I started using Flickr a while ago, and I've just upgraded to a pro account. I've not yet completely got it integrated into my photography workflow, but I'm getting there.

Some tools that certainly looked interesting.

Multiple Uploads from a watched directory. Perhaps I could now just set this to watch the portfolio directory that I have, and it would keep Flick updated

Picasa is a great local browser of images, but only set to go to Google's own blog. Being able to blog from Picasa to Flickr looks attractive

Finally a very nicle way of showing Flickr hosted pictures on your own site!

I nearly didn't get the R2400, for one very simple reason. It didn't seem possible to do anything with the ink cartridges afterwards. You can collect from various places,  bags to send used cartidges, from which some money for charity can be gained. What exactly the part that is worth something I don't know. I would send mine to the Hawk Conservancy for example.

Most of these bags don't accept Epson cartidges - so why not get an HP that could? Well when on Cartridges4Charity, they gave Epson's address that I could send back the cartidges to the manufactuer. Epson on the phone confirmed this was the case.

So I will be sending them back - hopefuly they will be reused and not thrown away. Here's the address

 Service Materials Management (SMM)
EPSON Telford Ltd.
Hortonwood 40
Telford
Shropshire
TF1 7YD

http://cartridges4charity.co.uk/epsons.htm

We've just run a photography competition at work. The winning picture was an infra-red shot. This really stood out and was absolutely wonderful. Sadly the picture isn't available on a public site, so Ican't point at it, but it got me thinking!

Could you do infra-red with digital? The answer appears to be 'yes' so I'm going to have a go! I've a D100, and the process looks very straightforward. Just need to get the IR filter for the camera. Probably going to go with the wideangle lens, as general views seem to produce the best images.

A good selection if IR images shows up some of what can be done.

Indeed it appears that not only IR but UV is possible!

Additional Links

• Warehouse Express page for Hoya Filters. (R72)

The Epson R2400 is a great printer, but has two different main black inks - Photo (i.e. glossy) and Matte. I got my printer profile today, and wanted to try it out. Sadly I had just swapped on to the matte inks, so had to switch back.

Of course the printer driver didn't spot I had swapped the ink cartridges so the list of papers was. Well internet to the rescue againg.... solution is here. Go into the Epson ink levels utility, click about a bit, and things work.

Really annoying!!

So what tools do I use for various photographic jobs:

• I take RAW images from the D100. These have been processed in Phase One's Capture One LE. Pretty good and very reasonably priced. It does all I can ask of it for RAW processing. No library features, and is a straight RAW editor. Has a very good feature to do a rough conversion to jpg. Very useful when the wife wants to see what pictures I've taken.
• Recently though I have started to use the Adobe Lightroom, just coming out of beta now, this has a very good interface. Browsing images is very nice, and can work not just with RAW but other formats we well. Not quite got to grips with the curves here, and I think it needs some reasonably procesing power.Capture One seems better at doing bulk image handling. No difference in output quality as far as I can see.
• Image manipulation, and I only do very basic stuff realy was done in Photoshop Elements 2. Now that I use Lightroom/Capture One, all that Elments does is to crop, rotate, compression of JPGs for web use, and converting formats.Elements 2 is missing 16bit support, plus curves and the channel mixer. Something that is offered by Earthbound Light
• Recently I was given as a present PaintShopPro X. Not used this a lot, but is looking good. I need to adapt from the Photoshop terminology and interfaces.
• For output, I use QImage. A great little program for solely printing. It's interface does take some getting used to, but after that it is great for getting things exactly where you want them, and the exact size. Please do work with this program and read the tutorials. Not be put off by the interface!
• For catloging images, and keeping a track of what I've got IMatch DB is great. Nothing else quite comes close; it has the ability to handle a massive collection of images. Plus it handles the ability to take a set of images, say from one shoot and move them to offline storage.
• I will confess that I am also now using Picasa to browse the images that are on my harddrive. It is set to only look at the RAW images, so it is great for looking at my recent work. It is fast and slick. Also it is great for other members of the family to browse the images I have recently taken.
• Some landscapes really do have to be taken with a panorama to do them justice. Not having a X-Pan to hand I use Panorama Factory - A great program that produces some stunning results
• To produce DVD images, ProShowGold is pretty good.Very easy to use, and work through. Have found a couple of defects in this, and it doesn't have short-keys for the functions. Means a lot of mouse use for a large presentation, but the options within it are unrivaled.
• For web galleries JAlbum is brilliant. It has produce mh-white.com for example. It is very easy to use and has some great submitted skins for to generate some good sites.
• Flickr is now starting to appear in my list of tools (look up Calanais as a user and that's me)

Any planned changes? Well Paint Shop Pro may well take over from Elements. I have tried to use GIMP, with the Photoshop look and feel. But it just not worked for me. Picutre Window Pro was looking promising, but never got the time to do it justice.

When I started photography seriously, I was using a 35mm file camera (Praktica ML50). My typical film stock was Fuji-print film. With hinsight, that was the wrong thing to me using. It was though easy to expose for, and produced results that you could see easily - and put in an album. Plus at the time I had an Epson 1200U scanner that could produce reasonable results from the prints.

What I think I should have done though is taken slides.  Velvia or Provia would have been a better training ground with exposure, and generally quality.  Obtaining a projector wouldn't have been a problem (have my father's projector) and a screen cost me £15 second hand.

But I moved onto digital - missing out slide film. Although I do have a few roles around that I really want to try using!

One thing though I have found is MicroQuiz they can produce from a digital file some great slides. There are 3 reasons to do this

1. Digital projectors are still not quite there for quality, but this won't last for long
2.  Slide competitions in local clubs are not now well entered. So you stand a better chance of wining based purely on numbers
3. Persistence. Perhaps the strongest reason of all. I reckon that a slide has a greater chance of lasting than a digital file.

So I am considering getting all of my main portfolio copied onto slide - just in case!