My Data Printing Program for Nikon Photo Secretary

The shooting data stored in N90s can be downloaded to a computer, then managed by the Photo Secretary. Nikon is humble enough to acknowledge that the data processing capability of Photo Secretary is very limited, thus offers an ASCII text format for exporting data to other applications.

The first thing I want to do with these data is to format them nicely and printed on a laser printer to put on slides. So far, I have a rough usable computer program. (Meaning: scratching my head for a few hours instead of taking it as a software- engineering project :-) So don't take it too seriously). Here is the source code written in ANSI C, along with a sample data file provided by Nikon. The following explains the features of the program.

• System Requirement:
  The program should compile under any platform with any C/C++ compiler. Compiling of the program should be straightforward without using any specialty library. After running the program, directly send the output to a PostScript printer.

  Alternative to PostScript printer is to have Adobe's Photoshop and a printer that can print an image from Photoshop. In such case, open the output file using Photoshop, which will rasterize the output file into an image; and then print the image from Photoshop.

• Labels:
  After a little market research, I've found only one product that suits the purpose: Avery Laser Labels for "Return Address Labels", Product Code 5267. (Product Code 8167 for Ink Jet labels of the same size, other products of codes xx67 are variants of the same size labels.) The label measures 0.5"x1.75" with rounded corners, and fits the frame of a 2"x2" mounted slide perfectly. Each page contains 80 labels arranged in 4 columns, which can be used for 2 rolls of films.

• Formatting of Data:
  The picture shown at right is a sample of a printed label. The following information are included in each label (italicized items are my definitions, see below for explanations): Film roll identifier, copyright notice, date, frame number, exposure mode, metering mode, shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, flash mode, flash compensation, film name, film speed, lens focal length, and lens information.

  Several graphical icons are designed to represent some of these data. Most of these symbols are the same as on the camera, and, hopefully, should be obvious to N90s owners.

• Modification to PhotoSecretary's Data:
  Personally I feel the data provided by Photo Secretary are not complete. Therefore, I redesignated several data for other purpose. The following explains how the original PhotoSecretary data fields are modified.
  • Film Roll Title --- I modified this field to contain film name, such as "Fuji Velvia" in the above sample. If film's designated speed is different from shooting speed, this nominal speed could also go here. The "film speed" field of the Photo Secretary is the actual speed in camera setting, which is placed in parentheses in the label.
  • File name --- In Photo Secretary, the file name is essentially the film roll number. I keep this convention, and use it as the film roll identifier.
  • Caption --- I split this into two fields: date and lens information. I think these two pieces of data are vital to a photo too. The date is the first part of the caption that reflects the actual shooting date, should be input manually in the format "mm/dd/yy", followed by a space, then the lens information. If the date is missing for a frame, the date provided by Photo Secretary is used, which is the date of data downloading.
  • Aperture --- For non-AF lens, the camera does not know the aperture value, and the Photo Secretary gives "F--" as aperture. I modified this to "f/___" so that the blank can be filled manually later. Aperture values are not changeable within Photo Secretary. But one can definitely key-in the values in the text file generated by PhotoSecretary before proceeding to print them. In that case, be sure to change upper case "F" to lower case "f".

  But, please be warned that the program is really a simple-minded one in that it relies the format of data Photo Secretary generates, even the upper and lower cases of outputs. So, other data generated by Photo Secretary should not be altered.

• Few Words about Program
  The program is invoked like, for the example above
  slidelbl D0010 [output_file]
  where slidelbl is the program name, and D0010.txt is the text format data file provided by Nikon Photo Secretary. (Note that this is also the film roll identifier printed on the label, and that only the base name is used as input.) The output_file is optional. Without it, the output is a file named D0010.ps. The option is provided to direct the output to a PostScript printer, in which case, the file name could be PRN or COM1, depending on the way the printer is connected.

  There are several parameters can be adjusted prior to compilation. These parameters are placed as "#DEFINE" statements at the beginning of the source code. The most important one is the copyright owner. (That's why no pre-compiled code is provided.) Other parameters are marginal spaces in order to print the label precisely. Adjustments might have to be made with a particular printer in use.

  The program only works with the "full information" data storage level. Field delimiter is a "tab", the Photo Secretary's default setting. The program prints the data for one roll of film at a time, using the left two columns of the labels in an Avery label page, which consists of 4 columns. A page of Avery label can be run through the printer twice for two rolls of films.

  The source code is provided for personal use only. If anyone is trying to convert this code to other platforms, such as Win95 or WinNT, please keep me informed.

• Bug Fixes
  
  • June 23, 1997: Sampath Oks (sampath@lscsjc.latticesemi.com) found that the program did not recognize the spot metering mode. Fixed.
  • June 25, 1997: Miscellaneous adjustments of spacings, added comments.

• Lasted Update
  June 16, 1998 (This happens to be an "anniversary update". :-)): The output PostScript file containing the labels now conforms the specification of Adobe's Encapsulated PostScript file. The significance is: if one does not have a PostScript printer, the output file can be imported to other applications, such as Adobe's Photoshop, that is capable of rasterizing PostScript files.