The Photographer's Mac

iPhone haiku

2010-07-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

Steve cleared it all up
No problem, use the bumper
Go away I command

How to write a blog

2010-07-16T07:31:00.001-07:00

Ok, so why do I not write anything here? I am sort of stuck.

I was having a conversation with the editor who gave me my first job in newspapers 20 years ago. She is one of the nicest people I know, and I was thrilled to get to work with her again. She is now the exec editor of a magazine and was out in LA to interview the subjects and so I drove up to shoot the story for her and we got to talk after the shoot over a couple of drinks.

Blogging and tweeting requires having something to say. I am fortunate in that I have a life that I find interesting and I get to do a lot of interesting stuff in the course of my work, but I always have to wonder if that translates into anything that other people want to read.

I also am committed to being Christ-like in my approach to what I write and how I live my life. I have, of course, not attained Christ-like status by any stretch. But I believe in going by the golden rule approach of writing this, which is not writing anything that I wouldn't want someone else to write about me.

That is not to say that I haven't written anything negative or that points a finger, or that I won't in the future, but that I want to be fair in doing so. I might talk about the problem, or the perpetrator, but only in a way, hopefully, that points to a solution... no talk of all hope is lost or that anyone is beyond redemption (which they are not.)

Oh well, go back about your important business now... I'm done rambling

I've been gone a long time

2010-07-16T07:27:00.001-07:00

Ok. So I have not posted here in more than a year. Photography (work... a good thing) and family (2 year old twins, a 7 year-old and a great wife... all blessings from God) have kept me plenty busy. So writing things here has not been something that I have even thought much about. Still. I am still here. And I really, sincerely, do plan on writing more.

I have an iPhone 4 (that would not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me) and I await what Steve Jobs has to say about the antenna issue today. Here are my pre-press conference thoughts compressed into 17 syllables.

Do not touch me there
If you want to make this call
I'm no 3Gs

Quick fix for smudgy MacBook

2009-03-10T16:52:00.000-07:00

So I have one of the new aluminum Macbooks. I love it. It has traveled the world with me since I got it back in November. But this morning I was using it in direct sunlight (not ideal, but I was in a place I had no choice) and I noticed what looked like fingerprints smudged under the glass that covers the screen. It made it look cloudy in those areas when there was sunlight back-lighting it.

I tried cleaning it, just in case, but it was under the glass. I had noticed smudges in that corner before under different light, but always assumed it was on the outside and I cleaned the glass (while inside under less light) and everything looked fine. This time, I did the whole thing with sunlight to my back and I was shocked to see it was under the glass.

I made an appointment at the Apple store to get it fixed, and hoped it would not be a problem getting it fixed. I showed up to my appointment (made within an hour of my screen smudge discovery thanks to the ProCare membership I spent $99 for) and was helped by a friendly Apple Genius named Michael Brown.

We walked out into the sunlight so he could see the smudges, agreed it was a problem, checked it in to be fixed and said I would most likely have it back this afternoon. I knew that ProCare was supposed to expedite repairs, but I really doubted that I would have it back same day. He (Michael) even verified that they had another screen to replace mine with. I gave him the laptop and went on my way.

Five hours later, I got the call my laptop was done. I am typing this on my now smudge-free MacBook while watching my son at a karate class.

Three cheers for Apple service and Pro Care.

Facebook

2009-02-08T06:12:00.000-08:00

So I realize I am really late in the game here, but I finally joined Facebook. I have had a number of invitations to join over the last few years, and the lure of getting work from joining finally made me do it. (Someone looking for photogs on Facebook to bid a job. I got the job... and a good paying one at that.)

Facebook is like some entire other life that obviously I have not been living. As comfortable as I am on computers, using IM, Skype, etc., I guess it is sort of weird that I would be so slow in just jumping in... but I think I've proven that some of my concerns have some validity.

One of the reasons I held off on most of these social networking sites is that I have quite a bit of face to face and telephonic social networking that I do already. In terms of communicating with the computer, there is email, and of course this blog (and anyone (all four of you) who have been looking at my entries here and/or the dates I made them knows how hard of a time I have keeping this up on any sort of a regular basis) not to mention AIM and Skype... plenty of ways to communicate.

Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with a few people who I have lost touch with and I truly am happy to have made contact with them again, but then there are those folks who I am happy to have as "friends" but who keep flinging groundhogs and things at me for no apparent reason, other than to be cute.

I certainly don't mind cute, or off the wall, but I don't like feeling forced to act. Now you chucked a mongoose at me... why do I have to pitch one to five other people? The fact that Facebook says so? No.

Plus, if I single out five other friends that I want to annoy with a hurled small mammal, and any of those five ask me why I did it... I'm not sure what my answer would be. It reminds me a bit of elementary school where you like someone and because you are seven or eight, you lack the social skills to go up and make interesting conversation, so you do something annoying like throw a kickball at them. I guess the thinking then was any attention (including negative) is better than no attention.

So I'm not sure how the lobbing of a small imaginary furry animal is intended to benefit me... nor do I see how it is going to enhance the life of those around me who agreed to be my Facebook "friends."

Now there are some cute Facebook apps as well. There is the one for the photojournalist who gets an unpleasant assignment that made me laugh, but there is the insider catch there that you and I are both photographers, so we both are going to think that is funny having shared that experience of a bad assignment or two over the years.

For one thing, time is a precious commodity. I find that my time is stretched pretty thin. Work, family, church, teaching, and the friends I do hang out with already make my days pretty busy as it is. So how I add another commitment and make it fit. This is the challenge I am facing.

So look me up on Facebook... but please don't fling any small furry creatures at me.

Switching Menu Bar Items

2009-02-03T16:50:00.000-08:00

I just found something cool on my MacBook Pro by accident. You can switch the order of the menu bar items on the right (clock, battery power, airport, etc) by turning them off and then turning them back on in the order you want in the System Preferences. The first thing you turn on is at the far right, the second is just to the left, the third is to the left of that, and so on.

This becomes even more helpful if you have your menu bar littered with stuff they way that I do.

I love iStat Menus which tells me all sorts of stuff about my computer while I am using it like the internal temperature, how much memory is being used, and what processes my computer is working on and how much data is being uploaded and downloaded.

By turning them all off and then turning them on in the order you want, you can customize your menu bar... and I figured this out by accident.

Charging laptop batteries

2009-01-23T16:48:00.001-08:00

It is 3:45am. I am sitting here in my hotel room at the Radisson SAS Kuwait (which, incidentally has the best breakfast buffet I have ever had at a hotel... it is really something) looking at my laptop and three depleted batteries. After the 4 1/2 hour flight from San Diego to DC, and the 12 hour flight from DC to Kuwait, I have emptied all three batteries I brought with me.

One of my first orders of business is to recharge all my batteries. I travel with one of the new unibody aluminum MacBooks because it is a lot smaller than my 17" MacBook Pro and it is small enough that I can actually use it comfortably in the airplane... even if the person in front of me reclines their seat all the way.

So now I am at the hotel for an overnight stay and have to try to get some sleep and recharge all my batteries. Recharging this many batteries is always a hassle when you are trying to do it overnight, because you end up having to wake up every few hours to switch batteries.

I really dislike doing this, especially here, because Kuwait is 11 hours ahead of California time. That means that when my alarm goes off and wakes me up at 1am to switch batteries, to me, it feels like 2pm (I got here about 10 hours ago) and I just can't get back to sleep (I have that groggy I just woke up from a nap feel). So now I get to sit here watching my battery charge on the laptop... groggy but not going back to sleep.

With the unibody MacBook and 15" MacBook Pro, there is a battery cover that comes off under the machine to replace the battery. Initially I thought this was a pretty good idea. It saves weight on the batteries and on previous laptop models, I always seemed to end up with one Apple battery that didn't match the tone of my laptop. It was a few shades too light or dark. Not that this matters, since few other people peer at the underside of my laptop... but I knew... and it always bothered me.

Oh yeah... back to the MacBook battery cover... after a few times of sitting on the plane, with the laptop upside down on my lap and juggling the old dead battery and trying to avoid knocking my cranapple juice off the tray in front of me while trying to line up the little slots to get the batter cover to close back up, it makes me miss the simplicity of the older-style battery. All you did was use a coin to turn the switch under the laptop, the battery pops out, click the new one in, and you are back in business. It was a one handed process. There is no way to get the battery cover seated correctly on the laptop without two hands.

Hmmm. My mind wanders a bit when I am sleepy....

Something cool that I found at MacWorld this year was the U-Charge by FastMac. It allows you to charge your spare laptop batteries without the laptop. You plug in their brick (about the same size as a MacBook charging brick) and then attach the cable right to the battery terminals themselves.

Currently it will charge the older style MacBooks and MacBook Pros as well as Powerbooks and iBooks. FastMac said that their charging cable for the newest MacBook and 15" MacBook Pro is in production and will be available very soon. The cable is going to be about $20 if you already have a U-Charge unit and will be priced about the same as the existing unit if you wait and buy it when the cable is available.

It won't solve my battery door issue (minor as it may be) but at least I can be charging multiple batteries at one time... and hopefully getting more sleep when traveling.

Packing to go out of town.

2009-01-21T12:09:00.000-08:00

I am out of town for the next week on an overseas shoot. I am hoping to post during my time that I am gone... but that all depends upon how crazy the schedule gets.

One of the things that I am always trying to try to perfect is how to pack for long out of town shoots. By nature, I like to bring everything that I might possibly need with me... and then some. The problem is that ends up being waaaay more than I could every sneak past the flight attendants as carry-on.

Each shoot is also different, so each time I have to weigh what to bring, and what to leave home.
But I am always trying to thin down my load, and bring only what I will need, but at the same time not leaving anything behind that I will end up really needing... and many of my shoots are in places where there is nowhere to pick up an extra battery charger, memory cards, or rent lights or lenses if I end up needing them (or needing more that I packed.)

It is also tough because I refuse to check camera or computer gear. I want to carry it on the plane, and carry it off the plane so I know that it arrives in one piece.

I have had a few memorable experiences where my luggage did not arrive when I did. The most extreme was covering Hurricane Rita when I worked for five or six days with only what I carried on the plane... my cameras and my laptop. No clothes, no mosquito repellent (which I sorely needed... I looked like I had chicken pox by the time I was done), no toothbrush, or anything else that I had packed. It was a drag. Even worse, since it was a fairly serious storm, there were no stores open so there was nowhere to buy clothes or anything else... I was ripe by the end of that assignment.

I was on a shoot once that was in a more remote area of the U.S. and we were going to be lighting everything... so I carefully packed my lights in a Pelican case and my light stands, gels, grids etc, in a separate case. The lights showed up... the second case with everything else didn't. The nearest place to rent lighting gear was about 4 hours away and we had to start shooting in a couple of hours. The airline was reeeeeeeeealy sorry... but still they didn't make it and we had to make do. The client understood, and it turned out OK, but it was still not the most ideal situation.

So I don't even want to think about what it would be like to arrive somewhere and not have my camera gear and/or laptop. I can make due without most things, but as a photographer I need the cameras to do my thing.

I have accepted the fact that there is no way for me to carry-on lights along with cameras and my laptop (unless I am just using 580's, or have brought an assistant with me so I can use them to carry on the lights) most of the time when I have to bring lights, I just have to check them and pray that they make it.

