Monday, June 29, 2009

Oh oh ... Windows has detected a hard disk failure ....

This dreaded error message has popped for me before ... what is it with me and hard disks? Anyway, last night I dumped my 1075 images onto my F drive and this morning, my C drive started popping this message.

Turns out that this message comes from the S.M.A.R.T. subsystem built into the hard drive, and it is warning me that failure is imminent. This first time this happened, I got a free replacement on warranty. That drive is small and is sitting in a box acting as a USB backup drive.

Note: If you have not enabled S.M.A.R.T. in your BIOS settings, I suggest that you do so. This may have saved me a total meltdown and loss of all data.

This time, it's my 500GB main drive, and I can't stand the thought of reinstalling all of my software yet one more time. I am well organized -- I have a secondary backup 500GB drive on USB and I run AllWay Sync, a nice little automated backup shareware program that cost me something like 20 bucks. Recommended. By the way ... don't bother with the free version, it's volume limit is pretty low and the Pro version is dirt cheap anyway.

I also use a secondary backup on the Internet, called Carbonite. It is an automated client that will push any changed file up to backup automatically. For about $50 per year, you have peace of mind. My images and email are too valuable to risk a permanent loss.

All that said ... my images are on a secondary disk, so I have three healthy copies of every image right now. The issue is all of my software, documents and email ... my entire archives minus images that is. Also my 45GB iTunes library. Gotta protect those.

Now, once the message starts popping, you need proof that there is a problem. Seagate (Maxtor, Quantum all part of the same company now) make a free tool called SEATOOLS that I downloaded and ran, I ran two basic tests -- SMART and short disk test. Both came back failed.

So ... I took the machine in to Over The Top Computing, a local shop run by a friend of mine from back in the dojo. He will be replacing the drive with a new 1TB drive and will attempt a sector copy so that the new machine thinks it is the old machine. That saves me all sorts of hassle regarding reauthorization of iTunes, Carbonite getting confused, and so on. Here's hoping.

I should be able to pick it up in the morning ... I want to get back to processing those lovely models in the evenings ... time is ticking away to the time when we all get back together to review the work with Crombie.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Life is Hard

I had the arduous task today (Sunday) of attending a workshop given by Crombie McNeil, a professional photographer of note from the Ottawa area. There were to be 12 models from the Barret Palmer agency, although only 10 were there.

This task was made all the more difficult because the models were to change clothes several times and we would be forced to gaze upon them for almost 6 hours in various poses and in water. It is a difficult job, but someone must do it.

I was shocked to discover that I had captured 1075 images when I dumped the card from my D300 to disk ... a process which took 40 minutes on its own (and I copied directly from cam, a much faster process than using my horrid generic card reader.)

So ... I will be sorting and culling images from these models for days. I will blog the event, and perhaps each model individually, I've not decided. The rented 70-200VR remained attached to the D300 the entire time and I must say that it has completely stunned me. The look of the images I got *cannot* be duplicated by consumer glass. It just cannot ...

So ... for now, I will show you how hard life is for those who can afford to play every weekend at the marina :-)

Start with a few toys out on the water ...


Next with many toys just sitting at dock waiting for someone to come and play ...


So what do boats at dock talk about all day ... do they make sea men jokes? Ba da bing!

And finally ... a man (or woman of course) who can afford toys by land and sea ... I am impressed, that's for sure ...


Life is hard ...

I Guess I Win?

I find a moment here or a moment there and like to comment and discuss on the various forums at dpreview.com ... but maybe I'm getting a little more invested than I should ...


'Nuff said ... I'm off now to grab some breakfast and then head over to my workshop with Chrombie McNeil and his dozen models :-)

Saturday, June 27, 2009

I Never Met a Peony I Didn't Shoot

Oh yeah ... you guessed it. I took the super lens off to the formal gardens at the Experimental Farm to continue testing it. I wanted to see how flowers would look at f2.8 with the sharpest tool in the shed ...

And low and behold, the Peonies are still blooming ... I tried looking for the most interesting ones, since I'd shot all the dull stuff last time :-)


Before anyone comments on yet another shoot in terrible (glaring sun) light ... I have this lens for three days, so bite me. I take what I get.

