Category Archives: Photography

Storage is power

Photography

The next order of magnitude

Here’s how you store 2 terabytes of data today:

Yesterday the SD Association announced that by the end of 2009 2 terabyte capacities will be possible on SDHC cards. That’s 2,000 gigabytes. On a postage stamp…. The current limit is 32gB.

What does 2 terabytes store?

  • 400 full length uncompressed movies
  • 100,000 books
  • 167,000 RAW image files
  • 2,000 record-length CDs

Well, you get the idea. The Library of Congress will be in your wallet before long. Though some might argue it already is.

Cloud computing and MobileMe

Software

The coming thing.

Cloud computing – where data files and even applications – reside on a remote, secure server (“the cloud”) is nothing new. Large businesses with broad and fast pipelines to their servers have been doing it for years. It allows application maintenance and upgrade to be centralized, improving efficiency and reducing costs, and helps ensure that data files are properly backed-up and protected against loss and illicit access.

Indeed, this blog resides in the ‘cloud’ and is sometimes even speedily accessible when the service provider’s computers are not stretched past their limits, which seems to be most of the time.

None of this has really helped the retail/home user environment. While we all run web photo web sites with low definition pictures which can be accessed by anyone we elect, this does absolutely nothing for off line storage of large originals (think RAW and PSD files) owing to the low speed of broadband connections in the US. European and Asian readers will laugh when they read this, while enjoying data transfer at rates many times those available in America.

So we plod along backing up daily to non-fire or theft-proof hard drives in our homes, when we remember, hoping those precious originals do not get lost.

This Christmas I bought a Flip movie camera for recording our boy’s adventures. My research took all of three minutes. It was cheap, it looked nice, had few controls and, best of all, that renowned technophobe masquerading as the technology writer at the Wall Street Journal loved it. When I checked their web site I discovered that both Standard Definition and High Definition models were made. It took but one more second to choose the SD one. A 640 x 480 movie (the same size as most of the photos in this journal) is more than adequate as a keepsake or memory, and the prospect of users downloading an HD version for viewing was more than I could stomach. A one minute video is some 7mB in compressed Quicktime SD format. It takes about a minute to download for most users. Just imagine waiting 5 minutes or more for the HD version. Journalists use their employers’ high speed lines for tests – meaningless for home consumers.

OK, so now our movies reside on a server and playback is almost immediate for all but the worst attention spans. But is that the best cloud computing can do for the man in the street on a realistic budget?

Apple rolled out its enhanced Dot Mac service in August of 2008, renamed MobileMe. Simply stated, it was a catastrophe. Many who depended on DotMac for email service suddenly found they were without any for days on end. Further, the claims made for MobileMe, which included synchronization of data across multiple devices in an instant, were flat out poorly tested hype, something we are increasingly used to from Apple. You really thought the iPhone 3G was ‘twice as fast’ as its 2G predecessor? You wanna buy a bridge in Brooklyn cheap?

Nonetheless, the idea stuck in my mind and I gave it the usual gestation period (the old ‘never buy Version One of anything’ rule) before signing up for a free 60 day trial subscription at the end of 2008. My goal was not only to synchronize email, the Address Book and iCal across three Mac OS X computers, I was also sick and tired of jumping around mailboxes on my iPhone to see emails while trying to remember which ones I had already read elsewhere. The iPhone, unlike OS X’s Mail application, does not support a consolidated mailbox and, like many, I have legacy mailboxes from old vendors which I dare not delete just in case something of importance crops up in one. No, I had no interest in uploading my original picture files. Those reside on external back-up drives and, with iTunes, aggregate over 125gB in storage. No way you send that over a cable or DSL modem from home. Further, the costly ($99/year) basic MobileMe subscription only provides 40gB of space, even if you could somehow speed up data transmission.

After a week of banging away at it and resolving usage and topography issues, I’m getting to the point where I have started to almost trust the service. After updating OS X Leopard to 10.5.6 I am getting reliable sync of Address Book and iCal data and mostly getting good email sync. In the case of the latter I am still getting some instances where an email read on one computer is not updated timely on the others but it seems to be getting better – ever since MobileMe decided to send me hundreds of iCal reminders to myself by email from the past three years …. Mercifully, this has only happened once, so far. I also continue to have sporadic downtime in MobileMe’s email availability and this really needs repair before MobileMe becomes trustworthy.

