Monthly Archives: May 2012

HDD storage

Computing

An update.

After spiking mightily, with prices doubling owing to the floods in Thailand which took out a sizable chunk of the world’s production facilities, Hard Disk Drive prices are coming down again. While my main Hackintosh uses Solid State Drives for the OS and applications, SSDs still remain prohibitively expensive for high volume data storage. Meanwhile, HDD technology refuses to die and just gets cheaper.

Scanning Amazon US I see 3.5″ indicative prices as follows:

  • 500mB – $70-90
  • 1tB – $100-120
  • 2tB – $120-140
  • 3tB – $140-160

Current Amazon US 1tB HDD listings.

Now there are drives and there are drives. In the various specs you will find 5400rpm, 7200rpm and 10000rpm, 3gb/s SATA II and 6gb/s SATA III, 32mb and 64mb buffers. You will also find hybrid drives with small SSD front ends and traditional high volume spinning discs doing the heavy lifting. The latter only make sense if you access the same apps (though it’s much more effective to simply buy more RAM and keep the apps loaded all the time) or recurring data frequently; otherwise, the price premium does not solve. And, unless you must have the portability afforded by 2.5″ notebook drives, these also make no sense for high volume storage at home where portability is not an issue, but price is. Further, 2.5″ notebook drives do not come in the higher capacities available in the larger 3.5″ clunkers.

Here’s my experience using a Hackintosh with a current motherboard, a machine superior in most regards to the current, and rather dated, MacPro:

  • 6gb/s transfer rates make for the biggest performance increase. I have found that the promise of twice as fast read/write times is largely met in my Hackintosh compared to an older 3gb/s HDD.
  • Bigger buffers – 64mb rather than 32mb – make a difference in streaming video applications where the larger buffer mostly obviates occasional pauses for refilling of the buffer with drives in external enclosures.
  • Rotational speed makes the least difference. The 7200rpm premium is hard to justify in photo processing applications. Save on your power bill and use 5400rpm if possible.
  • 10,000 rpm drives make no sense – costly, noisy, power hungry and with high failure rates.

If your PC or Hack’s motherboard supports 6gb/s connections – as the latest motherboards mostly do – then a 6gb/s drive for internal mounting is the best price/performance option. You get a fast, hardwired motherbard connection and no need for an external enclosure. I still use 1tB drives as the areal storage density is low so the technology is fairly remote from the ‘bleeding edge’. However, 2tB drives have been around a while now and while failure rates are slightly higher, they are more cost effective. At this time I am avoiding anything over 2tB. Most external USB enclosures support up to 2 x 2tB HDDs, but not 3tB.

For external storage eSATA is the way to go or use a USB3 external enclosure – not easy to find – which supports 6gb/s drives.

So its’s good to see that HDDs are becoming affordable once more. They remain an attractive option until SSDs start falling in price, something that is happening at a glacial pace.

Finally, for aficionados of Nikon’s latest, the D800, where file sizes can rise to 75mB, that gets you 13,000 files or so per 1tB. So the upgrade to a couple of 2tB drives should likely be part and parcel of your upgrade to a sensor few realistically need, and even fewer can fully exploit.

Madame Yevonde

Photographers

A famous British photographer.

Somewhat forgotten today, whereas the light of her peers from Beaton to Penn continues to shine brightly, Madame Yevonde (Yevonde Middleton) was the ‘go to’ society and advertising photographer for the best part of half of the previous century, starting in 1920. She pioneered the use of the three plate Vivex color process in the early thirties, where three primary color images were successively exposed, then merged at the printing stage. Conceptually similar to Technicolor used in the movies, this process resulted in highly saturated colors in a world used to black and white.

If you were a society woman in 1930s London, then Yevonde was your photographer of choice, as you sought to memorialize your flouncing about in flimsy fabric dressed as a Greek goddess. The pictures verge on kitsch, but it is high quality kitsch.

Madame Yevonde. Click the picture for the Madame Yevonde web site.

Lady Milbanke as Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons (!)

1930s advertising shot using the Vivex process.

Click the first picture for the web site, which is a lot of fun.

The Tripod Set

Photographs

More legs than a centipede.

I was making my way through the city giving the 80~200 Zoom a workout when I chanced on the Tripod Set.

They all had identical black tripods atop of which were perched identical black cameras. The instructor pointed and they followed his directions, taking it in turns to record their identical Kodak Moment. It was all quite amusing to behold.

The Tripod Set.

Exhausted by all the effort and clearly having left his tripod behind, Beret Man shown here sauntered in my direction and we got chatting.

Beret Man.

“We are practicing HDR” he pronounced, somewhat breathlessly, as he puffed on his cigarette.

“I see”, quoth I, affecting deep knowledge of the technique, being one I gave up on years ago as the results are just too, well, you know, Kinkade-like.

HDR shooters.

Anyway, as I wandered off, marveling at the sheer quantity of expensive gear on show, a passerby spotted the camera on my shoulder and asked what all the fuss was about.

“Oh, that’s the Tripod Set, you know” I replied, in dead earnest. “You are absolutely not allowed in without a tripod.”

“Oh!” he expostulated, rather shocked, and I left him to think about it.

All snaps on the 80~200m Ai Zoom-Nikkor, on the D700.

A few from the 80~200 f/4.5 Nikkor

Nikon lenses, Photographs

Not half bad.

I went on about the Zoom-Nikkor 80-~200mm f/4.5 lens the other day and finally had a chance to take it for a spin.

Light and easy to use, you have to be a bit careful with focus at full aperture as f/4.5 is not all that bright, though the viewfinder focus confirmation LED in the D700 works a treat in marginal cases. Fixing any zoom slop with vinyl tape, as I illustrated, is essential. There’s nothing worse than having the zoom ring flop about in use. In the snaps that follow I mostly used f/4.5 and f/5.6. The lens needs no stopping down to sharpen up and renders out of focus areas in a pleasant, smooth manner at larger apertures.

MIB3.

Friends.

Shine.

Go Forth.

On break.

Bay Bridge.

Sky ride.

For about a Benjamin, the lens is a keeper. Many will prefer the 75-150 Series E which, at f/3.5, is a stop faster and much lighter and smaller, but if you need the extra reach, this lens does nicely. And the 80-200mm is a better lens, clearly out-resolving the 75-150mm through f/8, where the smaller lens catches up.

Paris, 1974

Photographs

A magical place.

A friend is leaving for a much deserved spot of R&R in Paris, so I put together some old snaps to get the creative juices flowing.


Refresh your browser if the Vimeo file is not visible.

If there are many images from the Jardin des Tuileries, I make no apologies for that. After all, why not revel in the most perfect urban setting on earth? The beautiful, bitter sweet fin de siècle piano piece can be found here.

All snapped on my Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, Kodax TriX film. There are 36 images in the slide show, the same number you got on a roll of film back then. These are selected from but three rolls I shot during a one week stay. Film was like that – it discouraged waste.

Paris, je t’aime.