Macro focusing problems and eventual success :)

Since I first got my dedicated lens , I’ve always hated macrophotography. No matter how hard i tried I somehow always ended up with a lot of shots severely out of focus (even when I was damn sure I *got it*). Shooting handheld and not bothering to use manual focus was ofcourse part of the problem.
Then I stumbled upon some articles about “back focus” issues , I was vaguely aware of the phenomenon but thought that it was a problem seldom encountered – but decided to try out some simple techniques for finding out, I disregarded the more complicated solutions and opted for the easiest method I had read about. Puting the camera on a flat surface – and put a diagonal line of AAA batteries some distance in front of the lens.

Using the single shot focus mode (AF-S on Nikon) i focused on the centre battery and took a shot – Lo and behold; I noticed that what I focused on was not sharp, but the battery in front was. By using the AF-finetune feature on the camera, I gradually increased the “+” value, each time taking a shot. By doing this I could find the optimal setting for my lens (in my case +9). This crude way of calibrating suddenly enabled me to focus on the right spot – so I tried it out in our garden – the result was a great improvement. Need I say that I have now ordered a Datacolor Spyderlenscal to finetune all my lenses.

Although not a fantastic shot; now the focus actually works:

Backfocus fixed

Cabbage butterfly

Graphics driver problem in Windows 7 ….. and some Battlefield Bad Company 2.

I got a new computer a couple of days ago and had an odd problem that took me great effort to find a solution to. In Windows 7 (64-bit) from time to time there were graphics problems – suddenly the screen would go blank (usually white) or the computer would freeze for a couple of seconds, then a message would pop up stating “ Th Display driver has stopped responding…(and has been restored). Updating the drivers did litte to fix the problem. Here’s however what did the trick:

Open CCC and switch to ATI Overdrive
Unlock and enable Overdrive
Go to Options/Profiles/Profile Manager and create a new profile called, let’s say, STABLE.
Save the new profile. But DO NOT ACTIVATE the profile.
Now go to C:\Users\{YourUserName}\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles folder ( I assume C: is your system drive )
Note: You should have ” show hidden files ” turned on to see the folder.
Open the .xml file named STABLE with notepad.
Change the values of the idle Core clock and Memory clock speeds below

Feature name=”CoreClockTarget_0″
Property name=”Want_0″ value=”40000″ note: previous value should be “15700″

Feature name=”MemoryClockTarget_0″
Property name=”Want_0″ value=”90000″ note: previous value should be “30000″
Save the file and close it.
Go back to CCC and activate the profile. This will make the card idle at 400 MHz core clock and 900 MHz memory clock.

The speed change is immediate. You can see the speeds onder CCC Overdrive section.

Please note this change increases graphic card temperature by 6 to 7 degrees C at idle.

Many thanks to the poster “StarStrike” who supplied the information in this thread on the AMD Game Forums.
Note that the mentioned “CCC” in the post is the ATI Cataclyst Control Centre and thus refers to ATI (Radeon) graphics cards.

…

Battlefield Bad Company 2:

As a fan of the original Battlefield (2) series I was eager to try out this game, made by fellow Swedes Dice.  I had been playing Modern Warfare 2 since it came out but I finally gave it up due to the ridiculous amount of cheaters, who have literally killed the PC-version of this otherwise great, fast-paced fps - but for the last couple of months I hade been returning to the old, but still awesome Battlefield 2.

To cut it short BF: BC2 is an exellent game where cooperation really pays off. Although the server-system is still quirky the game is heartily recommended – where the menacing armour forces you run from cover to cover

Mesh

MSN Live login problem fix

Diverting from my photos; My son had problems logging into Windows messenger – and after quite a struggle I found a solution that I thought I’d share with you all. (My payback to all internet users who invest time and effort trying to help other users)

First, I tried a few tips found on the net (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-95438_35_0.html , http://messenger-support.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!1pUFzGgzjAV-OT0jri_AqaGw!1070.entry ) to no avail. (Although the mentioned solutions seems to have worked for quite a few users)

In our case it turned out to be the Time and date settings in Windows Vista that was out of sync and that the fix was quite easy: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/sync-your-clock-with-internet-time-servers-from-the-vista-command-prompt/.

Bear in mind that I had previously read about the time/messenger issue but I had tried manually adjusting the time (not syncing it) without any effect.

Laperm cat kitten , S * ÄgirsHus BC Freke