Fujifilm S2 with Laptop

First let me say that I have fortunately not encountered any of the problems with the S2 mentioned on this forum so far, and I am extremely pleased with the image quality of this camera.

A few days ago I scanned some of my very good slides with a Printscan 4000 and was really dissapointed with the noise levels as compared to the S2, in my experience the S2 is far superior to scanning slides.

Now for my question, I am contemplating a Sony Vaio NV290 Laptop to use with my S2, it is powerfull enough I think,2 Ghz, 512Mb ram,upgradable to 1Gb and I have been impressed with the Sony high resolution screen.

Is anyony on this forum using a laptop in conjunction with the S2 and if so could yoiu please relate your experience and some of the pro's and cons
Thanks Peter
--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

Hi Peter,

I use an IBM Thinkpad X30. It has a built-in 1394 port that I just tried last night for remote control of the camera. Worked really well. Other than that, I use it for my main machine (docked) for photo processing, printing, etc. and travel with it to download photos to when on vacation etc. I switched from having a desktop and laptop to now just having a laptop and docking it when I want a regular screen and keyboard to work from. I will never go back. My CPU is only 1.2ghz but it's enough for me and worth the benefit of not having to sychronize two systems any longer.

Kevin R.

Peter Leyenaar said:

First let me say that I have fortunately not encountered any of the
problems with the S2 mentioned on this forum so far, and I am
extremely pleased with the image quality of this camera.
A few days ago I scanned some of my very good slides with a
Printscan 4000 and was really dissapointed with the noise levels as
compared to the S2, in my experience the S2 is far superior to
scanning slides.

Now for my question, I am contemplating a Sony Vaio NV290 Laptop to
use with my S2, it is powerfull enough I think,2 Ghz, 512Mb
ram,upgradable to 1Gb and I have been impressed with the Sony high
resolution screen.

Is anyony on this forum using a laptop in conjunction with the S2
and if so could yoiu please relate your experience and some of the
pro's and cons
Thanks Peter
--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

Click to expand...

Kevin Roczey said:

I use an IBM Thinkpad X30. It has a built-in 1394 port that I just
tried last night for remote control of the camera. Worked really
well. Other than that, I use it for my main machine (docked) for
photo processing, printing, etc. and travel with it to download
photos to when on vacation etc. I switched from having a desktop
and laptop to now just having a laptop and docking it when I want a
regular screen and keyboard to work from. I will never go back.
My CPU is only 1.2ghz but it's enough for me and worth the benefit
of not having to sychronize two systems any longer.

Kevin R.

Peter Leyenaar said:

First let me say that I have fortunately not encountered any of the
problems with the S2 mentioned on this forum so far, and I am
extremely pleased with the image quality of this camera.
A few days ago I scanned some of my very good slides with a
Printscan 4000 and was really dissapointed with the noise levels as
compared to the S2, in my experience the S2 is far superior to
scanning slides.

Now for my question, I am contemplating a Sony Vaio NV290 Laptop to
use with my S2, it is powerfull enough I think,2 Ghz, 512Mb
ram,upgradable to 1Gb and I have been impressed with the Sony high
resolution screen.

Is anyony on this forum using a laptop in conjunction with the S2
and if so could yoiu please relate your experience and some of the
pro's and cons
Thanks Peter
--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

-----------------

If you look at the Apple site they have just come out with a new laptop which burns to CD's AND DVD's.

Personally I would wait a little bit untill the new Firwire (800bit) and USB2 (200bit) is fitted as standard. to all computers.

Regards.

GR

------------------

How does one scan slides on the S2. Are you telling me that I don't have to buy a Nikon coolscan IVto transfer my slides to digital?? That would be nice!!

George Richardson said:

Kevin Roczey said:

I use an IBM Thinkpad X30. It has a built-in 1394 port that I just
tried last night for remote control of the camera. Worked really
well. Other than that, I use it for my main machine (docked) for
photo processing, printing, etc. and travel with it to download
photos to when on vacation etc. I switched from having a desktop
and laptop to now just having a laptop and docking it when I want a
regular screen and keyboard to work from. I will never go back.
My CPU is only 1.2ghz but it's enough for me and worth the benefit
of not having to sychronize two systems any longer.

Kevin R.

Peter Leyenaar said:

First let me say that I have fortunately not encountered any of the
problems with the S2 mentioned on this forum so far, and I am
extremely pleased with the image quality of this camera.
A few days ago I scanned some of my very good slides with a
Printscan 4000 and was really dissapointed with the noise levels as
compared to the S2, in my experience the S2 is far superior to
scanning slides.

