Pelican Hard Drive Case
I’ve alluded in previous posts to moving hard drives offsite as a secondary backup technique. Buying more hard drives and storing them offsite as a secondary backup is kind of a pain in the butt (so is buying more hard drives). Having survived one house fire, I can tell you that you can never have too many backups. I was fortunate in that my data was ok following the fire. Had the firefighters not gotten there as quickly as they did, I could have lost my entire photo catalog. Every. Picture. You get the idea. I’ve decided now to keep backups in multiple physical locations now. One backup in my apartment, one backup at work. Hard disk drives don’t particularly hold up well with a lots of transport (I just had one WD Passport fail on me as a result) so I wanted to find a good case for the transport of drives. For the moment, I settled on a Pelican 1300 case. Here are the specs (directly from manufacturer website):
| 1300 Case Interior Dimensions: 9.17″ x 7.00″ x 6.12″ (23.3 x 17.8 x 15.5 cm) |
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With the Pick N Pluck foam, I’ve configured mine to hold 4 3.5″ drives. There are many other ways this can be configured but this is what I settled on. A couple thoughts about the Pick N Pluck foam: it seems to leave a little foam residue (dust) behind and the foam itself seems to be rather static-y. For these reasons, I plan to put my drives in a sealed static-free bag before putting them in the case. Otherwise, this case seems to be perfect for my needs.
I bought my case here.
Typical disclosure: I’m not endorsed by Pelican nor Amazon and received no compensation for this post. Case was purchased by me personally.
Thunderbolt Bridge and Target Disk Mode
One of the problems with working with multiple computers is sharing data between them. With the purchase of my 2013 Mac Pro, I’ve realized that it’s relatively easy to transfer information between two thunderbolt-capable Macs. First connect the two with a thunderbolt cable. Next, start the computer from which you want to transfer in “target disk mode”. Hit the power button and hold down the “T” key. This will start the computer in target disk mode. The computer which you want to transfer files to should then see this computer as a hard drive and you will have access to all the files. File transfer can then be done over thunderbolt very quickly. Pretty awesome.
Music Recording Backup Scheme
Sooooo because I’m a nerd and I invested a lot into the current workstation setup I’ve got, I decided to outline some data backup schemes that I have. Mainly for my own use to provide a cloud-based schematic for how I have my system setup but others may benefit as well. I also have a Wacom Cintiq 13HD that I need to start learning how to use, so that was the other motivation behind the underlying pics. Here goes…
For music recording I’m using the DAW (digital audio workstation) Logic Pro X. I like it because it’s relatively simple and comes with a bunch of software instruments and royalty free loops that are ready to go. It also integrates seamlessly with the Apogee hardware I like to use (for now a Duet 2). My recording projects involve a project file which is based off my 2013 Mac Pro hard drive (a pcie-based SSD), a samples drive (where my drum samples of BFD 3.0 live…a Samsung 840 120GB SSD connected via thunderbolt with a HighPoint RocketStor thunderbolt dock), and an audio drive (where my guitar/bass/vocal/mic recordings go…a 500GB Samsung 840 SSD plugged in to the second slot of the HighPoint). My projects are then backed up to a Drobo Mini using the Carbon Copy Cloner program and will then be backed up to another drive to be stored offsite (said drive still needs purchasing).
Here’s the data flow…only thing missing is the Duet which I use to get audio information in to Logic
Drobo Mini
Drobo has been around for awhile in the consumer/enterprise RAID game. With traditional RAID setups, it is [ideally] necessary to keep drives in an array of the same manufacturer, same spindle speed, and same capacity in order to function properly. The Drobo technology allows for the mixing and matching of hard drives in a single array to form a single logical drive. For me, this is intriguing because it provides a platform to give old hard drives new life. With my new computer setup, I needed a backup drive for music recording. I had a couple old 2.5″ laptop hard drives sitting around from previous laptop upgrades and decided to give these a spin (pun not intended hehe) in the Drobo Mini. The Drobo mini is a 4-bay 2.5″ disk enclosure with thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ports that allows you to insert 1 to 4 2.5″ laptop size hard drives and form a “mini” (in form factor) RAID array. When I received mine, I followed the instructions on the box and inserted a 160 GB drive, a 320 GB Drive, and a 500 GB drive. After downloading the Drobo dashboard software and plugging in the power supply and thunderbolt cable (all of which is supplied….hooray for manufacturers supplying their products WITH thunderbolt cables) with my 2013 Mac Pro, I had everything formatted and up and running in about 5 minutes. Everything was pretty straightforward and the Drobo dashboard has a pretty nice layout…also displays all the information about each of your drives individually etc etc. As a nerd and LED lighting enthusiast, it has a really cool lighting scheme on the front and the build quality seems excellent. The only weird thing was after plugging in the power cord, it requires a twist (kinda odd), and I haven’t quite gotten a hold of the power button (do you press it or hold it?). Otherwise so far so good. The other downside…doing a 5gb stress test with the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, it was only clocking in at ~100mb/s read/write. This is MUCH slower than my thunderbolt Promise Pegasus R4 (version 1, RAID 5…~500mb/s read/write) and slower than my eSATA Sans Digital box (RAID 10, ~200-300mb/s read/write). My previous post containing specific details about my other RAID storage arrays can be found here. I’m not 100% sure what RAID level the Drobo initially formatted (I think I was doing RAID 5…or at least that’s what I wanted) but I may have to look into this further with the Drobo Dashboard software. I imagine that having a software-based RAID setup with mixing and matching, you pay the price with speed. I’ve also read that even though it has Thunderbolt (TB 1) AND USB 3.0 ports, it functions as a TB OR USB drive. You can’t use both ports simultaneously. Minor thing in my mind but some people have complained about it online. In summary, so far the Drobo Mini does what it’s supposed to, has nice build quality, and is user friendly….albeit slow when it comes to transfer speeds.
I bought my Drobo Mini here.
Disclaimer: I’m not endorsed by any companies or websites mentioned herein. All equipment was purchased by me personally and I received no compensation from anyone for writing this post.
