7I Terrific Camera

i've had the 7I for a few days now. I must be easy to please because I cannot find noise or resolution problems. Beautiful pictures and great features. I did have some trouble finding a Compact Flash Reader to read the IBM Microdrive. Not all Compact II flash readers accept the microdrive.

Microdrive physically too fat for some. First charge of batteries was short battery life but after that the batteries were just fine. Great color, contrast and overall beautiful pictures. I did get a no card reading for half a second once and then it found the card. I'm pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of automatic focus and the accuracy of automatic exposure. Spectacular prints. Great non automatic features. Room for 376 pictures on the Microdrive. I just wonder if I should install the DIUV software because the pictures look so great without it. What great pictures! What a great camera.

I'm glad you like your new D7i. I've had mine for a few weeks now, and have just about the same opinion as you.

Re: The DIVU software, if you're getting 376 pictures on your Microdrive, I'm guessing you have a 1 GB drive, and are shooting in JPEG Fine mode and max resolution (which happens to be the combination I'm using). If that's the case, I'm not at all sure you need the DIVU software. I installed it, but I've never really used it. If you ever choose to shoot in RAW mode, you'll need the software to convert the images into another standard format (JPEG or TIFF).

HTH!

--Larry

Eugene Frank said:

i've had the 7I for a few days now. I must be easy to please
because I cannot find noise or resolution problems. Beautiful
pictures and great features. I did have some trouble finding a
Compact Flash Reader to read the IBM Microdrive. Not all Compact
II flash readers accept the microdrive.
Microdrive physically too fat for some. First charge of batteries
was short battery life but after that the batteries were just fine.
Great color, contrast and overall beautiful pictures. I did get a
no card reading for half a second once and then it found the card.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of automatic focus and the
accuracy of automatic exposure. Spectacular prints. Great non
automatic features. Room for 376 pictures on the Microdrive. I
just wonder if I should install the DIUV software because the
pictures look so great without it. What great pictures! What a
great camera.

Click to expand...

As far as I know DIVU isn't necessary except for RAW. I didn't have a 7 but have read in the forums that Minolta changed the colour mapping when they did the 7i to negate the need to process images from the camera. DIVU is necessary to even see/read a RAW image.

Larry Cunningham said:

Re: The DIVU software, if you're getting 376 pictures on your
Microdrive, I'm guessing you have a 1 GB drive, and are shooting in
JPEG Fine mode and max resolution (which happens to be the
combination I'm using). If that's the case, I'm not at all sure you
need the DIVU software. I installed it, but I've never really used
it. If you ever choose to shoot in RAW mode, you'll need the
software to convert the images into another standard format (JPEG
or TIFF).

HTH!

--Larry

Eugene Frank said:

i've had the 7I for a few days now. I must be easy to please
because I cannot find noise or resolution problems. Beautiful
pictures and great features. I did have some trouble finding a
Compact Flash Reader to read the IBM Microdrive. Not all Compact
II flash readers accept the microdrive.
Microdrive physically too fat for some. First charge of batteries
was short battery life but after that the batteries were just fine.
Great color, contrast and overall beautiful pictures. I did get a
no card reading for half a second once and then it found the card.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of automatic focus and the
accuracy of automatic exposure. Spectacular prints. Great non
automatic features. Room for 376 pictures on the Microdrive. I
just wonder if I should install the DIUV software because the
pictures look so great without it. What great pictures! What a
great camera.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Hi Eugene

Its a good idea to install DIUV software. You can batch process all your jpg files to tiff versions. Its always best to do all your editing in tiff format as you don't loose any information. Each time you open and close a jpg file you losoe some detail. You can then save the final corrected tiff version to a higher resolution jpg to save storage space.

Richard

Jeff/UK said:

Larry Cunningham said:

Re: The DIVU software, if you're getting 376 pictures on your
Microdrive, I'm guessing you have a 1 GB drive, and are shooting in
JPEG Fine mode and max resolution (which happens to be the
combination I'm using). If that's the case, I'm not at all sure you
need the DIVU software. I installed it, but I've never really used
it. If you ever choose to shoot in RAW mode, you'll need the
software to convert the images into another standard format (JPEG
or TIFF).

HTH!