I had to go back to the car to tighten the lens plate I'd stolen from my Tamron 180, and when I got back I ended up at the Columbine bed first. Still blooming, although the plants are clearly heading toward the end game ... I found this particular one simply stunning ...


Their tales ... er tails ... are always so interesting ...



A short distance away, the rose bushes are blooming quite profusely ... these are mainly native Rose bushes, and no the classic Tea Roses that are so high in maintenance. This particular flower has a visitor ...


Another pretty plant ...


And one that actually looks like a Tea Rose ... I don;t think it was, but them I'm not exactly qualified to make that statement, so who knows?


And then I found the daises ...


I wandered over to the Iris beds and was sad to see that all but a few plants were completely finished ... man, you gotta be on the ball to avoid missing them ...


There are some beds in the back with a mixture of plants I don't recognize ... like this pretty flower ...


Back through the roses again and I noticed one plant with truly gorgeous flowers on it ... the lighting is not great, but I kept this image anyway just because of the way the flowers look ... I want to remember these -- it's like they are lit from inside ...


Walked by the Foxglove again ...



Enough of all these pretenders ... where are the Peonies?

This next one looks a little untrimmed ... a kind of European vibe I'm thinking ...


And another bowl Peony soon to be ...


One of my favorites of the shoot ... if you look *really* carefully, you will find three insects. If you see the third, let me know in a comment ...


Ah yes ... the requisite back lit Peony ...


A pair in a bed nearby ...


And that's it ... but I did capture one more image there. It's June, and a lovely sunny Saturday. So what do we see every 5 minutes? A wedding party. I believe I saw five wedding parties come through the gardens for formals. The setups and equipment the photographers were using weren't rocking my world ... but what the heck, I wasn't paying either :-)


Having recently begun playing the end game, I look upon all these weddings with bittersweet thoughts ...

Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer, do ...

This is the famous song sung by the Hal 9000 as he died in the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey ...

Of course, this post has exactly nothing to do with the movie, being as this is a garden update. Sorry :-)

The daisies are finally blooming ... here is a shot with the rented 70-200VR (still testing it :-) in bright sunshine ... although the worst possible light for such an image, I quite like it anyway ...


Along the path leading to the pool are some Day Lilies ... the first has bloomed.


And, of course, the obligatory images of the patio furniture (looking good for 12 years old) and the pool ... nicely decked out with fully leafed out bushes of all descriptions ... the one behind the ladder is a Serviceberry ...



To quote Eva Cassidy and Fantasia ....

Summertime,
And the livin' is easy ...

Dick Bell Park -- Boats at Sunset

One of the first venues at which I shot when I got my first dSLR (Nikon D70s with Sigma 18-200) was Dick Bell Park. This is a pretty little marina on the Ottawa side of the Ottawa River. It has a somewhat protected harbor and when you walk along the point of land that protects it, you reach places where you have an unobstructed western view of the Ottawa river with the Gatineau Hills and Eardley Escarpment backing it. In other words ... it's really fricken pretty at sunset :-)

I shot this image the first time I went there ... it prints *very* well, and has been hanging in the lobby area at my office for over a year. It also hangs in my parents' living room.


I'll admit to being a bit heavy handed with the processing on that one :-)

On Friday evening, I was a bit later than I had expected to be (my usual excuse ... an absorbing conversation with a friend), but it turned out that there were still several boats out on the river and the sun was still plenty high in the sky. The clouds had threatened all day and were still around -- they would eventually wipe out any chance of a true "Sun on the river sunset shot" ...

I shot a couple of openers with the 28mm f3.5 AI lense on the camera and it on the tripod. The boats are always so nice looking at dock, and I can never resist trying to get some shots of all the colors. In this case, a spectacular thunderhead was soaring above the marina a ways down the river to the east, and so made a terrific backdrop.



That seemed like a pretty darned good start to me, so I turned my attention to the western view to see what the sun was doing. Well, I got a classic, if ordinary, sun over water shot ...


