Mid-Summer Stuff

NEWSFLASH from Topaz

Topaz Adjust, arguably the BEST app in the Topaz suite is going on sale for half price in a few days! Starting on August 13th, you can buy it for only $25, and you can download a 30 day free trial to check it out.

Adjust was the first Topaz product I tried and as soon as I did, I was hooked. It provides an amazingly broad range of control and adjustment effects to any image. I use it a lot: it's my go-to plugin in Photoshop (also works in Elements and Lightroom)

Here's the link, and put "augadjust" in the coupon box at checkout to get the discount. Remember, you can also put "faczen" in the checkout box for a 15% discount on the whole suite or any of their other products.

New Banner

As (most of you) can see, I've changed the banner on the blog. Whenever I change it, the old one disappears, so I've been posting it here in the body: but some people view this as an RSS feed so they can't see the banner and other formatting anyway. So I'll post the banner, together with the previous one, here in the body. Next time I won't have to post the previous one.

Old Banner. Composite image of bear at the landfill and a 50-image sequence put together with StarStaX. 

New Banner. Taken at the Highland Yard in Minden on August 3. This abstract is basically right out of the camera. I used a slow shutter speed and panned with the runner to give it a sense of motion. I couldn't resist enhancing it a little just to soften the blurred background some.

Tripod Update

The fine folks at 3 Legged Thing did what they said they would, they sent me a replacement leg segment and centre column piece to fix my broken tripod. I paid for shipping, that's all.

"Brian" is in one piece again, except for a couple of plastic bits they forgot to send me (they're in the mail). In their usual creative fashion these plastic pieces are called "chicken lips"! I love dealing with these guys.

Quality product from a company that really cares about their customers. They're not paying me to say this, although in fairness B&H Photo in New York does send a bit of commission my way if you buy anything from them using my link at right. Here's the direct link to "Brian" at B&H.

Backup progress

As I write this, I'm steadily doing a sync of my (now main) 2Tb external drive to a fresh 3Tb unit. I started it at around midnight, it's now 10:00 am and according to the progress bar, I'm about halfway through. It's working on September 2012 right now.

When it's done, I need to do an incremental backup to my other 3Tb, then I'll retire the 2Tb drive or re-task it somehow. I think I'm going to do another "Keepers" catalogue and put that on the 2Tb. There's no room for more on there now, it's 95% full. I'm still looking for a consistent strategy that doesn't involve buying a thousand dollars more backup drives.

I'm also worried about my desktop computer. When I wake it up, the screen is flickering. That could signal imminent monitor failure, or a video card failure or worse. The computer is about 3 or 4 years old, it might be that time... it's flaky anyway, and tests show that the main hard drive isn't happy. Diligent backups of the important data (including Outlook which runs on that machine) are in order.

Why am I writing this? Two reasons: to tell you how serious I am about backing up my archives and data, and to convince my loyal readers to give this some consideration!

Update: it took 16 hours to do the sync. Came up with two errors but that was probably because I brought up Lightroom once while it was working (had to look something up). I haven't done the incremental yet.

My (almost) daily chore

Since I'm not in the greatest physical shape (that's putting it mildly. Hey: Round IS a shape!) and being a lazy person, I don't do much exercise. To my regret: when I read about my friends Mark and Ron in Scotland, hiking the cliffs on the Isle of Skye, I feel deep pangs of regret that I didn't take care of myself better over the years. I'm beginning to admit that my age is catching up to me (I'll be 68 in September) and as my father used to say, "everything hurts. Except the stuff that doesn't work any more".

Update: Mark has been blogging about their trip at http://markgirard.blogspot.ca/, colour me green with envy. Scroll down to the August 7 post for my favourite images from their trip so far, landscapes on the Isle of Skye. I have to live vicariously...

My knees, or more accurately, my quads or the ligaments that attach them to the knees, are the most annoying. I completely lack the confidence to step down, afraid that I'll lose footing or balance and be unable to hold myself up. That's how I broke "Brian" in the story above. I get out of breath very easily doing moderate exercise. I've decided that if I'm going to live longer, I don't want it to be in a wheelchair or with a walker, so I must do something about it. My neighbour and I agreed to walk, some. That was a month ago, and we still haven't gone out even once. So now is the time.

