Wildlife Photography across the Water: News round up

Friday 2 April 2010

News round up

Just a quick one from me on this Good Friday before I go off and start demolishiong and rebuilding fences.

Firstly, I hope you enjoyed our April Fools spoof from yesterday. I was minded to just do a story about a Golden Eagle in the garden, but when the Polar Bear on Mull story came through on my Twitter feed, I thought I would use that link to build on my story.

I am sure that all of our readers are astute enough not to have fallen for it.

Two weeks ago, my PC got hit by a nasty virus that took me ages to fix, but in so doing killed off internet access. I have been deliberating on getting a new PC for a few months so this just made the decision for me. I 'built' my spec and ordered in from pcspecialist.co.uk. I ordered it on a Monday pm and it arrived one week later. It would have been here on the Friday if they had had Kaspersky in stock.

So it turns up, I set it up, plug in my plug and play Lacie monitor, and no picture is showing. So with a few options tried, I was only able to get a 800 x 600 res image on a television screen. So after a long call into the support line, we managed to get the monitor working via the on board graphics card. while they sent me a new graphics card.

That arrived yesterday, I swapped over and still had the same result. So another call in to support, make a few amends to the BIOS and we are fully up and running.

In the interim, I decided that I would get another monitor so that when I repair the original PC it would be available for further use, as it was still a prety good spec.

I was going to get the 24" Dell that Dave bought a few years ago. Needless to say that has been replaced, and doing a few web searches it seems that the replacement has colour issues - not what you want when you are trying to do accurate colour work.

So I had a look at the options from Colour Confidence, a specialist supplier to the imaging industry, and opted for an Eizo S2243W. It is a 22 " widescreen with 1920 x 1200 res, and of particular importance is the Adobe RGB qualities. It is capable of reproducing about 95% Adobe RGB. If you want more than that, then you need to spend a lot more money.

Well what a peachy monitor it is. The Lacie was excellent, but this is superb. I have now colour calibrated it with my Gretag Macbeath Eye 2 Display calibrator, and it is very impressive.

So this is my first post from the new PC. All my photo software is now installed, including the latest Capture One v5.1.1. I will do a more detailed blog on this in the future as this is one bit of software that Dave and I haven't talked about much.

My PC spec is now optimised as a balance of processor (Intel i5 - 660), RAM (4GB) and graphics card, (1GB Geforce GT) whereas before I paid less attention to the GPU. CS4 and CS5 when it turns up later this month make more use of the GPU than previous versions so this is something to think about when you are speccing.

As with my last PC, I have two hard drives, a smaller one for the OS and apps, and a large one for the files. I up speeced the motherboard to include the latest USB3.0 and SATA 6 technologies for future proofing. Windows 7 64 bit is my OS. 64 bit will enable the use of more 3GB of RAM. I have started off with 4GB, but will upgrade with a further 4GB when it becomes necdessary. I will wait to see what the performance of both Capture One and CS5 is like before I make that step.

If you want to know any more, please drop me a comment and I will reply.

Best wishes to all our readers over the Easter Holiday

Martin

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Bio's

David Courtenay, a self taught wildlife and nature photographer, has been capturing images for over 30 years. He has had a passion for wildlife since early childhood and remembers being glued to the television whenever Survival, Wildlife on One and other natural history documentaries were shown. In the 2006 he swapped his established career for the life of a wildlife photographer, such a move demands a measure of uncompromising passion and commitment.

David has travelled extensively throughout Europe as well as spending more than 7 months in India working with local guides and trackers in search of Bengal Tiger, Asian One horned Rhino and Asian Elephant. He has also photographed Wildlife in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra, Africa, Canada and America. Working closely with Conservation companies he tries to raise funds to help Wildlife that has been put on the endangered list by poaching and habitation loss

Martin Dyer has had a passion for avian wildlife since childhood, particularly raptors. Photography was also another keen interest and it was with the specific availability and control of the whole process that digital offers that Martin was then able to combine the two in 2003. Based in the UK, Martin is a regular visitor to Scotland, specifically the Isle of Mull to watch the Eagles resident there. Other trips to Europe and around the UK are usually part of Martin’s agenda in a typical year.

However, as a firm believer on making the most of the local patch, Martin has spent a lot of time and hard work creating a wildlife garden which is reaping the rewards with many new species and varieties of wildlife. A keen member of a number of wildlife photographic groups, Martin is keen to expand his portfolio into other areas of wildlife, and has already established a wide portfolio of images of fungi.