NEC PA272W-BK-SV
For the past year, I have been shooting primarily with a Nikon D800e and a Hasselblad H4D-40. Both of these cameras are relatively high megapixel cameras (36 and 40 respectively) and allow for large beautiful prints. The “problem” with making large prints is not only are they expensive, but imperfections in the source image become more apparent. You also start thinking more critically about brightness and color as you spend more money on larger prints (for yourself of for clients).
I’ve always liked the Cinema Displays from Apple. I have two older 20″ Cinema Displays, one 24″ LED Cinema display, and one 27″ Thunderbolt Display (NOT to be confused with the 27″ Cinema display, which connects via mini-display port ant lacks thunderbolt). The monitors themselves look sharp from a form factor perspective and always display rich, vivid, colors. There are a couple issues I have with them though. Lately my issues with them are growing and growing. First, they are expensive. Second, they lack modern connectivity. The Thunderbolt display does in fact have a thunderbolt port which is nice (and I believe at the time of writing is the only thunderbolt monitor on the market….LG announced one at CES back in January but it has not been released yet) and allows for the monitor to function as a dock so to speak, but the inclusion of USB 2.0 ports vs USB 3.0 ports is ridiculous. Third, I always find that they have a slightly yellow/greenish tint to them. The 24″ Cinema Display I have I even had Apple replace the display because of the tint issue at a cost of >$600 (thankfully it was under Applecare and I didn’t pay a dime). Last, they are very reflective…I find it hard to do some things in lab with my 24″ because of how reflective they are.
For all of the above reasons I looked into different monitors for my new 2013 Mac Pro. I wanted wide color gamut monitors with a matte display and even backlighting that were amenable to calibration. I found two that really peaked my interest: the NEC PA272-BK-SV and the Eizo CG277. In the end I went with the NEC simply because it was cheaper (and on sale when I bought it…the Eizo is BRAND new but I expect prices to come down in the future). Unlike the Eizo, it has an external calibration sensor (basically an NEC-branded X-Rite i1display pro from what I can tell), but otherwise shares similar specs. So far I really like the monitor. It plugs in to the Mac Pro with a [supplied] mini-display port to display port cable (mini-display port plugs in to thunderbolt port on mac, display port plugs in to monitor). After plugging it in, installing the supplied SpectraView II software, and plugging in the [supplied] colorimeter, I had it up and running and calibrated in about 5 mins. Very quick and painless. So far I’m a big fan! I was hoping I could use the supplied software and colorimeter to also calibrate my other displays, but unfortunately only certain NEC displays are supported (minor bummer). The only other downside is that I imagine I will have to run a USB cable from the monitor to the computer if I want to use any of the USB ports (also USB 2.0 unfortunately) on the monitor itself. I will amend my thoughts in the future if I experience any issues.
I bought my NEC monitor here
Disclaimer: I’m not endorsed by any companies or websites mentioned herein. All equipment was purchased by me personally and I received no compensation from anyone for writing this post.
HighPoint RocketStor
Not going to lie, I’m a big fan of hard drive docks. Having something I can simply plug naked drives (2.5″ or 3.5″) into for copying files, making bootable clones, etc without having to deal with a bunch of individual enclosures is great. Even though I love my 2013 Mac Pro so far, the form factor also means you’re going to have to be using lots of external storage. I recently came across one thunderbolt dock solution that I thought I’d give a try: the HighPoint RocketStor. It is a dual-drive (accepts 2.5″ or 3.5″) hard drive dock that connects to the computer via a single thunderbolt (thunderbolt 1) connection. I picked up one of these guys for music recording. I bought two SSD drives to use with it. Samsung 840 SSDs have been on sale lately, so I picked up a 120gb version (for storage of audio samples) and a 500gb version (for storage of audio files during recording). Both drives mounted like they should in the dock, the dock turns on when the computer turns on, and the dock turns off when the computer turns off. Using the Blackmagic disk speed test, I’m getting ~500mb/s read/write times from both drives out of the dock with a 5gb stress test. Looks perfect for my needs….so far, so good.
Pros:
Works exactly like it should
Cons:
Expensive compared to USB 3 docks
Feels a little cheap and plasticky
Only one single thunderbolt port (must be plugged in at the end of a thunderbolt chain)
I bought my dock here. Hard drives here and here.
Disclaimer: I am no way endorsed by any of the companies or websites mentioned in this post. All equipment was purchased by myself and I did not receive any compensation for writing this post.
2013 Mac Pro
Alright now that I have a new computer setup for music and photo production/post-production (not to mention all the lab number crunching), thought I’d blog a little bit about it! I went with the build-to-order option and went with a 6-core/16 gb RAM/1tb SSD/D700 configuration. I went with the 6-core option to get higher clock speed instead of more cores. The downside of adding CPU cores is that there is a tradeoff between clock speed and CPU cores. Some applications will benefit from higher clock speeds and some applications will benefit more from more CPU cores, so you need to decided what you plan to use the computer for primarily when deciding this. The good news though is that the CPU is upgradeable! So you can get everything setup and then upgrade CPU’s in the future if you’d like. Doing so will most likely void the warranty but it’s not a difficult upgrade (info here). I went with the base RAM for the 6-core option because I plan to upgrade the RAM soon. The RAM is considered a user upgradeable component, and more RAM can easily be ordered and installed after the fact (here is where I plan to order from). The larger SSD was for more storage. I don’t know if this can be upgraded in the future, but there are currently no 3rd party options for more internal storage. Even though I may not take full advantage of the dual D700’s in the computer for still photos, I like running multiple displays and may start doing some video/3D soon, so wanted to go with the max here. This is also one option you cannot upgrade in the future. Almost have my whole workstation set up so I’ll be able to give more thoughts in the future but so far I’m a fan of the computer. It is whisper quiet compared to previous generation Mac Pros and much smaller. The only thing I dislike is the amount of cables going out of it. You end up having lots of things plugged in to it and that means…lots of cables. If you’re thinking about ordering one for yourself, you can find lots more in-depth info on the 2013 Mac Pro system over at the Diglloyd Mac Performance Guide.