The two paragraphs above are like New Year's Resolutions. Doomed. Maybe this will help: how about you, my loyal readers, following up on me from time to time? If I have someone other than myself to be accountable to, maybe it will help. By the way, I've lost almost 15 lbs in the past month or so, hit a plateau in the past week because I won't give up eating corn and because I gave into temptation when Janie said, "join us for dinner at the Pepper Mill" (the best hamburgers anywhere!).

So I started writing this because I had a couple of pictures for you that might involve a bit of healthy lifestyle habits.

I had a total of 7 face cords (2⅓ bush cords) of wood delivered a month ago. Wood is substantially less expensive than other heating methods. It needs to sit out in the sun for a while to dry out before it gets stacked. I'm half way through it, I do about half an hour of stacking a day. It's helping my wrist and shoulder and a little abs. I'm going to try consciously lifting with my legs, let's see if I can strengthen them a bit.

A healthy breakfast. Too bad it's only available fresh for a couple of weeks! The raspberries come from my own bushes, lovingly hand picked. I hand picked the blueberries too: from the Costco warehouse! I'm eating a lot more fruits and vegetables than in the past, trying to change some lifestyle choices.

Floating Camera Platform

Here's the story. I was chatting with Dorian, a neighbour of mine, about a very cool boat I had seen at a garage sale the previous week. Unfortunately, it was way more than I could spend. He mentioned that he had a little boat and motor he didn't want any more, and we made a deal. I took the motor to a local mechanic who made sure it worked and today I picked up the boat.

Nobody's going to say, "there goes Speedy Gonzales!" But it's perfect for what I want, a floating camera platform. And a way to do a little fishing and relaxing on the lake.

It's just a little boat, with a 4 hp motor. I promise, I won't take it out when it's windy or rough. 

An HDR closeup, finished with Topaz Simplify. I should have given it more space at bottom right, so I'll re-shoot this soon. 

Here's my first HDR from the boat. That's Vic's place down Pleasant Point Road. I was worried about alignment and ghosting since I was shooting handheld from a bobbing boat, but Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 handles it really well.

Update: I went out at sunset last night, took my fishing rod but not my DSLR. Wish I had! Here's the best I could do with the little point-and-shoot.

It took a bunch of Photoshop and Topaz (I used Adjust: see the top comment in this article!) to make this happen. 

Some foreground interest! That's my little 4 hp motor idling away 

I'm posting this one because it's such a great story, but it's a terrible shot. Click to blow it up. 

Can't wait for the fall colours! Oh, wait, yes I can...

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Surreal Night

A picture is worth 1000 words...

...and I wish I had one to show you.

I find myself in the odd position tonight to be writing about something that isn't directly photographic, but has to do with artistic expression or at least artistic experience.

As you may know (if you've been reading my blog), I am presently camera-less. At least DSLR-less, because I do have a point-and-shoot and an iPhone which are indeed cameras. I also found myself driving home from Toronto after dark, an unusual experience for me because I try to avoid that situation. Oddly, because I actually do enjoy driving in the evening when it's not raining or snowing or otherwise difficult.

There I was, though. Floating along at my interpretation of the speed limit (let's not go there...). At the beginning of the drive, the full moon, just above the horizon directly in front of me, was huge and golden, and dressed in wisps of cloud*. It was hard not to stare at it instead of the road, markedly more difficult when a passing airplane seemed to be on a course to intersect the orb, and in fact it did, but too far away to present a classic silhouette. Two thoughts went through my head: (1) I wish I had a camera so I could capture that, and (2) even if I did, there's no way.

* I only found out 4 days later that there was a penumbral lunar eclipse (the moon was in the earth's shadow). That's why it appeared so different from normal! And no camera, of course...

It gets better, though. Now I'm driving on a deserted road, still into the moon, which is now silver and higher in the sky. With the evening drop in temperature came mist and fog, sporadically across the road. If you looked off to the side, you could see areas of fields blanketed in fog, maybe 2 or 3 meters deep, brilliant and clear above, wispy tendrils that followed the contour of the land. The same across my path, sometimes dense, sometimes thin, certainly not contiguous. Its presence related to altitude, so when the road dipped, you dropped into the clouds, as you peaked a hill, you came out. All the while, the moon glared balefully down from its position straight ahead.

