GL2 Startup questions

Roland Barth · August 29th, 2003, 06:50 PM

I have been using the Canon S800 bubblejet printer for 2 years now and I have been very happy with the quality (max size 7.5x10) when I used it after editing with Photoshop. But I'm sure Canon has more up-to-date printers now. They are cheap but the ink cartridges can eat you alive if you do a lot of printing. With 1488x1126 ppi resolution (GL2) you may be limited somewhat on print size. With my Canon Pro90, which has 1856X1392 ppi 7.5x10 glossies come out great.
Roland

Baker Rawlings · August 29th, 2003, 07:15 PM

"I guess I'll be a few weeks/months behind you on the learning curve. But I'll be doing only outdoor nature videos, which present a whole different set of problems than weddings and such.
One thing that's still bugging me is the apparent lack of a large preview/editing screen for screening/editing (in Pinnacle Studio 8). It seems that all the not-so-expensive programs lack a full screen editing capability, perhaps all. Any clues?
Roland"

Hey Roland,
With outdoor nature video, you are probably thinking there is lots of time to set up and get what you want, and, the lag time on using the video camera to get stills is not an issue. I agree unless you are focusing on something like a humming bird...

I hear you on preferring videoing or photographing landscape/nature photography, but I cannot find any work for pay to help support my habits in that area. Currently, for landscape and nature photography, I'm using medium format, slides. As I get more and more familiar with digital images, it is more frustrating to deal with photoprocessing services, when I know I would have greater control and better results on the images taken and edited on my computer. Cannot afford the upgrades, however...

I'd be interested to see some of your outdoor nature video work from the GL2, when you have something to share....

If you are doing previews of still images gotten with your GL2, and you have access to some photo editing software like Adobe Elements or Photoshop, you could view the images at full screen or larger.

I don't have any experience with Pinnacle, but with Primier I can enlargen the preview screen to full size of the monitor by dragging on a corner of the viewing area until the image is as large as I want it to be or full size of the monitor.

bake
r

Baker Rawlings · August 29th, 2003, 07:31 PM

"I may want to take some stills and print them for some friends.I am in the market for a printer.I have been looking at the canon printers,I850 and the I550.I also use Adobe Premiere.What would you recommend for a printer to use with the GL2 ?Would you bother with the ''solution disk''?

__________________
richard tamayo"

Richard,

We have an Epson Photo Stylus (one of the first models with 6 colors) and while we can stilll get pretty good photos from it, it's cheaper and with more consistant results downloading a bunch of images onto a cd and either going to Costco for ~ 9 cents a print (4 x 6) or sending somewhere on mail order.

We had a Canon printer before the Epson and that is still my favorite. But I'm spoiled by the color consistancy I get using outside photo services and at prices that make my printer photos look very expensive.

You might want to consider Adobe Elements for editing your still images taken with the GL2. Adobe has been in the digital photo editing business a lot longer than Canon. But if you decide to use the Canon software, I'd be interested in hearing about your experience.

bake
r

Roland Barth · August 29th, 2003, 07:52 PM

Hey Bake:
I just learned that Windows Media Player has the full screen capability for editing, so I may be using that S/W instead of Pinnacle.
I have been taking thousands of digital images with my Pro90 the past 2 years and will publish a field guide to the wildflowers of a local private Nature Preserve -- not for profit but as a fundraiser. I have tried to shoot birds before (I'm also an avid birder) but never invested in the long lense; plus I did not have the patience required for that. Now I'm stepping up to DV and will do all the flora and fauna and some scenics as well. I'll have a lot to learn about shooting and editing techniques and I certainly appreciate the experiences all the board members are sharing with us newbies.
Roland

Baker Rawlings · August 30th, 2003, 09:48 PM

Roland,

You probably are already familiar with this comparison, but just in case, when it comes to dealing with over/under exposure and getting good images, film and digital are different . My experience using manual settings with film is that if it's underexposed, the image can be poor quality, so I tend to push it one stop. But with digital I find it's kind of the opposite and so I avoid over exposure, knowing I can easily rescue an image that is slightly underexposed.