I ordered mind on Jan 31st and took delivery March 18th for those curious about build/delivery times.
2013: New Laptop and Storage Arrays
I apologize I haven’t posted in some time….the second half of 2012 was pretty bad. I will post on that at some point. Anyway, 2013 is a new year…with new toys!
I had been using a 2008 15″ Macbook Pro for all of my photo work. Unfortunately, the apt I was living in caught on fire and that computer got soaked from firefighter water. I will post more on that later but I have to say that firefighters are prob my fav people in the world now. Anyway, thankfully I had good insurance and got to get new laptop. For a replacement, I picked up a 15″ Macbook Pro Retina (2.7/16gb/7XX GB SSD). I was going to get the 2.6 because I read that the performance improvement wasn’t that great, but I needed a computer one weekend to finish two photo jobs I was working on. Apple had the config I ended up purchasing in stock but not the 2.6. So this one won out.
Initial impressions: this think rocks. Screen is crisp like nothing you’ve ever seen. Needless to say, my photo collection looks awesome, but even little things like the text on gmail you notice. It’s very thin, a little heavier than you’d expect, and fast as hell. I picked up Lightroom 4 for a song during Amazon’s black friday sale and it loads really quickly. Scrolling is a breeze. External editing with Photoshop and Nik plugin’s is SO much faster than my old setup it’s not funny. I’ve had too much school work to do lately to use this laptop that much (I’ve got a 2009 13″ MBP I use for that), but I’m looking forward to this guy becoming my daily driver.
Blackmagic test on internal SSD
Above you can see the Blackmagic test on the internal SSD. Purty speedy. It’s not a scientific test but just gives you an idea re: read/write speed. I do science for a living so no scientific tests here.
After the fire I also thought it was a good idea to revamp my backup situation. I have a valuable (to me) photo catalog that also has client photos in there, countless hours of PhD thesis work, and all sorts of other stuff I’d rather not lose. I originally thought about Drobo but have read some bad things (not about the company, but rather their products). I decided to go with RAID arrays over piles of other hard drives. After some research, I went with a Promise Pegasus R4 Thunderbolt array and a Sans Digital eSATA/USB3.0 box with WD Red Drives. I’ve got everything plugged into an APC BR1500G UPS for power management.
I was a little hesitant about the Promise because of the negative reviews on the Apple store website but went for it anyway. I just went with the 4TB R4 (4-bay) unit that comes with 4-1TB drives preconfigured in a RAID 5 configuration. First thing I noticed…instructions say it takes 8-10 hours to synchronize when you first plug it in. After I disabled all the energy saver settings and told the computer not to turn the hard drives to sleep, I estimated it took ~36 hours for it to synchronize. A little longer than they said but hey it finished. First file I transferred was a 33 GB movie file…took about 1 minute to go from internal SSD to Pegasus!!! Performance tends to fluctuate a little but I see speeds as advertised (below). More long term testing to come. I’m planning to no longer store my photo library/catalog locally and run it from this puppy. Should make edits a breeze. Also, if you purchase this through the Apple Education store it’s cheaper (~$100 off).
Promise Pegasus Results…I see the advertised 500MB/s
So that’s the Pegasus. The RAID 5 setup should allow 1-drive failure and I can rebuild and not lose data. Knock on wood….
I also wanted ANOTHER backup system. I put this one together myself. Ended up with Sans Digital box above (hardware RAID eSATA/USB3.0). Ideally, enterprise-level drives should be used for an array like this (WD RE, Seagate Constellation, etc). These drives are super expensive. I went with the middle of the road. WD Red drives are still considered consumer drives, but have some firmware modifications that make them better for NAS 24/7 applications. I’m not planning to run this as a NAS, rather a local storage unit. Also, this unit will only be for backup and won’t be running all the time. These drives should be ok. They are 2TB drives (4x2TB) setup in a RAID 10 configuration. Again, I can lose a drive, replace it and rebuild without losing data (in theory..knock on wood). I’m using this setup via eSATA with a Sonnet Echo Expresscard Pro and a Sonnet Tempo SATA 6Gb Pro ExpressCard/34. A couple notes…Sans Digital documentation is not great. For RAID 10, you set the mode dial in the back to the RAID 1 position, and throw in 4 drives. Then hold the reset button for 5 secs while powering on. Voila, RAID 10 is now setup, but not terribly intuitive. I had to email customer support to get this info. They got back to me in about a business day which is pretty good. Plugged in everything and it showed up as a single RAID 10 array. It froze on me once, but I think that was because I had two things plugged into the adaptor which then became unseated. The eSATA expresscard doesn’t lock in which is problematic. I’ve read about this unit overheating because there is so much SATA cabling in the back that it blocks the fan, but it’s not bad so far. Another note, sometimes with eSATA and RAID arrays, you wanna make sure your hub/adaptor/whatever supports port multiplication. I’ve also read with this kinda thing eSATA is more stable with OSX than USB 3.0. Food for thought! Anyway, I’m seeing about 200MB/s ish read/write speeds. Wish it were higher (esp after using the Pegasus and internal SSD) but still much faster than USB 2.0. So anyway, this system will mirror the Pegasus system above. I figure with two different RAID boxes, different RAID configurations, diff interfaces, and drives from diff manufacturers (Pegasus doesn’t use WD RED…I believe they are also consumer drives) I should be alright. I’ll periodically throw stuff on individual drives and throw those under lock and key in different physical locations too. Starting to transfer a bunch of data around and put setups into heavier use, will report back if there are any probs. Aside from a few hiccups, everything works as advertised so far! (knock on wood)
Blackmagic and Sans Digital (eSATA)
FYI: I purchased the laptop and Promise Pegasus from Apple; Sans Digital/WD Red, Sonnet gear from Newegg, Tiger Direct, and Sonnet; and APC from Amazon. Had a bit of a snafu with Tiger Direct ordering but the customer service ppl on twitter got my prob resolved quickly and efficiently…quite impressed. It’s also worth noting I am in no way affiliated with any of the above and received no compensation (monetary or otherwise) for this post. Also, special thanks to the folks at reduser.net for posting some great info on storage. Cheers….
