Category Archives: Photography

Minting it

iPhone, Photography

No more Mr. Nice Guy.

The cell phone is an indispensable part of our lives. Hardly a genius observation. The camera in that cell phone is not only a fine photographic tool, always with you, but it’s also used for scanning QR codes, reading bar codes in the supermarket to detect unhealthy ingredients, and taking pictures of the minuscule print on product labels so you can actually read the text. Why, you can even use the cell phone to, you know, make calls, not to mention receiving spam messages from our Russkie friends inviting you to share your credit card information because of all the toll charges you owe and suggesting you fend off the Dobermans at the IRS with Comrade Ivan’s assistance.

I have been a loyal (read ‘stupid’) Verizon customer for the best part of two decades, when the other day I received this email. It’s hard to conceive of a more crassly worded announcement. Translated, it reads “Thanks for being a loyal customer, chump. Now bend over.”:


Corporate greed redefined.

That’s a 13.5% increase on my current rate in an economy whose inflation rate is below 3%. That’s not going to happen and triggers Dr. Pindelski’s New Year’s resolution: Any rate increase over 3% results in immediate dismissal of the provider.

A while back, speaking with my sister in West Sussex, it transpired that the UK has many cell service providers and her monthly rate of $19 covers two lines. Hardly a new economic concept – all competition drives down price. My new Verizon rate would be $127 monthly.

So I searched the web for a lower cost provider with good coverage and found Mint, whose coverage map you can access here.

Here’s the map – use the above link and you can enter your address for a more granular reading:


Mint coverage – a few holes in the West.

It’s similar to T Mobile’s, suggesting that Mint is buying excess capacity from T Mobile:


T Mobile coverage.

The Mint service provides for a 3 month $15 monthly teaser rate for two lines, whereupon the rate rises to $45 monthly. That’s a full 65% less than Verizon’s, an annual saving of $984. Heck, two years of this and I get that Leica M for the home theater.

Both my iPhone 12 (physical SIM) and my son’s iPhone 15 (eSIM) are ‘unlocked’ versions, meaning that Greedy Apple got $10 more for each phone. This premium was paid with the distant thought that a carrier change might be made sooner or later. If your phone is tied to a specific carrier you cannot switch, but at a $984 annual saving you can afford a new phone when you do.

There are two aspects to the switch. The easy part is getting an eSIM download from Mint, which arrived in the email 30 minutes after signing up. Secondly, the physical SIM for my iPhone 12 arrived one day later by overnight FedEx, along with the little pin to open the SIM door in the phone’s side. Impressive.

The hard part – you guessed it – is first you have to get the crooks at Verizon to release you from their usurious charges. You are meant to get a ‘Number Transfer PIN’ which you enter in the Mint application but, shock news, the link from Verizon is broken. Fortunately there are several ways of getting this Number Transfer PIN, and one of those worked for me. See below:


How to get the Transfer PIN.

My son’s iPhone was up and running on Mint within 10 minutes and my service was transferred 24 hours later when the new SIM was installed in the iPhone 12. Here is the happy result:


Up and running on Mint.

The only caveat is that the physical SIM is tiny and it took my son’s deft fingers and excellent eyesight to get it installed in my phone.


Tiny new SIM.

The service works well and all that’s left to do is to make sure the crooks at Verizon cease charging me while I enjoy the savings.

Because the transfer process is non-trivial and Verizon will make sure it’s as opaque and as difficult as can be, few will bother to make the change to a cheaper carrier. They already know that the integrity of cell carriers is right down there with that of cable TV providers and big banks. So they will bend over, grin and pay up. Thus the 13.5% increase to suckers (like me) will mightily boost the income of a business with a very wide ‘moat’ (meaning prohibitive costs of entry for prospective competitors),

So I did the only thing logically possible. After firing the bastards I loaded up on Verizon stock. Little competition, oligopolistic pricing and a very safe 7.2% annual dividend. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.


Reaping what I sow.

