Building this site

My CV | Home Page

Updated Aug 2005 (badly needs updating again!)

Images

Recent photographs were taken on Canon EOS cameras and lenses and before that Canon FD cameras and lenses. Earlier examples come from a range of 35mm cameras - Halina 35, Periflex, Fed, Pentax Spotmatic & Nikon F - almost all bought secondhand. A few of the photos have been taken by Irene and our children - Cathy & Philip - using either 35mm compacts (Olympus, Yashica and Minolta) or a Canon EOS SLR. The 35mm negatives and slides have been scanned on a Canoscan 2700F and recently a Minolta Dimage 5400.  Over the past few years the digi-cam market as boomed and now the family film cameras have been largely sidelined by digital models - including my own Canon EOS 300D (6mp) as well as a Canon EOS 20D (8mp) for business use.

Computers

My earlier computers were self-assembled PC systems (AMD K6) and a 486 Toshiba portable that were networked together. But my business needs meant that the PCs have been totally rebuilt  more than once. As a result I now have a Pentium4 2Ghz PC, AMD Athlon64/3000 PC and a Toshiba Satellite laptop linked by a WiFi wireless network. This gives me the capacity to share files and produce DVDs as well as CDs.

Software

The software used is mostly anything that comes free or bundled; as a magazine cover disk or supplied with hardware. This route has provided products such as Adobe Premiere, Photoshop Elements, Adaptec EasyCD Creator, MyDVD, Microsoft Works, Scansoft Omnipage, Hollywood FX, Aura DV, Cakewalk Express, etc. They are not always the latest versions but they are still very useable.

But there have been exceptions - such as Lotus SmartSuite (much cheaper than Office), Paint Shop Pro, Corel Draw / PhotoPaint, Steinberg Clean and several versions of Family Tree Maker. [But this latter software may go since it is causing me increasing difficulties - while the free alternative, Personal Ancestral File, offers all that I need plus the ability to generate web pages without having to upload them to the supplier's site].

Extras

The only extra help has come through using office computers and scanners - especially useful when my new but cheap Philips flatbed scanner decided to stop working - which was often. (I had a early Microtek scanner that rarely worked so has now gone). The site started off as just a learning exercise with limited tools but then grew and grew - forcing the re-work many of the early pages [but I don't think I could have known in advance how the site would develop]. After many problems with my flatbed scanner - mainly due to its parallel port interface - I bought an Epson Perfection 1200 Photo that can also handle my small number of roll film negatives (mainly taken on old "box" cameras). This turned out to be a much better investment with its USB interface and accurate scanning. I also gained another bundle of very useful "free" software - for document archiving and character recognition.

The big missing element has been video - both the camera / editor and any PC-based movies. Having used 8mm, Super 8 and various video formats, I have both experience and "archive" material. However I also know just how much effort is required to get good results. My earlier camcorder - a Panasonic S-VHSC model - was sold when I decided that it would not provide the quality required today.

Using my "hobby" experience, my business needs were fulfilled by the Sony DCR-TRV30. It's quality and ease of use have already enabled me to create computer video "reports" to clients. To make this even easier in the future I have added a PCMCIA (PC Card) 1394 interface to the business laptop (Toshiba Satellite 1800-400) and can now capture / edit material while "on the road".

In good conditions the camcorder produced some quite acceptable still images - but a Fujifilm S602Zoom digital camera showed that excellent digital results were becoming possible. It also showed that fast results - without any processing delays - could be easily and cheaply acheived.

The S602 has now been joined by a 6mp Canon EOS 300D (SLR), 8mp Canon D20 (SLR), 5mp Canon A95 (compact) and 2mp Sony U30 (sub-minature).  This means that there are plenty of options for family members to create interesting images.

Personal Recommendations

If starting again from scratch and wanting a digital base for your photos then the equipment I would recommend today is -

• Desktop PC with lots of hard disk (120Gb minimum), a processor behind the "state of the art" for good price / performance, 512Mb of memory and firewire / USB2 ports for easy peripheral connections. Windows XP is almost unavoidable on any new-ish PC. Having a laptop as well or instead is very useful ; especially visiting libraries or on holidays. But there is a price premium and you need to be to carry it along with all the other digital gadgets.
  
