ashmorevisuals would like to congratulate all involved with the new arrival of…….

                         Clementine Margaret 

love and best wishes

andy & peter

We’ve just taken delivery of an Epson Stylus Photo R2000 printer and first impressions are very positive. So far we’ve  run through only a handful of test prints on matte, semi-glossy and glossy paper. We used LightRoom, letting it  handle the colour management. Being blokes we didn’t read the manual so ended up with one or two odd print size vs paper size mix ups and a bit of double profiling at one point, but once we’d found where to go in the extensive printer setup dialogue boxes, and with no further tweaking we got some stunning prints. Particularly impressive was the rendering of the subtle sfumato at the edges of a dimly lit theatre scene, printed on Epson’s own A3 archival matte paper.

See REHEARSALS for more details of the show.

So far we’ve upgraded just the one MacBook Pro to Mac OS X Lion to see how it behaves. Initial impressions are very favourable. The download time on a fast cable connection was around 20 minutes and the remaining install time was about 40 minutes.  The main applications that I tested appeared to be OK, most importantly LightRoom of course. Although it’s worth checking out the Adobe Knowledge-base article on compatibility if you use a pre V3.x version. The ability to display all the applications  on your Mac in an iPad style grid is great and revealed several apps that I had forgotten were installed.

With the formidable Canon 5D Mark II on the team the ability to shoot high definition video comes as standard, and with Macs on the team we are lucky to have access to Final Cut Pro  for editing.

A quick play with Apple’s latest version, Final Cut Pro X, reveals a number of things. It has the potential to become a great professional product; it’s new interface could initially frustrate users more familiar with previous, track based, NLE software; those new to NLE will become more productive more quickly.

It is a creditable .0 release. We hope that Apple will be swift to follow up with subsequent updates to reinstate omissions and may I please have an iBook version of the user manual? Trying to read a PDF of the online copy on an iPad is just painful.

Slightly away from our normal photo-centric posts to be sure, but I thought it worthy of note, as previous web searches that I’ve conducted hadn’t answered the simple query Can I use a Zoom H4n with the iPad 2? The answer is yes, with the USB adaptor and a powered USB hub. The latter is key. Without that the iPad will not recognize the device. With it, both GarageBand and StudioMiniXL take their input from the Zoom and work well. Having to tether oneself to a mains supply does offset the portable nature of the rest of the gear a tad…

Congratulations to ‘Rack and Ruin’ who played a great set at a recent barn dance held at Leamington’s Real tennis Club.  To hire the band please contact them via their website: http://www.rackandruin.co.uk/

Many thanks to Claire, Debbie & Dee from Battersea Dogs Home for allowing ashmorevisuals to provide photographic coverage of  their Crufts Reception and display stand.  For more information on the work of Battersea Dogs & Cats home please click on the link. www.battersea.org.uk/

Congratulations to the Red Hairing team at the University of Warwick who exceeded their target of raising £1000 for Comic Relief  by dyeing their hair (and where appropriate) beards red.

The dazzling results and dyeing process itself, are on show hair.