If you have problems at any time, feel free to document them and send the results to us. If the capture looks odd in any way, save the capture so you can show us. This is important because verbal descriptions do not always give us enough information, especially if the problem is similar in nature to other problems we commonly field. Not all problems require a “picture” but it’s still a good idea to catalog anything that you don’t consider normal. If the software does something you think it shouldn’t, make a screen capture and show it to us. To make a screen capture on a Mac, hit Command+Shift+3. You will hear a sound byte to verify the capture of the screen; it is the sound of a 35mm shutter. To capture a cropped section of the desktop hit Command+Shift+4, then click and drag to define the section you’d like to screen capture. Find the screen capture on the root of the volume where the operating system is resident, it’s called Picture 1 (and Picture 2,3,4, etc. for subsequent captures). It is a pict file, it can be opened in Photoshop and saved. Jpeg the screen capture and attach it in an e-mail to us. You may even want to compress the Jpeg with a compression utility such as Stuffit.
The e-mailed image can tell us a variety of things about the problem you are experiencing. For example, banding is one of the more common maladies we field. Telling us the camera is banding actually tells us little, as the banding could come from a variety of places. It could occur because your monitor is not displaying millions of colors. Or maybe the density range you’ve chosen is not great enough after a big remap when you’re in cmyk. Sometimes a verbal description is sometimes not enough.
When you’re planning to send us a file, you’ll want to attach it to an e-mail with text, detailing what the problem is and under what circumstances it occurred. File size is very important to keep small because transfer times for large files can become excessive. However, the file needs enough resolution to display the difficulty you are experiencing, so make sure you have enough file size so that it conveys the problem. That means you are going to attempt a balance between enough file size that demonstrates your problem and enough compression so that your file transmits efficiently. In general, you want to send the smallest file that will demonstrate the difficulty and transfer over the phone lines rapidly. Jpeg seems to be a good vehicle for compressing files. Stuffit (a popular Mac compression utility) and various Zip programs (Windows) are efficient for compressing and un-compressing, and can be applied to the j-peg format, so they're a natural for squeezing your e-mail files to the smallest (and fastest) possible size.
There may be times when you may want to crop a small section at full resolution rather than j-peg compressing the whole file. If the problem you are seeing is happening at the pixel level, you may want to crop just enough area to communicate the error you are trying to show us, and skip compressing the file. Test some jpeg compression settings to determine what will work without degrading the error. You can e-mail the attached file to yourself, to test what we would see; make sure we’ll see what you want to show us. In general you want to e-mail around 1 megabyte as the largest size because of transfer time; from you to your Internet Service Provider and from our ISP to us. If we get a T-1 or ISDN line, larger files can be efficiently received by us; we will let you know if that occurs.
There may be times when you’d rather send files on media. If your problem seems a little overwhelming you might find some solace in writing your problem images to CD, Zip, or magneto-optical. If your problem is inconsistent or in any way elusive, you might want to send several files. This is a good reason to keep a copy of anything that doesn’t seem right by saving a file every time.
When e-mailing attached files, please contact Customer Support to let us know to expect your attached file. Discuss your problem with us; that will generate a report that all of the tech support personnel can access so that no matter who you call, your particulars can be viewed by the support staff person you’ve chosen to call. When you call, you may be asked questions that are pertinent to the camera, computer, lighting, and perhaps, your level of training. Any or all of this data could be important in the solving your difficulties.
Once the image has been studied, we can better decide how to counsel you to solve your problem. The solution may be multifaceted where you may make several changes; to the host camera, the T2 camera back, our software, the strobes, the lighting, or to the computer.
If you have any questions as to how to make a file for an e-mail attachment talk to MegaVision’s Tech Support at (888) 324-2580.