Other providers? I expect that the insurance company crooks and the gardeners will be the next in the firing line. This is too much fun, replete with schadenfreude.

Shocking hypocrisy

Hall of Shame, Mac Pro, Macintosh

Apple’s planned obsolescence.

The other day I sadly took my 2010 Mac Pro to the recyclers. The resale value approximated what it would cost to ship this behemoth and the last six generations of OS X releases saw to it that none would run on the machine, denying me the security fixes announced seemingly monthly.


Can you spell ‘planned obsolescence’?.

While this piece is focused on Apple, like thinking applies to all computer hardware makers. They conspire with the software authors (in Apple’s case they conspire with Apple) to make sure that older machines can no longer run the upgraded operating system and many of the related applications. The conspiracy deepens when you look at the horrendous costs laid on users by ethically challenged businesses like Adobe who, in obsoleting earlier versions of their apps, use the planned obsolescence strategy to force you into a rental payment system, euphemistically known as the ‘subscription model’.

So it was with the memory of that great recycled Mac Pro that I read this well researched article in Macworld magazine. The bottom line is this:

So, in answer to the question: How long do Macs last? We’d say five to eight years, but beware that you may not be able to replace any faulty parts in a Mac when more than five years have passed since Apple last sold it.

Imagine if your house or your car lasted only 5 years. But, the hypocrites in Apple Marketing are the first to tell you about their environmentally friendly packaging for the new Mac Mini. It’s cardboard for heaven’s sake. See for yourself:


Hypocrisy redefined.

Any mention of the fact that your new Mac will be toxic landfill 5 years hence because Engineering was told by Marketing to make sure it’s obsolete by then? And because avoiding that required just a few lines of code? You must be joking.

Outstanding journalism

Photography

Beating the muderous dictator in the Kremlin.

Some fighters, of course, fight. These Russians squared up. They fired Kalashnikovs or shotguns at incoming quadcopters, threw their own helmets or rifles into the path of their descending tormentors or swung long sticks, trying to knock 21st-century drones to dirt with weapons from eons ago. When all other defenses failed, the instant before incoming warheads impacted torsos and limbs, a few swatted or kicked at the quadcopters with bare hands or booted feet, lashing out reflexively at the candid cameras sent to kill them. Then they absorbed shrapnel and blast. The explosions claimed many victims instantly. Others were thrown down and expired slowly, gasping or twisting or rolling in pain, sometimes with uniforms aflame, while observation drones collected footage of their agonies. Occasionally, wounded Russian survivors ended their own lives with hand grenades or by shooting themselves with rifles. Some played dead and ended up that way.

This extract from a superb year-end piece in The New York Times titled “How Suicide Drones Transformed the Front Lines in Ukraine” by C. J. Chivers, written in gripping prose with photography no less compelling from David Guttenfelder, testifies to the wisdom of subscribing to the last great newspaper in America. With The Washington Post now edited by a Murdoch goon (subscription cancelled) and The Guardian likewise (subscription cancelled) there’s only the NYT left for a sane view of an increasingly nutty world.


Superior journalism from the finest paper in the U.S.
Click the image to read.

It’s clear that the only way to stop the Russkies’ aggression in Ukraine it to take out the psychopath in the Kremlin or hope for an early end to his miserable existence. Where is The Jackal when you need him?

Monitor calibration

Epson ET8550, Printing

Apple’s Monitor Display Calibrator.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

There are two major aspects of calibrating the color rendering of your system if you want to make prints that match what you see on the display. And while no print – a reflective medium – can hope to match the dynamic range of a transmission technology like an LED screen, you still want to get as close as possible.

The first is to use the right icc paper profile for your printer and paper, something I describe here. And you must not let the printer manage color. The only way to invoke and use that paper/printer profile is to set up your computer to manage color. Leave the printer color management turned off.

