BW Laser Printer?

Q: A friend asked if I had any thoughts on getting a good BW laser printer to use with his Macs.

A: Ken Said

I liked my old HP… I did have issues with it sucking in speciality stuff properly over time (like envelopes going in double, etc). But it was a nice unit. At this point, you really might want to just go for a color laser and choose BW option (we have a ‘BW cheaper’ preset made on all our Macs… to save the money. But the color units are so common and reasonable in price. I LOVE the output quality of my OKI C5500 and I compared lots of units and really liked it better than the color HPs in the same price range for graphic arts stuff. BUT their Mac support is dismal (I’m actually the one who had to come up with a Kludge for using it without drivers under Leopard… and I told them what to recommend!) And they still don’t have a decent, easy driver out (since Tiger!)… So my next unit will be a Xerox Phaser I think, although it’ll double my per page cost. I do use generic toner in the OKI and that’s gone pretty well. After 2 years, I have needed to replace drums which wasn’t cheap… If you only want BW, do check out the HPs. I was always buying the smallest ones meant for small business/home office… not the ‘consumer’ units… so maybe that’s part of the issue as well, I usually was paying a fair amount for my model and then did like the output. I think they all come with Ethernet at that level too.

Hope that helps some.

More on this topic HERE

I Heart Canon

So one of the reasons I finally bailed on Nikon cameras was that their pitiful Pro Services. It was more like the ‘Professionally ignoring shooters’ arm of the Nikon business.

I had one repair into their ‘pro expedited service’ and after a few weeks I finally called, (after being on hold for a while) and they shuffled through some paperwork, found my lens repair and said they’d get on it… I’ve said before, one lens repair (on a $1500 lens), when looked at by the Non-NPS repair shop.. they said ‘Who repaired this lens last??!) It was so poorly done by Nikon Pro.

This Monday I sent our a flash repair to Canon , and today (Wednesday) I got the repair approval via e-mail (easy peasy) and since I pre-approved, it’s in process now. Should be done within 3 days.

This year Canon has switched to a tiered pro service setup, but I got the same great service on my last repair of a body under their old system. I do pay now $100/year for my (middle level) of service. There’s a free level below, and at my level, I get 2 free body cleanings a year, free return shipping and 30% off repairs… so it’ll pay for itself. The big thing for me is that Canon seems to be treating us pros like we need to be treated to keep shooting. And frankly, my Canon equipment has been holding up better than my Nikon equipment ever did. Ah, the joys of not having to re-glue my camera grips back onto a $5000 camera… bliss.

I’m not a famous national guy, but how many of them are there to all of us local working pros that need repairs done right and fast, and want to be taken care of just like we take care of our clients?

Oh, and they send fun things with the membership… a new, really nice Canon Pro CPS camera strap, etc. And the silly thing I love is the preprinted labels for repairs… nice job CPS.

Color Laser Printers

A friend asked me how I was liking the OKI C5500n that I bought about 2 years ago.

The Oki isn’t tiny, but it fits nicely on top of my 2 drawer file cabinet. The back has a nice pass-through for things like CD labels that I do all the time.

I said:

I love love love the general idea on color laser.
The OKI has been OK… it hasn’t knocked me out of the world.. but OK. I’ve really loved the Xerox phaser thermals, but don’t know much other than the price is more. The quality I’ve seen is stunning.
On the OKI, they were crazy slow coming out with Mac drivers when their was an update (most every other company shipped drivers with the new software… OKI took like 6 months)… not an issue for you, but just a point.
The consumables are quite expensive, but still nothing like inkjet and for toner, I’ve moved to offbrand stuff from the ‘net (see Suppliesguys.com)

And you don’t just need toner, but we’re now needing new drums, which aren’t cheap. It was like 3 or 4 ‘double life toners’ and now we’ve  just done our first drum on the black (that’s most used).
I do like the build and features and general output. It works great on a variety of paper from glossy, heavy for flyers, to cheap everyday paper, to my CD labels.
It doesn’t really do totally photo quality… but close. Not like an inkjet.
The Xerox’s I’ve seen have been very close to photos from inkjet for like thumbnail sheets, or flyers.
Staples had a decent display with actual output samples that made a big difference for me.

Switching to Canon from Nikon

A client friend asked about this, and since it comes up so much, I’ll suggest you click on the ‘Canon Cameras’ in the Categories list and scroll down to the second page to read it all… but here’s my synopsis to get you started:

Now in 2009, it isn’t as critical for a choice between Nikon and Canon… the Nikon is much improved with high ISO, but at the time, I was getting uggo digital noise at 500 ISO with Nikons and Canon was beautiful at 1600-2500ISO in the dark tones, which is critical for me in theatre (I do Geva and Naz Theatre).
I also really felt that Nikon stopped caring about pros. They did a number of totally crappy repairs on my stuff, their rubber body molding would fall off of $5000 cameras and they couldn’t fix it, just stupid cheap stuff (the repair thing was really pointed out to me when an independent repair shop asked me ‘who fixed this last??!… it was so poorly done)
Little things like Canon just shipping me a little missing part as a favor to a pro, etc. made a big difference. Oh, and I don’t know about current cameras, but my Nikons never quite focused right, I was always babying them… and I just took it for granted until using my Canon and I was stunned at my fast, accurate focus.
So, who know’s today, but that was my reasoning 2 years ago before the Nikon D3 came out. And I’m still VERY happy with my cameras. Also now, I have had much fewer repair issues.

