More Forks

This is the final version which I presented during the cutlery results evening. One of the local camera club assignments.

Twins

More photos on my flickr page.

Backup Strategy

Most things, if not everything, are stored on digital media nowadays. Parts of your life are registered on your hard disks, CD's, and DVD's. But what if one of those fail? Do you have a backup?

Backing up to optical media (like CD and DVD) is cheap, but with cheap also comes questionable quality. Will those files you've backed up two years ago still open? I don't know, and I don't care actually. I back everything up to external drives. A 500GB drives is cheaper than a spindle of DVD's matching the storage capacity, and a harddisk is faster and can be reused if nessecary. Another drawback of DVD's is that they have a relatively small capacity. I would need tons of DVD's just to backup my photos.

Most of my work is being done on my iMac. Attached to my iMac is a Firewire drive configured for Timemachine. This is done for quick and easy access to the average screw-up on my behalf (like deleting a file or directory by mistake).
At least once a week, or after certain events, like shooting a gazillion photos, I make a backup to my local server (which could as well be a network attached storage device, or a USB/FW drive). This backup remains onsite. For real disasters (like the burning down of my house) I have an offsite backup. This backup is made on a small 320GB 2.5inch USB drive (<€100) and runs whenever I think I need to do that.  This drive is encrypted with Truecrypt, so if someone steals the disk, they don't have access to my (precious/private) data.

Ideally, you could store drives with a friend or family. Every time you visit you exchange the drive. You do need at least two offsite drives for this to work.

The only thing that can go wrong (in the terms of data loss) is that the house burns down with me in it, while I'm backing up for offsite storage. Well, in that case I don't need the backup since I won't be around needing it ever again...... Or when Murphy visits.

I did think about a real online offsite storage solution (like Amazons S3 service), but the problem is my Internet upload speed. E.g. if I shoot 8GB of photos on one day it take almost two days to upload that to any service. Furthermore, online storage of >100GB of data aint cheap either. So, the offsite disk drive is a relatively simple, easy and cheap solution giving (me) a good backup strategy.

Amateur Photographers Stealing Your Bread

Every now and then, I stumble on a discussion about stealing the bread out the professional photographers mouth.

These (forum) discussions start with a amateur photographer asking advice about settings (like ISO, Aperture, etc), equipment etc. regarding shooting photos in a certain area (groups, head-shots, whatever). At first; some quick and helpful answers from other enthusiasts, but then the 'pro' photographer enters the 'room'.

Within minutes they turn the original question into something else.... A discussion about fairness, skills, and stealing the bread from someone else has begun....

Somehow they (the pro's) feel threatened by average Joe holding a digital camera (dSLR), and shooting (a cousins) weddings, or doing some work for a foundation or whatever. In most cases a low/no budget shooting.

On one hand, I can sort of sympathize with the pro's, because it's not pleasant to see other people 'stealing the bread from your mouth'. On the other end, they should (or could) have seen it coming.
Ever since the day digital photography became affordable to the public, more and more people started carrying cameras, and they are all photographers (technically). Just because you made it your profession doesn't mean that others can't play that game in their spare time.

If you don't have much money, and you want a photographer shooting your wedding pictures you might end up with a nephew (or another acquaintance) shooting those photo's. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. It just means that you've got competition. The bad competition might produce crappy photos, but then again 'you (the customer) get what you've paid for'.

If you don't want to give advice to an amateur photographer don't start moaning and bitching, but make sure to make a difference in your line of work (value added services e.g.) or find another job. Shooting photos is no longer for a select few. You are the professional. Act accordingly!

Nikon 10-18mm f4 G ED N Rumor

Rumored Nikon AF-S Nikkor 10-18mm f/4 G ED NNikon Rumors (among others) has a posting about a rumored Nikon 10-18mm f4 lens.

If this ain't just a rumor, it would mean that a full Nikon transition can take place, because it could replace my Sigma 10-20mm lens... 'Could', if the price ain't too high (<1000 euro's).

Unibody MacBook Memory Upgrade

My MacBook shipped with the standard 2GB of memory. I had the idea of adding the additional 2GB myself since Apple charges you more money than needed. Downside is that the new MacBooks are kinda sensitive about the memory you use. Regular Kingston / Sandisk memory could result in kernel panics (or other strange behaviour).

After some googling I read some forum posts on OCZ memory and the new aluminium MacBooks. Today I added 2 * 2GB of OCZ memory to my MacBook, and it runs fine (at the moment).

As long as there aren't any updates on this post it probably means that I'm not having any problems with the new memory.

Memory details:

OCZ SO-Dimm 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-8500, 1066Mhz

OSX Finder Replacement [Update]

A while back I wrote something about Path Finder as a probable Finder substitute. Well, it's been a couple of months, and I must say that  I'm still using the crappy Apple Finder.

Why? Well, I guess that it kinda grows on you, eventhough Path Finder has 'some' neat features. It just didn't feel like a real substitute. It felt more like an add-on.

So, back to Finder with its little annoyances like;

• Not being able to move or delete files when the OS is busy creating the thumbnails.
• No Cut&Paste (⌘-x, ⌘-v) in the file system.
• ⌘-o to open files instead of hitting the Enter-key.
• Sort folders before files. Not mixing them.
• Clock/Date format (I want the date also to be visible).
• Manual refresh option for (share) folders.
• etc.
  

I have high hopes up for Snow Leopard. Hope that Finder gets a real good overhaul.

Photography Seems Equal To Terrorism

... Well, at least in some places.

Even though it's categorized as fun, it's not funny at all. Photography is not a crime, as long as you're not photographing state secrets or plans of the new nuclear power plant.

New Gear

:D

Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G AF-S VR IF-ED

Fork Experiment

An assignment from the local camera club.... No idea if this is gonna be the final result. We'll see. I've got till March for this assignment.

More photos on my flickr page.

Move To Hosting Provider

When you're reading this it will mean that I've moved my website to an external hosting service. This has some drawbacks:

• The SymCAImport tool will be available through another URL (http://symcaimport.redelijkheid.com /symcaimport/). I also editted all previous posts with the old SymCAImport URL.
• Some other services will also be moved to other locations. More on that when they are up and running.

The advantages are a more reliable uptime, and faster up- and download speeds.

There might be some things I might have missed in the transfer. Leave a comment if you find errors or strange behaviour on the website.

UPDATE: I forgot the MIME type settings on the SymCAImport tool. If you did encounter problems importing, you might wanna try again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update on Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 13:49 by Willem

Moved the website to SquareSpace.com in the mean time. The SymCAImport Tool has moved back to http://symcaimport.redelijkheid.com