IF Up and Running & First Reaction

[Kirstie]

Thanks to all of you who helped me work out the details of buying the camera, buying the USB active extensions, hanging the camera, and so on.
We attached a Panavise ceiling mount to the Canon S1. We mounted that to a small board, which we attached to our track lighting rail by drilling two holes directly into the rail. (We turned off the track to do that!) I bought a plug to snap into the track to power the camera. We ran the USB along the top of the trac (No probelms with interference with that so far) and then painted a piece of stretcher bar white, attached it at right angles to the track and attached it to the wall on the other end, and led the USB cable along the top of that, down the wall, and into the Dell Precision. Voila! It works and doesn't look too bad at all. I'll try to get a photo of the set up tomorrow.

Tonight a customer watched us taking some sample shots. She waid, "Wow! I've never seen anything like that. I'll be back with lots of photos to frame!"

I'm going to be bold tomorrow and offer the service to at least one customer. We really don't know all the ins and outs of it yet, but we're getting there and I think the customers will just love it.

My only qualm is that as the camera stays on all the time, the lens is exposed all the time. To turn it off and put the lens cap on, we would need to climb on a step stool on the design table as the camera is 7-8ft above the table. Hoping for the best with the dust factor.

Hint: In order to register the programs--IF and Mat Designer, I had to open port 77 on the firewall. A nice fellow at level 2 support at AT&T DSL walked me through it.

[John Ranes II, CPF, GCF]

......My only qualm is that as the camera stays on all the time, the lens is exposed all the time. To turn it off and put the lens cap on, we would need to climb on a step stool on the design table as the camera is 7-8ft above the table. Hoping for the best with the dust factor....

Kirstie,

What dust?

When you turn off the software, the lens should retract into the body of the camera. Regardless if you place the lens cap back on, it is facing downwards. How must dust settles on the underside of a glass table? You should be fine.

John

[Kirstie]

Kirstie,

What dust?

When you turn off the software, the lens should retract into the body of the camera. Regardless if you place the lens cap back on, it is facing downwards. How must dust settles on the underside of a glass table? You should be fine.

John
It is the downwards facing lens which does make me feel better about the lens. The Canon S1 series does not have a lens which retracts (and closes) when the camera is off. It stays open unless you put the lens cap on. Also, it doesn't even seem to turn off unless I turn off power to that track, and that is the one we leave on at night. I'm not going to sweat it. It was under $250. with Mike Labbe's deal, so I'm going to forget it and hope for the best. Moreover, it seems to work very well with IF. I only crashed the program once when I tried to zoom really fast.

[Mike Labbe @ GTP]

If you got the deal I posted for $227 a week ago, you have the Canon S2 IS.

We have an older S1 IS in our shop, which is very similar. As probably the first shop to adopt this technology in March of 2005, it has been up there ever since. (first PIF, recently upgraded to FrameVue) The lense is still clean, and we have a somewhat dusty shop with a saw in the back. If it becomes dirty, it's no problem to clean it for another two years. :) The dust hasn't been an issue at all in our case, and I think you'll probably be fine too.

Good luck with the new techno gadgets!

Best regards,
Mike

PS: Most brackets will come with an option for screwing in from a flat plate, as well as an attachment so they can clip to a drop ceiling metal grid.

[Paul N]

Kirstie:


Don't worry about the dust. The lens is facing downwards anyway so it will have minimal, if any, accumulation.

And if you really want to clean it, just buy a compressed air can and give an occasional compressed-air-dusting, no step stool required.