On Station - learning how to survey

[tncaver]

I just googled: how to draw a map of a cave
and found dozens of sites explaining the process.

See, another success of organized cavers.

Organized caving has it's good points and bad. I think perhaps many of the bad experiences I've had were mostly caused by individuals from my state who
don't practice "quality" caving ethics. Organized caving is definitely good at teaching things. I'll have to check try that surverying Google Phil.

[JR-Orion]

On Station showed up last night, straight from Cave Books. Along with a great poster sized map of Mammoth Cave. Should make some fun reading for this weekend.

[lleblanc]

On Station showed up last night, straight from Cave Books. Along with a great poster sized map of Mammoth Cave. Should make some fun reading for this weekend.

Is the 2nd edition out yet?


Luc Le Blanc
http://www.speleo.qc.ca/Auriga

[George Dasher]

The second edition is having troubles. Major troubles.

All the books I have done previously have had digital text and hard-copy pictures.

I wasn't prepared for using digital pictures, and I didn't listen to Tom Rea's instructions clearly enough--I instead tested the pictures in The West Virginia Caver, which proved to be an inadequate test in this case. Pictures that are good enough for computer screens and computer printers are not good enough in quality for printed books--the bottom line is that l need tifs at at least 600 dpi, not lesser-quality jpgs. The pictures are thus being redone (and made into B&Ws), and the entire book may have to be reformatted. Anyway I having major troubles (oh, for the good old days of using hard-copy pictures!).

This is particularly painful because we didn't catch the problem until I sent out the manuscripts for the VERY last review. And now I have been knocked back to square one. That's painful when you think you have the finish line in sight.

I've previously been able to do everything in Word Perfect (The West Virginia Caver, the Buckeye WVASS Bulletin, the Spring Creek monograph, the 2000 Guidebook, and the 2001 Pendleton County book), but WP can't handle the larger pictures files, so I have ordered InDesign and am going to try to learn that software in a hurry. (which may be impossible, because it is supposed to have one horrible learning curve). InDesign, by the way, is what Art Palmer did the 2009 Convention Guidebook with.

Of course, all of these books have only a small window when the described technology is "in date," so trying to fix the picture problem is letting the technology go "stale."

My original "hoped to have it out" was the Vermont convention; but I am not sure I can make that self-imposed deadline now.

I'm also working on a Grant County WVASS Bulletin, which I had completely formatted and almost done, and it is in the same "back to square one" boat.

And as a side note: I really thought the first chapter of the original On Station clearly explained "how to survey."

[Bob Thrun]

Pictures that are good enough for computer screens and computer printers are not good enough in quality for printed books--the bottom line is that l need tifs at at least 600 dpi, not lesser-quality jpgs.

What about pictures made with digital cameras? I bought high-end point-and-shoot cameras made by Olympus and Nikon. They give a choice of JPEG and Raw. Every manufacturer's Raw seems to be different. And their resollution is not expressed in dpi.

[Leitmotiv]

The second edition is having troubles. Major troubles.

And as a side note: I really thought the first chapter of the original On Station clearly explained "how to survey."

The first chapters are a good introduction on how to survey, but for me they don't thoroughly explain how to actually perform the survey, especially the part of putting pencil to paper, to align the the protractor with a certain edge of the book, how to interpret the data as a sketcher, etc. No hard feelings. It's one of those things that is easier taught in the field than taught in a classroom. Like tying a shoe.

[George Dasher]

I tried to cover the "how to sketch" in a later chapter, maybe it didn't work so good. Too much text maybe.

I bought Photoshop Elements, and have been able to convert my pics from jpgs to tifs with the required dpi. I had to convert them to B&W, then to bitmap, and then save them as tifs. Tom Rea told me how to do it. So I would think the photo-manipulation software is more important than the actual camera, provided the camera is a good-quality camera to begin with. And I am just using a pocket camera, not a more-expensive SLR.

Working with this stuff does wear you down though... particularly learning new software. I can't wait until I have to "move up" to Windows 7.

[Jeff Bartlett]

I bought Photoshop Elements, and have been able to convert my pics from jpgs to tifs with the required dpi. I had to convert them to B&W, then to bitmap, and then save them as tifs.