Now for my question, I am contemplating a Sony Vaio NV290 Laptop to
use with my S2, it is powerfull enough I think,2 Ghz, 512Mb
ram,upgradable to 1Gb and I have been impressed with the Sony high
resolution screen.

Is anyony on this forum using a laptop in conjunction with the S2
and if so could yoiu please relate your experience and some of the
pro's and cons
Thanks Peter
--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

-----------------

If you look at the Apple site they have just come out with a new
laptop which burns to CD's AND DVD's.

Personally I would wait a little bit untill the new Firwire
(800bit) and USB2 (200bit) is fitted as standard. to all computers.

Regards.

GR

------------------

Click to expand...

Hi Peter,

I have an Apple G4 Ti-book laptop which I use with my S2 nearly Everyday!!! It is great. I took it with me to Fiji, Texas, Death Valley and many other places. I have a space in my photo backpack for it which is great!

Just today Apple announced new G4 laptops with DVD Burners and the authoring software. iDVD is a great application and allows you to make full DVD movies out of photos for viewing on a home theater system.

I have used the VAIO as well and I don't think it has near the performance of the G4 Laptop

Don

Peter Leyenaar said:

First let me say that I have fortunately not encountered any of the
problems with the S2 mentioned on this forum so far, and I am
extremely pleased with the image quality of this camera.
A few days ago I scanned some of my very good slides with a
Printscan 4000 and was really dissapointed with the noise levels as
compared to the S2, in my experience the S2 is far superior to
scanning slides.

Now for my question, I am contemplating a Sony Vaio NV290 Laptop to
use with my S2, it is powerfull enough I think,2 Ghz, 512Mb
ram,upgradable to 1Gb and I have been impressed with the Sony high
resolution screen.

Is anyony on this forum using a laptop in conjunction with the S2
and if so could yoiu please relate your experience and some of the
pro's and cons
Thanks Peter
--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

Click to expand...

Laptops are nice because they are portable. However, the screens are not perfect for viewing. First, LCD screens are designed to display best at 1 resolution; they don't scale very well to other resolutions. Also, it's very difficult to get color just right with an LCD. And there's viewing angle issues as well.

I would suggest that if you get a laptop you also get a good CRT monitor so that you can use that for any adjustments or viewing. CRT's scale better to various resolutions, allow easier color adjustment, and have great viewing angles.

Hope my opinions help.

Anthony

Peter Leyenaar said:

First let me say that I have fortunately not encountered any of the
problems with the S2 mentioned on this forum so far, and I am
extremely pleased with the image quality of this camera.
A few days ago I scanned some of my very good slides with a
Printscan 4000 and was really dissapointed with the noise levels as
compared to the S2, in my experience the S2 is far superior to
scanning slides.

Now for my question, I am contemplating a Sony Vaio NV290 Laptop to
use with my S2, it is powerfull enough I think,2 Ghz, 512Mb
ram,upgradable to 1Gb and I have been impressed with the Sony high
resolution screen.

Is anyony on this forum using a laptop in conjunction with the S2
and if so could yoiu please relate your experience and some of the
pro's and cons
Thanks Peter
--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

Click to expand...

medicineman said:

How does one scan slides on the S2. Are you telling me that I
don't have to buy a Nikon coolscan IVto transfer my slides to
digital?? That would be nice!!

Click to expand...

Hi there,

I do not know if that exists for the S2 (or better said, for SLR lenses), but I do know there was something to scan slides and negatives using Camedia cameras. I dont see why something similar could not be done for the S2, probably using a macro lens. The quality for the Camedia scanned negs was much better than my Coolscan III in terms of noise.

Best,
Dioni

medicineman said:

How does one scan slides on the S2. Are you telling me that I
don't have to buy a Nikon coolscan IVto transfer my slides to
digital?? That would be nice!!

Click to expand...

Hi Medicinman, I may have expressed myself poorly and really meant that the results of the S2 are better then the older method of shooting slides
and scanning those, I meant to say that the S2 produces far cleaner results
Best Regards Peter

Tony DeCicco said:

George Richardson said:

Kevin Roczey said:

I use an IBM Thinkpad X30. It has a built-in 1394 port that I just
tried last night for remote control of the camera. Worked really
well. Other than that, I use it for my main machine (docked) for
photo processing, printing, etc. and travel with it to download
photos to when on vacation etc. I switched from having a desktop
and laptop to now just having a laptop and docking it when I want a
regular screen and keyboard to work from. I will never go back.
My CPU is only 1.2ghz but it's enough for me and worth the benefit
of not having to sychronize two systems any longer.