Sample Shots from Glacier County/Glacier National Park, Montana
A couple shots from Montana. The lighting was pretty dreary so I decided to go almost all black and white. Still tweaking them and can’t wait to get them printed. (PS All the post on these was done with Aperture 3. I used to think Lightroom all the way but Aperture is a pretty cool piece of software. I’ll do a Aperture v Lightroom post once I upgrade to LR 4)
Landscape Photography: What I learned in Montana
Went on my first “real” landscape photo outing to Glacier National Park in Montana this past weekend. Got some great shots of some amazing scenery! I learned a lot in the process and thought I’d share…
1) If you think you’re carrying too much gear then you are. Leave some of the lenses behind and bring a good wide angle and a telephoto
2) Neutral density filters are a must, graduated neutral density especially. That being said, don’t leave a grad. ND on the camera the WHOLE time and remember that grad NDs are not just for making the sky darker. If you’re shooting a lot of waterfalls you may need to flip it around. I also quickly learned why cokin style filters are made of resin not glass (they don’t shatter when bumped)
3) A circular polarizer is great however I found it got in the way more often then not. You lose a few stops of light and they are annoying to turn with a hood or cokin-style filter holder on there.
4) Lose the lens hood if you’re using a circular polarizer unless you actually are getting lots of flair
5) Don’t be scared to pull out the tripod. I found the extra weight while hiking was a pain but well worth it. Don’t be shy about using it, esp with a bunch of filters on. You don’t wanna find yourself kicking up the ISO too much out in the field…you add noise and lose resolution
6) Bring a small towel to wipe off wet gear
7) Bring lens cleaning gear, especially microfiber to clean lens and filters. They get dirty in the field quickly
8) The iPhone 4S takes really good pictures. Kinda made me mad at the quality actually since I was lugging around 30-40 lbs of SLR gear and my friends’ iPhone was taking such good pictures.
9) Don’t get so enamored with the subject/views in front of you that you forget to look *behind* you. Sometimes if you just turn around you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Last but not least, if you see an amazing scene….slow down. Our trip was a whirlwind and I found myself rushed VERY often (I was traveling with 2 non-photogs). While I got some great shots, they would’ve been better if I had not rushed myself and thought about focal length, filter choice, etc. try diff angles, diff focal lengths, but just take your time. This isn’t always possible as light can be fleeting, but I found a good landscape scene is like a good hand on poker: don’t go all in. Stop and take a breath and take your time.
There you go….photography is a learning experience and I learned a lot. Montana is beautiful and I’ll share shots shortly. On that note, I leave you with one closing thought: don’t get too wrapped up in your gear to the point you forget to enjoy the scenery and wildlife!
Really Right Stuff TVC-33
FINALLY bit the bullet and treated myself to a new tripod…picked up a Really Right Stuff TVC-33 +BH-55 LR package. For those looking to order one, they were backordered, but it only took about two weeks from the time I placed my order to the receipt of my package. More pics of the tripod coming along with some field testing next week.
Bowers and Wilkins P5 Headphones
So I recently realized that I’ve been neglecting the blog. I’m gonna try to do better at updating on a semi-regular basis. Here’s a post I’ve been wanting to do for some time….
Awhile ago I was in the market for headphones. I’m a student and therefore do a lot of work late at night, in coffee shops, libraries, etc. and wanted to spring for a decent pair of cans (headphone slang for those unfamiliar). I was looking for an over-the-ear closed back set that did noise cancellation or isolation. I did a lot of research and narrowed things down to a couple options: Bose QuietComfort 15, Monster Beats Studio, and Bowers and Wilkins P5. I then ran around to the Apple store (they have all three on display) and the local Best Buy to try out every pair I could. Here are my thoughts:
Bose QuietComfort 15 (~$300): A lot of people like these. They sound pretty good and offer noise cancellation. The noise cancellation works well and cuts out a lot of ambient chatter from around you. This is great because you can listen to your music at lower volumes. Unfortunately, I learned noise cancellation is not for me (this might not bother others). Noise canceling headsets use Active Noise Control. The headphones actually emit soundwaves to cancel ambient noise. Not gonna go into the details, if you want more info check out the link. For me, it feels like these headphones are constantly putting pressure on my eardrums and it gives me a headache. So I liked the sound from these guys and the premise of noise cancellation but found out its not for me. They’re comfortable to wear and come with a nice carrying case though. Next.
Monster Beats Studio (~$300): A lot of people love these and I see a lot on campus. If you read reviews, a lot of people say that the build quality is not up to snuff for a $300 pair of headphones. They do feel kinda flimsy, and if you go to an Apple store (which do get a lot of traffic in the defense of the headphones), take note of which headphones are broken. Usually they are the Beats. The sound is decent but I think it depends on what you listen to. To me the frequency response sounds artificial. I feel like the mids are scooped and the highs and bass enhanced. They have a ton of bass but sound artificial to me. Again I say, artificial to me. They are also big and clunky, not something I was a fan of. Last, like the Bose, they are also noise-canceling, something I’m not a fan of. Next.
Bowers and Wilkins P5 (~$300): These are the cans that I ended up purchasing. First, the build quality is fantastic. Very solid. The next thing you’ll notice when you put them on is how comfortable they are. The headband and ear cups are made of “New Zealand Sheep Leather”. PETA won’t approve but it feels like you have pillows on your ear. The sound I think is amazing. It’s very organic. The bass response is great without being enhanced. These make listening to your old MP3s fun again. You’ll be surprised at the things you’ll pick up in songs you’ve listened to a million times. They are noise-isolating and not noise-canceling. “Noise isolating” is a fancy way of saying they physically block incoming sound because they sit on your ears. They do bring down the ambient noise (not as much as the above two sets) but won’t block it out completely. This ends up not being a huge problem as I rarely have to push the volume above 50% for the music to block out everything. I can listen to these things for hours on end with minimal ear fatigue at those volumes. They are slimmer than the above two sets and come with a soft carrying case. I was worried about the soft carrying case but I’ve been carrying them around in my bag for a couple months now without issue. The other thing about these I thought was cool: the earcups are removable and the cord can easily be replaced by you if it ever gets severed. No sending them back to the manufacturer if you have cord problems. The cord also comes with inline control for ipod/iphone/etc. Giddyup. Anyway, I can’t speak highly enough about these. I talked my brother into getting these as well for school and he loves them as well. Definitely give them a listen.