The one thing that has totally made traveling a little more fun it is the ThinkTank Photo Airport International II rolling bag . It holds:

5d MkII's x2
50D
16-35 mm f2.8
24-70mm f2.8
70-200 mm f2.8 IS
24mm f1.4 II
50mm f1.2 L
135mm f2
580 EX II flashes x 2
small bounce cards, off camera cables, etc.
lots of camera batteries
chargers for the 5D MkII's and 50D
memory cards
flashlight and lots of other odds and ends.

It is a great bag. It has survived multiple trips to Iraq and Afghanistan along with lots of other places both in and out of the U.S.. It is one of the things that has made travel easier. It is also international sized, so I have never had a problem bringing it as a carry on... even on overseas flights. It also fits in the overhead on the smaller jets.

Along with the Airport International II, I also carry the Shapeshifter. for the laptop. Thinktank has really cornered the market in good travel gear for the photographer.

But I am off for another adventure. I have all my gear packed (hopefully) and I will be posting more soon.

Some of my favorite things.

2009-01-19T06:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a short list of some of the things I am using that I really like.

1. Canon PIXMA MX7600 inkjet all-in-one printer

I recently replaced my office all-in-one printer. I got the Canon PIXMA MX7600 inkjet all-in-one and absolutely love it. It has a much smaller footprint than the printer I had previously, the print quality is amazing, it is quiet, and it has built in duplex printing, copying and scanning.

Yes, all three processes are duplexed. I had a hard time believing this when I read the specs on the printer.

It is the best office printer I have ever used. Another thing I really appreciate about it is that the software that comes with it actually works. With certain other popular brands of all-in-one printers, you buy it, get it home, and then discover that when the box says it works with OS X, that means it PRINTS with OS X, but scanning and faxing aren't supported "yet." All the features are supported on the Canon.

I paid about $350 for it.

2. Skype

I started using Skype on the advice of a pastor friend of mine before we took a trip to Fiji last August. Since I seem to be doing a lot more international work lately, it was always a hassle to make phone calls from other countries. You could find decent internet just about anywhere (including Iraq and Afghanistan) but you were still stuck paying $2.50 a minute on the cell phone or having to use a calling card.

With Skype, you can use your internet connection to make phone calls. You install the software and with a US account, you can call other Skype users for free. For a few bucks a month you can get a phone number on Skype that will let you call US phone numbers for no additional cost, too (so if you have a Skype account with a phone number, you can call other phones for free, too, with no limit on the number or duration of calls.)

Skype also has texting (like IM) and video conferencing which seems much more robust than iChat or AOL's video chat and seems to work at much lower bandwidth. You can also send files, photos, or other docs over Skype, too.

3. ThinkTank's Shape Shifter laptop backpack

As I rapidly rack up airmiles, I have been continuing to hone what I carry and how I carry it.

I have a closet full of laptop bags that almost do what I need them to do, but not quite. Either they are great for a light load, but won't fit everything I need for a road trip, or they will hold lots of stuff, but not be padded well enough for the bumping around that happens on the road, or they are padded well and hold lots of stuff but won't fit under the airplane seat and have no means to lock the compartments.

Thinktank Photo has created the near perfect bag with the Shapeshifter.

It holds everything computer related. It will also hold either one of my laptops (17" MBP or 13" aluminum MacBook) and all the chargers, converters, card readers, backup hard drives, and all the little bits and pieces. You can also unzip an inner area of the bag to expand its size so it can also accommodate a couple full sized DSLR bodies and lenses. If you don't need to carry that much, you can zip the inner area closed and you have a very thin, streamlined laptop solution.

It is also padded in an intelligent way. It is not puffy like the Michelin Man, but has the right amount of protection in the right places.

The outside pockets don't have a lot of padding, but I am putting the more rugged things in those pockets, pens, biz cards, headphones, card readers, cables, etc.. The laptop area is well protected, including on the bottom, (which many laptop makers seem to forget that we do set the bag down once in a while).

The pockets where you would put camera gear are very well protected with a denser foam that is quite thin, the advantage of this is that it protects what is inside (and keeps what is inside from beating up anything around it) but is thin enough that when you close that pocket, it is not a big puffy blob in the middle of the bag.

The key pockets also have reinforced zippers with the locking holes on them so you can secure them and the bag. It won't prevent a determined thief from getting to what is inside, but it will probably deter the causal crook that is looking for an easy unsecured target of opportunity. It comes in black, black, or uh, black and is about $250.

4. Drive Genius 2

There are lots of solutions for Mac Drive/Data recovery. Techtool, Disk Warrior are the two biggest. I have used both, and found both to be lacking. Techtool often finds problems that aren't really there and other times has created new problems. It also seems like it is always a step behind on compatibility. It takes them a long time to release updates when there is an OS update or a new Mac released.

Keeping up with these is important because a big part of their pitch is the ability to use a boot disk or other device to boot your Mac when it is having trouble. I got suckered in a few years back when they came out with a version of TechTool that you could install on a firewire flash drive and it never worked as advertised. It never was able to boot up my Macs and when you talked to tech support they would try to talk you into their annual subscription to get all the updates... huh? Pay for the software and then pay for updates? I tried it... the firewire solution still didn't work and so I swore off Techtool.

Drive Genius I really like. It is simple and works well, but they too are way behind the curve on keeping up with current Mac hardware. As of the writing of this, they still don't support the aluminum MacBook (which was released more than three months ago!) So if I have a problem with my MacBook, I can't boot up with their disk. What is the point?

I found Drive Genius 2 about a year ago. It works as advertised. It works will all my Macs, they seem to update it fairly frequently, or at least when there is a need for an update, and everyone else I have turned onto it loves it also. It has a simple interface, keeps things working the way they are supposed to, and doesn't offer a lot of garbage that you are most likely not going to use.

It can be found for $99

Until next time...

(The photo at the top is from a project I shot in Fiji in Aug 08. It is just a photo that I like... it has nothing to do really with photo or Mac stuff. The fellows in the image are Fijian sugar cane farmers. )

Drobo and Time Machine.. a match made on the Mac.

2009-01-14T10:01:00.000-08:00

Time Machine... I love it. It backs everything up, keeps it organized by hour, day, week, month. It's great. The best thing is that I don't have to do anything to keep Time Machine working... uh, except for keeping a hard drive plugged into the computer that has enough room on it for all those backups.

This probably isn't an issue for many Mac users, unless they compulsively save every Youtube video they find online or take part in some other hard drive filling hobbies. For me, it is photos... which is what pays the bills. So at any given time, my basic MacPro backup is anywhere from 100-125gb depending (this is apps, music, and everything but photos) and then my photo drive is another 200-300gb depending (these are transmits and raw takes that have not been edited and moved into my archiving system yet.)

So that first Time Machine backup is about 400gb. Figure I'm using a 750gb drive and right there, I have filled 1/2 of the drive (roughly... I know that math is not one of my strengths). And from there I am able to fill the Time Machine drive up with amazing speed.

Each time I come back from a week long overseas shoot with 50-60gb of raw files... slurp... there goes another chunk of the drive... and you do that three or four times, along with the normal day to day backups and you have managed to fill up a 750gb drive in less than two months.

So then you go buy another hard drive (because I want to have a lasting backup system so that if I need to go back more than two months if I need to) and you start the process over again. First, it creates the giant backup that takes up a large chunk of the drive and then you watch the remaining space get smaller and smaller until it is time to repeat the process again.

Eventually you end up with a whole lot of drives and a bit of a headache from a backup/redundancy standpoint because in the unfortunate circumstance you need to go back to a backup to find something (and it happens... believe me) you then have to remember which disk (which two month chunk of time) the file or files are stored on.

This is when I decided to take the plunge and try the Drobo. I had always thought the Drobo systems were pretty cool. If you don't know what a Drobo is, it is a RAID array that runs its self. You just have to put in up to four SATA drives (any size you want, they don't have to match) and plug it in to the firewire or usb port on your computer and it will do its thing from there.

It seemed like a perfect solution (you put a few 750gb drives in there and it'll last a long time since you won't have to keep re-doing that initial backup). Initially I was a bit concerned and kept going back to look at the backups and make sure that it was working and there weren't errors or problems... and there weren't. The Drobo was rock solid. The Mac would hang and I had to force it to restart, it would restart and Drobo was right there ready to work... unfazed by the shutdown.

One of the complaints that has floated around about the Drobo is that it is slow... when it was USB only, that might have been true, (I never tried the first version that was only USB) but the firewire 800 version is plenty fast. If I was editing video or doing something else that required lots and lots of extreme bandwidth, maybe I wouldn't be as happy. For Time Machine and the drive works great and is plenty fast.

The other thing that made Drobo attractive is that it is redundant backup. If one of the drives craps out in the array, you replace the drive and the Drobo will get you right back up to speed... with no data loss. Nothing nicer than having backups of your backups. Remember... redundancy. Drobo uses part of each drive to backup the other drives in the array automatically. It does all of this by its self. You don't have to do anything other that put data on it.

Here is another reason why redundancy is good. Before trying the Drobo, I tried using one of the Maxtor 2 terabyte drives (follow the link only so you know what NEVER to buy... there is a reason they are always on sale) and found out the hard way that when one of those drives fail (and it is two 1TB drives in an enclosure with a very cheap built in hardware raid solution) you have to send the whole thing back to Seagate and they send you a brand new drive and your data is gone. In my case, the drive shut down all of a sudden with about 500gb of data and would not mount again no matter what I did.

And when your data is gone, you might ask ... gone where? Good question. One they were not able to answer. They promised that they erase everything that comes back as a return, but were unable to answer the question of how many times they write over the data, etc. Plus, if you were counting on that backup... its gone. All of it. They ship you a new drive in a box and will not make any attempt to recover your data.

So with the Drobo it is fast, redundant, quiet and as simple to use as a regular external hard drive. It is the perfect Time Machine (or other backup progam) solution, in my opinion. If a drive fails, you replace the drive. It does not require sending anything back to Drobo unless the actual device fails, but from what I have seen, they are very reliable.

And then I started to compare the Drobo to my existing RAID system...

Secure portable hard drives

2009-01-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

I love cool new technology that solves problems. Here has been my problem:

As a guy who is really into redundancy and really into backups, I never leave the office without without a working backup copy of my laptop hard drive. This is a good thing and has saved me a number of times, but also poses a really big security problem.

Where my laptop is password protected and has the hardware firmware enabled, so it is relatively secure if it ever gets snatched, that portable hard drive I carry as a backup is not. It is wide open and easy prey if it ever gets lost or stolen. Where you can use Filevault or other security methods to encrypt the contents of the drive, it prevents it from being bootable, which is one of the things I need in case my main drive in the laptop goes belly-up.

There is a new solution out there that solves this problem. It is currently marketed by Lenovo (yeah, the ThinkPad folks.) It is called the USB Secure Hard Drive. It comes in 160 gb and 320 gb flavors and is not altogether unreasonably priced.

I know, I know, it is only USB2 and not firewire, but I have to let you in on a little secret. I bought one of the new MacBooks and love it and I am actually doing pretty well sans firewire. Buy if you are running 10.5 you can boot up from a USB drive anyways, firewire or not. And now you can do it securely so what could be better than that?

