DigitalPro Shooter Volume 1, Issue 7, March 28th, 2002
Welcome to DPS 1-7. Lots of news about DigitalPro--Canon Raw file support and a sneak preview of color management--and PhotoRescue with NEF file support, plus some neat new products from Wimberly and Hoodman. All this along with some thoughts on customer service and the role it plays in our photography businesses.
DigitalPro is now way out in front of the pack in Canon 1D support. In addition to fully support auto-tagging of Canon 1D images--IPTC information for Raw & JPEG files and ICC profiles for JPEG files and also displaying a subset of the Canon proprietary EXIF shooting data--DigitalPro now displays and converts full resolution Canon 1D Raw images. To get this functionality just download the latest (free to registered users) update to 1.2! It is still a test version, so give us feedback and feel free to let us know about sample images that do or don't look great and we'll add them to our test library to continue to improve future version.
As always, you can download a fully functional evaluation version of DigitalPro for Windows for free from the DigitalPro website.
We're pleased to offer PhotoRescue build 603 with excellent support for the recovery and previewing of Nikon Raw (.NEF) files. It's great that the folks at DataRescue have listened and delivered. I've used the product already with great success. As always we offer the latest version and the user guide right on nikondigital.org for your convenience.
You've continued to request the best possible color--both on screen and printed--from DigitalPro for Windows. Well, we've been hard at work and now have a release in test which has full color management. It allows not just the profile tagging we've always done, but renders your JPEGs and NEFs through either standard or custom profiles. This includes support for monitor profiles and printer profiles, so that you can have DigitalPro do the color conversion of your images the way you want before sending them to your printer.
In addition, Proofing support is available, so you can select a proofing profile and then preview how your output will look on your printer. We're planning a public beta test of this version within the next few weeks. The upgrade will be free to registered users, so you'll only gain if you buy now! We've also added a cool statistics package so you can track your shooting and search across multiple folders. Thanks to Bertho from the D1 list--who can be very persuasive when he wants to be!--we've also added some more options for Web Gallery layouts.
As professionals, or even serious amateurs, we all rely on our equipment. Sure we have backups for everything important, but it's still critical that we have reliable, working gear when we go off to shoot. Inevitably things break. That's where customer service comes in. How many times have you heard people compare the price of Flash Cards, for example? Some are posted every day on almost every web board related to digital photography. But what is the price of a lost image? Possibly more than the value of a card. To Moose and I, for example, the Lexar no-nonsense "we'll try to get your images back and send you a new card" policy is worth every penny we pay for our Lexar Pro cards.
Good customer service not only saves you the consumer money in the long run, it saves you time. The time you would otherwise have to spend hassling with forms, hold times, repeated trips back to the store, etc. For all the postings complaining about Nikon, for example, I've found the quick turnaround service offered by NPS to be a real life-saver on more than one occasion. And more than once they've seen something else wrong with the camera, lens or flash that I didn't notice and fixed it--often on their own nickel. I'm sure many other camera vendors would do the same, but it certainly helps keep me loyal to the Nikon brand.
Just this week I was reminded of the importance of customer service to me by two very different experiences.
My LowePro ProTrekker has been all over the World and been a great camera back for a couple years now. But the zipper was always prone to separating. For a long time I couldn't bear to part with it long enough to get it repaired. Finally I emailed LowePro asking what to do. I got a nice email back from Maury Cohen saying "send it in, we'll take a look". Right away I got a call asking about the filter I'd left in the bag. Maury insisted on sending it right back to me at his cost! Then he asked about the bag and the zipper. I explained that I was sure I'd gotten plenty of use out of the bag and I'd be happy to pay for a replacement. He said since it had never been right for me that they'd be delighted to replace it with a new model at their cost and send it back. Okay, I already own practically every bag they make, so I'm not going to run out and buy a bunch more just because of this, but I'm a very happy camper and will keep patronizing LowePro whenever I can.
By contrast, I bought a DEMO unit LPA WaveSensor from an authorized dealer in January. The dealer clearly states that DEMO items come with a manufacturer's warranty. The WaveSensor didn't work at all when I got it. I called the only phone number in the manual--which happens to be the manufacturere, LPA Design--for Customer Service. They said "sounds like a warranty repair, send it in." Nearly a month later I got a fax with a $120 repair estimate. They said it didn't look like I did anything wrong, but that the unit didn't work. I asked about the dealer's claim that it was guaranteed by LPA. They said I shouldn't have sent it to them, that I should have returned it to the dealer and that the dealer would have tested it and then sent it to LPA for repair. Well, of course that wasn't what I was told, and certainly would make repairing things more difficult. Imagine if every time your D1 needed service you had to send it to the dealer so they could send it to NPS?! So after 4 phonecalls with both the technician and his manager, and a fax to them of the dealer's claim, they agreed to "split" the bill with me. They never denied the product was under warranty (they weren't sure and couldn't tell from the serial number), they just said I should talk to the dealer. Nevermind that if the product didn't work they'd still get it for repair in any case!
Now the good news is that the dealer (B&H in this case), credited me for my portion of the cost of the repair, so the story has a happy ending. But the whole experience certainly left me a little worried about buying more products from LPA. I'm now a little confused about whether they or someone else is really there to stand behind them. For now I'll just hope my trusty PocketWizards stay healthy!
Did you know you can use the arrow keys & space bar to move around and select & unselect images on the Light Table. If you fingers are on the keyboard this is often even faster than messing with the mouse all the time. Try it!
Wimberly has yet again come up with three great new products. They have combination lens foot and adapter plates for Nikon's long lenses (the 400, 500 and 600mm) which replace both your existing adapter plate and the lens foot. The combination is smaller, lighter, packs better, and even balances better on your tripod head. You can learn more about them on the WRP web site or buy them securely at the new WRP online store.
Hoodman combo magnifier is an interesting idea. It combines their LCD cap, rubber hood and a magnifying lens. That adds up to a lot of bulk to mash your nose into, but it does provide an easier to read view of the LCD if you are back from the camera (perhaps shooting with a remote release). However, I wasn't sold on it (as an inveterate nose masher who relies on the contact between my face and the eye cup for camera stability) as a great alternative for me--until I happened to use it wearing glasses! I found two great things about it for eyeglass wearers. First, it does help you see the LCD if your near vision isn't perfect. And second, it gives you something to put your cheek against to get camera contact and stability without having to mangle your glasses by smashing them into the eye cup. I doubt this is entirely what Hoodman had in mind when the designed this product, but if you shoot with glasses it's worth checking out. We have some product photos on the nikondigital home page.
New on Nikondigital.org: The first really thorough online article covering White Balance on the D1 family of cameras--from Moose--is now available on nikondigital.