Working with my GL2 today, it was bright outside and with the zebra stripes "on", I noticed that almost everywhere I pointed the lens in the sun, except shaded areas, the automatic settings were overexposing, sometimes even after the ND filter was turned on. I had to manually crank the exposure to a negative 6 or 7, which made everything okay. It seems like the camera is at the edge dealing with overexposure. I don't think I've got any other settings or functions "on" or "off" that would make the camera show overexposure

bake
r

Roland Barth · August 31st, 2003, 11:28 AM

Bake:
Thanks for the tips on exposure -- I made myself a note; but I haven't done much testing with the GL2 yet.
With my Pro90 camera overexposure was not a big problem until I gave my images to professional printers, who found several cases of "blowout". In the four color process they need to have at least 5% of color so not to wind up with blank paper.
And I thought all there was to photography was learning to set up shots and to know the basics of photography. But it tends to get you deeply into all sorts of related fields.
Later.
Roland

Don Parrish · September 1st, 2003, 08:31 PM

Baker,

On the audio, make sure the audio is set to "mic" and not "line" or "mic att" (attenuate), "mic" is about double the volume of the others. On the XL1S it is in the menu's. Not sure about the GL2 but the XL1S has auto levels that keep up quite well when not attenuated from being in Line or mic att.

As far as loading the software (or anything else) don't forget one of the best things about Canon, 1-800-OK Canon, You will not wait long before hearing a live human voice, No company that I have ever dealt with is better than Canon at answering their phones, If the phone rep can't answer it they will gladly call an engineer.

Donny

Baker Rawlings · September 1st, 2003, 09:42 PM

Thanks a lot for your advice, Donny.

Since I posted the comment about audio, I forced myself to consult Webster's dictionary because the manual explained nowhere the meaning of "attenuate". I'm afraid to say I've never used that word before. Although not a very techy definition, Webster helped me understand.

As for the difference between line and mic, I do not yet know for sure this distinction, but I will keep your caution in mind when I fiddle with the settings.

I nearly called Canon tonight, but was eventually able eliminate the GL2 as source of problem. I'm real happy to hear from you about Canon's good rep on helping customers. More than I can say of my experiences with Sony.

I just upgraded my video hard drives from 2 IBM 45 gigs to 2 IBM 75 gigs. Afterwhich I tried my first clip capture with GL2 using Adobe Primier. An error occured, which at first I thought might be related to the new device, my GL2. But I tried the same procedure with my old Sony with same result. Turned out to be a temp file/scratch disk problem that I'm still working on.

Went to the zoo yesterday to test the GL2. Still a little puzzled by what seems like an inclination for overexposure. Thankfully, the manual exposure dial resolved every incident. Maybe I'm reading those zebra stripes incorrectly...

bake
r

Don Parrish · September 2nd, 2003, 05:17 AM

As for the zebra stripes I dont use them, something is always going to be non perfect. Mainly I find zebra'a to be everywhere in all pictures, I tend to look for the lack of details in the dark areas more than the bright areas, it just seems that zebra's were in every shot no matter what. The best thing I ever found in photography that carried over to video is the wonderful circular polarizer, it darkens the picture by 1 or 2 stops but is magnificent for knocking out the glare and darkening the overbright.

Try this, turn off the zebras and trust your eyes. It's the good thing about electronic viewfinders (EVF's), what you see is what you get.

Baker Rawlings · September 2nd, 2003, 11:26 PM

Don,

Thanks for your advice. Playing around with my old Sony the other day, I noticed that it had the zebra stripe function also. I may have used it once or twice long ago, but then forgot about it. I may try using the zebra stripes with the GL2 when there is plenty of time to tweak an image, but that's not often in my business.

I noticed that the circular polarzier was a favorite item for purchase with the GL2 when I was shopping for a new camcorder. I use the same a fair amount with still photography, but hadn't thought it was worth it for video. You changed my mind on that one.

Thanks again.

bake
r

Trig Simon · September 3rd, 2003, 09:40 AM

Baker-Baker

I just got my GL-2 and had the same quandry about the software.

I think that this is intended for those who do not have firewire, and need the usb hook-up to the pc or mac.

I have downloaded thru my firewire, unplugging my usb cable.

Does this sound right?