I'm listening to music, stored on my iPhone and played back through the multi-speaker sound system in the car. I'm surrounded by Rhoda Scott's interpretation of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (Link) (which you may recognize as the theme from Arthur Clarke's "2001, A Space Odyssey" or if you're more classically educated, as Richard Strauss's 1896 tone poem), a maestro performance on the Hammond B3 organ. Her nuances probe your mind like alien tentacles. Surreal. It ends, to be followed by Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", (Link) and Neil Larsen's inspired B3 solo* where he expresses and shares his soul.

* Writing this note after the fact, of course. You should know that I was up until almost 4am, sitting at the keyboard (piano, not computer), trying to emulate this solo without measurable success. I wish (a) I had a B3 and (b) that I could play. OK, I wish (b) before (a). I got some of the emotion into it, but the playback sounds horrible because I don't have the talent. If I could come back in another life it would be as a musician. Just sayin...

PS: if you're into virtuoso music, you have to watch (or listen to at least) Barbara Dennerlein playing "Georgia" (here). When she switches the lower keyboard to piano mode she especially shows off her talent. I get lost in her music.

Now you turn into a narrower back road and suddenly you pass under arched trees, whose branches meet overhead like the crossed swords of an honour guard, like dancers holding hands, and the fog is back. You can't really see the road surface, you are soaring through the misty clouds, tunnelling through the ghostly sentinels of nearly naked trees in the surreal light of the moon.

The road opens up. Trees have been cleared away from the verges so your view ahead is wide and unimpeded. With the brights on, your headlights brush the evergreens, painting them with light so they stand out against the dark sky. Now there's an oncoming car, still below the horizon. His lights illuminate the fog or low cloud, reminiscent of a movie scene where they're trying to imply a distant explosion, just below your sightline. Then he crests the hill and his headlights explode upon your vision. Still shrouded in cloud, you think of alien spacecraft approaching through the mist.

Two thoughts went through my head: (1) I wish I had a camera and (2) even if I did, there's no way I could capture this.

Surreal, to say the least. I wish I had had a camera but then there was no way I could have captured the moment. I wish I had a paintbrush and the creativity to know how to use it. But for now that moment has to remain locked into my memory and maybe some day in another life, I'll be able to bring it out and share it with you.

This looks like a great deal

Normally I'm not a fan of off-brand lenses but the Tokina 11-16mm DX f/2.8 looks like a winner, especially at less than $500, which is what B&H is selling it for now. Links here: Nikon Mount       Canon Mount

Ken Rockwell rates it very high, better than the OEM lenses and it's actually wider and faster. Doesn't work on full frame sensors, though, too bad. It's not a brand new lens, it's been around for a few years, but the price reduction makes it attractive!

Backup Strategy and Tactics

I've outgrown my backup drives. It was inevitable. Like the old saw about hard drive failures, it's not if, it's when. and my time has come. I have over 80,000 images in my archive, all by the way, in a single Lightroom catalog. The pictures are mostly RAW files and they add up to almost 2Tb, and that's the capacity of my largest external drive. I actually have two of those, plus one 1Tb drive, plus a total of about 3Tb inside the two computers themselves. Oh yeah, and a 500Gb drive in the drawer I just remembered.

So what to do? I could split things up, say everything up to 2012 in one place and all the newer stuff somewhere else, but I don't want to. So I decided on a strategy, and I want to share it with my readers in case they need to decide what to do as well.

I just finished going through the 83,000 image Lightroom database. I selected every picture that I had ever given a rating to, whether it's 1-5 stars, or a colour code for status (to be edited, in process, finished, exported, etc) and I marked them all with the "Pick"flag. That means there are some picks that don't have any ratings, but that's OK, I want to err on the side of choosing more rather than less. The sum total is 24,449 images.

I reformatted the 1Tb external drive, and as I'm typing this on one computer, I'm exporting these Keepers (and a new Lightroom 5 catalog) to that drive. All my keepers will be there. It's too big for the 500Gb drive, unfortunately.