--Larry

Eugene Frank said:

i've had the 7I for a few days now. I must be easy to please
because I cannot find noise or resolution problems. Beautiful
pictures and great features. I did have some trouble finding a
Compact Flash Reader to read the IBM Microdrive. Not all Compact
II flash readers accept the microdrive.
Microdrive physically too fat for some. First charge of batteries
was short battery life but after that the batteries were just fine.
Great color, contrast and overall beautiful pictures. I did get a
no card reading for half a second once and then it found the card.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of automatic focus and the
accuracy of automatic exposure. Spectacular prints. Great non
automatic features. Room for 376 pictures on the Microdrive. I
just wonder if I should install the DIUV software because the
pictures look so great without it. What great pictures! What a
great camera.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Richard Lamprecht said:

Hi Eugene
Its a good idea to install DIUV software. You can batch process all
your jpg files to tiff versions. Its always best to do all your
editing in tiff format as you don't loose any information. Each
time you open and close a jpg file you losoe some detail. You can
then save the final corrected tiff version to a higher resolution
jpg to save storage space.

Click to expand...

This sounds a little bit weird to me.

(1) Opening and closing JPG's won't lose you any data. Only opening and re-saving as JPG will.

(2) TIFF's are a lot bigger than JPG's.

If you batch-convert all of your originals to TIFF, you're using up a lot of space for pictures you might never even edit. It's more efficient to keep the originals as JPG and only re-save as TIFF if and when you edit them. If you re-save the edited ones to JPG (to save space), you will lose data (although not enough to really matter, IMO, if you use high quality).

I'd recommend you keep your originals as JPG's, and only save to a lossless format once you make changes. TIFF isn't your only choice; JPG2000 (lossless) or PNG work as well. I'd definitely not re-save as JPG at any point in the workflow.

Petteri
--
http://homepage.mac.com/psulonen/

As I have a 1 gig microdrive on order, I am curious as to which reader(s) yoiu found worked. Currently have a SanDisk...fellow at Ritz Camera told me he thought it would work just fine.

nburton

Eugene Frank said:

i've had the 7I for a few days now. I must be easy to please
because I cannot find noise or resolution problems. Beautiful
pictures and great features. I did have some trouble finding a
Compact Flash Reader to read the IBM Microdrive. Not all Compact
II flash readers accept the microdrive.
Microdrive physically too fat for some. First charge of batteries
was short battery life but after that the batteries were just fine.
Great color, contrast and overall beautiful pictures. I did get a
no card reading for half a second once and then it found the card.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of automatic focus and the
accuracy of automatic exposure. Spectacular prints. Great non
automatic features. Room for 376 pictures on the Microdrive. I
just wonder if I should install the DIUV software because the
pictures look so great without it. What great pictures! What a
great camera.

Click to expand...

I also have a Sandisk reader and it works just fine with the microdrive. It doesn't work off a hub unless it's powered though, because the microdrive needs a decent power source to spin up.

Mine is the image mate.

Shane

P.S. If the HQ Jpg images are 2.3mb and I have a 1gig Microdrive (it says 1gb available in windows) then why only 376 pictures? I calculate it as 430 or something.

nburton said:

nburton

Eugene Frank said:

i've had the 7I for a few days now. I must be easy to please
because I cannot find noise or resolution problems. Beautiful
pictures and great features. I did have some trouble finding a
Compact Flash Reader to read the IBM Microdrive. Not all Compact
II flash readers accept the microdrive.
Microdrive physically too fat for some. First charge of batteries
was short battery life but after that the batteries were just fine.
Great color, contrast and overall beautiful pictures. I did get a
no card reading for half a second once and then it found the card.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of automatic focus and the
accuracy of automatic exposure. Spectacular prints. Great non
automatic features. Room for 376 pictures on the Microdrive. I
just wonder if I should install the DIUV software because the
pictures look so great without it. What great pictures! What a
great camera.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

First, I can confirm that the SanDisk ImageMate handles the 1GB Microdrive just fine. That's the combination I used and have never had a problem. And as Shane pointed out, it doesn't work off a hub, due to the power requirements.

Re: The number of images you can get from the 1GB drive, what you see in the viewfinder (376 with an "empty" drive) is just a rough estimate, based on an average of 2.3MB. Quite often when I've taken a picture, the counter doesn't count down at all, since the image didn't take up the entire 2.3MB the software uses for this estimate. It depends on the complexity of the subject you're shooting, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to squeeze more than 400 images on my Microdrive before it's full.

--Larry

Shane Bushman said:

Mine is the image mate.