Kevin R.

Peter Leyenaar said:

First let me say that I have fortunately not encountered any of the
problems with the S2 mentioned on this forum so far, and I am
extremely pleased with the image quality of this camera.
A few days ago I scanned some of my very good slides with a
Printscan 4000 and was really dissapointed with the noise levels as
compared to the S2, in my experience the S2 is far superior to
scanning slides.

Now for my question, I am contemplating a Sony Vaio NV290 Laptop to
use with my S2, it is powerfull enough I think,2 Ghz, 512Mb
ram,upgradable to 1Gb and I have been impressed with the Sony high
resolution screen.

Is anyony on this forum using a laptop in conjunction with the S2
and if so could yoiu please relate your experience and some of the
pro's and cons
Thanks Peter
--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

-----------------

If you look at the Apple site they have just come out with a new
laptop which burns to CD's AND DVD's.

Personally I would wait a little bit untill the new Firwire
(800bit) and USB2 (200bit) is fitted as standard. to all computers.

Regards.

GR

------------------

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

Whether a PC or Mac notebook .. its ESSENTIAL to have CDR/RW burning capability. You DO NOT want to trust your hard drive to survive after downloading your images from the S2. ALWAYS BACKUP from hard drive to CDR/RW/DVDR IMMEDIATELY after downloading. Or at least backup to another indepedent hard drive/pc/laptop.

I bought a 400L Dell laptop with a 2 gig Intel processor (note not a puny mobile processor) with 256 megs of ram. It has a built in firewire and two usb ports. It also has a 30 gig hard drive. I upgraded the ram to 512mb. The price after discount was around 1550. It has a beautiful screen and has built in wireless into the machine. It is a windows machine so don't know that you want that. But I love the machine and makes a great image tank.

Tony
--
Life is one long surface interval

Tony Carro said:

I bought a 400L Dell laptop with a 2 gig Intel processor (note not
a puny mobile processor) with 256 megs of ram. It has a built in
firewire and two usb ports. It also has a 30 gig hard drive. I
upgraded the ram to 512mb. The price after discount was around
1550. It has a beautiful screen and has built in wireless into the
machine. It is a windows machine so don't know that you want that.
But I love the machine and makes a great image tank.

Tony
--
Life is one long surface interval

Click to expand...

--
Life is one long surface interval

Hi

take a look at Toshiba 1900 Satellite, 2.2Ghz, 512Mb ram, 16.1" (!) tft screen, wireless removable keyboard & mouse... works great!

Regadrs
Johan
http://www.motljus.com

Peter Leyenaar said:

First let me say that I have fortunately not encountered any of the
problems with the S2 mentioned on this forum so far, and I am
extremely pleased with the image quality of this camera.
A few days ago I scanned some of my very good slides with a
Printscan 4000 and was really dissapointed with the noise levels as
compared to the S2, in my experience the S2 is far superior to
scanning slides.

Now for my question, I am contemplating a Sony Vaio NV290 Laptop to
use with my S2, it is powerfull enough I think,2 Ghz, 512Mb
ram,upgradable to 1Gb and I have been impressed with the Sony high
resolution screen.

Is anyony on this forum using a laptop in conjunction with the S2
and if so could yoiu please relate your experience and some of the
pro's and cons
Thanks Peter
--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

Click to expand...

Yes I am using a loptop with my
S2 it is a To

peter cartier said:

Yes I am using a loptop with my
S2 it is a Toshiba

Click to expand...

Satilite laptop p-4 1.7 gig procss, 512ram, the only thing I had to does to get the shooting software to work was buy a Belkin pcicard for the firewire to work thats the only one fuji said would work, and after buying three differnt ones and brands I cuncure with fuji on that. it works great I used it on a pre school shoot.
Peter

I use my S2 with a Mac Titanium G4 with one gig of ram. Works real well. However I don't like shooting teathered to a laptop. Especially if clients are going to be seeing the images. Most of my clients don't really understand viewing images on a laptop screen. The same clients love looking at the images on an iMac.

So if / when I'm working with the Titanium laptop and S2 combo. I'm usually just processing files.

Hope this info helps.
Phil W

The thing to remember with laptops (pc platform) if its a Toshiba or Dell its hard to go wrong. With digital imaging more is better when it comes to RAM. Higher processor speed helps, but RAM is the main thing to have (minimum 512MB & pref. 1GB. Both the Toshiba and Dell P4 models with the high-end displays have both firewire and usb ports standard. Note: if you need a serial port (db9) look at the Dell, Toshiba and most others have gone to USB only.

