Category Archives: Photography

Trust

Hall of Shame

And you trust Adobe why, exactly?

“A serious outage has taken login functionality offline for almost 24 hours, leaving subscribers to Adobe’s Creative Cloud unable to access their accounts or do much of anything else – including downloading new apps. As yet, Adobe has been unable to offer any indication of how long the outage will last, but a message on the CC homepage states that the company has ‘identified the cause [and is] working to restore the service as quickly as possible’. ”

This from the company which recently had its crown jewel stolen – its Photoshop code – along with 30 million subscribers’ account information.

20140517-020907.jpg

Another Panasonic GX7

Micro Four-Thirds

The street snapper’s perfect camera.

In film days you would have seen me, as likely as not, toting two Leicas, an M2 with a 35mm lens and an M3 with a 90mm. This was very much an ‘around the world’ outfit, the few occasions when something wider or longer in lenses was needed making the return on humping additional weight too low for that to make sense. None of that solves for the landscape/nature/animal set where you can mostly carry any amount of gear in search of your quarry and for landscapers the subject isn’t about to run away. But for street snappers, light, unobtrusive and fast are the dictates of success in gear and in operation, and the Panasonic GX7 has the genre down by a considerable margin over any other hardware I have yet used.

When I first wrote about the GX7 a few months ago it was my third in a line of wonderful Panasonic MFT bodies, a journey which commenced with the ground breaking G1 (5 years ago!) and later with the sensor-improved G3, the latter now doing happy service with my nephew and pro cinematographer, in Los Angeles.

After many happy years with a 28-90mm zoom (the 14-45mm kit Panasonic lens) I added the truly exceptional 17mm Zuiko, a 35mm lens of outstanding performance and diminutive size. It’s the default optic on my GX7. Later, an equally inexpensive (the benchmark for cost and optical quality being the 35mm and 90mm Summicrons for the M Leica) 45mm Zuiko came along, the equivalent of the classic Leica 90mm portrait lens and almost as good optically as the 17mm Zuiko at a bargain price. I almost wrote “throw-away cheap”, and that’s not far from the truth. Have you priced Leica M lenses recently – you know, the ones without AF?

The 14-45mm kit zoom started to gather dust as I found I was walking the streets with the 17mm on the GX7 and the 45mm in a pocket. But the lens changing thing started getting old and the thought arose that a second body might make sense for the 45mm, especially given how small and light the kit is.

The market gods must have looked favorably upon this idea for as I write I am a happy owner of a brace of GX7s.


Black and chrome – two Panny GX7s.

It helped that I got a new black body on eBay for $608, which compares with almost $800 on Amazon and over $900 at B&H. The chrome GX7 ran me $1000 a few months ago and doubtless a year hence GX7s will be remaindered for $19.99. But if you forever wait for technological progress and price erosion, you are never going to take a picture. So, the heck with depreciation – it’s a minor cost of making the snap.

Black? I dislike black bodies but the color distinction makes sense here as the 17mm and 45mm Zuikos are indistinguishable at a quick glance. The black body does the trick when you are grabbing one in a hurry.

Teething problems? Only one. Conferring identical settings on the new body from the bazillion options and the preferred setup on the first body is an exercise which would try the patience of Job himself but one which, mercifully, need be done but once. I continue to revel in the silent electronic shutter the GX7 optionally offers (I use it exclusively) and have the C1, C2 and C3 custom settings all programed for aperture priority, electronic shutter and auto everything, the sole distinction being the 320, 1250 and 3200 ISO settings. The neat little serrated ring around the shutter button operates the aperture – I still wish it operated in full stops, not the fussy thirds Panny adopts – and that’s about all there is to it. Twiddle the ring, first pressure on the button for focus and ‘click’ – except the ‘click’ is silent, like the ‘D’ in Django.

So what you have here is one happy camper, err …. trekker. Any day now my legs will give out, my eyesight will fail, I’ll start wetting myself routinely and will be doddering around with a cane, but until that day comes you will find me snapping away with not one but two wonderful GX7s and their no less wonderful Zuiko stablemates, in that most eclectic and thrilling of American cities, San Francisco.

Avoiding file numbering conflicts:

All Panasonic MFT cameras start numbering files ‘P1010001’. To avoid duplicate file names, it makes sense to change this, but the camera has no way of doing that, unlike my big Nikons.


Stock file numbering, the SDHC card being viewed in Finder here.

Simply go into Finder and change the first digit of the directory, thus:


First digit of file directory changed from ‘1’ to ‘2’.

Now reinsert the card in the GX7/G3/whatever and format it. Take an exposure. This is what you will now see in Finder:


Be sure to stick with the same SDHC card in that body, or effect a like change on any new card.

You are now set for your next 8 Panny bodies!

Perfect Effects 8

Lightroom, Photographs

Free software, impressively engineered.


Click the image for the download.

onOne Software is offering its Perfect Effects application, usually $100, free for a limited time. You can download it by clicking the above image.

I did so and it installs as a plug-in in PS CS5, LR 5.4 and Aperture, becoming immediately available in LR which is my default processing application.

The engineering could not be better. Export a file from within LR’s Develop module and you get a simple display with a large number of effects to choose from. Save the file and it is saved as a ‘.psd’ copy in your LR catalog, adjacent to the original. I especially like the ‘Glow’ effect when subtle hints of age are called for in an image, and you can easily modulate the glow amount with a slider. Selective application of effects is also possible. A nice tool for the working photographer.