Shane

P.S. If the HQ Jpg images are 2.3mb and I have a 1gig Microdrive
(it says 1gb available in windows) then why only 376 pictures? I
calculate it as 430 or something.

nburton said:

nburton

Eugene Frank said:

i've had the 7I for a few days now. I must be easy to please
because I cannot find noise or resolution problems. Beautiful
pictures and great features. I did have some trouble finding a
Compact Flash Reader to read the IBM Microdrive. Not all Compact
II flash readers accept the microdrive.
Microdrive physically too fat for some. First charge of batteries
was short battery life but after that the batteries were just fine.
Great color, contrast and overall beautiful pictures. I did get a
no card reading for half a second once and then it found the card.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of automatic focus and the
accuracy of automatic exposure. Spectacular prints. Great non
automatic features. Room for 376 pictures on the Microdrive. I
just wonder if I should install the DIUV software because the
pictures look so great without it. What great pictures! What a
great camera.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Hi Petteri

While I generally agree with most you you say. I was just trying to simplify a suggested method of using DIUV for Eugene. However, there is hardly a picture that does not require some form of editing mainly using Levels and USM. Each time you perform such an edit and resave the image you loose information. I only store tiffs of images that I really think are worth keeping. But then again I make-up my images into pages using either PageMaker or InDesign 2 to print and tiff is my preference. I would not advise PNG as an alternative to anyone.

Its the idea of batch processing that I wanted to get over. I shoot nearly all my images in RAW mode, batch process to tiff, convert the images to Lab colour where I use the lightness channel to most of my adjustmnets to the levels and USM and then convert back to RGB. I also sometimes, when having shot in jpg mode, use gaussian blur to this channel to reduce noise, although I generall use Neat Image. But I only go through this process if I think an Image is worth keeping.

I hope this is a little clearer now.

Richard

Petteri Sulonen said:

Richard Lamprecht said:

Hi Eugene
Its a good idea to install DIUV software. You can batch process all
your jpg files to tiff versions. Its always best to do all your
editing in tiff format as you don't loose any information. Each
time you open and close a jpg file you losoe some detail. You can
then save the final corrected tiff version to a higher resolution
jpg to save storage space.

Click to expand...

This sounds a little bit weird to me.

(1) Opening and closing JPG's won't lose you any data. Only opening
and re-saving as JPG will.

(2) TIFF's are a lot bigger than JPG's.

If you batch-convert all of your originals to TIFF, you're using up
a lot of space for pictures you might never even edit. It's more
efficient to keep the originals as JPG and only re-save as TIFF if
and when you edit them. If you re-save the edited ones to JPG (to
save space), you will lose data (although not enough to really
matter, IMO, if you use high quality).

I'd recommend you keep your originals as JPG's, and only save to a
lossless format once you make changes. TIFF isn't your only choice;
JPG2000 (lossless) or PNG work as well. I'd definitely not
re-save as JPG at any point in the workflow.

Petteri
--
http://homepage.mac.com/psulonen/

Click to expand...

Richard Lamprecht said:

However, there is hardly a picture that does not require some form of
editing mainly using Levels and USM. Each time you perform such an
edit and resave the image you loose information.

Click to expand...

Not true. If you open the file, perform an operation and save, then do the next operation and save, etc., without reloading between steps, the data is not degraded. Your in memory copy is not compressed and decompressed, it remains as is.

Thus, if all you're going to do is some levels and USM, JPEG is as good as anything. If you plan to work in several sessions or do more work, then a lossless format such as XCF, PNG, TIFF or BMP may be useful.

Richard Lamprecht said:

I would not advise PNG as an alternative to anyone.

Click to expand...

Why would you not advice PNG? It's an excellent format, combining the advantages of several others. Lossless compression at much smaller sizes than the (horribly archaic) TIFF.

That being said, for working on photos I use XCF format. If I need to go cross platform I use PNG, and for final output I use PNG or JPEG.

Richard Lamprecht said:

Its the idea of batch processing that I wanted to get over. I shoot
nearly all my images in RAW mode, batch process to tiff, convert
the images to Lab colour where I use the lightness channel to most
of my adjustmnets to the levels and USM and then convert back to
RGB.

Click to expand...

With this workflow, converting to TIFF in batch is practical. The question was if there's any use for the software when shooting JPEG. Batch conversion from JPEG to TIFF makes little sense.

--
Jesper

Richard Lamprecht said:

Hi Petteri

While I generally agree with most you you say. I was just trying to
simplify a suggested method of using DIUV for Eugene. However,
there is hardly a picture that does not require some form of
editing mainly using Levels and USM. Each time you perform such an
edit and resave the image you loose information.

Click to expand...

With USM, indeed you do. With Levels, not if you use adjustment layers. I actually save the Photoshop files (and the out-of-camera originals).

However, I store more pictures than I actually use. The unused ones are there until I need them; those I archive in the format they came out of the camera.