August 29th, 2003, 07:15 PM	#17
Baker Rawlings New Boot Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Bellevue, Washington Posts: 11	Weddings and landscape "I guess I'll be a few weeks/months behind you on the learning curve. But I'll be doing only outdoor nature videos, which present a whole different set of problems than weddings and such. One thing that's still bugging me is the apparent lack of a large preview/editing screen for screening/editing (in Pinnacle Studio 8). It seems that all the not-so-expensive programs lack a full screen editing capability, perhaps all. Any clues? Roland" Hey Roland, With outdoor nature video, you are probably thinking there is lots of time to set up and get what you want, and, the lag time on using the video camera to get stills is not an issue. I agree unless you are focusing on something like a humming bird... I hear you on preferring videoing or photographing landscape/nature photography, but I cannot find any work for pay to help support my habits in that area. Currently, for landscape and nature photography, I'm using medium format, slides. As I get more and more familiar with digital images, it is more frustrating to deal with photoprocessing services, when I know I would have greater control and better results on the images taken and edited on my computer. Cannot afford the upgrades, however... I'd be interested to see some of your outdoor nature video work from the GL2, when you have something to share.... If you are doing previews of still images gotten with your GL2, and you have access to some photo editing software like Adobe Elements or Photoshop, you could view the images at full screen or larger. I don't have any experience with Pinnacle, but with Primier I can enlargen the preview screen to full size of the monitor by dragging on a corner of the viewing area until the image is as large as I want it to be or full size of the monitor. bake r __________________ bake r

August 29th, 2003, 07:31 PM	#18
Baker Rawlings New Boot Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Bellevue, Washington Posts: 11	printers for still images "I may want to take some stills and print them for some friends.I am in the market for a printer.I have been looking at the canon printers,I850 and the I550.I also use Adobe Premiere.What would you recommend for a printer to use with the GL2 ?Would you bother with the ''solution disk''? __________________ richard tamayo" Richard, We have an Epson Photo Stylus (one of the first models with 6 colors) and while we can stilll get pretty good photos from it, it's cheaper and with more consistant results downloading a bunch of images onto a cd and either going to Costco for ~ 9 cents a print (4 x 6) or sending somewhere on mail order. We had a Canon printer before the Epson and that is still my favorite. But I'm spoiled by the color consistancy I get using outside photo services and at prices that make my printer photos look very expensive. You might want to consider Adobe Elements for editing your still images taken with the GL2. Adobe has been in the digital photo editing business a lot longer than Canon. But if you decide to use the Canon software, I'd be interested in hearing about your experience. bake r __________________ bake r

August 30th, 2003, 09:48 PM	#20
Baker Rawlings New Boot Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Bellevue, Washington Posts: 11	under/over exposure Roland, You probably are already familiar with this comparison, but just in case, when it comes to dealing with over/under exposure and getting good images, film and digital are different . My experience using manual settings with film is that if it's underexposed, the image can be poor quality, so I tend to push it one stop. But with digital I find it's kind of the opposite and so I avoid over exposure, knowing I can easily rescue an image that is slightly underexposed. Working with my GL2 today, it was bright outside and with the zebra stripes "on", I noticed that almost everywhere I pointed the lens in the sun, except shaded areas, the automatic settings were overexposing, sometimes even after the ND filter was turned on. I had to manually crank the exposure to a negative 6 or 7, which made everything okay. It seems like the camera is at the edge dealing with overexposure. I don't think I've got any other settings or functions "on" or "off" that would make the camera show overexposure bake r __________________ bake r

September 1st, 2003, 09:42 PM	#23
Baker Rawlings New Boot Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Bellevue, Washington Posts: 11	Thanks a lot for your advice, Donny. Since I posted the comment about audio, I forced myself to consult Webster's dictionary because the manual explained nowhere the meaning of "attenuate". I'm afraid to say I've never used that word before. Although not a very techy definition, Webster helped me understand. As for the difference between line and mic, I do not yet know for sure this distinction, but I will keep your caution in mind when I fiddle with the settings. I nearly called Canon tonight, but was eventually able eliminate the GL2 as source of problem. I'm real happy to hear from you about Canon's good rep on helping customers. More than I can say of my experiences with Sony. I just upgraded my video hard drives from 2 IBM 45 gigs to 2 IBM 75 gigs. Afterwhich I tried my first clip capture with GL2 using Adobe Primier. An error occured, which at first I thought might be related to the new device, my GL2. But I tried the same procedure with my old Sony with same result. Turned out to be a temp file/scratch disk problem that I'm still working on. Went to the zoo yesterday to test the GL2. Still a little puzzled by what seems like an inclination for overexposure. Thankfully, the manual exposure dial resolved every incident. Maybe I'm reading those zebra stripes incorrectly... bake r __________________ bake r