And an equally classic, and equally ordinary, boat on river shot ...


It's a pretty river with the hills in the background ... one must admit.

But that was about the extent of the scenery for now, so back I turned to the marina, facing east again. There, I was treated to a sudden appearance of a slash of sunlight that happened to light up one particular boat ... it was *so* cool!



A moment later, a muskrat swam by ...


Walking over the hill again to face west, I found that the clouds had intervened and that there would be no shooting of the sun on the river, so I grabbed what I could. The sun tried to break through for a moment, but it really never made it again ...


Soon, everyone was leaving. I caught an image of a lone fisherman packing it in for the day.


The boats and seadoos were coming in for the night ...



A quick peak back west showed me that the rain might yet threaten ...


One last peak to the marina ...


Kids ...

And off I go.


The seats are kept down nowadays because Nick remains in Europe and I like to hear all 7 speakers equally loud :-)

The first two and last one images were shot with the Nikon D300 and 28mm f3.5 AI manual focus lense. The series in between were all shot with the D300 and the 70-200 f2.8 AFS VR, Nikon's best professional level short zoom. I picked this up earlier in the evening from Henry's (through Headshots in Toronto) for the weekend.

For those who actually read this blog, remember that I mentioned that I am taking a workshop on Sunday with a dozen models ... and for such an undertaking I wanted an excellent lens. The one big surprise with this lens was that the tripod foot came without a lens plate, so my tripod was basically useless this evening. Everything with the zoom had to be hand held .... today I am substituting one of my lens plates (probably from the Tamron 180mm) temporarily.

Anyway .... I hope you enjoyed the boats.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

OMG! Farrah is gone too!


My blog entry for Michael Jackson was the result of a feeling of great loss for the planet. A remarkable artist leaves ... a little like the day Elvis died, and just as sudden from my perspective.

But I had no idea that Farrah Fawcett died this morning too, after her long battle with cancer. We knew it was coming, but who could possibly want such a beautiful memory to pass? I probably watched every episode of Charlie's Angels when I was a kid, and she was just plain HOT!

And her passing is simply terribly sad. I read an article on her final moments with Ryan O'Neill at her side and a few friends. The other Angels had stopped in, and her 91 year old father had flown in a few days ago for a last kiss. It was enough to raise a pretty solid lump to my throat ... I just plain liked that woman. Her acting was a huge cut above what would have have been expected from someone marketed mainly as a bunny ... and she gathered a lot of acclaim over her career.

So I'm really sad today ... the loss of Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett in one day ... *sigh* ...

Edit: Can't leave this one alone ... gotta write a haiku, even one that sucks ...

Angels shedding tears
Heaven receives great beauty

Farrah has arrived

Bokeh Test -- Nikon 50mm 1.8 AF

So I have this really cool photography workshop with Chrombie McNeill coming up this Sunday. It promises to teach me how to work with (lots of) models in a studio and location setting under natural and studio lighting. All in all, sounds like a blast.

I tried to rent two of Nikon's best lenses for my DX cameras, the 17-55 f2.8 AFS for the D70s and the 70-200 f2.8 AFS VR for the D300. This is the combination I used for my niece's wedding in 2007, but alas that marriage, and therefore that gallery is no more. I was quite proud of many of those shots, and more importantly I was stunned by the quality of images produced by those lenses. They embarrass my consumer glass in a fair fight.

But ... all that said, HeadShots had no lenses, all the interesting stuff was already rented out. There is a price to be paid for spontaneity. But then she realized that there had been a cancellation on a 70-200VR and she would be able to send it to me! This is a $2100 lens in Canada and I could rent it from 3pm Friday until Monday noon for $40. A great deal.

Now to choose a lens for the D70s as a closer in shooter. Well, I have the manual focus 28mm f3.5 AI, which is also wicked sharp, but we were warned that the models change looks very quickly and we need our trigger fingers dancing. So I chose instead the 50mm f1.8 AF, a lens that is very close to professional quality. The only issue I had was how would the bokeh look? I know it's pretty good generally, but I wanted to check spectral response in case we had water dropelts shining in the sun.