Here’s how the application’s display appears:

And here are the ‘before’ and ‘after’ images:


Before Special Effects ‘glow’.


With Special Effects ‘glow’.

Upgrading the Mac Pro 2013 – Part XXII

Mac Pro

An expensive beast.

For an index of all my Mac Pro articles, click here.

The 2013 Mac Pro may still be hard to find but that does not mean the buyer should overpay for the better CPUs available. Paying Apple or OWC a huge premium for a better CPU suggests you have more money than sense, in which case go for it. This piece is not for you.

The nMP adds one feature not available in the oMP – Thunderbolt. This Intel data communication technology is a motherboard-only hardware installation and it is extremely unlikely that the aftermarket will ever see a TB-equipped motherboard for the oMP. So that means data speeds are limited to 600mb/s at best in the oMP (using a PCIe SATAIII card) whereas twice that rate should be theoretically possible in the nMP.

Where the nMP falls down in price:performance is in CPU speeds. The Geekbench chart below is for multi-core performance.


64-bit multi-core Geekbench data.

Given that the oMP can be upgraded with even faster CPUs than the fastest Apple ever marketed, the 4-core base nMP’s CPU performance is poor by comparison. Install a couple of X5680 3.33GHz or X5690 3.46GHz Xeons in your 2009-2012 oMP and you will get Geekbench scores of 30-32,000, which equals the extremely costly $7,000 top of the line nMP for half the total cost of the computer.

The stock 4-core Xeon E5-1620 in the nMP Geekbenches at 14,600. There are currently three ways of getting a faster CPU:

  • Pay lots to Apple for a costlier CPU at purchase of your nMP
  • Pay lots to OWC/MacSales when you send in your nMP for upgrade and they resell your old CPU for which you get zilch. You have to ship the complete nMP to OWC for the upgrade.
  • Do it yourself and save lots of money

Here’s the current data for the available CPU options which are known to work:

All of these CPUs have a Thermal Design Power of 130 watts, which compares to 80 watts (E5520 8-core), 95 watts (X5650, X5660, X5670, X5675 – all 12 core) and 130 watts (W5590 (8-core), X5680 (12), X5690 (12)) for 2009-2012 dual CPU oMPs.

To ensure meaningful comparisons, I have shown all the Apple-bought options with twin D500 GPUs, 16GB of RAM (the $3,000 base spec nMP comes with only 12GB), and a 256GB SSD. So, as you can see, Apple is charging a premium of $3,500 to upgrade from the 4-core to the 12-core CPU. OWC is barely better, charging $2,978 for the upgrade.

The math could scarcely be simpler. First, there is no earthly reason to buy a new Intel CPU. Used CPUs pulled from servers are fine – I lose count of how many of these I have installed in oMPs and have never had one fail. Never. Just avoid Engineering Samples – look for the ‘S-spec’ on the CPU lid, which confirms that it’s the final item.


Model number and ‘S-spec’ on a final production CPU.

Do the CPU upgrade yourself:

You can do the nMP CPU upgrade yourself. There’s a fair number of sub-assemblies to remove to get at the single CPU which is buried deep inside the form-over-function cylindrical case design of the nMP, but patience and care will get you there. Until Apple Service Manuals become available, the iFixit guide is excellent:


Click the image for the iFixit CPU replacement guide.

Economics of the DIY upgrade:

The current data suggest the following is the most cost effective approach:

  • Purchase the base 4-core nMP new with 16GB of RAM – $3,500
  • Purchase a used 12-core E5-2697 on eBay for $2,500 (Must be marked ‘SR19H’; avoid ones marked ‘QDUF’ which are beta test engineering samples)
  • Sell the stock E5-1620 for $150
  • Net cost of the 12-core upgraded nMP: $5,850. That’s $1,150 less than Apple charges.

The warranty issue:

This piece by OWC says the warranty remains valid when you do a CPU upgrade, unless you damage the machine in the process. Beats me if it’s right as I have not read of the principle being tested, so do your own research if a warranty is important to you:


OWC on warranties.

I remain unconcerned as CPUs very rarely fail. Fans, graphics cards, disk drives, even memory sticks – all of these are likely to fail far sooner than a CPU. That’s where you will most likely claim under warranty.

Other upgradables:

1 – RAM:

Memory upgrades are already available from OWC. Other suppliers will doubtless follow. Four 16GB 1866MHz sticks will cost you $850 or so at OWC, replacing the four 4GB sticks in the stock machine. Alternatively, go to B&H and pay $225 less for Crucial RAM of like spec. Replacement is a trivial process – unplug the old, plug in the new and you are done.

2 – Solid State Drives:

Conventional 1TB SSDs from Samsung run some $450, but these will not fit in the nMP. Apple uses a proprietary connector for the internal SSD, which is retained with but one Torx T8 screw – a trivial replacement. Here are the Apple options:

Until aftermarket options become available the best thing here is to simply wait if you really must have a huge SSD. Given that the best use of an SSD is for the OS and applications I am somewhat mystified why anyone needs 1TB, even with large scratch disks. Further, there’s nothing to stop you using an external SSD in your overpriced Thunderbolt enclosure as a super fast boot and apps drive. But paying $800 for a 1TB internal drive makes little sense.