September 2nd, 2003, 11:26 PM	#25
Baker Rawlings New Boot Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Bellevue, Washington Posts: 11	Don, Thanks for your advice. Playing around with my old Sony the other day, I noticed that it had the zebra stripe function also. I may have used it once or twice long ago, but then forgot about it. I may try using the zebra stripes with the GL2 when there is plenty of time to tweak an image, but that's not often in my business. I noticed that the circular polarzier was a favorite item for purchase with the GL2 when I was shopping for a new camcorder. I use the same a fair amount with still photography, but hadn't thought it was worth it for video. You changed my mind on that one. Thanks again. bake r __________________ bake r

August 29th, 2003, 06:50 PM	#16
Roland Barth Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Bellevue NE Posts: 31	I have been using the Canon S800 bubblejet printer for 2 years now and I have been very happy with the quality (max size 7.5x10) when I used it after editing with Photoshop. But I'm sure Canon has more up-to-date printers now. They are cheap but the ink cartridges can eat you alive if you do a lot of printing. With 1488x1126 ppi resolution (GL2) you may be limited somewhat on print size. With my Canon Pro90, which has 1856X1392 ppi 7.5x10 glossies come out great. Roland

August 29th, 2003, 07:52 PM	#19
Roland Barth Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Bellevue NE Posts: 31	Hey Bake: I just learned that Windows Media Player has the full screen capability for editing, so I may be using that S/W instead of Pinnacle. I have been taking thousands of digital images with my Pro90 the past 2 years and will publish a field guide to the wildflowers of a local private Nature Preserve -- not for profit but as a fundraiser. I have tried to shoot birds before (I'm also an avid birder) but never invested in the long lense; plus I did not have the patience required for that. Now I'm stepping up to DV and will do all the flora and fauna and some scenics as well. I'll have a lot to learn about shooting and editing techniques and I certainly appreciate the experiences all the board members are sharing with us newbies. Roland

August 31st, 2003, 11:28 AM	#21
Roland Barth Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Bellevue NE Posts: 31	Bake: Thanks for the tips on exposure -- I made myself a note; but I haven't done much testing with the GL2 yet. With my Pro90 camera overexposure was not a big problem until I gave my images to professional printers, who found several cases of "blowout". In the four color process they need to have at least 5% of color so not to wind up with blank paper. And I thought all there was to photography was learning to set up shots and to know the basics of photography. But it tends to get you deeply into all sorts of related fields. Later. Roland

September 1st, 2003, 08:31 PM	#22
Don Parrish Major Player Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Tavares Fla Posts: 541	Baker, On the audio, make sure the audio is set to "mic" and not "line" or "mic att" (attenuate), "mic" is about double the volume of the others. On the XL1S it is in the menu's. Not sure about the GL2 but the XL1S has auto levels that keep up quite well when not attenuated from being in Line or mic att. As far as loading the software (or anything else) don't forget one of the best things about Canon, 1-800-OK Canon, You will not wait long before hearing a live human voice, No company that I have ever dealt with is better than Canon at answering their phones, If the phone rep can't answer it they will gladly call an engineer. Donny

September 2nd, 2003, 05:17 AM	#24
Don Parrish Major Player Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Tavares Fla Posts: 541	As for the zebra stripes I dont use them, something is always going to be non perfect. Mainly I find zebra'a to be everywhere in all pictures, I tend to look for the lack of details in the dark areas more than the bright areas, it just seems that zebra's were in every shot no matter what. The best thing I ever found in photography that carried over to video is the wonderful circular polarizer, it darkens the picture by 1 or 2 stops but is magnificent for knocking out the glare and darkening the overbright. Try this, turn off the zebras and trust your eyes. It's the good thing about electronic viewfinders (EVF's), what you see is what you get.

September 3rd, 2003, 09:40 AM	#26
Trig Simon Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Toledo, Ohio Posts: 47	Software Baker-Baker I just got my GL-2 and had the same quandry about the software. I think that this is intended for those who do not have firewire, and need the usb hook-up to the pc or mac. I have downloaded thru my firewire, unplugging my usb cable. Does this sound right? __________________ Trig Simon 832 Main Toledo OH 43605 419-696-0872