Photo Usage Rights

This is a huge topic with clients; here are some thoughts I shared recently:

FYI: I don’t want to argue with lawyers, but I’ll just give you my understanding of it… just my opinion, don’t sue me

They always say that photo rights are on a sliding scale of ‘Location’ and ‘Usage’… the more public the location and the more ‘news’ the usage, the more clear the ability to do what you want with the photo. The more private the location and the more ‘advertising’ the use, the more you need signed permission. You have to decide on how far the balance is tipped in each situation.

This is pretty consistent with what my clients do. At the biggest college I work for, we don’t get photo release permission forms on anything during Reunion. And those photos go up in several online galleries.
We do get them when I photograph in a hospital (no surprise… not ‘public’, very private and with HIPAA rules) and I’m sure the Marketing team gets them for the Billboards and ads (which I don’t take the photos for).

What shots don’t need releases?

There is a point where the group is large enough in a photo, that a release isn’t expected. If it’s a very public event, and a very wide shot of the crowd with no real main subject focus, you would be less apt to be told to get a photo release for fairly ’safe’ uses, like promoting the event next year, etc.

And let’s not forget the classic ‘no faces showing’ option, where people are only seen from behind. When done well, you don’t even think about it.

(in this photo, the only face showing is a staff member)

But the lawyers!

It’s totally possible that lawyers might say that you must have every single photo released before using it in any fashion… but that would be crazy and impossible to do on a large scale event. But a lawyer’s job is to play it super-safe and they may not think through the implications.

I’d estimate that getting permissions would cut the number of photos by a factor of 10 and add one or two workers to follow me. Imagine getting the form from every subject in groups taken on the run. I’d be holding things up and being a pest. Really, I’d just have to focus at each event on 2 or 3 good shots, and not get the other 20 things I get. And that becomes a decision you’d have to make.

We did releases once for a brochure (so it was marketing use, not news), at a very public event and it was so crazy, I’d think twice before doing it again… or more likely would change what I attempted to do… and for that shoot, I had 2 helpers getting forms signed.

Hope that helps explain the difficulties of a system of having every photo taken having a signed release at every public event.

Web Hall of Fame

Since I was so hard on organizations not using photos quickly on the web, here are some examples of clients doing big things right on the web.

RIT Reunion:

For a number of years now, RIT has let me run with this idea of a ‘Virtual Reunion’. We post photos throughout the weekend to a site I create and this year I tested this new interface where comments can be left, photos can be sent as e-cards, music can be played, etc.

Results: 3061 Unique Visitors (not ‘hits’ or counting people twice, actual different people). More people saw the photos than attended Reunion.281,000 Page views… that’s huge. My normal would be around 6,000 for a week.

For the ImagineRIT event, my Associate Ron Cronk and I did the same thing with big results:Over 3000 viewers on Flickr (over 20,000 image views of any sort on Flickr… not counting people just seeing the slide show on the RIT site
To my web site’s ImagineRIT Gallery:Over 1100 unique visitors in 3 daysOver 13,000 page views
OK, less chatter from me and more examples to inspire you…

Harley School:

They have a system built into their new web site design and can easily upload my photos. Under the ‘News & Events’ Menu, click Media Gallery.

UofR:

I do online slideshows like this for my top clients (that I know will share them), and the UofR does a great job of promoting what I’ve done. The Wilmott Cancer Center and the UR School of Nursing particularly promote when I create online photo content for them. I see people visiting these shows for months after an event.

One very telling thing is that I see that many people will Google the name of a major event, or the organization and will find my site with these shows… so if your attendees are looking that hard for the photos, you know eventually all client web sites will be set up to show off things like this.

RIT (Again!):

Innovation must be in the water at RIT, because they let me try so many things and they really run with new ideas.

RIT hosted a cool conference for kids in elite science and tech high schools. I covered the event and they wanted my photos right away for a dinner slide show and they paid me to create this online component. I even did this wild 3-D gallery as part of it, figuring tech kids would enjoy the fun interface.

Thanks so much to all of my clients that have been so supportive of these projects… this kind of display of my best work really gets me excited and I think is a ‘Wow’ for event attendees.

Homework: How can you use these ideas with your photos at your next event? What IT person can you befriend to get support to put photos up right after an event, rather that weeks later when no one is looking any more? What can you change with your next web redux to make a space for simple (but elegant ala Harley School) galleries.