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Sunlight direction calculators - remember those? They used to be circular dials you rotated to find out where the sun would be at a given time. They're very useful for location photographers. Well, after one members request for one, replies flooded in with the new 21st century electronic 'all singing, dancing and with bells on' versions. And one member educated us all on how to do the same calculations with a simple wrist watch.
Macs were discussed in various forms this week, from the amount of RAM needed, regular OSX maintenance, speeding up Lightroom and the value and usefulness of a .Mac web account. No doubt it will be Vista and XPs turn next week.....
Have you tried saving a 16bit Tiff lately, using LZW compression? You might be surprised that the resulting file may be larger than an uncompressed version. It completely baffled most members until one chipped in with the explanation. It's far too complicated to mention here, but it does make sense, honest!
PicApp appeared to be giving away members images distributed by Getty. Some firm emails produced the response that it was a glitch, and that only Getty owned images should be distributed. Time will tell, and no doubt the lawyers are rubbing their hands in glee.
A link to a Wired magazine article, explaining why free was the new economics, raised the blood pressure of more than a few members. Free as in: we'll practically give you the printer, but we'll then charge you a fortune for the ink. It's an old technique first used by Gillette and the razors. However, it does not, and cannot, apply to the licensing of picture usage.
Finally, a robotic all-terrain mule was shown on YouTube, and members wondered if it would be good for carrying equipment. But given it has been developed for the US military, members agreed that assistants were cheaper. One Swiss member, though, is in the process of training his dog to carry his camera bags. Don't let it anywhere near those lakes! Submitted by Simon Grosset
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