How it works:

You plug it in to your computer, a little red light turns on next to the keypad on the drive. You enter your password and hit the unlock button and the light turns green the drive mounts and you are good to go. Without the password, you can't mount the drive. Since it is a hardware solution, you can pull the drive out of the case and put it in another case and it still won't work. Without the password the data on the drive can't be accessed.

HA! Take that bad guy who steals my drive!

Ohhhhh I love cool new stuff that solves problems.

Sorry

2009-01-13T05:57:00.000-08:00

Wow. There is not much to say other than sorry.

It has been nearly a year since I have posted anything... ANYTHING AT ALL here. Hmmm... Life has been crazy, one-year-old twins, a five year old, more international work than I have ever had before in a one-year span (this is a good thing!), and just life in general has made the blog sort of fall to the back of a long list of things I have been working on.

It is sort of like the friend you really like talking to and hanging out with, that you keep meaning to call, but life and responsibilities keep getting in the way until you run into that person somewhere and realize that you never called them and feel really bad about it, but how do you articulate that desire and intent to have called (or in my case, post up here once in a while) but communicate it in a way that they don't feel like you are giving them the brush off or trying to make it sound like a feeble excuse because you never meant to call in the first place. Is there a way to sincerely share that feeling so that they don't feel like they are getting the brush off?

I hope I am being successful at this. I will post more frequently. For those that have continued to check in a lot, I am sorry I have not posted. Life has gotten in the way... that is evidence of my not following through, not proof that I don't intend to post here or don't care. So please stick with me a little bit longer... I will be posting more info and more frequently. My technological life has undergone quite a few changes since last March when I last posted.

Talk to you soon, and again, sorry.

Viveza... burning and dogding bliss

2008-03-12T06:31:00.000-07:00

So I am not a real big Photoshop filter user. Being that a lot of my work is editorial in nature, which makes it all about showing what is really there and not changing things (no cloning, erasing, etc.) there aren't a lot of filters that I use, and even fewer that I'd spend much money buying, since I rarely need or use them. The other part of this is that I am committed to making correct exposures in camera so that I don't have to spend a bunch of time "fixing" things in Photoshop. The only filters I use frequently are Nik's Dfine 2.0 and NoiseNinja which are both great at reducing digital noise of high ISO images, but even is hasn't seen that much use now that I am shooting with Canon's Mk III cameras.

So after processing my images in RAW, and I am working in Photoshop, most of my time is spend using curves, levels, selective color occasionally, and burning and dodging.

But then I came across Viveza... and it is a filter that makes burning and dodging and ranging color corrections really easy and it is one of the most effective filters that I think I've ever used. It ranks right up there with Noise Ninja in its ability to save time by cutting out many steps in the burning and dodging process.

In the few weeks I've been using it, I am also impressed with how well it keeps shadow and highlight detail and color accurate. It does a much better job of lightening shadows and darkening highlights than CS3's Shadow/Highlight adjustments. What I mean is that it doesn't add noise or mess with the saturation and contrast the way that the Shadow/Highlights adjustments seem to.

Nik, the maker of Viveza, also allows potential purchasers to download a 15 day unrestricted trial version. It is not cheap ($200+) but if you spend a lot of time burning and dodging, it can definitely be a time saver... happy computing!

SuperDuper is Leopard compatible

2008-02-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

My favorite backup app in the entire world... no wait... the entire universe is now Leopard compatible. You would think that between family (especially with twins babies- Charlotte (L) and David) and work and church and ASMP other commitments I wouldn't have time to obsess over a backup program... but I make time for the important things ;-)

SuperDuper is now Leopard compatible. If you don't use it... buy it now and start using it. It is the best bootable backup solution for the Mac.

10.5.2 woohoo!?!

2008-02-13T06:22:00.000-08:00

Apple has released Leopard update 10.5.2 which addresses dock issues and apparently a bunch of other stuff. It also seems to have fixed the Photoshop CS3 issue with the crop tool that I had posted about previously. I have not had a lot of work to do in Photoshop since running the update a few days ago, but is seems like the problem is gone... (fingers crossed that I am right!)

The install went smoothly on my MacPro and my MacBook but after running the installer, my MacBook Pro froze. (I left it alone for two hours and it made no progress... it froze.)

I had to force a restart and when I did, my MacBook Pro was not well. No internet connections, it would hang if I opened System Preferences and was displaying a boatload of other odd behaviors. It was not good. I downloaded the 10.5.2 update and ran it again, and it took the second time and restarted like normal... it seemed.

But after it finished booting, the fans came on after about 30 seconds and after looking at activity monitor where both processors were running at about 40-60% I realized that my troubles were not over.

I was able to isolate the problem to the spotlight indexing and I used Onyx
to reset the Spotlight index which forced the laptop to completely re-index the drive but it seemed to solve the problem. I'll post more if that changes.

The problems I had with the install on the MBPro also illustrate why having a good backup is critical. I would strongly suggest backing up your computer (with a bootable backup) before running any update for just this reason. Had it really killed my laptop, I would have just restored the machine from the backup and tried again. Time machine is not a bootable backup, fyi. Use something like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable backup.

Happy updating!

I Have Been Busy...

2008-02-05T06:39:00.000-08:00

My apologies for not writing more over the past couple of weeks... I have had a few rather time consuming shooting projects and my wife is now back to work after being on maternity leave so I have been pretty busy on the home front, too.

Things seem to be getting a little more back to normal, so I should be back to posting more frequently again, soon.

Be Nice

2008-01-26T04:29:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed that when some peoples' computers, cell phones, cameras, etc. stop working unexpectedly, so does their ability to be nice?

On occasion I get a call like that from a couple choice consulting clients when they run into technical issues. I know that they are frustrated that things aren't working the way they are supposed to, and I am sincerely committed to helping them get back on their feet as quickly as possible , but just wish they could learn to separate the problem (and it's cause) from the one trying to help them fix it.

I am not the one who made your external USB drive stop working. On occasion you are going to buy something from a manufacturer that does not work properly and will need to be sent back to the manufacturer for repair. While I might have told you about a sale on that particular drive to save you a little money, I never claimed that they were 100% error free, nor does my suggesting a drive mean that I am going to take personal responsibility for it, that is the job of the manufacturer.

What I will do is help you restore your backups (because I always stress the importance of backups) or if was your backup that failed, I can help you set up a new backup drive while your other one is being repaired. If you didn't run the backups because you turned off the external drive that was going to serve as your backup drive, please don't get mad at me about that either. I helped you set it up and showed you how to verify that your backups are working... you have to take it from there.

And I understand how frustrating it can be when things don't go your way. I have had countless billing issues with a certain cell phone provider that I have been with for years, and have had my issues with certain computer manufacturers as well, but I try really hard to separate my frustration with the situation from the person I am talking to on the other end of the phone line whose job it is to help me.

That individual on the other end of the line isn't the one who prepared my cell phone bill, but they are in a unique position of being able to help me get my bill fixed. The nastier I am to that person, the less of a chance there is of happy resolution. No one wants to stick their neck out and work hard for someone who is abusive and unappreciative.

The other thing to remember... mistakes happen. Everyone makes mistakes. If you show people some grace and the ability to forgive, they will usually bend over backwards to make it right for you. If you have a problem and berate the person on the other end of the line and ask how they even manage to get to work in the morning because they are so stupid you're surprised they can even find the way there, don't expect a lot of help on their end.

Before calling, try to come up with a brief outline of what the problem is and what potential solutions you would find acceptable or what you are hoping to gain from making the call. If you are angry and not calm... take the time to calm down before calling.

Figuring out what you want before you call will save you both time and more importantly save you money. I have had the occasional client just call me up to vent about how unhappy they are with things that I don't have the power to fix (a printer that is too noisy because they want to listen to classical music while making prints or similar no-win scenarios.) I will sit and listen to what you have to say, but I will charge you for doing so. I would much rather be charging you for something more productive and solution oriented to help you reach a goal, but if you want to pay me to listen to you rant and rave, go ahead...

Consider, too, if you have a problem with your credit card company or cell phone service provider... explain the problem in detail and tell the person on the other end of the phone what you are hoping they can do to solve the problem, and then give them a chance to work on your behalf.

Droning on and on about what an important client you are to them and how close you are to canceling your service because they have never got anything right in the last 10 years is not earning you any points with the person on the other end of the line... you might feel better in the short-term for dumping on the person, but don't be surprised when they don't want to jump through flaming hoops to help you after your 10 minute monologue of puffing you up and knocking them down.

Please understand also that you are not my (or anyone elses) only client or responsibility. Just because I answer the phone on a Sunday afternoon does not mean that I am going to stop everything (including my afternoon plans with my children) to immediately work for you.

I will do what I can to meet your needs as quickly as possible, but if I am currently committed, I will need to schedule you amidst my existing commitments to people who booked portions of my time before you. Just like when I'm working for you, I am all about meeting your needs and focused on you, my other clients and especially my family, deserve that same level of attention.

I guess all of this boils down to The Golden Rule...

"Treat others only in ways that you're willing to be treated in the same exact situation." (This is more of a modern-day definition, but I like it)

or in the Bible, Jesus said in Matthew 7:12

"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."

I find that the people who are always demanding respect are often the ones who are the most unwilling to show any respect or courtesy towards other people. Be nice... it will make a difference.

I Bought an iPhone

2008-01-20T07:45:00.001-08:00

After a year of holding out and insisting that my Blackberry met my every portable need, I crumbled and bought an iPhone.

This happened, is because I was in a weakened state after seeing what a disappointment the MacBook Air turned out to be. I was in that odd place where you have committed yourself to buy something (the new Mac ultra-portable laptop that everyone knew was coming) and it turned out to be lacking quite a bit (like ethernet, a removable battery... best that I don't get started on this again) the urge to buy remained... so I started looking around the Apple store and overheard a conversation about the new firmware upgrade for the iPhone and once I picked it up, it was all over.

I had looked at them before. Actually I probably have played with them 9 or 10 times in the Apple Store over the last year, but somehow it never quite seemed to be the right phone for me... obviously I was wrong.

It really is a cool phone. It syncs without any problems (unlike my Blackberry) it is able to view html emails (unlike my Blackberry) and it is just really cool and very Mac-like.

The Blackberry is much more like using XP, except that the Blackberry never bluescreens, it is just very menu driven and not terribly intuitive. After using a few different Blackberry over the years, however, it is taking me a bit of time to get adjusted to the simple and intuitive nature of the iPhone. (Similar to the complaints of long time PC users when they start using Macs.) I keep looking for awkward menus to select what I want to do, when on the iPhone what I want to do when it is usually on a button right in front of me.

The other thing I have discovered in about six trips back to the Apple store is that there are so many cases out for the iPhone that is is nearly overwhelming... and a lot of them are just cheap junk. Apple rocks with their 14 day return policy because I have been going back again and again buying a case that looks like it'll work, trying it, hating it, bringing it back, picking another, repeat, repeat, repeat.

The pitch on the outside of the packaging makes most of the cases look like they will solve your every iPhone carrying issue, but many of them are so hard to use, or so poorly built that you are better off using nothing.