Above: Bowers and Wilkins P5. Shot with Nikon D7000, 24mm f1.4G @f1.4 (review to come soon), ISO250 1/60 sec. Straight out of camera.
Keep in mind that there are more options out there than what are listed here. There are some very high quality earbuds out there that sound great, block out external sound very well, and are VERY compact for traveling. Not everyone enjoys sticking stuff in their ear canals though. I’ve owned several pairs of this style by Shure. They’re great but cleaning out ear wax is a pain in the butt and all the pairs I’ve owned have broken after a year or two. Two pairs were under warranty and Shure replaced them pretty hassle free no questions asked. Great customer service and I’ll buy another pair for working out when I’ve got another $100. There are also other over-the-ear OPEN back headphones, such as Grado. Grado’s get RAVE reviews by audiophiles however the open back design is not great for quiet places, like the library, where sound leakage is a problem. Keep them in mind though when making your decision. Note: I am in no way endorsed by any manufacturer of any sorts so don’t get any perks for writing about this stuff. I just do so because I like to.
Nikon D800
I bought my Nikon D300 almost exactly 3 years ago. It’s been a great camera and I’m still shooting great images with it. From a commercial standpoint, people are still paying me to shoot with it. So here’s a big “thumbs up” to you D300. That being said, it is 3 years old (ancient by tech standards) and I have been looking to upgrade for some time now. Upgrade?? Wait, hold on….you just said it’s a great camera shooting great images getting great use? Why would you want to upgrade?
Nikon has several sensor sizes in dSLR bodies: DX (APS-C, a “cropped” sensor) and FX (full frame). The main difference between the two is size. According to Wikipedia, Nikon DX sensors come in around 23.6 x 15.8 MM (give or take) whereas full-frame FX sensors come in around 36 x 24 MM (about the size of a 35mm film negative, sensor size comparison here). The main advantage of the larger FX sensor is better low light performance and dynamic range under certain conditions. The “crop” factor of the DX sensor can come in handy sometimes too, especially for telephoto. Having around a 1.5x crop factor means that 24mm lenses act like 36mm on DX, 200mm acts like 300mm, etc.
So when I first bought into dSLRs, I got the D300, a DX camera. I shot a lot of pictures. I also started getting paid for jobs. After awhile, I wanted to upgrade to FX as well as get a back-up camera (I think its stupid to go into jobs without a backup cam). Last year I had money to do this. My plan was to buy an FX camera and use the DX D300 for backup. Big problem. The FX cameras in Nikons lineup. The D3x and D3s were too expensive for my needs at the time. The only other FX option, the D700, was over two years old at that point. I didn’t want to drop $2500+ on a two year old piece of tech gear. So what did I do? Bought another DX camera that was cheaper that the D300 (the D7000) that actually has better specs on paper than the D300. The D7000 has been great (esp the 16MP resolution vs 12MP of the D300) but it just wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. The D700 replacement was really what I wanted.
There have been a lot of rumors about a D700 replacement lately. Supposedly it will be called the D800. Nikon Rumors posted purported pics here. The specs of the camera have generated a lot of buzz on the web, and here are my two cents:
1) If those pictures are to believed, the body size and control layout represents a departure from current prosumer and pro bodies. It more resembles the D7000. I’m not too crazy about this. While this will make the D800 smaller and lighter, I like having all the buttons at my finger tips and am not a huge fan of the D7000 layout. Smaller and lighter is great, I guess, but the lenses I’ve got weigh a ton in my bag. Shaving a couple ounces off the size/weight of the camera won’t make a huge difference to my back or Really Right Stuff tripod/ball head I will be ordering in the coming weeks.
2) 36MP would be awesome! A lot of people argue you don’t need that many MPs. I disagree. The lenses that I have bought for my DX cameras (24-70 2.8G, 70-200 2.8G, 24 f1.4G, 105mm 2.8G) easily out-resolve the DX sensors. I’m more than happy to see FX sensors with more MPs that are going to be able to take advantage of the resolving power of the lenses I’ve already spent thousands of dollars on. Also, with more MPs comes a greater ability to crop. It’s not always possible to get the composition you want and sometimes you have to crop. Cropping a larger file will give higher resolution crops. That is good. Bigger files also mean I better start buying higher capacity memory cards and hard drives.
3) Price…a little high but certainly doable esp with those specs. For the haters: granted the sensor is larger, the Leica S2 is currently the only weather-sealed camera in a dSLR form factor that can deliver that high MP images (37.5MP). The problem? It is $23k. The lenses are all in the $5k-9k range each. So 300,000 yen ($3900) for a D800 when I’ve already got some kick-ass Nikon F-mount lenses seems like a bargain. If you think it’s too expensive, you don’t need one: buy a $1200 D7000. I have one, it rocks for DX. 16MP, useable images at ISO6400, and 1080P 24FPS video for a fraction of the cost. Or buy a used D700 for FX. People will be selling lots of them when the D800 comes out.
4) A lot of people are complaining about AF and FPS. I don’t think Nikon is going for the sports or bird-watching market with this camera. This is not the camera for you if you care about shooting fast moving things at high FPS.
5) Video: good video specs, hopefully an 1/8″ mini-jack for mic in (for connecting external mics/audio devices). If true, it will do 1080P at 24/25/30FPS and 720P at 24/25/30/60FPS. Just remember, if you’re new to dSLR video you are going to need stabilization gear and continuous lighting. Don’t expect to re-create Reverie just because you bought a dSLR that does video.
6) Memory cards: if it’s got a CF and SD slot that’d be great. I shoot JPEG+RAW. JPEGs for quick client deliverables (or for delivery with no editing if they’re good enough) and RAW for post. CF+SD would allow me to do RAW to CF, JPEG to SD at the same time. I’d be happy.