I have now removed the email boxes for my two service providers and am relying on MobileMe. The emails from those are automatically forwarded to MobileMe and I respond from my MobileMe account. I no longer see a gamut of in- and outboxes. Sure, Gmail is fine and offers tons of free space, but it would be hard to concoct a worse user interface. By contrast, the UI in Apple Mail is superb. And finally, I have one email box on my iPhone whose unread message count is correct for the first time since I bought the device on June 30, 2007! It is rather reminiscent of magic when you update a contact or calendar event on one Mac and have that change speedily conferred on all your other devices. Further, if you find Apple Mail’s spam filter as weak and I do and use the best there is – Spam Sieve – you only need run this on one computer as automatic synchronization will zap spam across all your devices.


MobileMe – not for serious photographers – yet.

So MobileMe may be worth looking at for some users, but it’s hardly the cloud computing answer photographers are looking for. Why not use one of the other file server services for photographers? Well, one famously went out of business in 2008, losing many photographers’ images, so what I want here is a service with a high enough profile, lots of capital and high reputational risk, such that failure is simply not an option. I believe Apple is in that “too much to lose” position and now that they are talking of moving more of their applications to web versions (iPhoto? Word and number processing?) I remain more interested than ever in the service.


Finally, a proper email count on the iPhone

One issue I ran into is that my main computer would try syncing endlessly. The fix is to back-up then erase the folder User->Library->Application Support->SyncServices, empty the trash and reboot. Then reselect your sync options in System Preferences->MobileMe->Sync. These are the options:

I do not Sync the Dock owing to limited screen space on one of my devices, plus I keep my dock at the left hand side of the screen which makes icons smaller than if you keep the dock at the base of the screen. I do not Sync Dashboard Widgets for much the same reason. I do find the ability to Sync Safari bookmarks much more useful than I would ever have expected, as my work flow tends to be the same regardless of which OS X device I am using. I expect that sync issues will go away once the various devices are stable after a sync or two.

Apple’s site says that MobileMe also works with Windows but for the life of me I cannot think of a use for that. A buggy but improving service with a buggy and failing operating system? I think not.

Bento

Software

No time like the present.

Ask the average consumer to recommend an insurance company and you will get saccharine encomiums about his local broker. Ask how they handled the most recent claim and you will get a blank stare, for chances are all the consumer has ever done is hand over premium payments to the smiling broker whose newly whitened teeth testify to the industry’s profit margins.

Simply stated, insurance companies are in the business of not paying claims. That’s how they make money.

So the consumer has to try that bit harder to prove loss and recover payment and in a modern digital world nothing could act as a greater antidote to an inherently morally challenged industry than photographs. Pictures not only beat a thousand words, they also beat the crook at the corner fronting for an industry whose morals are comparable to those of Wall Street.

Collecting and collating all the data relating to your personalty is, let’s face it, a pain in the nether regions, but it sure beats sifting through the ashes of a fire or the trauma of a burglary. I am as guilty as most of procrastinating on the awful job of making a good home inventory but a simple database application named Bento makes it a lot more fun than a root canal.

Bento is a database program wrapped in a glossy coat which requires no technical skill from the user. An included Home Inventory template makes it instantly usable and all I did to mine is add a second picture field. Each item (or ‘record’ in database-speak) has two pictures (or fields) – one for a snap of the item, the other for one of the related purchase invoice. A few other text fields add information for description, serial number, location and so on, but the the pictures will include most of what you need to fight the forces of evil when it comes to making a successful claim for loss recovery.

Here’s an example from my Bento home inventory file:

The invoice was scanned on my ancient Epson 2450 flat-bed scanner and simply dragged and dropped into the invoice picture area. Click on it and a full size version opens in Preview for review or printing. Same with the picture of the lens.

What was surprising to me is not only how little time all this takes but also just how much valuable junk I have lying around. Just like you.

So here’s a good project for those post-turkey lazy hours. Get your camera out, snap away at anything of value and scan all those invoices. Of course, Bento only runs on Macs but you are smart enough to have one of those already, right?

Once you are done, export the database to your remote file server and you are safe. Or at least better prepared for the scum bag the insurer will confront you with when you make your claim. Appropriately, he calls himself a “loss adjuster”. It’s a classic bait-and-switch. The guy with the teeth takes your money and the one without makes sure you do not get any back.

