Monthly Archives: October 2010

Printing to Sharp AR-M450 in Ubuntu (using CUPS)

Printing to a Sharp AR-M450 using CUPS (the standard print system for most free *NIX and even Mac OS X) is possible, but took me some time to find the right settings. First, you need the printers IP address, in my case 10.2.0.98.

In CUPS you chose “Network Printer” and “lpd/lpr”. Then you set address=”10.2.0.98″ (replace with your own) and queue=”lpr”.

As printer driver, I chose “Generic PCL 6/PCL XL Printer”, using “CUPS+Gutenberg vX.X.X Simplified”.

This should get you running!

Testing Macro capacity of Nikon P7000

I bought a Nikon P7000 compact camera a little while ago (the Canon 450D belongs to my girlfriend, and sometimes I cant borrow it). I was a little curious how it performs in macro photography. So, again, I photographed my little train. First the full shot:

Nikon P7000@6mm, 5s, f/5.6

Not so bad. The barrel distortion is clearly visible. This picture is taken from about 2cm distance from the object, with the lens at its widest setting. As I zoom in, minimum focus distance quickly increases, and the widest mode gives the largest magnification of the object.

Now the crop of the details (the object is about 6.5 mm wide in real life):

Nikon P7000@6mm, 5s, f/5.6, crop

So, it is very possible to read those little characters on the train. Comparing with the other two Macro tests I have made in the past, I draw the following conclusions:

  1. Nikon P7000 beats Canon 450D with 18-55mm kit lens
  2. If Macro Effect filter is applied to the 18-55mm lens, its a draw
  3. The SLR camera wins when equipped with a Macro Extension Tube

Blog, Spam and Akismet

When I started writing this blog, I thought nobody would ever find it. Soon, I realised I got comments, which was nice. But the quality of comments varied, and I soon realised many (or most) of them were just spam. The longer the blog has been around, the more spam has shown up. I have approved all comments manually, and the comments you see on the posts are those I approved.

A few days ago I started using Akismet – a tool that automatically filters out spam comments. It works nice! I would recommend anyone with a wordpress blog to use it.