So... after filling up my .mac inbox with Apple Store receipts for all of my purchases and returns, I ended up with the Contour iSee case (but in orange) which I liked because it protects the phone, but also gives you a really nice clip for it, too, because I like clipping my phone to my belt or pocket, I don't like carrying it in my pocket.

I also have decided that I am not crazy about the fact that Apple has changed the port on it so you have to use adapters to plug in anything but the iPhone headphones. I like the iPhone headphones. They have a built-in mic so you can talk when you aren't listening to music or watching movies, and they are comfortable and the audio appears to be pretty good on the mic. I haven't had anyone say to me "You're not talking on one of those.... HEADPHONES, are you?"

This was a frequent complaint when using the Blackberry... everyone hated listening to me when I was wearing one of the headphone microphones. Either they said I sounded like I was in a tin can, sounded like the teacher on the Charlie Brown tv cartoons (Hwa hwa hwa hwa, hwa) or just plain-old couldn't hear me.

I know that there is also the bluetooth option for the Blackberry and the iPhone, but for some odd reason, bluetooth headphones are just outside my grasp of being able to use them effectively.

Scenario one: I don't have it synced with the phone (but don't realize it), so the phone is ringing, and I am pushing the button on the headset and nothing is happening. Result-call goes to voicemail.

Scenario two: I am trying to answer the phone using the actual phone and forgot that I have it synced with my bluetooth headset (which is in my pocket or my camera bag) and I can't figure out why there is no audio coming out of the phone. Result- call goes to voicemail.

Scenario three: The phone rings, I am in the car. I madly search my pockets, the passenger seat, the cup holders and the surrounding area for the little $#&%#$ headset as the phone rings and rings. Result - call goes to voicemail and I am obsessed with finding the little headset hidden in my car. I have to stop the car at the first opportunity to find it. (I know it is nearby and just hiding because the little bluetooth icon shows up on the phone.) 75% of the time it is in the back of the car in or near my camera bag. Close enough that the phone will recognize the headset and sync, but far enough away that I can't get to it without stopping the car. 15% of the time it has fallen between the seats, and the other 10% I am sitting on it, which requires re-bending the earpiece to fit before I use it again.

Scenario four: I have the phone synced with the headset, and I remember that they are synced, and I know where the headset is, so when the phone rings, I put the bluetooth headset on and push the button, and it works great for about 30 seconds before it goes dead because I haven't charged it in two or three weeks because I never use it. Result - dropped call and confused caller and I call each other back and get each other's voicemail because we are calling at the same time.

See, for some reason bluetooth headsets just don't work for me. I can easily navigate the most confusing computer issues, and even have a bluetooth computer mouse or two, but when it comes to headsets I prefer the little plug in ones.

Wait, I was talking about the iPhone, wasn't I? It is a great phone. It also works better at my house than my Verizon phones. Living in San Diego, Verizon has a reputation as having the best network, but after using the ATT iPhone for a few weeks, I am not seeing any worse coverage, and in fact it seems to work better in a few areas that are somewhat lacking with Verizon.

Surfing the web on it is a lot of fun, too. It seems to be about the same speed as my EVDO enabled Blackberry was and I am able to surf some photo-heavy sites with no problem. The automatic switching from vertical to horizontal to surf works really well, too.

I also am really digging the visual voicemail thing. It is nice to be able to look at it and pick which order I want to hear them and be able to look at what voicemails are there vs. having to try to remember them all when listening to conventional voicemail.

The one scary part of this process was the transferring of my long-time Verizon number over to the iPhone. I had nightmares of days of time with no incoming calls and was imagining all sorts of horrors, but in fact it took about three minutes to complete and has worked flawlessly ever since.

I love my iPhone... and have already sold the Blackberry.

ExpressCard Adapter... Make Your MacBook Happy

2008-01-17T07:18:00.000-08:00

One of the things that has always bugged me about Apple laptops is the fact that Apple always left the PCMCIA slot off their smallest laptop (12" Powerbook) and now leaves the ExpressCard slot off of their MacBook Air (along with firewire, ethernet, ahh... don't get me started!)

Even the 13" MacBook is missing the ExpressCard slot (just like the earlier siblings the 12" and 14" iBooks were missing the older-style PCMCIA slots.) Why this bothers me is because both the ExpressCard and PCMCIA were a very flexible interface and therefore used for many different uses. I have and ExpressCard EVDO modem, an ExpressCard compact flash card reader, a SATA ExpressCard... and the list goes on. But without the slot, these cards are unusable on MacBooks, or iBooks and certainly on the MacBook Air.

If you find yourself in this predicament, take a look at Synchrotech. They make a wide range of adapters that will allow you to use ExpressCards and PCMCIA cards on laptops (or desktop Macs, for that matter) through your USB port or through an existing slot, for example, you can use a PCMCIA card with their ExpressCard to PCMCIA adapter or like I have done above in the photo above, I am using their USB2 to ExpressCard adapter for my EVDO modem that I share between my MacBook and my MacBook Pro.

I know that it is not a very safe looking connection in the photo, with that thing hanging way out to the side, but it made for a decent photo, eh? What I normally do is use a USB2 extension cable to put the modem closer to the nearest window to boost my signal and to avoid having it hang off the side of the laptop like that. It doesn't impact the speed at all when you use a USB cable, either.

Ultimately, Synchrotech has created some cool solutions that makes me glad to use a Mac and allows me to exist without the ExpressCard slot on every machine.

Oh, and the adapters I've used all seem to be compatible with 10.4 or 10.5

Great Insight for the Impatient (Me!)

2008-01-16T07:20:00.000-08:00

I am by nature fairly impatient. I am not prone to sitting around or waiting for things to happen. I like to move quickly and I sometimes forget that there are good reasons that the entire world does not move at the speed that I would like it to move at.

A great example of this is the blog of Dave Nanian, the maker of SuperDuper my very favorite Mac backup program. SuperDuper is still not Leopard compatible.

Now I have been using Leopard for a couple of months and was starting to become impatient with how long it was taking for SuperDuper to be updated. I love SuperDuper and was really growing tired of waiting for it to get bumped up to being Leopard compatible . I mean it is just a backup app, how long could it really take? (Forgive me for thinking this!!)

Well if you take a look at Dave's blog of his and his team's progress, it is taking a while... and for good reason. Really, read his blog, it helped me take a big super-sized dose of patience.

Sometimes I forget that behind the smooth interface and reliable performance of my favorite apps, there are people hard at work trying to make them better. And after reading Dave's progress with SuperDuper and Leopard, it details all the work they have done in fixing some major hiccups due to the new OS, apparently many of which were Time Machine based.

I appreciate companies like ShirtPocket Software (Dave and the other creators of SuperDuper) who take the time to make everything work right together... Time Machine and SuperDuper so that when I install it and use it, it will work great and not mess up the other software on my Mac...

Even when it doesn't happen on MY schedule.

Take your time Dave, I can wait.

MacBook Air.......ARGH!

2008-01-15T12:34:00.000-08:00

Ok... I have no shame. I was sitting outside the Apple Store this morning watching the various blogs running down what was announced at MacWorld. The doors opened at 10, I put away my MacBook Pro and moved to one of the store machines with various windows open keeping the info flowing on all the latest and greatest from the big Steve Jobs Keynote.

All looked good, including the MacBook Air until I took a look at some of the specs... sooooo close... yet it has missed the mark in my opinion. At least for the time being, my credit card sits safely parked in my wallet and I will continue to use my boxy little black MacBook.

There are some really cool things Apple has done with the laptop. The size is great, the multi touch controls are cool, and the fact that they have gone waaay green with the MacBook Air is cool. I don't think that it is a bad laptop for everyone.

If size is your main criteria and you don't use a lot of accessories, this could be the machine for you, but as a working photographer, here's why it isn't the machine for me:

No firewire... it is apparently USB bootable, but still... I want firewire. With the difference in speed and the $$ I've invested in all the firewire accesories, I don't plan to toss them for a slower USB2 solution.
No removable battery. Why, why, why... Obviously the designers have never flown cross-country on an airplane with no outlets for charging a laptop. I don't want to be stuck with the battery in the laptop and no way to replace it. We (my wife and I) had one of the original orange and white iBooks (it was my wife's work laptop) and the only problem it ever had was the bolted-in-battery. The specs say five hours of battery life... not that Apple ever makes overly-optimistic claims about their batteries...
One USB port. So pick one device and plug it in. Or for more than one device you can use a USB hub... oh, you want to use a bus powered device like a hard drive and an EVDO modem on the hub, no problem, you better find a powered USB hub then. That means you better find a plug to use it, too... not too mobile of a lifestyle if you have to travel plug to plug to use more than one accessory at once.
No ethernet port. Airport is cool, I like Airport, I use Airport, but I also like ethernet. Sure there is an ethernet dongle, it plugs into... you guessed it! The lone USB port.
No internal CD/DVD drive. Years ago I owned a laptop that was really small and cool... except that it had no internal CD/DVD drive. It didn't bother me until I tried to balance the laptop and the external CD/DVD drive on the airplane seat tray... it is actually easier to use a 15" or 17" laptop than to fiddle with a smaller laptop and an external drive.
No ExpressCard slot. I have gotten to like the ExpressCard slot in the MacBook Pro. It adds a lot more functionality than the old PCMCIA slot, and would have gone a long way towards me being able to live without firewire... sigh.....
Dinky hard drives. If you opt for the faster solid state drive and want to use Boot Camp you don't have much room left on your hard drive. That goes for the 80gb drive, too.
1.6 or 1.8 Core2Duo? Have I gone back in time, isn't that slower than even the entry-level MacBook... no, it is 2008 and it is slower than the $1000 laptop.
It's new... I would wait a few months to see what if any issues come up once these laptops make it into the wild. While Apple makes pretty darn good laptops (generally) the first run of each radical new design tends to have some issues, some persistent, others easily fixable. I would wait to see how many of each this laptop has.

I was really hoping this was going to be a real replacement to the 12" Powerbook. I was at the Apple Store and ready to throw down the $$ but unfortunately this just isn't the Mac for me. :-(

Mac Backup on the Road

2008-01-15T06:45:00.000-08:00

One of the most vulnerable times for a photographer to suffer computer issues or data loss is on the road. This is also where photographers are rarely backed up.

We are creatures of habit. Get on location, setup, shoot, drop images into the laptop, edit, get the selects to the client, break everything down, job well done.

But once in a while the unexpected happens. Just like we plan for hardware failure with backup cameras, and extra flash and more than one memory card and camera battery, your laptop has the ability to fail, too. The most likely part of your laptop to fail unexpectedly is the hard drive. So backing it up is important... and if you are a Mac user, relatively simple.

The first thing to look at is how much junk you have on your laptop. I am a firm believer in keeping a laptop slim with only the things you need to get the job done. I don’t save a lot of photos, games, or a library of every QuickTime movie I’ve ever downloaded on the laptop... I waste the hard drive space on my desktop computer for things like that!

As soon as I get back to my office from a shoot, I move the photos off my laptop and onto my desktop system which then gets it started in my archiving system so I know it is backed up and protected.

