I've got a client that is in the Landscaping business. Not a mow-and-blow guy, rather high end commercial design, installation and maintenance. I'd like to use photos of his actual work for his web site and marketing materials, but everything he sent me, and all he has, was shot with his iPhone, complete with dirty lense.

He's asked me what kind of camera to purchase for better shots I can use. I was originally thinking of having him grab a Rebel kit, but even that is likely more complicated than he's going to spend time figuring out.

I do want him to be able to shoot RAW+JPG so I can correct the exposure and white balance of the photos he takes. The photos will mainly be used for his web site, blog articles and email campaigns. I doubt large prints will be an issue, he can hire a local pro for that level.

So, I'm thinking:

Something that shoots RAW+JPG
Moderate optical zoom
Behaves decently on "Auto" but offer aperture priority mode.
Tough enough travel with him, though I don't think weather sealing is a big issue.

I shoot Canon, but am brand-agnostic for this application.

We haven't discussed budget, but I know he likes to do things "right" rather than skimp and I told him it could cost $500 to $1000 and he wasn't taken aback by that.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

-Ed G.

This guy showed up outside of my office window today. I had to shoot through a dirty window, and a screen, so the quality isn't great. Now I've got him coming in closer to the house (I've seen him in the wood from time to time), I've got to figure out a "blind" so I can capture him outdoors. Or maybe I could clean my windows....

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Looks like a member of the yarduss-artus family to me.

I just tried it to remove a bit of "goo" from a dog's eye....nice tip, and it gave me more to explore.

Despite the fact that this printer only has three ink colors + black, I'm very pleased with the output of mine. I'm haven't done it yet, but I'm going to try a side-by-side comparison with a Pro-10 a friend has for grins one of these days.

If I need top quality for something, I'll send it out, though the pro-100 deals do tempt me at times.

It asked me to log back in a few days ago, which was odd, but no other ill effects

Just an old Pine in the driveway.

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Perhaps the cd was not burned as a music cd, rather as a file system disk with mp3 files?

There are many models, but the one you mention seems to have good specs, particularly if it's the latest generation of i7 processors. I believe it does as one of these was on my short list last year, but make sure you can get a "data drive" in the chasis along with the SSD. That 512gb is going to fill up fast.

Ultimately, I went with Lenovo with a 256gb SSD and 1tb spinning drive. The SSD is filling up....but I've been trying out a lot of photo and video tools, which go on it with the system files. I moved my libraries (Pictures, Videos, Music, Documents) to the spinning drive and install applications that aren't critical to me on that one as well.

I see some rat dog in the mix! They are extremely affectionate.

Great shots! If you don't mind my asking, which harness is he sporting? I'm looking for one for a our adult rescue that was never leash trained. She pulls until she chokes herself. I like the two different hookup points...front to prevent pulling, but the back comes in handy in tight quarters.

For home printing, I've been pleasantly surprised by my Epson Ecotank. I bought it for general and business use primarily, but tried a couple of test print on photo paper with really nice results. I would go to an outside printer for anything I planned on lasting years, gifting, or selling. A friend has a Canon Pro 10, and the results are excellent from it. Cartridges aren't cheap though.

You may want to get a 2nd quote. $6000 sounds awful high if the wiring and pipe are still in decent shape. The pump should be in the $500-1000 range for a good quality unit. My brother and I did his as it was only 90ft. We would have definitely needed help for that depth.

That was a good read, thanks for sharing. As Windows becomes more and more "connected" to the mothership, examining and sharing my every move while using my compute resources to do it, I've started to become more drawn to Linux.

For me it started a few years ago, when I had a hard drive fail in a way that no Windows based recovery utility could get to it. I found a Linux utility that showed potential and created a bootable image to run it. It was then that I realized how far along the efforts had come to make Linux usable for the average Joe/Joan.

For grins about a year and a half ago, I setup a virtual machine image of the latest and greatest Ubuntu as a local development server for a web project. I started playing around the with the graphical interface, the Ubuntu version of the application "store", and the Ubuntu versions of OpenOffice and was impressed.

Most recently, I acquired an old Dell machine from someone I was doing an upgrade installation for. Even after a total cleanup and re-install of windows, it was dog slow. It had 4GB of RAM and the motherboard maxed out at 8GB, so it was deemed obsolete. I decided to experiment with this machine and installed Ubuntu on it. The install was simple. It found the wireless network, and even an HP multifunction printer that was on that network and auto installed the drivers. The only part that was a bit "sketchy" was support for the scanner on that machine, but there was a quick fix for that easily found on the web. In short, the machine has a new life. Even with only 4GB of RAM, it ran great, but I added another 4 to max it out. Everything auto-updates, it has never frozen or given me the equivalent of a "blue screen of death". Updates are automatic and rarely require a restart.

For context, I have been in IT since the 80's as everything from a programmer to salesman. I still have an old Sun SPARC workstation buried somewhere in the basement, so technology does not intimidate me. I think it is because I have dabbled in Unix over the years, and have heard Linux declared "ready for the mainstream" a number of times that it clearly wasn't that I'm impressed on where it is today. I can totally see it being used by "novice" users for everyday tasks such as browsing the web, streaming, document editing, spreadsheets, etc.

I gave the machine to my brother, 63, and he loves it. It runs, it browses, it prints, it streams Pandora and YouTube. That's all he needs out of it.

It may not be for everyone, but it has come a long way. I've hunting for another "throw away" to bring back to life for myself, but after reading that article I may "Go Geek" and build something for photo/video editing and run it alongside my all Adobe system for a while to see how well it all works together.