.

Speaking of speed, I got the Firewire Reader from Lexar, and it totally blew away my Sandisk USB (1.1 standard) reader, which got benched to backup status. I haven't seen any USB 2.0 readers. Definitely go Firewire.

Also, http://www.googlegear.com has the 1GB IBM Microdrives for $219. I got two, but plan to use them to archive photos shot during my trips / shoots - I'm leery about stuff with moving parts on the go, so I have 2 Lexar 24x 512MB cards (these are the fastest I know of and very reliable) for the camera, then transfer at night to the Microdrive.

For printing I opted for best quality and went with Kodak Thermal Dye Transfer. The 8500 printer (I am unpacking mine as we speak :-) goes for $900 at http://www.UniquePhoto.com, but only does up to 8x10 and the consumables are $$$ - around $1.70 per 8x10 (paper and ribbon cost). If you want the best ... I'll wait for my larger print solution while I establish a nice collection of what will probably be 7x10s :-)

Best of luck and fun!

DJ
 
After voicing my complaints back in September I sold my ND rather than continue to be aggravated over $7,000.
Now I have heard the camera is going to be discontinued so I am going to try to buy one for around $4,000 similar to that e-bay link from yesterday - My price limit on digital aggravation. So if someone can let me know where they picked up those extra battery holders I would truly appreciate it.
Sincerely,
Ken
 
Ken,

Where did you hear about the N Digital being discontinued? Please say it isn't so - a camera like this with no support from the manufacturer is a total disaster!

DJ
 
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