By limiting what I keep on the laptop, it also makes it easier to back it up. My backup solution is simple. I have an external portable firewire hard drive... portable drives are the ones that run off the firewire cable and require no A/C Power. The MacBook and MacBook Pro will also boot off of a USB2 drive... but running a machine off of a USB drive is a slow and frustrating experience... stick with firewire.

It is also true that portable hard drives are more expensive and offer less storage than the desktop variety hard drive, but remember, you are buying this to use with a laptop. Portable drives are powered off the firewire connection to the computer and they are much smaller, meaning you don't need to fire somewhere to plug it in and it will fit in your laptop bag. You can be thrifty and buy a full sized hard drive, but you are not going to enjoy dragging it around in your bag and always be searching for a plug when you need to use it.

I normally use SuperDuper to make the backup of the hard drive. SuperDuper creates a perfect bootable clone of my hard drive and also allows you to do synchronized backups after the first full backup. (This means that instead of it backing up the entire drive every time you back up, you have the option to only update the things that have changed since the last backup... saving boatloads of time.)

*Note - SuperDuper is now 10.5 compatible.

If you are using an Intel based Mac, there are ways you can back up your Windows partition, too... but that's a topic for another time.

Regardless of which software you use to create your backup, make sure that you select the option to make a bootable backup. That way, if you need to boot from the external drive, you power down your Mac, plug it in, hold down the “Option” button while booting up, select the external drive, and you are back in business.

The other reason having a bootable backup is to repair your main hard drive if it starts acting weird when you are on the road. You can boot up from the external and run the disk utility or other fixit programs on the main drive and hopefully be able to repair it. If you can't, no big deal, just clone your backup back over to your main drive and you are back with a working OS again.

Assuming that you keep your laptop slimmed down without a bunch of extra unnecessary stuff, you should only need to update the backup every month or so to account for software upgrades.

Another thing that I would suggest is create two partitions on the external drive so you can use the extra partition as an alternate storage location for images. If you use a program like PhotoMechanic, you can set it to import the images to a folder on your main hard drive and to copy them to the second partition on the external drive at the same time. That way you have an immediate backup of the files.

If I am shooting out of town, I usually store my external drive separately from my laptop after I've loaded my shoot in it so that if my laptop bag gets stolen, at least I have all my images backed up safely somewhere else (like in my camera bag.) If you keep the external drive with your laptop and it disappears or gets run over by a bus or something... you are hosed.

So remember to backup your laptop and have fun if you make it to MacWorld... I'm home hanging out with the twins.

Another Great Little App -- Savvy Clipboard

2008-01-12T08:22:00.000-08:00

Savvy Clipboard is one of my favorite little apps and let me tell you why...

What it does is creates a little clipboard that can sit on your desktop and it will collect all the things you copy and paste; each one in its own little tab. Once they are there, you can give individual items hot keys or lock them or delete them after you don't need them anymore. It is a great place to store the silly little things that you seem to paste over and over again. It has also proven handy more than once when I copied something and then deleted it... and then copied something else before I pasted the first thing... re-write city.

With Savvy Clipboard you just click on the tab of the item you want and "Apple-V" it right back into your document or wherever else it belongs. It is one of the little things that you never realize how handy it is until you've tried it.

It's $12 but it is a small price to pay for some cut and paste happiness.

Grouchy Mac? Don't panic!

2008-01-11T14:44:00.000-08:00

This is for the Mac that boots up successfully but acts weird after that.

Every Mac gets weird once in while. But when it happens don't freak out. Applications not opening, the spinning beach ball, sudden loss of your otherwise stable internet connections, or an application just bounces away on the dock and never opens up are usually things that can be fixed easily.

First thing to do... restart. Doing nothing more than restarting will solve 80% of the "all of a sudden my Mac is acting weird" problems. Unlike a PC, restarting your Mac can work magic. I never shut down my desktop computer, and rarely shut down my laptops, preferring to have them sleep so I can wake them up and go to work... this is good, but allowing the computer to restart and reload the OS can sometimes fix little bugs that seem to creep in if your Mac has not been restarted for awhile.

If your Mac doesn't seem to be responding to the command to shut down or restart (which is located under the Apple in the menu bar at the top left of your screen) then you can hold down the power button for 2-3 seconds and it will force your Mac to shut down (this works for all Macs, desktops, laptops, cubes and mini's... both Intel and PPC.) Wait 10 or 15 seconds and then hit the power button and your Mac will start back up.

If you restart and things are still not behaving the way they should, get to your "Applications" folder and then open up your "Utilities" folder. Find the application called "Disk Utility" and double click it. You should select your main hard drive on the column on the left and then select the "First Aid" tab on the right. Then click on "Repair Disk Permissions" towards the bottom of the window.

After the computer completes this (and it might take awhile so don't worry if it seems to be going very slowly) click the "Verify Disk Permissions" button and you should not see repeats of any of the errors that the computer found and hopefully fixed when you told it to "repair."

If there are still errors (usually in red) that Disk Utility couldn't fix, copy the name of the error and do a Google search on the name of the error and put "os x" after it and if it is common, you should be able to find the fix for whatever the problem is.

Something else to consider when problems start appearing... have you added any software, hardware, memory or anything else to the computer right before the problem started? If so, try uninstalling or unplugging that latest addition to see if the problem goes away.

If repairing permissions doesn't solve the problem consider Onyx made by Titanium Software, a tool no wise Mac user will be without. It is free but one of the best all around utility programs to fix your ailing Mac. If your problems aren't solved by the fixes above, you should definitely try Onyx. When you open Onyx it will want to verify S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard drive and verify the startup volume (which will quit all other applications running on your machine) You do not want to skip this steps. It can alert you to problems and let you know if your problem could be hard drive related instead of software related.

If Onyx tells you that there are issues with the disk and it needs to be repaired, you should restart your computer and boot from your install DVD for whichever OS you are using (10.4 or 10.5) and run the disk utility when booted from the DVD to repair the drive.

Disk Utility can't repair a drive when it is the drive you are running your Mac from, so you have to start from another drive (or DVD) to fix your main hard drive. Here are the instructions on how to do it.

Once your disk is repaired, you can restart like normal and there is a good chance your problem is fixed. Disk errors can cause all sorts of glitches.

If not, reopen Onyx and go to the "Automation" tab, click all the check boxes...yes, everything and then click "Execute."

Doing this is sort of the computer version of the broad spectrum antibiotic. It will clean and zap all sorts of stuff in your system (non-destructive to your data) that can become corrupt and hopefully you will have a happy Mac after that.

If you are still having problems with specific applications (not with the system as a whole) check to see if there are any updates for the program. Many apps now have the ability to check for updates automatically when you start them up, but either way, go to the software maker's site and look for any updates or look in their support area to see if there are fixes for your specific problem.

You can also do a Google search for the name of the application and a description of the problem and add "OS X" to the end for good measure. Something like "Photoshop CS3 crop tool broken OS X" (the problem I am having that I posted about previously.) The other good reason to do this is because it is rare that you are the only person experiencing whatever problem that is occurring. By doing a search, you will find out that you aren't alone and hopefully stumble upon a fix along the way.

If your problem is with a specific application, the next thing to try would be deleting and reinstalling that piece of software to see if that makes things better. The way I like to do this is with AppZapper. It cleanly gets rid of the application and the support files and preferences. It also makes a cool Captain Kirk "Zap" phaser noise as it sends your no-longer-needed app to the trash. As cool as AppZapper is, however, you still have to reinstall the software the old fashioned way... it's only good at getting rid of apps, not reinstalling them.

If problems continue and repairing permissions, cleaning things out using Onyx, searching for the problem you are having yielded no results, and reinstalling the offending software didn't help, I would try doing a clean install of your system and reinstall everything. (Or just restore your computer from your backups... you backup, right??)

While reinstalling everything can be time consuming, in the long run it will usually save you some time. I can have all my critical software reinstalled on a computer in about three hours when I reinstall from the disks... yet troubleshooting obscure problems can consume the best Mac sleuths for days. After doing the steps above, you are usually better off just starting over then remaining in a semi-crippled mode with your computer and hoping and firing blindly for a fix.

If you are absolutely opposed to doing a clean reinstall, the other thing to try would be taking your offending Mac to the Apple Store or give Apple support a call place to see what they can do. If you take it to the Apple Store and they decide there is a problem and that they want to take in your computer for repair, make sure you have all your data backed up... they are fond of wiping hard drives and doing clean OS installs... and for good reason.

The only other thing to consider... there are times where bad RAM or other hardware issues can cause what seem like random corruption, and if this is the case with your Mac, it's probably best left to Apple to help you ferret out where that problem lies.

Leopard and mail stationery... so close

2008-01-11T07:18:00.000-08:00

One of the features in Leopard that was most touted was the ability to us html based "stationery" to send cool emails embedded with logos, photos or whatever you want. As a photographer, I imagined all the possibilities to be able to send cool stylish emails with my logo or photos or whatever... but something that would give me the opportunity so send something other than the black text on white screen email.

It exists... it is a part of Mail 3, but the choices that are built in are not all that attractive (unless you want to look like a spin-off from a iPhoto advertisement or you are fond of really obnoxious backgrounds (like little flags.)

While the argument could be made that there are some cute ones, and there are, they are all aimed at the "cute" market... and some fall farther from the mark than others. What makes the whole thing not-very-Apple-like is the difficulty of trying to make any changes to the stationery templates or personalize them.

Here is a ten step tutorial on the Creative Guy blog showing you how to modify stationery (very cool for him to break it down and post it.) It is not impossible but it isn't simple either.

The other option is to shell out $30 and buy a bunch of other stationery templates that to me are all a bit over the top, too just like Apple's.

Neither solution exactly work for me.

What is odd is that there is no functionality built into iWeb to create stationery templates... it seems like it would be such a perfect fit and really boost the value of the whole thing to be able to make your own. The stationery is html based as is iWeb... why are they not playing nicely together?

The same thing that Apple has done with music (GarageBand), photography (iPhoto and Aperture) and video (iMovie and iDVD) which is to give the end user the ability to be creative in a simple and powerful interface has been lost with Mail and stationery.

Hopefully in the future (or maybe with the next Leopard update) this will become a reality so that email can become an art form on its own.

The other thing that needs to be mentioned is that html based email is the bane of Blackberry and most email enabled phone users everywhere. It shows up as a bunch of html coding and is nearly impossible to decode. So if you decide to dig into the stationery and start using it for your email, just don't send it to my Blackberry.

Taking your manuals with you

2008-01-07T10:01:00.000-08:00

One thing that I have amassed as a digital photographer are lots and lots of instruction manuals. Cameras, flashes, wireless units, audio recorders, Pocket Wizards, studio lights, computer software, portable lights and all of them with more features than I could possibly remember. So I am really good about keeping all of the instruction books on a bookshelf in my office... ready to be referenced at a moments notice.

The only problem is that I am rarely shooting in my office when I need to look up some obscure feature offered by one of my cameras or accessories. Typically I am out of town, or at least across town when I need to look something up... and my manuals are... right there on my office shelf and out of reach.

So I started downloading pdf's instruction manuals of all of the cameras and other devices I use frequently and have a folder with my own little "digital library" that is on both of my laptops so that it always travels with me and I have access to all of my manuals whenever I need to look up a feature or setting.