7) ISO: gonna have to wait to see samples to see how ISO stacks up to current FX and DX shooters.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. If those specs and pics are too believed then sports and wildlife shooters may be disappointed but I’m pretty pumped. You can’t make a camera for everyone but this looks like the next camera for me. Time to start raising money and all I’ve got to say to Nikon is: bring it on!
Apple, Steve Jobs, and Creativity
Well at this point, I’m a little late to the “blog about Steve Jobs resigning” party. Nevertheless, I had a few comments I wanted to share on the matter. Unless you live in a cave, under a rock, or on Mars surely by now you’ve heard the news that Steve Jobs has officially stepped down as Apple CEO to be replaced by Tim Cook. Some of you Apple fan boys may be anxious about what this holds for the future of Apple products, some of you Google/Microsoft fanboys may be pretty happy, and some of you probably frankly don’t care (unless you’re playing bar trivia).
Whether you love Apple products or hate them, one fact cannot be ignored: Steve Jobs has been instrumental in revolutionizing the world of digital music, the smartphone, and the world of mobile computing (iPad anyone?). A recent tally suggests that Steve has his name on 313 patents. Yes. 313. It doesn’t take a statistician to tell you that anyone with that many patents is clearly interested in innovation which brings me to my next point.
Steve Jobs was also relatively famous for replying to random emails. Usually they were relatively terse replies to customer inquiries about new products or new product features, one email exchange back in 2010 grabbed my attention. A drunk Gawker media staffer decided to email Steve over an iPad ad he had recently seen and a heated debate ensued (source emails here). Steve got in the last jab, where he asked “Do you create anything, or criticize others work and belittle their motivations?”.
Love him or hate him, you have to have respect for someone who has the courage to bring their vision to the marketplace and then vigorously defend it. Not only that, but he brings up a great point. It’s far easier to be cynical than to have a vision, to innovate, and then have the balls to defend your vision. As a PhD student, I see this all the time in the world of academia. Frankly, I think its only because it is easier to be cynical than to have the guts to follow your visions. The world would be a better place if more people set out to create something rather than criticize and “belittle” the work of others.
While I do believe the world would be a better place with more people like Steve Jobs (or Jim Jannard, Elon Musk, etc….anyone who sets out to push the limits of what we perceive is possible), I’m not saying that everyone should aspire to be him. In todays world, on an innovation level, comparing yourself to Steve Jobs would be a little like Homer comparing himself to Einstein in the Simpsons. I’m too lazy to find the quote, but Steve once said something along the lines of he wanted to make a ding in the universe. Well, I certainly think he did by todays standards. If anyone out there is listening, go out and create….try to make a “ding” in something. You not only might surprise yourself, you’ll never know how big that “ding” may be until you try.
[As a disclaimer, I certainly am an Apple fan….I’ve got three different macs I use on a daily basis (currently), I’ve gone through a million ipods, I’ve been an iphone user since week 1, and I’m a big fan of my ipad. I might as well sign my paycheck over to Apple every couple of months. That being said, I don’t particularly see myself a fanboy, I’m just a big fan of their design and their products work well for my needs. I don’t feel that has any bearing on what I just wrote though]
RED Epic-X Production
….has begun, making a lot of filmakers out there very happy/giddy filmakers. All I’ve got to say is go RED team go! Despite the delays the EPIC project is an incredible feat and I wish more electronics manufacturers were out there pushing limits like you. Hopefully Epic-S and Scarlet (ESPECIALLY Scarlet) won’t be too far behind now that the Epic-X production lines are going. Until then I’ll be figuring out ways I can get my hands on $35k for an Epic-X……yeah….right…..
Epic-X production thread here at Reduser.net
Creating Slideshows: Stay Away from Encore CS5
Recently I was given a relatively simple task: create a slideshow for playback in a conventional DVD player/TV. My client gave me about 350-360 JPEGs along with a playlist of songs for the slideshow. My first attempt at the slideshow, I used Apple’s iDVD simply as a proof of principal that I could get something my client could use. After rescaling all the images to 1920×1080, I imported the images into iDVD and had a workable project in about 30 minutes. Granted it took longer to render and burn to disc (about 90 minutes), I had something that would for my client in about 30 minutes. Some Apple software that comes bundled with OSX is great….its relatively simple and you can get things done quickly. Most out of the box Apple software has its limitations, making programs like iDVD more suited for consumer use than professional use. For example, when creating a slideshow with iDVD, you can only set one transition for the entire show. Well, for a slideshow with 350ish pictures, this can get rather boring and stale after awhile. You’re also stuck with the Apple themes for menus.