Richard Lamprecht said:

I only store tiffs
of images that I really think are worth keeping. But then again I
make-up my images into pages using either PageMaker or InDesign 2
to print and tiff is my preference. I would not advise PNG as an
alternative to anyone.

Click to expand...

Why not PNG?

Richard Lamprecht said:

Its the idea of batch processing that I wanted to get over. I shoot
nearly all my images in RAW mode, batch process to tiff,

Click to expand...

Why do you batch process to TIFF? I'd think that you'd want to do the levels adjustment in RAW (manually) and then save to 24-bit TIFF. Of course, if you save to 48-bit TIFF, it's another story- but very expensive in terms of disk space.

(I rarely shoot in RAW, because my photography is mostly situational -- I can't afford the performance and image size hit.)

Richard Lamprecht said:

convert
the images to Lab colour where I use the lightness channel to most
of my adjustmnets to the levels and USM and then convert back to
RGB.

Click to expand...

Me too. Although it seems you do lose some data in the RGB-> Lab -> RGB conversion.

Richard Lamprecht said:

I also sometimes, when having shot in jpg mode, use gaussian
blur to this channel to reduce noise, although I generall use Neat
Image. But I only go through this process if I think an Image is
worth keeping.

Click to expand...

Same here. However, for many images I'm not sure -- and these are the ones I sotre in the format they came out of the camera.

BTW, I've noticed that in high ISO (400 and 800, occasionally 200) most of the ugly, chromatic noise on the D7i is in the blue channel. I've gotten pretty good results Smart Blurring that channel; it doesn't soften the image visibly and makes the noise finer and more film-like. You can get some chromatic aberration-like effects in areas with high contrast, which you may need to clean up, though.

Richard Lamprecht said:

I hope this is a little clearer now.

Click to expand...

Indeed. I can see that batch processing does simplify things if you shootin RAW and if disk space is not an issue. However, I think that it's a lot less useful if you shoot in JPG. For that, I think the JPG original -> PSD (-> export to TIFF or JPG for the web) workflow is more efficient.

Petteri
--
http://homepage.mac.com/psulonen/

TheSwede wrote:
[snip]

theswede #100093 said:

That being said, for working on photos I use XCF format. If I need
to go cross platform I use PNG, and for final output I use PNG or
JPEG.

Click to expand...

Tell me more about XCF. I haven't heard about it. What's the deal?

Petteri
--
http://homepage.mac.com/psulonen/

Petteri Sulonen said:

Petteri Sulonen said:

That being said, for working on photos I use XCF format. If I need
to go cross platform I use PNG, and for final output I use PNG or
JPEG.

Click to expand...

Tell me more about XCF. I haven't heard about it. What's the deal?

Click to expand...

It's the non-destructive native format of Gimp. The equivalent in Photoshop would be be PSD (or is it PSP? I forgot; was long ago since I had to use Photoshop - and yes, I own it). Both formats allow for saving layers, selections, channels and to some extent undo information. While I'm working on pictures that's all I use. Once I'm done I keep the latest XCF around and save as JPEG or PNG for final output. That way I can always go back and tweak more.

--
Jesper

TheSwede said:

Petteri Sulonen said:

theswede #100093 said:

That being said, for working on photos I use XCF format. If I need
to go cross platform I use PNG, and for final output I use PNG or
JPEG.

Click to expand...

Tell me more about XCF. I haven't heard about it. What's the deal?

Click to expand...

It's the non-destructive native format of Gimp. The equivalent in
Photoshop would be be PSD (or is it PSP? I forgot; was long ago
since I had to use Photoshop - and yes, I own it). Both formats
allow for saving layers, selections, channels and to some extent
undo information. While I'm working on pictures that's all I use.
Once I'm done I keep the latest XCF around and save as JPEG or PNG
for final output. That way I can always go back and tweak more.

Click to expand...

Ah, I see. Thanks for the info. How do you find Gimp? I experimented with the Windows and Darwin ports for a while, but found myself firing up my good ol' Photoshop 4.0 rather more often; the integration with the OS was frustratingly bad. Is it worth the learning curve? - FYI, until now, I've been doing my photo stuff on a Mac, but I'll be dropping it for a PC day after tomorrow. I'm planning to make it a dual-boot and would like to do as much of my stuff as possible in Linux anyway.

Petteri
--
http://homepage.mac.com/psulonen/

Petteri Sulonen said:

Ah, I see. Thanks for the info. How do you find Gimp?

Click to expand...

It's a bit rougher around the edges than Photoshop, but so far I found nothing I can do in the versions of Photoshop I've used extensively that I can't do in Gimp. I also use Photoshop tips & tricks to good effect, although sometimes I have to figure out the equivalent way to do something in Gimp.

