Thanks to all of you for your excellent advice. I’ve looked through the specifications and the evaluations and the strong recommendations regarding the Epson series scanners. The V 600 series seems to be the best balance between performance and cost for me. However when I went to order, I found that there was some confusion (at least for me) regarding the correct terminology.
The web mentions-
Epson V600
Epson Perfection V600 Color Photographs etc.
Perfection V600 Photo scanner

Are these all the same unit or is the so-called “perfection” a later model.
They all sell for around about the $219.

Thanks.
Which model? They range in price from $70.00 to $230.

A lot of good advice has been exchanged on this forum regarding scanners, but most of that discussion has been about scanners suitable for 2 x 2 transparencies. I would appreciate the group’s advice on a flatbed scanner, chiefly for office work but including the ability to scan photographs, large negatives and additionally, do a reasonably good job with 2 x 2 transparencies. I use a Nikon Coolscan V for 2 x 2 slides when I want the best results.
Until recently I used a Canoscan 8800FF but it has developed the problem of white vertical lines. From reading on Google, I gather can be due to dirt on a variety of places including the lamp, the white strip used for calibration and elsewhere. It is beyond my ability to repair and probably too expensive to have repaired.
What scanner under approximately $250 would you recommend.

Don't forget to focus one third of the way into the depth of the subject so you use the DOF in front of the plane of focus.

Please send me a name and postal address.

McGavin

Recently, sorting through the freezer in my refrigerator, I found the following films-

2 rolls Kodachrome 25, 36 exposure, 1996

4 rolls Kodachrome 40, 36 exposure, 1997

1 roll Ektachrome EPY 135-36, 1985

1 roll Agfapan APX 25 135-36, 1994

4 rolls Kodachrome undated

I was about to dump the whole lot, and then I wondered if there was somebody who would like to have them. The films have been in a domestic freezer since the dates listed above. I understand that the freezer in the refrigerator is not the optimal way to store film.

I would forward them by standard mail to anybody who would like them.

If they are to be forwarded frozen, then I would request that the recipient pay the shipping costs.

Donald McGavin

865-607-7128, mmcgavin@bellsouth.net
1

Isn't that continuous line along the edge of the road a Godsend when headlights are approaching?

This is a remarkable photograph, full of atmosphere. It is not just a picture of an aircraft but of one “escaping” from the valley. The eye enters the frame from the left and notes the depth of the valley and then moves to the aircraft which is flying upwards in with its gear only partially retracted suggesting that it has just taken off from the strip in the valley itself.

At first, I thought the picture could be improved by cropping it to include just the aircraft itself with the usual recommendation of having more space in the front of the moving object (in this case the F4) than behind. But the cropped picture just did not look “right”. It was a picture of aircraft devoid of any feeling.

The closeness of the aircraft to the ground is surprising and is more compatible with an attempt to fly out of the valley.

The photograph would be improved by removing the utility pole and lines and darkening the lower left side of the picture and perhaps also at the bottom, to prevent the eye being led away from the subject.
The exposure was made at exactly the optimum time. How did you anticipate that?

I intended to attach a copy of the photo with suggested changes but I did not follow the right sequence and the attach button disappeared. Sorry.

I saw a report a few years ago from a member of a squadron that landed on those British carriers. In that he stated that "he returned a year later and none of the original members was still there", which was a testament to how difficult it was to land a Corsair on a carrier.

The tight turn before landing was used by Spitfire pilots landing on either a landing strip or carrier.
I'm sure you have seen in some of the documentaries of a taxiing Spitfire would frequently have a WAAF, (a female Air Force member) sitting on the extreme end of the wing, guiding the pilot along the taxiway. There was even a report of a Spitfire taking off with a man on the wing, but the plane was able to return safely to the strip.

Great shot. It illustrates all the difficulties in taking clinical or advertising photographs of large animals. I have to do this as a veterinary pathologist.

The photograph illustrates the two problems with this type for photography-the background and the type of lighting and whether the latter has rendered any texture in the coat.

It is not unusual in large animal photographs-particularly for advertising that the major effort goes into securing a non-busy background and then the light comes from wherever it will. In this case the light coming from above and to the side has skimmed across the coat and has brought out excellent texture.

Frequently there is no way to control the background and it is not unusual to have the corral fence there.The only hope is that this can be removed in Photoshop. The worst backgrounds are those that have automobiles in them. I was projecting a slide in a lecture of a horse with liver failure leaning against a concrete wall. It was quite a good photograph with a plain concrete wall and floor but unfortunately the photographer had left a hose on the ground which led the eye back behind the horse and there was a 1956 Thunderbird. A voice from the back of the class said "is that a 1956 Thunderbird".

The major concern is the lighting and the animal should be positioned so lighting is the best. If there are deep shadows then fill flash is essential.

Also avoid any handler and preferably a bridle as this leads the eye out of the phonograph.

I went to a lecture once where the speaker illustrated his talk with a horse held by a handler who was a particularly attractive blonde woman and unfortunately she wore an identification label. Let us say that with a chiefly male audience, the horse received little attention.

It is worth remembering that as Magnification or Ratio of Reproduction approaches life size i.e. R.R,=1:1, the aperture marked on the lens -the NOMINAL aperture is no longer the same aperture but effectively becomes a smaller aperture and this aperture is the EFFECTIVE aperture. Thus at F-16 and RR=1:1, this nominal aperture of F-16 becomes an Effective aperture of F-32 which can cause diffraction.

I did the same thing when I saw the poppies there. We bought paper ones every Nov 11 in Australia when I was a child.

Australia raised a military of half a million, shipped 333,000 troops overseas and every 5th man did not come back.

The total population was 4 million.

I had 5 maiden aunts-not enough men to go around. My uncle was wounded on Gallipoli.

By the way, there was no draft-all volunteers

Is this really correct?

They received all the German possessions, islands such as the Marianas as a League of Nations mandate, which were then converted to major naval bases,

I had bilateral cataract surgery and the Ophthalmologist convinced me to have the corrections for the two eyes set for different distances. I demurred and he pointed out that with them i could see my way around the house if I awoke at night, could read in bed without glasses and even have adequate distance vision.

It has turned out as he predicted and so I am functional in an emergency for most situations without any glasses

I am wondering if I have not been deluded myself in what I thought a “backup” was achieving. My mental picture was of a repository where everything I had saved over the years was still there and could be retrieved, but I think that that is not so.
If for example I accidentally eliminated half of a folder today and then did not detect the loss for say, two weeks, by then my Cloud would have been updated, presumably with the most recent version which would be one with the deleted files. I checked with my Cloud supplier and apparently, they keep the older version for a week and it can be retrieved.

It seems to me that the continued admonitions of “backup, backup, backup” is not really a full backup. Is it possible to have files backed up automatically but retain some of the deleted material from older versions? If this is not available every day, then perhaps once a week or even once a month. I presume that the only way that files could be backed up with a new one each day would be to save it with a slightly different name-perhaps the name of the old folder supplemented by the date of that day.

At the present moment I am backing up to two external hard drives and a Cloud. But none of these would solve the problem on how to obtain a previous version if I have accidentally eliminated some of the folders.

Any advise?