Hi all, just joined the forums after lurking for a short while. I own an aptus 22 for about 10 months now using mac g5 dual 1.8ghz tower running capture 8.4.3 and I have a recurring nuisance of a problem:

The back is firewire tethered to either my sinar large format or my hasselblad 553 elx, once or more times per day it will go through a rapid beep cycle and the window on screen says "picture cancelled" over and over until I pull the cable from the back. I then have to quit the application and then dump preferences and restart the software. I notice that when I reconnect the cable to the back my strobes will fire - this seems odd. I had the problem with 8.4.1 and when changed to 8.4.3 it seemed to not happen as much. Maybe its a stress sensor because it seems to happen at the most inopportune times! Model on set, client breathing over shoulder, ice cream melting, etc.

In addition, I notice that whenever the fire wire bus is altered by plugging or unplugging a device (ipod,pocket drive) it causes the back to lose its connection to the computer and must be reconnected via the software. No big deal but perhaps an indication of power issues on the bus and its effect on the back?

Have spoken to my local dealer in NYC (foto care) and they are scratching their heads as well


I have not tried it with capture 10 as it does not support live video (ugh!) and is ugly as sin to look at !

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help,

Steve

Steve,

I can't comment much on the back, but from the Mac side there could be a few issues. One thing I didn't get from your history of things is: was all OK for the first few months and it has gradually gotten worse, or did the back always behave this way? If its gotten worse, it could be the back or a softare matter. However, the fact that things seemed a little better after changing from Capture 8.4.1 to 8.4.3 makes me think it is a computer/software issue and not the back.

To track down problems with the Mac, you might try turning off various features, like Bluetooth (the latest updates seem very unstable on my Mac and I'm using the same computer as you are) and Airport if they're active. Some USB devices when combined with an active Bluetooth causes problems, especially if the USB peripherals deviate from strict USB v2 protocols. The front USB port is a bit wonky on the dual G5, so I try never to connect much to it on a permanent basis. (The iPod won't even reliably transfer to and from the front USB port.)

Until you've resolved things, make sure to only boot up and run Capture with no other applications running and no other firewire devices connected. You might want to try a new Firewire cable, and maybe even another computer, if you have one available.

A 'techie' thing: after installing software, it is a good idea with OS X, to run the Disk Utility and do a 'Repair Disk Permissions'. This is a good habit after every software install or update that you do or is done for you. You also might check out where the Library folder (both the main Library and your user Library) in the "Applications Support" and "Preferences" folders; toss any Capture related items so they get updated with a fresh install. There might even be a Capture folder directly in the Library folder itself. You might have missed a corrupted Pref file.

On the software side, have you upgraded the Mac OS X system? Maybe the older version of Capture won't work as well with the latest OS software. If this is the case, you'd have to roll-back your system software with a re-install to test this out.

From a back perspective, if it is defective, changing it out should help. After you've eliminated the above computer stuff (short of rolling back the OS, which is a royal pain), perhaps your dealer could let you use a rental back for a few hours. Or maybe run your back on one of their systems to see if it misbehaves in their store.

Regards, Robert

Hey Robert, thanks for your reply. Things did seem to get better with the upgrade to 8.4.3. I try and not do software updates on the OS until I read enough about their stability on versiontracker. I am not currently near the G5 (working on the intel laptop from home) but I am pretty sure it is running 10.4.6. I will def. give eliminating bluetooth and airport a try. I do not rely on bluetooth at all but airport is pretty integral to my studio and capture stations needs. Running capture alone is tough as I try and do a little photoshop processing while I am waiting for sets to be changed. Perhaps it is time to reduce the multitasking...!


a clean install of the leaf capture software couldn't hurt either.


Thanks for your thoughts

Steve

I do a lot of work with backs on manual cameras (RZ, 503, etc) and simply said, there are always issues. Mostly due to connectivity with the sync between lens and back. Its always a good idea to have extra cables on hand and to keep your sync connections in good order. The backs are much more senistive to connections than traditional strobe sync.

The Leaf back is very sensitive to other devices on the firewire bus. You pretty much have to dedicate the bus to the back. Basically you need to disconnect the back to mount an external hard drive. Pretty major pain, but I've consistently had connectivity issue with Leaf if I try and keep anything else on the bus.

The Leaf website shows the most recent V8 as 8.4.2

Recently I upgraded to the new V10 and its pretty stable. They released 10.0.3 just recently and it has been been pretty solid for me over the past two weeks.

Hi Erik, thanks for your reply. Yep thats pretty much what I thought. The manual camera is just that - heavy lifting in the era of metal contacts and digital communication