What I found is just a tad disappointing. It degrades slightly at anything above about f2.2. But it's still wicked sharp and if we don't have too many spectrals, it should look terrific. Very smooth, almost buttery.

If what I am writing sounds like Greek to you, or more accurately Geek, take a look at these definitions for Bokeh. Here, and here.

So, on to the test. I shot an image at 1600 ISO in my kitchen with only the range hood lamp on in the far background. The swan-shaped lamp is the focal point, specifically the beak. Everything fades out from there ...

In the shot with the lens wide open at f1.8, the background is almost unrecognizable, and the spectrals are circles. Not perfect circles, it's not that good a lens. But decent. No rings around the edge or bloom in the middle, so it looks pretty nice.


Stopping down just a tad already puts a distinct heptagonal shape, caused by the seven-bladed diaphragm with square blades. But otherwise still a nice bokeh.


Quality professional lenses, and even the more expensive consumer lenses use either 7 or 9 blades, and the best lenses use rounded blades. The bokeh is smooth and does not change shape as much as you stop down. This lense cost $150cad, so who can really complain. Well, I can ... but it won't get me anywhere.

Stopping a full 1.33 stops to f2.8 leads us to a more pronounced heptagon, and it's smaller. The shrinking of spectrals also tends to make them more obvious. Unfortunate, but the light just does not spread as much, so tough. But note that the surface of the heptagon remains uniform and smooth, so not all that bad really ...


Also, the bokeh remains smooth, which is a very good thing.

Finally, at f5.6, things get kind of ugly. Very small points of heptagonal light and a rather busy background make it obvious that you want to avoid stopping down to far if you want smooth bokeh.

Still, give credit where credit is due ... the lense is still giving a smooth background. Just more of it comes into focus ... which is inevitable as you stop down.


It's a fantastic lense, though, for a lousy $150cad. It's going to be my first gambit on the D70s. If I find I need to get up closer and I want a wider view, I'll move to the 28mm. And if that is not enough, I'll mount the 18-200VR, but that's not quite in the same league with these others.

And then there were four ... Goodbye Michael


The Jackson Five were a pretty big deal when I was young. Michael sang like an angel back then, one of my favorites of his was "Ben", although in retrospect it was kinda wussie ...

He had the greatest selling album of all time with Thriller, and yes, I own a copy of the vinyl and one of the CD. It's really very good, although I must admit it smells of all the things I dislike about 80s music these days. But at least he did it pretty much better than anyone else.

The sad thing about Michael is that he was obviously a tortured soul ... and he was tortured in the media for it. Entire web sites are devoted to the most crude jokes you can imagine about him and his alleged predilection for young boys.

And now he's gone. Dead at 50, just as he was preparing and rehearsing for his comeback tour, which had sold out in short order. It's really a very sad day for the world ... he was one of its greatest artists. He revived the group dance music video ... and his moonwalk invented a whole new array of wicked dance moves, imitated by many but never really exceeded in my opinion. I could watch that kind of dancing for hours ...

I was hoping to end this entry with something really clever, based on one of his song titles. And in searching this site with his entire song list, I found exactly one song that is a perfect fit ...Gone Too Soon. No matter what you think of Michael Jackson ... you absolutely must agree that he was a great entertainer ... and on that note, let's finish with the final two verses from Gone Too Soon...

Born to amuse, to inspire, to delight
Here one day
Gone one night

Like a sunset
Dying with the rising of the moon
Gone too soon
Gone too soon

Entry-level dSLRs in Trouble?

According to a recent poll on this web site, the advanced bridge camera as epitomized by the Fuji S100fs is poised to crush the entry-level dSLR. I'm certain that, efter these results are published here, Nikon and Canon will be mobilizing in force to nip this threat in the bud.




Of course, this result is a farce. I'm pretty sure that one of two things happened:

1) A training center for mentally-challenged Orangutans had a computer left on my blog page by one of the staff (such great reading is needed for stress relief) and the apes actually believe that a mere bridge camera has a chance against the tide of the entry-level dSLR (hint: Fuji makes the last remaining advanced bridge camera.)

