There are 4 bits: Transilluminator – camera – laptop - printer.

For ease of setup, the camera, printer and particularly laptop should be left running.

Simple use

Stroke the trackpad to check the laptop is running & wake it up. Assuming that it is, and that you see the remote capture application running, just set up your gel in the centre of the transilluminator and click the shutter ‘release’ button in the 'capture' window on the laptop. (As the camera insists on auto-focussing, I like to put the fluorescent ruler alongside the gel, to give it something to work with.) These pictures are effectively free, so you can have several tries.

The picture is saved to hard disc, in ‘My Documents’. From there, you can copy across using a memory key. You can also double click on the files to open them in ‘IrfanView’, crop them and send to the attached photo printer. This gives fantastic results at about 20p per print.

If the camera is switched off (no little green light next to the viewfinder):

Press the on/off button on the back, and check that the ‘Mode’ dial on its right is set to playback (Blue triangle in rectangle).

If the laptop is switched off

After startup into Windows XP, launch ‘Canon remote capture’ on the desktop. 

Click ‘connect’ to camera. A new window (the capture window) opens. If necessary, click on the triangle to open up the advanced options. You’ll need to set several of these to get good pictures. From the different submenus, choose

-flash OFF

-focus assist light OFF

-macro ON

-B&W mode ON

-Zoom setting about halfway

Take a couple of test pictures of the fluorescent ruler until it looks sharp (for some reason, it may not always be sharp first time round). I find taking a picture with macro off, then macro on, seems to get it sharp.

Then you’re ready.

Once again: do not switch the laptop off!

Reloading the printer

The consumables are in a box above the printer. 

To change the cartridge, switch off. Open the door on the right ofthe printer. Slide out the cartride, and slide in the new one. Switch on.

To change the paper, remove the tray, open the lid and insert a new pack of special paper (shiny side up). Close the lild, but do NOT slide it all the way home. It sounds odd, but you must leave about 1 cm of paper showing, or the print wheels won't be able to get to the paper! Then insert the tray as far as it can go.

Any problems? Call Julian