• DVD Re-writer from a well-known brand such as Sony or Pioneer. The latest ones will also write dual-layer DVD's - which is a very useful extra if you can find / afford the blank media. (and make sure that it can be used for installing Windows from CD / DVD).
• Epson, Canon or Hewlett Packard colour inkjet printer - I now use the very basic Epson Stylus Color 670 and expensive Epson Stylus Photo 2100 - but there are some nice ones to choose from these days. Check out the costs of ink and which papers will work. In the case the Epson 2100 most non-Epson papers have problems!
  
• Epson, Canon or Hewlett Packard scanner with a USB2 or firewire interface.
• Cameras are still a split decision - film+scanner versus pure digital. If you have a camera already (and some accumulated negatives) then my choice is still with film. You then have high quality originals with digital backups. If you have nothing; then a good quality digital camera - probably with a "microdrive" for image storage - would be my choice.

Back in November 2000 the costs were -

Scanning from film (negatives or slides) can provide much larger images that those from digital cameras in both number pixels (up to 44Mpixel from the Dimage 5400 scanner). But even with good quality slides / negatives (and significant processing) any "large" scanned images do seem grainy and noisey relative to digital originals. So the current limits of "domestic" scanning and camera technologies seem much the same. Moving to professional scanners or digital cameras will increase costs significantly.

However when fast results are at a premium then digital is well ahead. Now that digital SLR camera systems - based on 35mm and 645 film systems - are becoming available with up to 22 megapixels then professional photographers are using little else. Improving printer quality and ink permanence (along with a switch to "digital" printing of films in high street processing labs) have largely overcome the output hassles. Basic digital cameras still have problems with moving subjects ("button lag") and noisey sensors - but professional digital SLRs are up to film standards in every area.

Almost all digital cameras let you check your pictures straight away - and possibly retake them on the spot. Professionals have used Polaroid camera backs for the same reason for many years. I don't know how many wedding photographers have already switched to digital but it seems that many will if they can. But there is still some way to go in the high street. Passport photos taken in two different shops - one on a Polariod instant film camera, the other on a new Polaroid digital camera & printer - show better results with film. The digital results had a limited tonal range and washed-out highlights and were too bad to use. You should be able to guess which is which - even on this digital scan!

Building Your Own Site

Does any of the family have a web site or an ambition to build one? If so, I may be able to help - or at least let you know how to avoid the mistakes that I made.

The main idea to grasp about web sites is that they start from something similar to a basic word processing document. In fact, a document with very few controls - you don't even need to nominate a font. You could make a "web site" out of something as simple as just one page containing a few lines of text. This page is bigger than some personal web sites.

If you get a copy of the Mozilla "open source" web browser then you also have a free web page editor included. That is all you need to create your first web pages - even though they will look a little simplistic without any graphics. At this stage you don't need to work online - since you should save you initial attempts on your hard drive.

Having got past this first step things don't get much more complex - just more detailed and more time-consuming. You will almost certainly need to add images - either from photos or drawings. This means you will need some graphics software to create images of a size that fits your page layout and probably some ready-made art work or clipart. Exactly how much graphics you want to create (and to what level of quality) will determine how long each page will take to perfect. Taking this page as the example again - it has been very quick to create - since there are very few graphics; it's mainly text and tables.

Having perfected your web site within your PC you must then load it to the servers at your ISP for access via the web. If you choose the right ISP for your e-mail then you should also get a useable amount of free web space - in addition to any space for storing web mail.

If you want to find out more there are many sources of information and advice. One that I have used myself is at http://www.cyndislist.com/construc.htm - at the Cyndi's List family history site. Obviously this it is aimed at family historians but the advice is just as useful for anyone. It does have a wide range of links to other web sites that are useful when creating a web site and is written for non-technical users.

Another approach is to buy web space rather than use the free quota. With some ISPs this means that you also get some free software that makes it easy to build a web site - one example of the software provided being Netobjects Fusion. Also you could make your web presence in the form of a blog - but you should be prepared to update your blog like you would a diary if you go down this route.

Good luck

Copyright © Brian Townsley 1999-2005