Here are some of the links to the most popular items... if there is something you want that isn't listed, you can probably do a Google search for the name of the device and the words "manual" and "pdf" and if it's online, that should lead you to it. (Example: "Canon 40D pdf manual")

Canon manuals -- click on the camera you need the manual for. Then click on "Drivers & Downloads." Scroll down the list and download the manual for the camera.

Nikon manuals -- in the Nikon Knowledge Database under "Search by Product" select "Digital SLR" and in the sub-menu you can select the camera you want. Then under "Search by Category" select "Manuals and Guides" and then hit the search button and you can download the manuals you want.

Pocket Wizard manuals -- the various Pocket Wizard manuals (for current and previous products) are listed here.

Quantum battery packs and Q-Flashes -- a list of all the manuals for all their lights, batteries and accessories.

Happy shooting and computing!

10.5 and the little bugs

2008-01-07T07:29:00.000-08:00

So overall I am still really liking Leopard (since have it installed on all my machines, I guess it is too late to not like it) but there are still a few things that continue to bug me.

The first and most annoying is that my HP 7310 All-In-One printer will no longer do double-sided-printing. It appears this has been a known issue since Leopard's release and HP has worked with Apple and on the Leopard install disk are print only drivers for the majority of their printers... that's right print only drivers... so a lot of the other functionality of the all-in-ones has disappeared. No more scanning or faxing from the computer and no more double sided printing.

And I can't begin to tell you how much fun it is to have to feed each page of my published image copyright continuation forms by hand into the printer after filling them out in Acrobat so that they will print on both sides correctly...

There are numerous discussions about this on most of the Mac forums.
Hopefully we will see a fix from HP soon.

The other thing that has come up recently (I've only experienced it in the last two weeks) is a bug where in using Photoshop CS3, when you try to enter a size in the crop tool, nothing ends up being entered into the boxes where you put the size and resolution of the image. Most of the time, quitting out of Photoshop and opening it back up again does the trick... but still... what a pain.

This also happens using the feather tool and a number of other tools, but most frequently for me with the crop tool. What is odd is that I am having this happen on my MacPro and my MacBook Pro but not on my MacBook. It could be because I do the least Photoshop work on the MacBook.

There has also been some debate over whether this is an Apple bug or an Adobe bug. Hopefully come MacWorld it will be fixed since there has been word that 10.5.2, which is rumored to be scheduled for release at MacWorld, will fix the problem.

A short term workaround for the problem: If you hover your mouse over the text Width, Height, and Resolution text in the menu next to the boxes where you enter the size, and then hold down the mouse button you can use it like a slider (go right or left) to increase the value to what you want in the box. If you also hold down the shift key, it will go by increments of 10 (pixels, inches, etc.), if you hold down the option key, it will move by increments of 0.1 (pixels, inches, etc.)

The other way you can make a crop if the bar isn't behaving is to do a crop with no data in the sizing windows and then use the "Image Size" tool under the "Image" menu bar item in CS3.

The other Leopard oddity I have experienced on all three of my Macs is the occasional really long startup or shut down for no apparent reason. If there were updates that were installed or running maintenance scripts or something beforehand, I wouldn't worry... but it is odd that this happens every so often. Repairing permissions doesn't seem to make a difference and there are no rogue startup applications that could be causing the problem... hopefully this will be put to bed by 10.5.2 as well.

If I had to do it all over again, I would still be running Leopard right now. It is fast and very stable... with the exception of the problems listed above... none of which are important enough to avoid making the jump... but hopefully they are viewed as important by the companies that hold the keys to fixing the problems.

Backing up Your Mac - Long Term Archiving

2008-01-04T08:26:00.000-08:00

In addition to daily backups to protect work in progress, you should also be doing long term archiving of all your images and critical files. Unlike daily backups where you can access your backed up data quickly because it is plugged in to your computer, if you don't break your backups up, your backup system can be unwieldy if you are making it search and update 2TB of data every day.

How often you should perform long term archiving depends upon how many photos you shoot and how much space you are taking up on your hard drives.

I tend do to do archiving once a month. Doing it monthly keeps the number of images manageable and while I am archiving, I also compile everything for quarterly copyright sumbisison. I look through the images, delete anything that there is no use for (out of focus, mis-fires, etc.) and I burn everything else (from the raw shoots) to two DVD's (two copies of the same images.)

I also use a program called CD Finder to catalog all of the DVD's that I've burned so that I can search for photos using the database it builds. It is just another way to keep track of images.

One set of DVD's is stored on-site in my office closet in an acid-free box designed for the storage of CD's and DVD's. The other set of DVD's is stored off-site in a similar set of boxes. Both sets are stored in a cool, dark and dry location that isn't prone to big shifts in temperature or humidity.

After I burn the two DVD's, I move the files over to a hard drive that is only used for archiving. At the end of the year, I duplicate the hard drive (two copies of the same data) and put one hard drive in my safe deposit box at my bank, and the other with my off-site set of DVD's.

At the end of the year, I also burn DVD's and copy to the hard drive(s) all of my published images from the year, clips, copies of everything submitted for copyright (and copies of the submitted thumbnails) and anything else photo related that would fall within the year.

I reason I archive to hard drives as well as DVD's is because it is much easier to manage the data on a hard drive. If all of the data on my RAID got corrupted, it would be much easier to restore it from a few hard drive than from hundreds of DVD's that would have to be read one at a time.

The reason I archive to DVD's is because they are cost effective and allow me to do incremental archiving of images in smaller batches that I can then move to my off-site more quickly instead of waiting until the end of the year to distribute my backups.

There is still some debate about the lifetime of DVD's. If you burn quality disks, and verify the data, you should be in good shape. Most disks that go "bad" are bad because of scratches or they were left in the sun, or some other environmental cause.

You should store your archive DVD's in good hard cases (DVD's can get scratched in those cheap little paper sleeves) and use CD safe pens to write on them. You should store them in some sort of container designed for storing disks and keep them in a dry, dark, cool place. This will help extend the life considerably.

I figure that before I get close to the lifespan of a DVD, we will be archiving on something with 10 times the capacity... look at the transition from CD's to DVD's. So I am not fretting over the lifetime of the DVD's.

I would also advise that you not store your original files and all of your backups in the same place. Living in San Diego, wildfires are a constant threat, and there were a number of photographers that not only suffered the loss of their homes during the fires, but also lost all their photos and backups because they were all stored on-site. Spread your backups out so that if something catastrophic happens, you have other backups to rely on that are kept in other places.

You can even partner with another photographer to keep a copy of their backups and in exchange they store a copy of your backups.

The other thing that I use (and really love) as part of my archiving strategy is an external RAID where I also store every digital photo I've ever shot and all of my scanned film images, too. I use a Firmtek 4 bay RAID which I've been really happy with. I have 750GB drives in mine, and I am not sure I could live without it now.

The ability to have instant access to every image I've ever shot without even getting up from my chair is awesome. It has saved me hours of time that I used to spend pulling archived DVD's, getting the images off of them and then refiling them every time I had a photo request from a client. Using a RAID also reduces the risk of damaging your archive DVD's. Since the RAID is plugged into your computer, Spotlight catalogs the disks which makes it really easy to search for images.

Another advantage of using a RAID is that you can mirror the drives. Just like the name implies, one drives is a mirror image of the other. When you add or subtract files, those changes are made on both drives at the same time. When one of the drives in the mirror fails, you can pop in a new drive and the RAID will copy all the data back over to the new drive and you have no down time.

I use SoftRAID to run my Firmtek box (vs. Apple's built in RAID control.) It gives me more flexibility in how I set things up, and also gives you warnings if there are any problems with the disks in the RAID.

RAID is not a replacement for good archival backups, however. The problem with using a RAID is that if the data becomes corrupt or gets deleted, that change will be on both the original disk and the mirror (since they are the same) so having other good backups is critical. The mirroring is only protection against hardware failure, not data corruption.

Now is a great time to come up with your own archiving plan and start backing things up.

Backing up Your Mac - Short Term Backups

2008-01-02T16:16:00.000-08:00

Backing up your Mac is important. Hard drives fail, software can mess stuff up, or a rogue four-year-old can go from playing Reader Rabbit to putting desktop files in the trash and emptying it because the unnamed child liked the satisfying sound the computer made as they trashed each file.

No matter how it happens, data loss can range from being a simple annoyance to a very expensive business-altering-disaster depending upon how well your data is backed up.

And there are a lot of people that don't back up. Some are lucky and haven't had a problem...yet. But it is not a question of will you suffer a data loss at some point, it is just a question of when.

One thing that proves that point is the number of companies that exist to recover failed hard drives. Here is a Google search on "Hard Drive Recovery." The reason there are that many companies in business is because there are a lot of people who suddenly discover their data is hosed and don't have any backups so they have no choice but to shell out to try to save their data.

Most of these companies are reputable and do good work, but you can expect to pay thousands of dollars to recover your hard drive and depending upon why it failed you could get all of your data back as one giant folder with all the files contained on the drive. You then get to spend days figuring out what they are and where they go. Or you could end up with little or nothing off the bad drive like this poor guy's experience. Needless to say, it could be a really bad and expensive situation.

Now if you really like to live dangerously, you can try what this guy did and rebuild the drive hardware, but it's not something I would suggest.

So if you aren't actively backing up, the first thing that you need to figure what data should be backed up. Things that usually fall into this category should include your photos (duh), invoicing, documents, estimates, contacts, calendars, bookkeeping, software installers and serial number, music, movies, passwords, and anything else that you would be lost without. Many of these items reside in your User folder, but double check that things aren't parked in other parts of your hard drive(s) that should be backed up.

There are two types of backup you need to think about; short-term and long-term.

Your short-term backups are for day to day backup of files that you use all the time and things that are important. If they stop working or disappear, you can go back to the version from yesterday, or the days prior and get back to a working copy of the file. Programs like Backup (for 10.4 or 10.5 users) and Time Machine (for 10.5 users) are best for this type of backup.

If you are on a desktop Mac, you can designate on of your other internal drives* as a backup. I prefer using an external drive so that if that machine dies, you can unplug the external drive and plug it into another Mac, and immediately recover the data you need until your main Mac is fixed.

One thing you never want to do is use your main (boot) drive or any partitions on it for backups. If you do that and the drive fails, there go your files and your backups. The same goes for any other drive that has critical info on it. You want the backup on a separate drive from where your originals are stored.

With Apple's Backup, you have to do a little work to decide what you want backed up and how often you want it backed up, but once you've done that it pretty much will run automatically in the background at the scheduled times. I like to have Backup run early in the morning (like 2am) when I am most likely not sitting at my computer, but I also set my computer to never go to sleep. If you have your computer sleep when you aren't using it and this happens during a scheduled backup time, it will run the scheduled backup next time your Mac is awake.

When the drive is full it will stop backing up and let you know that you need to replace the drive or erase it and start over. External hard drives are inexpensive enough that I would strongly suggest buying another drive, unplug the old one, label the dates archived on it, plug in the new one and safely store the old one just in case you ever need any of the data on it.

With Time Machine, you just tell the computer which drives you want backed up and it will do hourly backups to make sure everything is where it is supposed to be. After a few days it condenses things to one backup per day, and if you go back a month or two, it condenses them weekly. The idea being that most likely if you lose something, you will know it pretty quickly and be able to recover the most recent version of the missing file(s) but if you are going back weeks, it is probably a file that is not being updated frequently anyways.