The second aspect is monitor calibration. While in OS 10.15 Sequoia it’s hidden away, Apple’s Monitor Display Calibrator is still around and has been for ages. It’s a cheap (free) alternative to calibration hardware which will set you back a minimum of $170. While my Benq monitor comes very well calibrated out of the box, the Apple tool can make things even better. As for my X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 colorimeter it is toast as the makers have refused to update it to work with Apple Silicon CPUs. A business with the integrity of Adobe.

The problem is that Apple seems not to want anyone using the Monitor Display Calibrator as it’s well and truly hidden. Here’s how to find and use it.

Go to ‘System Settings (Apple symbol)->Displays’:


System Settings->Displays

Click on ‘Color Profile->Customize’:


System Settings->Displays->Color Profile

See that little ‘+’ symbol at the lower left, below? Hold down the Option key on your keyboard and click it. This will get you into the Monitor Display Calibrator which looks like this – be sure to click on ‘Expert Mode’ in the right hand window:


System Settings->Displays->Color Profile-Customize

The application will walk you through a five step process to adjust your monitor. Be sure to do this in an ambient light setting as similar as possible to that in which you will display your prints, as ambient light color (‘temperature’ if you speak Geek) affects color rendering in a print. Save the result and then go back into ‘System Settings->Displays’ and make sure your new monitor profile is the one you have selected – see the first image above.

You are done.


A nice print to display match.

Lightroom Classic and paper profiles

Epson ET8550

How to make sure you are using the paper/printer profile.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

There’s a poor piece of interface design in the Print module of Lightroom Classic (LRc) which, if the user is not aware of it, will result in a custom paper profile NOT being used and will have LRc default to color management by the printer, which is NOT what you want. I’m on LRc 14.1.1 but would bet that earlier versions have the same bug. Easily checked if you read on.

Most quality paper manufacturers make icc profiles available for a variety of printers and for a broad selection of papers. For example, my default paper’s maker, the French Canson company, lists a host of profiles for its papers here. Dial in your printer’s make and model – the Epson ET-8550 in my case – and you can download and install the relevant profile(s) for use with LRc.

If you are using a custom icc profile matched to your printer and paper then you must not allow the printer to manage color. You want your computer to manage color which in the case of a Mac means you must use Colorsync. This will ensure that the tailored profile is applied when the print job is sent to the printer. Adobe has a somewhat cryptic italicized note to this effect in the Print Job section of the Print module, thus:


The Canson paper profile has been invoked under
‘Color Management’. Note Adobe’s italicized advisory.

The problem is that you cannot ‘turn off’ color management on purpose (meaning selecting ColorSync – see below) as LRc does that for you. But you sure as heck can accidentally turn it on, and I explain how that can happen in the details which follow.

Now click on Printer, lower right above and you get this:


The Print dialog.

Click on ‘Color Matching’ and you will see:


LRc has selected ColorSync. It’s greyed out,
so you would think it cannot be disabled. Read on.

Whatever you do, do NOT click on ‘Cancel’ to exit this dialog. If you do click on ‘Cancel’ and click on ‘Color Matching’ again guess what? Adobe switches the printer setting to ….


The Print dialog. LRc has switched
to ‘Managed by Printer’. WRONG!

The tailored custom paper and printer profile you think you are using will be bypassed and the printer will take control of color management, which is exactly what you do NOT want.

Instead, to exit the Print->Printer Options->Color Matching-> dialog (go up two images) you MUST click on ‘OK’. That will preserve the ColorSync setting and you should not have to go into that dialog box ever again. The ColorSync setting is stable and is preserved even if you exit and restart LRc.

How did I discover this? Well, print colors were off in my first run with Canson paper and only after a bit of digging did I realize that I had lost the ColorSync setting which ensures that LRc manages color using the custom paper/print profile. The Epson printer had taken over, messing things up as it does not know to apply the custom icc printer/paper profile. All the printer knows is that you are using glossy paper (if you told LRc that – in the ‘Print Settings’ drop down in three images above) and nothing else.

You can safely confirm that color management is indeed Off by clicking on Print Settings->Advanced Color Settings whereupon you should see this:


Confirmation that Color Management is Off.