Next, I'm going to copy the whole shebang: all 83,000 images to a brand new 3Tb drive I just bought at Costco. Theoretically, the 60,000 images NOT in the Keepers are garbage that I will never ever need. But I can't bring myself to throw them away just yet, at least not in bulk. For instance, there are images from trips I've made which I didn't select, but which contain memories. It will be a slow task to go through those and throw out the real trash, but I'll have the luxury of having them all in one place. I am going to the place where I will only have one copy, not multiple copies of those images.

Now I'm going to bring the "Keepers" back to the 2Tb drive I use as my main storage. So I'll have 3 copies of those, at least. One of the smaller drives will go off-site and the other will get updated with new Keepers every month.

So in summary:

• Grand archive of everything on a 3Tb drive
• Two backups of Keepers on 1Tb and a second 2Tb
• The 1Tb drive is stored offsite, at my mother's apartment in Thornhill
• Working files on a 2Tb external, with the keepers
• The working (Passport) 2Tb drive goes with me in the car whenever I go away for a day or so
• Newly imported files are also in the internal drive in the laptop.

That should keep me going for a while. But given Moore's Law (it applies here too!), watch this space a year from now for my NEXT new strategy! By then, there will probably be 5Tb or 6Tb affordable drives on the market.

Sounds complicated, right? It isn't really, my working files are on the 2Tb Passport with a regular backup to the internal drive in the laptop. I have to harden my heart and be more diligent about throwing away the trash. The 3Tb is a grand backup, the 1Tb is my offsite emergency backup and the second 2Tb is a spare. Of course there's always the second computer and the cloud...

Nice Nikon

As I write this (Tuesday the 29th) I have received my cheque from Nikon and I'm going into Toronto on Thursday or Friday for my D610. A shout out to Mike Krupat at Henry's in Thornhill who puts up with my nonsense. He's a good guy. Call him at 905 886 1020 or email him, he'll be happy to help you out. Tell him you saw it here...

Update: November 2
I got the D610 yesterday. Good news and bad news.
 Good news: I wish I had my D600 in front of me for comparison. I think they ruggedized the camera. My impression is that the finish is different. Also I'm not sure but I think way an AC Adapter gets attached is different. I have to RTFM...
 Bad news:

• Lightroom 5.2 and Photoshop CC DO NOT RECOGNIZE RAW FILES FROM THE D610. For now, I've set up the camera for RAW + JPEG (Fine), and I put RAW on card 1 and JPEG on card 2 –  necessary because if there are raw files in a folder, LR won't recognize the existence of the JPEGs for some reason, so I have to separate them. There's a "Nikon View NX2" DVD in the box but I remember it's a real pain in the butt and hope I don't have to use it. Otherwise, I can't see the RAW files (I wonder if it can batch convert to DNG. I doubt it, but I'll install and have a look)

I hope Adobé comes through with an update soon.

• I diligently saved my camera settings from the D600 on an SD card. You guessed it. The D610 won't import them. I spent almost an hour going through the menus and setting stuff up the way I had it before. Annoying, but I guess it was good to use the opportunity to run through all the menu items and refresh my memory about where stuff is.

FP Flash Sync on Nikons

Ever wonder how the high speed flash sync works on Nikons (you can actually sync your flash at speeds like 1/4000 second, not limited to the 1/250 sec mechanical shutter speed)?

I wondered too, and Google took me to this excellent explanation:
http://nikonclspracticalguide.blogspot.ca/2008/03/10-auto-fp-high-speed-sync-explained.html

Pictures

Without a camera, I don't have anything new. But I do have some older shots for you to enjoy. I call these, Day, Night and Dawn.

After visiting the Ansel Adams exhibit in Kleinburg, I shot this, reminiscent of one of his images called "Birches".  

I put a flashlight in the car but it was way too bright, so I buried it under a yellow rainjacket. Still too bright, but the Milky Way was just right! 

Whenever you get up before dawn, you don't go away empty handed! Horseshoe Lake Road, just before sunrise.  I never get tired of this spot. This makes a superb large format print, available on my gallery at www.faczen.smugmug.com

Next week: pictures from the new D610! TTFN

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