For movies and books I use Bruji’s products as they are more tailored to these assets and you can see the related databases for these on my ISP’s file server by clicking the related links on the right. These are more aimed at retrieval of favorite titles but serve equally well for insurance battles. Mac only, of course.

Lightroom 2 on an older Mac

Lightroom

Useable.

I mentioned a while back that I would comment on how Lightroom 2 runs on an older Mac. I had tried LR 2.1 on my 6 years old iMac (IBM G4 1.25gHz CPU, 1 mB of RAM) and it was not useable for localized adjustments such as the adjustment brush. You would paint something on the screen and many seconds later the effect was visible. Not useable.

Well, Adobe released Lightroom 2.2 the other day so I loaded this up on both the MacBook (Intel C2D 2.1gHz, 4 gB RAM) and the iMac. First, on the modern machine the adjustment brush is now fully useable. Changes occur almost in real time – say a fraction of a second delay as you ‘paint’. In this comparison, the MacBook is running OS Leopard 10.5.5 whereas the iMac is on OS Tiger 10.4.11.

Moving over to the iMac things are quite encouraging.

For purposes of what follows I was using a RAW file from my Canon 5D, so both machines had to perform RAW decoding prior to display of the picture. A RAW file from the 5D is some 12 mB but once converted comes to some 60gB. Not small, in other words. As usual, I let LR generate full-sized previews on import – it takes longer but the payback when processing is immediate. Images pop on the screen far faster this way.


LR 2.2 on an old iMac

Loading LR takes 20 seconds (versus 7 on the MacBook) and the first switch from the Library to the Develop module takes a long 30-35 seconds (MB – 7 seconds). Thereafter, switching between the Library and Develop modules takes 3 seconds (MB – near instantaneous). But, most importantly, the greatest advance in LR2 compared with LR1, localized adjustments, is now quite useable in LR 2.2. I can ‘paint’ on the screen using the mouse and see the adjustment within a second or so – made even easier by using the mask-display routine outlined here.

This little test discloses just how much faster the Core 2 Duo architecture of the Intel chip is over the IBM G4, but also shows the fine job Adobe has done of keeping those older machines in service. If you cannot afford the latest Mac, $300 for a nice 15-17″ display on an older G4 iMac will serve you just fine and there are lots of these older machines around going for a song. While I sold my G5 iMac a while back when the MacBook came along, I would guess that the G5 CPU will be speedier than the G4, much as it was using Photoshop CS2 when I first got the G5. The G5 iMac routinely sells for $350 – $400. A spectacular bargain with clean looks and a nice big screen.

If JPGs are your thing, then a G4 or G5 Mac should just fly. And they sell for a lot less than a new Mac when the current bottom-of-the-line MacBook (mine!) sells for a very overpriced $900 and iMacs start at $1,200. That money saved gets you a another lens for your DSLR and a great computer for Lightroom 2.2.

A Fantasy

Movies, Photographers, Short stories

The Sixties relived.

By way of introduction let me say that, as a boy of 15, I was already fascinated with the hobby of taking pictures. So when I saw Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up in 1966 on its theatrical debut, it was a matter of moments to write to the star and ask for an interview. To my amazement, a neat, handwritten note came back from David Hemmings, the star of the movie, not two weeks later, granting me my wish.

Quite what an interview entailed I had no idea, but when I arrived at his mews home in Kensington, Hemmings greeted me with great warmth and, within moments of our handshake, proffered a nice tape recorder the better with which to take notes. Cleaning out a closet the other day I came across the tape, which I had all but forgotten about, and set to transcribing it for this journal.

Hemmings had just finished filming and was, in modern parlance, still ‘channeling’ the character of Thomas, the photographer-protagonist in the picture, so he insisted on conducting the interview in the character of the photographer he portrayed, and further requested that I address him as ‘Thomas’ rather than as ‘David’.

TP: Thomas, the movie opens with you looking a bit, shall I say, worn. What was all that about?


Looking a bit worn. Click the picture for the map.

DH: Yeah well, you know, Britain was going through one of its interminable labour disputes at the time so I was down the Consort Road in Southwark taking pictures for my new book on the working class. These laid off workers would be collecting their money at the dole office and I got into the whole thing. Thought it would be better to look like one of them. Not too hard given the night I had just had with those birds. Talk of insatiable!

TP: And the car?