I also own the Adobe CS5 Design Premium (on my photo computer) and Production Premium (on my school computer) suites. I figured that by using one of the programs (After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore), I could create something a little more professional. After a little research, I settled on using Encore CS5. At first, I was really happy with Encore CS5. Despite the limitations of 99 slides per slideshow, I got something usable with the exact same pics (with exact same dimensions) incorporating individual transitions where I could pan and zoom. I used photoshop to create my own menus, etc and got those working and got a working slideshow that I was relatively happy with. Then I started running into problems. When trying to create a 16:9 version of the exact same 4:3 slideshows, Encore crashes every single time I try to do something pretty much. Now Encore is pretty much useless. Granted my Macbook Pro is 2 years old, I still have a dual core processor with 8 gigs of RAM and it should be able to run Encore without a problem. I mean even iDVD didn’t flinch when I threw the EXACT SAME pictures at it. So now I’ve got a deadline and an Encore CS5 project rendered useless by a program that crashes every time I click on anything after I open the project. I’m running the latest version of the software and I don’t have the time or energy to uninstall/reinstall the suite (not to mention its expensive and if I have a problem reinstalling, my license could be lost), clear out registries, and do a lot of things suggested by quick searches of Encore CS5 crashes. My images are within suggested guidelines of the appropriate bit depth so I shouldn’t be having this problem, especially if iDVD can handle my project without a hitch. I could rebuild the slideshow from scratch in a new project, but I don’t have time, so I’m pretty angry with the whole situation considering the amount of time I put into the project with Encore. Maybe my mind will change further down the line (yes I’m aware of the “user error” possibility), but for now, I’d say steer clear of Encore CS5 for creating slideshows. You’d probably be better off sucking up the learning curve and using After Effects or Premiere Pro to create the slideshow and then import that into Encore CS5. I’m pretty disappointed…I’m a big proponent of Adobe software and use Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Lightroom on a consistent basis. For now, looks like I’ll be going back to iDVD…its not ideal, but it at least didn’t cause me any problems
B+W ND 3.0 MRC Filter
I finally got to take a little vacation and decided to do some shooting along the way. Along with my truckload of gear I brought along a new toy: the B+W ND 3.0 MRC filter. I picked up one from B&H last week. It is a neutral density filter, but just not any neutral density filter. It decreases the light coming through the lens of the camera by a whopping 10 stops (even more if stacked with other filters like polarizers). Why on earth would you want to reduce light transmission 10 stops you might ask?? From what I understand, this filter was made for astronomical sun studies, welding applications, anything that would involve photographing insanely bright things. Along the way, photographers discovered this filter had another use. It allows you do long exposure shots in broad daylight! Imagine the kinds of things you can do with 30 second exposures in broad daylight! Unfortunately this specialty filter does not come without any caveats. There are two issues with such a dense filter. First, seeing through the lens is damn near impossible with the filter attached. Second, autofocus is also rather difficult. You also have to use a tripod for the kind of work I’m interested in. What you end up having to do is composing your scene and focusing with the filter detached, putting on the filter, and then hitting the shutter. Your camera may also have difficulty metering so there’s going to be some trial and error getting the correct exposure. It’s definitely not a filter for the lazy but I’ve had a lot of fun with it so far. Here are some examples from flickr that people have shot and below you can see some I took today. I’m hoping to get more shots with the filter while I’m down on the coast (it’s great for moving water) so stay tuned! Pics taken with Nikon D300, Nikkor 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 DX, 77mm Hoya UV, 77mm B+W ND 3.0 MRC at ISO 100, F/8, 30 seconds (at around 5 pm). Post processing done with Adobe Lightroom 2.x, Photoshop CS5, Nik Dfine and Silver Efex Pro.
Photo Tip #4: Know Your Gear
One thing I LOVE about Nikons is the Creative Lighting System (CLS). Recent Nikon cameras and speedlights can be linked via line-of-sight infrared (IR) communication and you can trigger your Nikon speedlight off-camera without buying any additional equipment. The system is great and if you own a Nikon dSLR and Nikon speedlight (SB600/700/800/900), it’s a great introduction to off-camera flash that you can play around with. By setting the speedlight as a remote, you then use the built-in flash on the camera to trigger the speedlight. You can tell the built-in flash to either fire or just be a trigger. I don’t have time to put together a tutorial, but if you’re interested and not sure how to do it, just look at your manual[s] or google “Nikon CLS” and you can figure out how to do it. It’s relatively simple and straightforward, so go out and use it! You’ll be amazed at the results you can get just with a little tinkering. One piece of advice: take note of what channel the speedlight is on!!! Last night, I embarrassingly made the rookie mistake of not keeping track of what channel the speedlight was on and what channel my camera was sending messages to. As a result I got very frustrated and didn’t exactly get the shot I want. This takes me to today’s photo tip: know your gear before going out in the field! You’ve got to be familiar with every aspect of your gear before going out in the field if you’re going to get the shots you want. Read your manuals and find willing guinea pigs to try out your gear before going out on jobs. That way if you run into trouble, knowing your gear will help you effectively and efficiently troubleshoot. I figured out my problem last night relatively quickly (probably within 3-4 minutes), but I only had a couple minutes to get the shot I wanted, so by the time I figured out what was wrong the opportunity had passed. While I’m disappointed in myself, identifying the source of problems and learning from your mistakes will make you a better photographer. I hopefully won’t be making this mistake again, and by sharing my experience here I hope you won’t either!
Fixing Computers
Turns out when you have to manage and maintain several personal computers for yourself, and you don’t have the money to pay other people to fix them, you learn a little bit about hardware and DIY fixing. Last week I had an adventure fixing a coworkers computer. Along the way I hit quite a few snags that I thought I’d share in case you ever come across them yourself. My coworker has a 13″ Macbook unibody model A1181, the hard drive of which had crashed. I took on the task of replacing the hard drive and restoring her computer. Before I go further, let me say first that this should have been a relatively easy fix….switch out hard drives, install os x, restore from time machine backup. Unfortunately for me, the “easy fix” turned out to be a tad more complicated….
I got the computer from my coworker and proceeded to take out the hard drive, it came right out. Unscrewed the drive casing from the old drive, put it on new drive and slid the new drive in. Here’s where the first problem was. When you install hard drives, you screw in guide screws into the sides of the drive that slot into hard drive guides in the computer. Normally these are plastic or metal and problem free. On this particular model, A1181, the guides are rubber that attach to the computer casing with adhesive of some sort. Well, one of the guides had come loose from the adhesive and bunched up in the casing which prevented the new drive from going in. It was impossible to get the drive in. In order to get around this, I had to completely disassemble (instructions here) the computer and thankfully was able to fully access the drive bay that way and get the guide and hard drive back in place. This was scary because this particular part you can’t order, and had this been the problem, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything and she would’ve had to pay apple to do it. Just buy applecare and the genius’ can take care of parts for you, free of charge.
Now that the new hard drive was in place thanks to my disassembly, I reassembled the computer and went to install OS X. My coworker did not have her restore disks….thankfully I have all of mine for all of my computers so we used one of mine. I put the cd in the optical drive and here’s where we run into our next problem. The optical drive doesn’t work. If you ever fix someone else’s computer, have them be up front with everything wrong with the machine before you start, it will save you time and frustration. Now we have a problem…how do I get OS X onto the new drive if the optical drive doesn’t work??