Good Luck ,
Dan. D.C. Enterprises - Computer Consultant.

• Digital/Film Photography.

Phil Wever said:

I use my S2 with a Mac Titanium G4 with one gig of ram. Works real
well. However I don't like shooting teathered to a laptop.
Especially if clients are going to be seeing the images. Most of
my clients don't really understand viewing images on a laptop
screen. The same clients love looking at the images on an iMac.

So if / when I'm working with the Titanium laptop and S2 combo.
I'm usually just processing files.

Hope this info helps.
Phil W

Click to expand...

Hi Peter,

Your contemplated VAIO has impressive specs

I have been using a couple of lesser VAIO's with my S2 to great
satisfaction. A tiny SR17K and a slightly bigger LS505Z ( where on
earth do they get the numbers from ? It drives me crazy ....

Anyhoo, both are 256 / 20Gb / 750 Mhz. Downloads from the S2
( with the built-in VAIO firewire ) have been a dream.

The main attractions of the VAIO's are the incredible lightness at 2.75
and 3.75 lbs respectively. The extra-bright Sony screens are wonderfully
responsive to S2 images but I am careful not to leave too many high-res
pics on the HD before transferring because ( as you will have discovered
there can be millions and millions of pixels living there very soon.

I tend not to use the Fuji software but rather just download via
microdrive and Zio! card-reader into a separate VAIO drive and then
use another prog ( T+ ) for any editing/e-mailing while travelling.

Overall, a great combination. Agree with posters who suggest CD-burners
etc as good ideas, but for me, a laptop should be light and powerful,
rather than full-featured and heavy

With laptops, as with cameres, one has to choose according to one's
needs. The idea of burning a CD on the road is very attractive, especially
for a commercial endeavour, but right now, I just enjoy the freedom to
shoot away, knowing that I can happily download into a capacious drive
until I get home to a bigger screen.

Good luck with your choice,
Keith

I use an iBook with my S2 when I'm out on jobs. I love it!

The design is just superb, and it is fast enough to run photoshop reasonably well. I use a dualproc g4 for my work back at home base, but for the field the ibook is phenomenal.

I just hook up the firewire, slurp down the files, burn cds before I head home.

The new powerbook with its builtin dvd burner would be even better, I suspect.

--
Charles Bandes
http://www.bandesphoto.com

Peter Leyenaar said:

First let me say that I have fortunately not encountered any of the
problems with the S2 mentioned on this forum so far, and I am
extremely pleased with the image quality of this camera.
A few days ago I scanned some of my very good slides with a
Printscan 4000 and was really dissapointed with the noise levels as
compared to the S2, in my experience the S2 is far superior to
scanning slides.

Now for my question, I am contemplating a Sony Vaio NV290 Laptop to
use with my S2, it is powerfull enough I think,2 Ghz, 512Mb
ram,upgradable to 1Gb and I have been impressed with the Sony high
resolution screen.

Is anyony on this forum using a laptop in conjunction with the S2
and if so could yoiu please relate your experience and some of the
pro's and cons
Thanks Peter
--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

Click to expand...

--

MCS Peter I use one all the time. My favorite is the fujitsu P2110, a very small compact job which fits into the camera case and writes CD's. I also use the hyper utilities and have nohing but praise. The computer uses the 850 celron with only 256 mb. For critical work on the pictures I connect my Sony 17" 1280 x 768 monitor. I enjoy looking at it so much that I forget to work. The S2 makes very little demand on the computer, even with EX and raw. Did have a bad firewire port on the first S2 but they exchanged it without question. Suggest great care in plugging into the firewire port, it is a very easy to damage connector. Line it up and push straight in, easy. Hope this helps. MCS [email protected]

USING THE NEW MINI-COMPUTER. SMALLER THAN A SHOEBOX AND FITS IN A PELICAN HARD CASE FOR AIR TRAVEL. PACK WITH 1 15" LCD. UNIT HAS BUILT IN 1394 ON THE MOTHERBOARD ALONG WITH 10/100 LAN , SOUND, 120GIG H.D. AND COMBO DVD/CDRW 12X. HEAVER THAN A LAPTOP BUT A BIT STURDER. COST 1/2 AS MUCH AS LAPTOPS. WORKS WELL FOR ME!

--
http://www.pbase.com/tojo123
[email protected]