DH: Well, no effing way I was going to drive the Rolls down Southwark way. They would have pinched my tires and mascot in seconds. Anyway, let me tell you, that car is a piece of crap. Constantly in the garage. New water pump, constant tuning and 10 miles to the gallon. I’m thinking of getting one of those Minis, actually.


Piece of crap

TP: Who’s your favorite model, Thomas?

DH: There are so many it’s hard to choose, but I would have to say it’s Veruschka. A real pro, always on time. She’s some sort of Russian countess or something. Great legs, too. God, this woman is fit.


Some sort of Russian countess

TP: How did the picture in all the ads come about?

DH: Well, after that Veruschka session, I was pretty shagged out and in need of a drink, but she insisted on just one more roll of film. So I had David, my assistant, load up the Nikon and had at it. And it just happened, you know? That bum of an assistant took the snap of me making out with her.


It just sort of happened

TP: So you favor the Nikon?

DH: Nah! Look, I’ll use whatever the latest publicity roll-out gives me. It’s all free, as long as I flash it about a bit, you know? Like they gave me this Hasselblad for studio work and it’s OK, I suppose. When it’s not in the shop with the Rolls, getting something fixed. Last week the magazine jammed, this week it’s the shutter. God, if only people knew how bad these things are.


I’ll use whatever they give me

But I do like the Nikon, I must admit. I almost feel like I’m armed with it. I keep one in the glove compartment of the Rolls for street snaps. Like, the other day I was down at this antique place in Woolwich picking up a big wooden propeller for the studio (cost me eight quid, I can tell you) and wandered over to Maryon Park nearby. Grabbed the Nikon, of course. It was a windy day and I thought what with the trees and all, something good might come of it. That’s when that bloody Antonioni wasn’t using the crew to spray the grass green. Jesus! Italian wanker.


Grabbed the Nikon, of course. Click the picture for the map.

TP: So that’s when you latched on to the whole mystery thing? I mean, the body and all?

DH: Yeah. Let me tell you enlarging those snaps was sheer hell. Bloody Kodak and their TriX. When the (deleted) are they going to make this film with grain smaller than a piece of dead, cold porridge? Sure, I could use PanX or PlusX for less grain but then everything comes out kinda blurred, if you get my drift. And as for faster, have you ever used HPS? Basically every picture is the same – one big blob of grain.

Anyway, I had the 50mm on the Nikon that day and, boy, did I find myself wishing for something longer. I mean, I was miles from Vanessa when I snapped those images. Let me tell you, mate, one of these days Kodak will fix their film and you will get 36 wall sized enlargements from a roll one quarter the size and none of that poncing about with wet chemicals. Have you seen my carpets recently? Talk of hypo stains.


Poncing about

TP: So you found the body. Why no camera?

DH: Yeah, I found the geezer. Some sort of Italian judging by the suit. You know how these foreigners like to overdress. Hell, I could still make out his scent. Imagine, a man wearing scent. Christ! Let me ask you, have you ever touched a dead man?


Have you ever touched a dead man?

TP: Well, my old man when he died a few years back.

DH: Pretty yucky, huh? Let me tell you, this guy was COLD! To answer your question I had no camera as there’s no way you can take pictures at night. We’re talking 400 ASA here, mate, not some 21st century technology. Nah, I reckoned I had to come back in the day to get a snap and, of course, by the time I did, the stiff was gone.

TP: So nothing ever happened? No one was caught?

DH: Yeah, that’s about it. Bloody cops, what do they know? My assistant – he’s an East End lad – says all the cops are in cahoots with the Krays. Still, the park is kinda neat and I went back the other day to take some more pictures. Not hoping for another body, or anything, just street snapping.

TP: My favorite thing.

DH: Well, what do I come across but these kids with white faces playing tennis in the park. No bloody racquet or balls, though. Kinda fun once I got into it. Even retrieved a ball for them.


No racquets. No balls

Transcribed from the original tape of December 21, 1966.

At this point the tape ran out. Hemmings took it off the recorder and tossed it to me.

DH: Well, that’s it chum. Gotta run. By the way, once yer balls drop, come back and see me. I think that my assistant, that Bailey fellow, is pretty much on the way out. Keeps trying to rip my work off, know what I mean? And I’ll need someone to load my cameras.

* * * * *

Hemmings and Antonioni are gone, sadly, but their great film monument to the Sixties lives on.