I tried two relatively idiotic, noob-ish things first. 1) I tried using a disk image of the installer disk and running it from an external. I made a disk image of the installer disk using Carbon Copy Cloner and transferred it to the external with the back ups. Luckily I had an old drive laying around that I took out of a working mac. Using a hard drive dock, I plugged this hard drive into the dock, and plugged the dock into the old computer via FW 400. NOTE: Use FW400/800 or USB, preferably FW. OS X won’t bootfrom eSATA and USB is questionable. Restarted the old computer and held down option (which will allow you to select the boot OS source) and booted the computer from my hard drive pugged into the dock. Ran installer from external with back ups. Does not work. I think you have to transfer the disk image to a flash drive, then boot from the flash drive, in order for it to work, but I didn’t have a spare flash drive. Maybe I should’ve booted from the external with the disk image…either way, so far my attempts = fail.
2) I tried restoring the new hard drive to go into the old computer using the Disk Utility’s Restore function from the disk image and trick the computer into thinking that the hard drive was the installer disk and that everything would be hunky dory. Wrong. Doesn’t work. Ok, back to square one.
Next, the working solution….this is what I would have done from the start had I known the stupid optical drive was caput: plugged new hard drive into hard drive dock that is plugged into a working mac with a working optical drive. Plugged in external hard drive with time machine backups into working mac. Inserted OS X restore/installer disk and ran it. Computer restarted and booted from the optical drive. Followed the onscreen instructions and installed OSX to the hard drive in the DOCK (remember the names of the hard drive on the working computer, hard drive in the dock, and external hard drive with back up… you don’t want to write over the hard drive in the working mac or the hard drive that contains the backups). After OSX is installed, followed the onscreen instructions and restored from Time Machine backup on external USB hard drive. Voila, the new hard drive in the dock now has OS X and had been restored to the last time the backup was performed. Then I just took the hard drive out of the dock, installed it into the old computer, reassembled the old computer, and boom, now we have a restored functional old computer.
I got everything working, but it took about 3 times as long as it should have, and my time is pretty sparse and therefore valuable these days. In finishing, here are some general tips and tips from my experience worth sharing:
1) buy applecare! it sucks at the time, but we (especially we graduate students) rely on computers so much we have to have a functional one, and you can’t put a price on piece of mind
2) save your restore disks that come with the computer!
3) back up your hard drive to external drives! I use a combination of OS X Time Machine and hard drive cloning with either Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner. There’s a lot of back and forth as to what’s better, but since external hard drive space is so cheap these days, do both to be safe if you have any doubts. Think of all the time and effort you put into all the data, documents, pictures, music, etc that is on your computer. You can’t put a price on that. Extra hard drives and the little bit of extra time it takes to back up are WORTH IT
4) if your hard drive is at or near capacity, clear it out or buy another! full hard drives run a much larger risk of crashing…
5) periodically, go to Disk Utility check health of disk, repair [if necessary], and repair permissions [for os X]
6) restoring a hard drive with an image of the installer disk and trying to boot from that doesn’t work
7) simply trying to run the OS X installer from an image doesn’t work….you have to boot from it somehow (i think, there are plenty of tutorials out there)
Applecare: Yes/No/Maybe?
Most of you out there are familiar with the extended warranty. Whether you’re talking about electronics, appliances, cars, you name it, most stores are more than happy to sell you an extended warranty as well. Most of the time I think that extended warranties are completely worthless and just a way for the retailer to increase its profit margins so avoid them like the plague. That being said, for some reason, when buying Apple products, I have always plopped down the extra dough for Apple’s extended warrantly: Applecare. Why I do this when normally I avoid extended warranties?? Other than the fact that I basically enjoy signing paychecks over to Apple, who knows. I’ve never taken advantage of Applecare until recently. To give you a little backstory, my 24 inch LED Cinema display had been wonky lately….the lower half of the screen (lower left corner especially) was “warmer” than the rest of the screen. This translated to a yellow/brownish tint and aside from being annoying, plopping down $900 for a monitor with a varying color temperature across the screen is unacceptable. The monitor was out of warranty, but low and behold I had purchased Applecare with the monitor, so I brought it in to Apple. The genius at the bar was a little skeptical of my complaints, but took them seriously and logged the monitor in for repair. I was without the monitor for about a week, but then got a call saying it was ready. So far after a little calibration and white balance adjustment (via display preferences in OS X), it’s looking pretty good. Can’t tell if it’s perfect but certainly better than before. Was the $80 for the Applecare (for displays) worth it?? Take a look at the iphone grab of the bill and judge for yourself (look at the “amount due”. hint: yes). In this case I can certainly say from experience Applecare for your Apple products is worth it.
RED EPIC .r3d files
Above: REDCINE-X EPIC .r3d screenshot
I’ve posted before about the RED EPIC 5K digital cinema camera. The “nuclear reactor in a matchbox” according to Jim Jannard of RED. In addition to being a 5K digital cinema camera that fits in your hand, it also marks RED’s first DMSC – digital motion and stills camera – meaning it takes stills too! The EPIC cameras out in the wild currently have an alpha build of the firmware where only motion is enabled. However, it is still possible to extract RAW stills from the .r3d motion stream without the still mode enabled. The camera industry is currently abuzz with talks about the future of cameras being still/motion hybrids. Only time will tell if that holds true, but I’m certainly not opposed to it. Jarred Land of RED has been kind enough to post some RED EPIC .r3d motion and still files throughout reduser.net for us to play with. I decided to play with a few and posted the results below. Hard to tell how these would stack up with a still camera in the same situation, but the results are pretty neat, especially since these were extracted from a motion stream. A lot of photographers are used to playing around with RAW stills, but playing around with RAW motion files is a whole new beast and a frankly, a whole lot of fun! Limited run EPIC-M cameras are currently being shipped to special existing RED customers and other existing RED customers should get their EPIC-X cameras this summer. It will be interesting to see some A/B tests with EPIC and other still cameras, esp medium format ones….
Below: my attempts at “grading” some .r3d files (photos below courtesy of Jarred Land, RED Digital Cinema. Original source here)
BLOG!
Alright, so I’m giving this blog thing a try. So far so good, although my typekit font doesn’t seem to be loading. http://www.deveauphotography.com will soon be live
Deveau Photography 
