Re: paleonet Digital photography again

["Mitch Covington" <mitch@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have used the older Nikon Coolpix 950 successfully on nannofossils at up
to 1500x mag.  At that mag it's critical, of course, to keep the camera
steady.  A custom made contraption exists which allows the attachment of a
standard cable shutter release, but I've found that using the timer on the
camera is a better alternative to either the cable release or manually
pressing the button.

To transfer files from the camera to my laptop while on offshore drilling
rigs, I use the flash card from the Coolpix and a removable card reader
(PCMCIA) that fits into a socket in the laptop.  The flash card is treated
like a removable hard drive and works extremely well.  Hooking the camera up
to the PC via cable/USB port is annoyingly slow!

Mitch Covington



----- Original Message -----
From: Frank Holterhoff <frank@matricus.com>
To: <paleonet@nhm.ac.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 8:47 PM
Subject: Re: paleonet Digital photography again


> There's no generic/universal remote switch (like the old cable
shutter-release)?
> I guess they don't standardize so that each maker can sell you his own (at
$130 a
> pop).
>
> Also I note that the Nikon Coolpix 995 (successor to the 990) can go up to
ISO
> 800 (I believe the 990 can only go to ISO 400, is that right?).  This
would
> improve the depth of field, wouldn't it?
>
> F
>
> TomDeVrie@aol.com wrote:
>
> > I may have been the person who recommended the Nikon Coolpix 990.  It
does a
> > good job, including getting in close on specimens down to about 1 cm in
> > length.  I'm not sure how well it will do with micro-mollusks.
> >
> > I wish the depth of field was better (f-stop only to 10.8 or at best
11.1).
> > The remote switch for taking pictures is too expensive ($130) but it
does
> > remove a pixel or two of jitter induced by manually depressing the
shutter
> > button  while the camera is on a stand.  The direct download of files to
a
> > Mac with a USB port has been problematic and slow with Nikon software.
My
> > best results are obtained by moving the image card from the camera to a
card
> > reader that is directly connected to a USB port.
> >
> > The typical image size of about 1500-1800 pixels for the long dimension
of a
> > fossil is enough to produce a 2.5-3" printed or digital image of up to
600
> > pixels per inch.  Larger images for reproduction on plates would start
to
> > lose some resolution.  Thus, I suppose a >3.34 megapixel camera would be
> > advantageous for some kinds of specimens.
> >
> > One cautionary note that I think applies to camera cards used with Macs:
> > dragging image files from a window on the computer desktop to the trash
is
> > apparently not recommended; not everything leaves the camera card; the
card
> > eventually fills; and ultimately the camera appears not to work when the
card
> > is loaded and seemingly empty.  Image files need to be removed with
software
> > resident on the camera while the card is loaded in the camera.
> >
> > Tom DeVries
>
>
>