But converting a low-resolution image to 600dpi doesn't actually increase the quality. In other words, a 150dpi image re-saved as a 600dpi image is still exactly the 150dpi image, it just has 4x the pixels. It'll pass preflight at the printer, in a sense, but the result is still going to look every bit as terrible.

[Crockett]

Maybe you prefer to build the suspense but does this edition include contemporary topics like paperless sketching, electronic instruments, software and software issues like data visualization, round tripping, file compatibility, integration with geographical information systems, and portals?

[Jeff Bartlett]

Maybe you prefer to build the suspense but does this edition include contemporary topics like paperless sketching, electronic instruments, software and software issues like data visualization, round tripping, file compatibility, integration with geographical information systems, and portals?

In much the same vein, does it remove material from the original book that has become extremely dated, such as how to use the Leroy Lettering System?

[Bob Thrun]

In much the same vein, does it remove material from the original book that has become extremely dated, such as how to use the Leroy Lettering System?

I went the other way and suggested that George should include Barch-Payzant pens.

[George Dasher]

I don't feel I am winning at this game.

First of all, I have to use the pictures I have at this point, because there is no way I can go back and retake them all--nor do I want to use many of the pictures from the original book. And if On Station Two's pictures are bad, then I'm in real trouble with the Grant County WVASS pictures, because some of those caves are real hard to get to and all of the important caves are closed thanks to WNS.

I have tried to include information on paperless sketching, electronic instruments, round tripping, file compatibility, and integration with geographical information systems. Aaron Addison has been helping.

I don't have anything on portals, and I don't have anything on Barch-Payzant pens.

I have also cut some sections down, such as using paper topo maps and traditional drafting techniques; however, I did want to cover the basics. A cut-down version of Leroying is still in.

But my biggest headache is how to proceed at present; I'm at a real stumbling block with my software problem--which is to learn a new software (such as InDesign) or continue to use my old software (which is Word Perfect). I am losing sleep over the problem.

And another thing--the last WVASS Bulletin contained a lot of great-looking color photos, all of which were low-quality jpgs.

[Bob Thrun]

I have learned a lot about scanning publications and pictures. My first disappointment was with the cheapest HP flatbed scanner. Regardless of what output format I asked for, the cave maps (line art) always had JPEG snow around the lines and lettering. You want to avoid JPEG with text of line art.

I got a scanner that was claimed to have 1200 dpi optical resolution. This is actually scanning or stepping resolution. The problem was that the scanning spots were about 4 pixels in diameter, effectively giving 300 dpi resolution. I have an Epson 4990, a high-end flatbed scanner with a claimed resolution of 4800 dpi. The scanning spots are 5 or 6 pixels in diameter, giving an effective 1000 dpi maximum. I made a special test slide that Chip Clark scanned on his "4000 dpi" Nikon slide scanner. It is really 2000 dpi. It appears that all scanners suffer from scanning spot size trouble.

I tried various resolutions for cave maps. 400 dpi is about the minimum for inked lines on maps. John Ganter had a blueprinter make a 600 dpi scan of his map of Seneca Caverns and the caves on the same property. The original was 36 x 90 inches.

I tried different resoutions for survey notes and sketches. I could note improvements up to 300 dpi, so I decided to scan at 600 dpi. A 256-color palette was adequate. Again, I did not use JPEG because of the snow.

[Jeff Bartlett]

But my biggest headache is how to proceed at present; I'm at a real stumbling block with my software problem--which is to learn a new software (such as InDesign) or continue to use my old software (which is Word Perfect). I am losing sleep over the problem.

If I were you, I'd outsource this portion of the production process.

[Scott McCrea]

But my biggest headache is how to proceed at present; I'm at a real stumbling block with my software problem--which is to learn a new software (such as InDesign) or continue to use my old software (which is Word Perfect). I am losing sleep over the problem.

If I were you, I'd outsource this portion of the production process.

At least, talk to whoever is going to print it. They may tell they can't use WP files. I guarantee they will be much happier if you give them an InDesign file.