2) Certain members of the Fuji Talk Forum on the DPReview site chose to put forth their agenda as a volley in the long-standing feud between the "modern fuji camera owners" group and the "Nikon Ninja Brotherhood", or the Ninjahood for short. The former group is made up of self-styled "professional" photographers who truly believe that the S100fs is all one needs to be in the "biz" .... the latter are made up of a group of Fuji owners who happen to also own Nikon dSLRs (which easily make up the majority of the dSLRs owned in that forum.)

It's a childish dispute in which those of us who have advance beyond the small sensor attempt to keep the speculation (which always borders on hallucination) from getting too far out of hand, which always stirs up the "ownerhood" to get nasty, throw ridicule around and call names. It's like teachers being called out by middle-schoolers, a very good analogy actually.

The amusing thing is that intellectual prowess behind the 6 votes for option 4 is about the same whether (1) or (2) are true. And just to clarify ... the advanced bridge cam is stone cold dead as a genre. The poll was set as a lark and it turned into a joke. I suppose that I got what I deserved :-)

I'm a PC *and* a MAC

I've built a dozen PCs over the years, all worked great, all were reasonably stable and all were very inexpensive relative to name brands, and especially relative to MACs of the same power. So I can rightly be called "a PC" ... and yet I purchased my first MAC this year, a core duo MAC Mini, a rather nice little machine. I just got it back today from its 4GB upgrade and now I can rightly consider it a member of the family.

So what do I think about MAC's attack ads on the PC? I dislike them, of course. They twist the truth in ridiculous fashion and you'd have to be a moron to fall for them and run out and buy a MAC. But, at the same time, they are entertaining.

Anyway ... PCs are getting better and name brands tend to be fully set up out of the box. MACs are beautiful and the prices are almost tolerable since they went Intel, but you still pay a premium, and you don't quite get what you pay for any more, as Thom Hogan (Nikon professional photographer and journalist) alludes to in his What was Apple Thinking? article.

They seem to be losing their way as they have more consumer success ... something that also happened to Nikon when they stopped building the best compact cams and started pumping out me-too cams. Both companies arguably have the best professional gear in their respective markets, but both are getting weak in the middle of the market because of a too-strong influence from the high volume consumer end ...

Back to the MAC itself ... when things do not work on the MAC, good luck figuring it out. You need to go spelunking in the guts of FreeBSD to figure out what the heck went wrong. Sheesh ...

An amusing aside (to me, anyway) ... way back in the 90s, The Regents of the University of California put out a call for participation in FreeBSD. I answered and chose to write a pin-compatible version of CAL, the calendar program. I did that, and wrote shell scripts to test the old and new versions against each other and run diff on the results. Diff returns nothing when there are no differences, and after three days, all 10,000 calendars had been compared with no differences found. They really liked my version, and there are many evolutionary versions out there today, including the PerL wrapper for Linux that explicitly defines itself as an homage to my original implementation. The MAC OS X Server Install Manual still mentions my name as one of the authors of the OS. But the new version in the Desktop Tools for OS X does not ... I wonder, though, if this was a clean room rewrite, as mine was, or did they use my code as a base? In which case .... hmmm .... And by the way, I consider this the perfect example of one of my philosophies for how to respond to request for help ... the answer is always yes. Good things often come from helping out ... not that this has amounted to a hill of beans, but I still like being in some of the MAC manuals ...

Anyway ... I think the ads have done nothing but further polarize an already polarized marketplace ... if that's what Apple wanted, then they have done well. On the other hand, I have to agree with Seth Stevenson of Slate that the ads simply come off as smug. Prudence of Slate adds the word sanctimonious, and that seems to fit well too :-)

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Corn is Coming Along

There is this pretty little farm at the corner of Fallowfield Road and Eagleson Drive in the southwest corner of the city. I drive by it once in a while and love how bright and white the roofs are on the various buildings ... looks terrific in bright weather.

As I was leaving work today, I stopped for a moment and captured a couple of images of the farm and the corn. For no reason other than it was there and it looked pretty in the blazing hot sun.