Improvements in CAMERA SHOOTING SOFTWARE

[apb]

I had no problems installing the camera shooting software in OSX on my older g4-400AGP tower.

I hooked up my s2 this morning, to do a quick tabletop shot and had a devil of a time getting it working - to sum up:

1. I had pulled my AA batteries and my CR123s
2. plugged in my firewire cable and AC adapter
3. booted the Camera Shooting Software (please Fuji, a better name!). The software would connect and report no camera, or would connect and error out. A couple of times I managed to get it to the shooting screen, only to have it crash out when I made an adjustment.
4. tried a different Firewire cable & port - no dice
5. on a whim, I replaced my AA in the camera, and bammo... the software works. So far it has been stable for a couple of hours now.

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Improvements in CSS:
1. none so far - pretty much it seems like a port of the old version so it would run natively in OS X


Problems in CSS:
1. Can't fire the camera while looking at the preview window - not a big deal, but with a smaller monitor, or laptop screen it's a pain to have to keep hiding and showing the different windows.
2. rotation of the preview does not rotate the capture (at least in RAF mode)
3. no click balance - if they can do it in Converter EX, why not here?
4. if you turn off the camera, the software auto quits.
5. no functionality for checking highlight & shadow values - ie no eyedropper - again, this function is present in Converter EX, why not here?
6. CSS is not tightly integrated with Converter EX - if I shoot a RAF file, I should have the ability to auto-launch upon capture. CSS could even have built that functionality into EX - in fact why are these two programs not merged into one full featured program?
(Fuji may argue that FinePix Viewer is the way to integrate these functions, but it's a terrible POS software IMHO.)



more later I'm sure

andy

[apb]

more:

7. It would be nice to have an automatic 'focus check window" that shows a small portion of the image at 100%. I realize that you can do this with the preview window, but the zoom function is very awkward, and it would be nice to have a full sized preview next to the 100% window

andy

[crabby]

Well, actually I guess I could. The preview window should be part of the shooting software, the gallery view could be the seperate window. It would also be nice if it saved the gallery views to a scratch disk instead of ram so you don't have to go back and delete after every few shots.
A grid that you can turn on and off in the preview is a must.
An eye dropper type white balancing method would be so much better and more accurate then trying to fill the frame with a white card.
I also agree on a small check focus window. It would be great to click on a check focus button and have a small window pop up and you could just click anywhere on the main image preview and get an instant 100% view of a small area to check focus and moire.
And your idea of integrating CSS and EX converter would be much better. I would love to be able to select the images I wanted from the gallery view window and convert.

I have not been able to get the OS X version to work and I haven't had the time to troubleshoot. But I am running it in 9.2. I believe you are only supposed to remove the cr123's when hooked up to AC.
I had a problem the other day shooting in computer mode with my nikon 35-70 2.8. I could not set the apature on my emac 800. No matter what I set the slider to I got the same exposure. I had to relaunch in camera mode and make all the settings on the camera. Any idea what the problem was. I haven't tried with that lens since but I did use it before in camera mode with no problems.

[apb]

It might be that the prefs file for CSS may have gotten corrupted. Try deleting them. But what I am going to guess you might not be doing sounds astoundingly simple ( it screwed me up for a while when I was setting up the camera/software). After making the change did you hit the "Apply" button? You can make all the changes you want, but if you don't tell the CSS to apply them, it reverts to whatever the previous setting was. Which would make all the exposures the same.

8. Fuji should have at least made the "Apply"button change color when you make changes to the settings, to give you a visual reminder to hit it. Or they could rewrite the software to actually make those changes on the fly. Now there's a good idea.

Fuji - Are you listening?


cheers

andy

[crabby]

You are exactly correct about hitting the apply button after any changes. I went back and reread the CSS manual. I haven't played with the softwre since the day I downloaded it and totally forgot. I'm glad it was that simple. I would rather feel stupid then have to troubleshoot software.
So there would be another welcome improvement. Camera settings changed in PC Mode should change on the fly without the added step of OKing the changes.
Also I would like it if the Shoot Button would still work in Camera Mode, that way I wouldn't need a cable release.