One thing that Time Machine will eventually do if you are not careful is start delete your oldest backups when the backup hard drive gets full. Before it gets full, I suggest replacing it with a new drive and store the old one after labeling it with the dates archived on it... just in case.

Another type of backup that can be a good idea is a network backup. The easiest way is through Backup and your .Mac account. Due to space and network limitations, I only back up things like invoices and other must-have files that I would be really sunk without, but if my office burned down, I would have the data available to start rebuilding things.

But please, please, please back up your Mac. Stop reading and do it now! Well, you can finish this post, first, I suppose. There is only one paragraph left.

A good external hard drive can be bought for around $100 and Backup is free if you have a .Mac account. Time Machine is free if you have 10.5 installed on your computer. There is really no good reason to not back up, but there are plenty of reasons for regret if you don't.

A few more freebies that I like

2008-01-01T18:12:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! More free Mac stuff - enjoy!

If you use a MacBook Pro or a Powerbook with a backlit keyboard, this is for you. Labtick is a cool free app that allows you to adjust the backlight level on the laptop (and overrule the sometimes erratic ambient light settings that the laptop chooses.) (10.4 and 10.5 friendly)

Mactracker is a great program. It is a list of every Mac ever made and the specs to go along with them. When I am trying to help someone figure out how much RAM they can put in the PowerMac 9500, it comes in real handy... it is also fun to look at the specs of the first Macs compared to where we are now. They also have added Apple iPods, keyboards, displays and just about every other Apple branded item to the database. (10.4 and 10.5 friendly)

Monolingual is a free utility that will remove all of the other languages installed on your computer. If you are running low on memory, this can free up some space. A lot of progams install a whole boatload of languages even though most of us never get away from English on our Macs. I would suggest backing up your machine before running this... just in case.

This last one is a program that I stumbled across and it looks like it could be fun to play with. It is called MacOSaiX and does what the name sounds like... makes mosaics out of your photos. (It is supposed to be 10.4 and 10.5 friendly)

TSA and batteries... an update

2007-12-31T15:59:00.000-08:00

It turns out that DC based photographer Greg Mathieson has been working behind the scenes to get this mess sorted out. Here is an email he sent out this morning (Dec 31) regarding the progress he has made towards this fix:

I just got off a conference call with TSA,DOT and DOE and all the powers that be and they are currently going to rewrite the regulation in that there will be no limit on how many batteries can be carried aboard an aircraft. It seems that the PAO putting out the release and notice did not get the facts right in that the issue is the Watt hours, per each individual battery and not that of the combined amount of power or lithium content. What they are trying to prohibit or restrict is that of a single size battery exceeding a set about of lithium, such as a 130WH battery or greater. Only the larger space power batteries that stand alone next to a laptop provide that type of power and some camera crew batteries do as well.

It's recommended though that once the new press release and notice is put out by TSA and DOT that members carry a copy if they are carrying large quantities of batteries onboard an aircraft. Just in the event some TSA guy never got the word or is reading the old notice.

All the best for a happy new year,

Greg E. Mathieson
MAI Photo News Agency, Inc.

So hopefully a new memo will be out soon that will get this straightened out. When it is released, I will post it here.

One lingering concern... it still remains to be seen what this means for photographers that travel with portable light kits that rely on heavy-duty batteries for power....

Airline travel is about to become even more fun!

2007-12-30T07:09:00.000-08:00

So the TSA has dropped their latest bombshell on all of us that travel frequently. A new ban on too many rechargeable batteries. Apparently the new rule (effective Jan. 1, 2008) says you can bring two rechargeable batteries other than those actually attached to the devices they were intended for in your carry-on bags. Batteries are now forbidden in checked luggage.

They also need to be in individual baggies to keep them from shorting out or catching fire. But if putting them in a baggie renders them safe, who cares how many you bring on the plane???

I guess I'll be using Fedex to send all my batteries ahead of me on shoots from now on.

Read the release here.

Securing Your Laptop - software and firmware

2007-12-30T05:43:00.000-08:00

How easy would it be exploit the contents of your laptop if it was taken? What kind of information is stored on your laptop that you wouldn't want to fall into the hands of criminals? Passwords, banking records, serial numbers, images, contacts and access to any online account that you have "remember me" set up for. Think about all the times people say "I have my entire life on my laptop."

Which means if your laptop gets stolen, and it isn't secure, the person that swipes it suddenly gets to be you... with access to your email, banking and whatever else they can find on it until you can change all your passwords... unless the bad guy beats you to the punch and changes them all for you, effectively locking you out of your own online life.

Here are some things you can do to help prevent this from happening.

In System Preferences go to "Security" and check the boxes that say "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver" and "Disable automatic login."

By doing this, your computer will require you to input your password every time you start your computer and to wake it up from sleep or the screen saver. So if someone steals your laptop, they won't be able to start your computer or use it because they won't know your password.
Use a real password that is at least 6 characters long that uses both letters and numbers and a capital letter or two for good measure. pswd, 0000, 1234, abcd, qwerty, admin, and guest are really not secure passwords... those are all things that crooks are going to try if they are attempting to get into your computer. Avoid your name, your kids names, Canon and/or Nikon for that matter as well... those are all easy to guess.

After you've crafted your password, make sure you remember what it is. Don't write it down on a piece of gaffers tape and stick it to your laptop. That defeats the purpose of having a password. Keep in mind that if you have a password written down, someone could potentially log into your machine over a wireless network you share and access your data that way as well... keep your password a secret.
Enable the firmware password for your laptop. Here are Apple's instructions on how to do it. By turning this feature on, it prevents someone from being able to boot up your laptop from an external device (like a hard drive) or boot it up in any of the diagnostic modes that exist under OS X. The only option for someone would be to do a clean install of the entire machine with an OS X DVD.

This means that your computer is pretty much a brick to anyone that swipes it and doesn't have your user password or the firmware password. If they want to use your computer, they would have to start all over. This means that your data potentially stays safer and is much, much more difficult to access than if you laptop was wide open.
Protect critical data with encryption. Use File Vault (built in) or use Knox to create secure folders on your hard drive to protect critical data. That adds yet another layer of security to your Mac laptop. Password protecting Word, Excel, or other documents is not really any protection at all. There are a ton of ways to quickly crack password protected files.
Protect serial numbers, passwords, and banking info on your laptop. Laptops allow us to run our business from where ever we happen to be. That means that we also have to carry around all the logins and passwords to be able to do that. Securing this data is critical.
I have recently found 1Password which I am totally taken with because of its ability to autofill passwords on websites, sync between my different computers using my .Mac account and the fact that it is locked tight when not in use. It is the best $25 you could spend to secure and synchronize your password data.
GET REVENGE. A really cool app that has been released for the Mac (and specifically for the MacBook and MacBook Pro with their built-in cameras) is called Undercover. What it does is installs software in the background of your computer that does nothing except check in with their server every so often when it is online. If your laptop gets lifted, you alert Orbicule (the folks that make Undercover) and the next time your laptop goes online and checks in with their server it will start sending photos of the user taken with the built in camera, logging the websites that the user goes to and what he types while he is there, logs their IP addressand send all that stuff to Orbicule in the background so the bad guy has no idea that his every move is being recorded. You then forward all that to the cops and they can get your laptop back and a free trip to the gray bar hotel for the jerk who took it.

Securing Your Laptop - Hardware and Paranoia

2007-12-29T07:52:00.001-08:00

In January 2004, I was shooting the Michael Jackson arraignment in Santa Barbara for Reuters and the courthouse was an absolute zoo with photographers, fans, protesters, and tv crews everywhere. I was sitting next to another photographer in an outside area at the courthouse where we transmitting photos after Jackson had left. People were walking back and forth all around us. I had my cameras at my feet. He had his cameras at his side on the bench we were sitting on while we were both working away, completely focused on our laptops.

After we both finished and started packing up, he looked over at me and asked if I knew what happened to one of his camera bodies and his 16-35mm lens. He has set it down next to his other body with a 70-200 zoomer on it and his camera bag which were still sitting right next to him, but the one body and wide zoom were gone. It appears that while we were working, someone just walked up and picked up his camera and walked away. Neither of us the wiser until much later when the poor victim started looking for it. But where it was siting next to him, he couldn't actually see it when he was looking at the laptop. By luck, I had my gear by my feet where I could see it, because there was no more room on the bench.

This is one of quite a few stories I know of first hand where laptops, 400mm lenses, camera bodies, hard drives, entire camera bags and lighting kits have seemingly disappeared without a trace.

All of these stories made it clear that the easier something of value is to steal (and the more inattentive the owner is,) the more likely that someone will steal it. So make sure that you keep things secured so that they are not easy to walk away with... this goes for laptops, cameras, gps units and all that type of stuff that is easy to swipe and put on ebay. Unfortunately, if you are a photographer, you are a constant target carrying all of this type of equipment around.

I travel just about everywhere with one of my laptops. I am a photographer who is shooting 95% of my work digitally, so the laptop is a critical piece of getting the images off the compact flash card and to the paying client in a timely manner.

One of the challenges I face with dragging a laptop around all the time is how to keep it secure... especially in the times when I need it up and running so the client has remote access to the images, but I'm not right there next to it.

First thing I do is use a laptop cable lock... even when I am nearby. Keyed cable locks are not the greatest solution for security. In fact, they are pretty easy to defeat with a ball-point pen or cardboard toilet paper tube (this link is to a 8mb .wmv file that shows how easy it is to do.) Combination locks are a little better, but are not terribly hard to defeat if the criminal really wants your laptop.

Most of the time, thieves strike where they can take something and get away quickly. The fact that your laptop is secured to something, even if it is just a combo cable lock makes it harder for someone to make off with your computer without increasing the risk of being caught because they have to fiddle with defeating the lock, increasing their chance of being noticed.

If you are in a situation where there are other laptops present (like a photographer media room at a football game) it means that a thief who is looking for an easy target, will pass on your laptop if it is locked to the table and go for one that is unsecured. I also try to set up as far from the doorway as possible so that the thief will have to travel the longest distance away from their potential escape route (the door) to try to take my stuff. If there are going to be other people (editors) working in the room the whole time, I also try to set up near them (or at the same table) so that no one will mess with my stuff because someone would be right there if they tried to take it.

I also secure my laptop bag through the cable lock. Since most photographer carry card readers, extra batteries, backup hard drives and all the other expensive bits and pieces with their laptop, most laptop bags, without the laptop, still have $100-$500 worth of goodies inside and the bag with or without the computer is another common target of thieves.

I also use a zipper lock (like in the photo) on the zipper of my laptop bags. These locks are not super secure, but again, it deters the thief who is just looking for a easy target. It isn't going to be worth it to try to break into the lock to see what's inside the bag that is attached to the computer's cable lock... the thief will look elsewhere for easy pickings.

Protecting your thumb drive

2007-12-29T05:43:00.000-08:00

How many thumb drives (jump drives, usb drives) do you have? Where are they? What is on them?