I own Photoshop 3, and I used Photoshop 5 extensively on a coworker's system whenI was trying to decide whether an upgrade would be worth the money. At the IT training company I was working we did Photoshop training, so I had to stay on top of it to be able to offer advice.

At that point I was switching over completely to Linux as I was doing administration and training in it, and started working with Gimp instead of PS3/5. Now I run only UNIX systems at home, except for a few work related NT installs in VMWare virtual boxen. Thus I use only Gimp, and it works very well for me.

A good resource to get started is the gimp manual, freely available on the 'net or available as a book. I recommend buying a copy to support the authors, even if you use the online version. I am doing that.

http://manual.gimp.org/

As for switching to Linux, the best way is to try to do everything on Linux for a while. Rebooting all the time is very frustrating.

If you really need certain Windows apps, find out which ones and examine the wine support for them. I run MS Office under crossover office since I get word and excel documents for my work. Apart from that I run nothing windows related except games. I can happily report that Jedi Knight II runs very well under Linux using Transgaming's WineX.

Sadly, no version of Photoshop runs on wine yet. That may change, but it may take a while.

--
Jesper

Hi

As many people who have some sort of work flow to suit their specific requirements and capabilities, they will work to their own preferred solution. I've just upgraded to PhotoShop 7 now and do all my colour adjustment and other enhancements with it.

For subtle tonal shifts I prefer to convert to CMYK and make the adjustments using curves which suits me best as am a qualified photographic retoucher learning my trade when colour separations where cmyk contones. We had to judge colour values on B/W eparated bromides to colour corrections marked on a overlay to the transparency.

As I said I make-up A4 page composites of pictures for our Photo-album in mostly Indesign 2 which does not support PNG formated files.

I am going up to North Walesina few weeks time to shoot pictures at the International Whitewater Championships and will be taking all the pictures in jpg fine mode. I will also be taking a laptop to test pictures early on before the event begins.

I think that by now our poor friend who asked a simple question about DIUV must be confused.

Richard

TheSwede said:

Richard Lamprecht said:

However, there is hardly a picture that does not require some form of
editing mainly using Levels and USM. Each time you perform such an
edit and resave the image you loose information.

Click to expand...

Not true. If you open the file, perform an operation and save, then
do the next operation and save, etc., without reloading between
steps, the data is not degraded. Your in memory copy is not
compressed and decompressed, it remains as is.

Thus, if all you're going to do is some levels and USM, JPEG is as
good as anything. If you plan to work in several sessions or do
more work, then a lossless format such as XCF, PNG, TIFF or BMP may
be useful.

theswede #100093 said:

I would not advise PNG as an alternative to anyone.

Click to expand...

Why would you not advice PNG? It's an excellent format, combining
the advantages of several others. Lossless compression at much
smaller sizes than the (horribly archaic) TIFF.

That being said, for working on photos I use XCF format. If I need
to go cross platform I use PNG, and for final output I use PNG or
JPEG.

theswede #100093 said:

Its the idea of batch processing that I wanted to get over. I shoot
nearly all my images in RAW mode, batch process to tiff, convert
the images to Lab colour where I use the lightness channel to most
of my adjustmnets to the levels and USM and then convert back to
RGB.

Click to expand...

With this workflow, converting to TIFF in batch is practical. The
question was if there's any use for the software when shooting
JPEG. Batch conversion from JPEG to TIFF makes little sense.

--
Jesper

Click to expand...

I'm using a Belkin powered hub and plugged iinto it is an an Imation FlashGo! It will read Compact Flash, Microdrive, Memory Stick, Secure Digital MultimediiaCard and SmartMedia. It creates one drive letter in Explorer, not manjy drive letters as some multi readers do. It has an adaptor inserts that plug into the Compact Flash Module. The Imation FlashGo works fine off the hub with the IBM Microdrive. I think I will save my pictures in JPG and then switch to a lossless format after editing. I don't have all that much editing to do because I take 20 or 30 pictures of the same subject from different angles and settings and distances, etc. and then perhaps I'll save one or two from the batch. I found that pictures taken under strong sun, under the shading of the patio umbrella are great for portrait work. It gives a professiona type lighting perfect for portrait work. Some light gets through the umbrella and some bouces up from the ground.

Thanks for bringing up the powered hub issue. In my previous response in this thread,I failed to mention that I have a passive, non-powered, hub. I've had some problems with powered hubs (one knocked out my entire USB bus), and don't completely trust them. On the other hand, if you have one that works, it sounds like you can use the card reader/Microdrive combo with them.

--Larry