Monday, May 14, 2012

Trivia (XLVI) - The Executive Customer Relations Representative


Incoming:

My name is Esther Reynolds and I represent Executive Customer Relations within Amazon.co.uk and in this capacity, your correspondence has been brought to my attention. 
I am sorry to hear of the difficulty experienced with the Canon PowerShot S95 Digital Camera (High Sensitivity 10 Megapixel, 3.8x Zoom, 3.0 inch LCD Screen) received in the 20th of October 2010 from your order #203-6918744-1001102. 
The European Directive 1999/44/EC allows for a claim to be taken (under certain circumstances) for a period up to two years in accordance with European Law, and up to six years under UK law. 
This does not imply that an item has a warranty of two years or six years respectively. It merely permits an individual to make a claim under certain circumstances within that time period, e.g. should a fault be proved to have been inherent in the first six months. 
Amazon do not provide the warranty for this item. We do, however, cover our obligations under the relevant legislation such as the Sales of Goods Act 1979 in the UK. Under the Sale of Goods Act, a consumer is granted recourse against a seller of goods if those goods were defective at the time of purchase. This may include, in certain circumstances, repair, refund or replacement but only to the extent that doing so is not disproportionate to the value of the goods, having regard to the use the customer has already had of the goods and the nature of the goods. 
You purchased your product approximately 18 months ago and, until recently, have used it successfully and reported no fault with the product. Given your satisfactory use of the product for a period of time which exceeded the manufacturer's warranty period, it is not established that the product did not conform to the contract (i.e. was defective) at the time of purchase. 
Amazon.co.uk is therefore not under an obligation to offer any additional assistance in repairing or replacing your product. 
However, although we do not have any obligation to do so under the Sale of Goods Act or otherwise, in this circumstance as a measure of good will we would like to offer you a choice of the following resolutions: 
1. An Amazon.co.uk gift certificate to the value of 61 GBP.
2. A refund of 46 GBP. 
Please reply directly to this e-mail to confirm if you wish to accept either of these offers as a full and final settlement in this matter and I will make the appropriate arrangements. 
Please note that the manufacturer is often in a better position than the retailer to deal with technical problems affecting their products. Therefore, should you wish to pursue this matter, we would encourage you to contact the manufacturer to see if they are able to provide you with any further assistance. They may be in a position to offer a repair service or could provide you with information on relevant charges for an out of warranty repair. 
Thank you for your attention to this email. 
Regards,

Esther Reynolds
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.co.uk
http://www.amazon.co.uk

Jardim da Cordoaria
(The Urban Sketcher, 7)

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Trivia (XLV) - The advertising break


Pizzeria Napoletana Pulcinella
Forno a legna
Famiglia Mezzero
Av. Menéres, 390 - Matosinhos
229382806 / 933453462

1 x Antipasto Pulcinella
1 x Del Generale
1 x Ago
1 x Serafino
1 x Birra Moretti
1 x Birra Nastro Azzurro

Thank you Chef Antonio Mezzero, the birras are indeed great!



Takeaway pizza box from
Pizzeria Pulcinella

Avenida dos Aliados, 237
(The sign-holder)

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Trivia (XLIV) - Pro Advice


White Balance.
«Auto WB is totally up to the camera and out of your control. Its goal is to make all whites the same, all neutral greys the same - in other words, to negate any unique character the light has - to average it all out. If instead of Auto WB you choose a specific WB and make it like a specific film, then any changes or qualities unique to the light present, will be reflected in the coloration of the image.
My take on tweaking WB to your own taste is to pick one WB like "Cloudy" and tweak that. Auto WB is all over the map and changes at the whim of the camera - it will not produce consistant results. I feel you need a stable WB and then season it to taste. That way you will know exactly what you are getting.
I picked cloudy, because in the past Cloudy WB has often given the look of an 81A or 81B warming filter. I then cooled it down a tad by going one notch toward blue and two notches toward magenta to get away from any greenish cast, which I personally don't like but others might prefer. Both my GF1 and G1 are set this way and stay this way for all outdoor shots, no matter what the outdoor lighting situation is. Any changes in time of day, weather, overcast skies, etc. will simply be reflected in the final image - and so far, rather accurately.»

Noise.
«It is really inportant to turn off all noise reduction settings. There is no need for noise reduction and all it does is dull the otherwise fine detail of the image.
I seem to be shooting most of the time in ISO 200. With the image stabilization and/or the fast lenses like the 20mm, I have not needed to go above 800. Consequently, I have the noise reduction down as far as it will go at -2 just to ensure I don't lose any detail. So far this seems to be working fine.»

RAW vs. OOC.
«Unless you spend some time fine tuning the settings, there is no point to taking jpegs - you might as well resign yourself to the tediousness of shooting RAW. However, once you do arrive at the settings you like, the Panasonic G cameras can produce jpegs that are terrific. I did RAW files for six months and found it wasn't for me.
With the tweaked WB (cloudy with 1 notch toward blue, 1 or 2 notches toward magenta) and with Dynamic Film Mode (with contrast at -1, sharpness at +2, saturation at +1, and noise reduction at -2), I find no more need for shooting RAW and stopped doing so in early October of 2010. It was a very freeing experience. I now feel that with natural light, I am getting dependable, usable, appealing images - ones that I can then do a little more tweaking in Photoshop and they are done.»

pjohngren, Micro Four Thirds User Forum member

Largo de Mompilher
(The Urban Sketcher, 4)