Thumb drives are a great tool for dragging stuff back and forth between different computers, but since they are so easy to use, most people end up putting all sorts of stuff on them that could be trouble if it fell into the wrong hands. I can't tell you how many times someone has handed me one of these usb drives with something on it I need and when I open it up, this person's entire life is on this little device.... files like creditcard_numb.doc, passwords.doc, adobe_serial_numbers.doc, banking.doc, and clientlist.doc are all sitting right on the top level of the drive.

Fortunately for these trusting souls, I am honest, but if they ever left the drive sitting in a Starbucks somewhere, how much damage could someone do to your life with all that info you carry around on there? It's a pretty scary thought.

And while many people take advantage of password protecting files like these, that is only good to deter the causal snooper... it will do nothing to prevent a committed crook from accessing your data.

Here is a video that shows how to break a Microsoft Word password in less than two minutes.

Here are the results of a Google search for "break ms password" Page after page of hacks and software to break into any MS document. Feeling concerned?

I've even met people who take pride in not having any personal info in their laptop, "In case it gets stolen," but keep all this data on a little jump drive. To me, this makes little sense since it is much easier to keep track of your laptop (I bet you know excactly where it is right now) vs. one or more little usb thumb drives (as you pat your pockets and look in your laptop bag.)

Here is what I would suggest...

A. Keep only what you need on your jump drive. After you have moved something from one machine to the other, delete the files. Just because you purchased a 2GB jump drive doesn't mean you have to keep 2GB of stuff on it.

B. Encrypt the drive so that is unreadable. I really like Knox which allows you create "vaults" on your jump drive or on portions of your hard drive. It uses Apple's File Vault for the encryption so it is Mac native, very secure (and works on both 10.4 and 10.5.)

Since it is a Mac-only program, if someone sticks it in their PC and tries to get anything off of it, they are not going to have any luck, but when you use Knox, it also installs the app on the jump drive its self so that when you plug it into another Mac that doesn't have Knox installed, it will automatically run the program so you can unlock the vault with the password.

You can turn the entire drive into a vault or you can just set it up so part of the drive is in the open for transferring files to other people's computer, or getting files from them (but see the next section below about doing that.)

C. Since thumb drives have become incredibly cheap, have one with your data on it, and have a second throw-away one that you only use for moving files back and forth with other computer users. That way, if you forget to get it back, you haven't lost access to your data, you are just out the $10 drive until the next time you see the person.

I find that having a few extras is always a good idea since my son like to pretend they are phones, guns, missles, walkie-talkies or any number of other imaginary items. I have also found a couple of them in odd places like in the sand box in the back yard and in the shower... but no one has come forward to take responsibility for putting them there.

Here are some other options for encryption programs (this is on the Apple website under software downloads in the network and security section.) Make sure anything that you download is compatible with your OS and the hardware you plan to use it with.

Avoid the malls! Stay home and download freeware!

2007-12-26T07:03:00.001-08:00

May this blog be your solace in the flood of "After Christmas Sales."

No claims of best deals ever. These offers do not expire at midnight, nor do they require you to line up in a parking lot outside a store at 3am because this offer is not limited to stock on hand.

Here is a short list of free apps for your Mac. They are all things that I use and like (and all of them should work under Tiger or Leopard.. but don't take my word for it, please read release notes and I always suggest you have good backups before installing anything on your computer.)

Happy Holidays!

(The photos are of Nick opening some last minute Christmas presents this morning. )

1. EXIF Viewer - When you just want to look at the exif data from an image you shot. It works with jpegs, and doesn't seem to work with RAW files too well (at least not Canon CR2 files.) I use it a lot when someone asks how did you shoot that, what ISO were you using, etc.

It is also handy when you are getting ready to sell a camera and buyers always want to know how many actuations there are on the camera. It will share how many frames have been shot at the time you took the photo (for most cameras) (10.4 and 10.5 friendly)

2. Chax - A freebie that allows you to make some helpful modifications to iChat. It can switch you to "away" when your screen saver turns on, it allows you to modify the size and style of the font in the contacts window (really handy on laptops - my favorite feature) and you can set it up to auto-accept text, file, AV chats and screen sharing. It does even more, but there are the highlights. (10.4 and 10.5 require different versions of Chax. Both are located at the link above.)

3. MenuMeters 1.3 - A series of menu extras that will show you hard drive activity, the load on your CPU(s), a breakdown of how your RAM is being used, and a meter that shows network activity (how fast you are sending or receiving data.) The meters show up on the menu bar at the top of your Mac (on the right side, just to the left of the date & time, airport icon, etc.)

I've found this to be handy to see what's going on with your computer and if you suddenly see big spikes in CPU usage that don't match what you are doing on the machine, it can alert you to potential trouble or an app that has crashed and is using up lots of CPU resources. The network meter is nice when you are sending photos, to be able to see the quality of your connection in real time. (It definitely works in 10.4 and all indications are that it works in 10.5 just fine. I haven't had any Leopard related issues with it. I would recommend reading the latest notes before installing it in 10.5, just to be safe.)

4. Adium - Adium is an instant messaging app that works with just about every chat format under the sun. It will log you in simultaneously to all the different chat formats that you subscribe to and is very customizable. There are quite a few sound and icon sets and "styles" that you can use to change the look of Adium. It does not offer any video or audio conferencing so it is not a complete replacement for iChat, but offers quite a lot for free. (10.4 and 10.5 friendly)

5. Enemy Territory - Return to Castle Wolfenstein - having fun on your Mac is important. I love games and this is a great one... and free at that! It is a network version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. One of the original OS X games that showed what the OS could do. It is a first-person-shooter, so it you aren't fond of shooters, I'd skip the 250mb download (broadband connection advised) (10.4 and 10.5 friendy.)

6. Carbon Copy Cloner - Make bootbable backups of your mac, synchronize folders or drives, and even back up to networked drives. This is a pro level app that is given away for free. The only thing that Mike Bombich (the guy who wrote it) asks is that you consider making a PayPal donation to him. It's well worth it.

Expect another similar list here in the near future as more of my favorite freebies are updated for Leopard.

Securing your Mac -- A good read

2007-12-25T06:03:00.000-08:00

The good folks over at TUAW (The Unauthorized Apple Weblog) have a whole series on securing your Mac.

This was published a while ago but since it is still something good to take a look at and bookmark-worthy. While Macs are still less troubled by security issues than PC's, there are still some things you can do (and things to look out for) to keep safe.

While you are there, don't miss the link to increasing your safety while surfing on unsecured wifi networks. I personally avoid "free" wifi networks because of privacy concerns... you never know who is watching as your check email and do your online banking and keeping track of your info...

I hope you have a great Christmas... it' time to go unwrap presents with the kids... woohoo!

Installing Leopard... a tale of two installs

2007-12-23T13:50:00.000-08:00

One really important thing I forgot to mention about Leopard: DO A CLEAN INSTALL.

But before you do anything... do a complete bootable backup of your hard drive. Please! I beg you! Doing OS upgrades on a computer is the way to guarantee something will go horribly wrong if you aren't backed up. So go to your local computer store, Apple Store, or your favorite online retailer (my favorite for Mac stuff is Other World Computing) and buy yourself an external drive to back everything up first. You will be glad you did.

The first machine I installed it on, my MacBook, didn't take to it too well when I did the install as an update. In fact, my poor little MacBook didn't do well at all. It got slow, buggy, things crashed, it had problems booting, problems shutting down and was not much fun to use. You would be in the middle of doing something and all of a sudden the fans would come on and the Activity Monitor would show all of these strange (meaning not the normal processor intensive things going on behind the scenes) processes running at nearly 100% of the laptop's capacity.

So after a couple of hours of trying to track down what caused all these issues (although deep down I knew it was because I tried running the update) I then heeded the advice of Apple and did a clean install... and it worked great.

At times, I don't learn lessons easily, however. So my next Leopard target was the Mac Mini in our family room that is used by my wife for surfing, my son for playing Lego Star Wars and Wingnuts and my inlaws for watching Korean soap operas while they are hanging out with the twins. So what did I do, why I tried running the upgrade again on the Mini.

How did it work?

Horribly! I had everyone mad at me because it actually seemed (to me) to work pretty well after it had finished. Now I don't use the Mini much, unless it requires some sort of fix, so I guess I didn't spend that much time checking everything out, but I probably should have. Safari started crashing, Nick (my Lego Star Wars loving son) was unhappy because the games wouldn't load and my inlaws couldn't get any of the online videos to play. Lets just say my family was not seeing the value of upgrading to Leopard.

So again, I got the various install disks out and did a clean install and it worked great. No problems whatsoever.

Now I have to confess, in the past, I have gotten away with doing upgrades (I did 10.3 to 10.4 upgrade on my 15" Powerbook in a hotel room in Ohio somewhere after a shoot) and then came home and did the same for all my other Macs and it worked fine... that time. But Leopard seems to introduce enough new stuff that upgrading can cause more problems than just spending an hour or two and starting fresh.

The other good reason to do clean installs is because it gives you a chance to do some spring cleaning on your computer. You actually look at how much junk you have installed on your computer vs. what you actually use all the time.

Some people that are too scared to wipe their hard drive (or maybe they just like living dangerously and are opposed to backing up ) like the archive and install choice. That is where it moves everything on your computer into a folder called "Old System" or something like that and installs the new system in a new system folder. The reason I don't like this is because it leaves all your applications alone and there are a number of apps that put stuff in other places (that is now called "Old System" ) and so the temptation is to start using the stuff in the old system instead of reinstalling your apps, too. Take this as a fact... if you try to use your apps from the previous install, you will spend more time trying to figure out why they aren't working right than if you had just installed them cleanly in the new system.

After doing the clean install, this is when you can go to your backup of the drive to import thing like your email, preferences and other odds and ends that you are going to need on the new system after you installed all your apps.

Another thing that I would suggest before doing the upgrade is make sure you have all of your downloaded installers, installers on CD's or DVD's and most importantly, serial numbers for everything before you do the reinstall. I actually print out a copy of what is in my applications folder so that when I do the reinstall I don't forget anything important. I actually create a folder with the latest drivers and installers when I did my upgrades on all the machines so I could just work down the list in the folder installing one after another which saves time of having to hunt for disks and downloads later on.

I would also suggest doing a Google search to make sure that all your critical applications and hardware (printers, scanners, etc.) are working with Leopard. In Google just search for the name of the hardware and "leopard" or "10.5" or search for it both ways. You can also include words like "issue, "problem", or "conflict" to see if anything comes up.

If it turns out that your printer or some other hardware is not Leopard compatible, look at the bright side... you really do deserve some new peripherals, don't you???

I am liking Leopard

2007-12-23T07:36:00.000-08:00

I am now running Leopard on all three of my work Macs. Currently, that would be a Mac Pro 2.66 quadcore, a 17" MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.33, and a black MacBook Core 2 Duo 2ghz. It has been quite stable and I am not experiencing any real serious issues with it.

My main pet peeves are that I can't get my HP Officejet 7310 duplexing printer to duplex any more and that I have a few little odd files in the trash that won't go away on the Mac Pro (but this problem hasn't shown up on either laptop.)

I understand that there is actually a fix for the files in the trash thing that has something to do with the windows partition... maybe (I am running Boot Camp, but I haven't taken the time to research it since the only thing that happens is that it shows that the trash is perpetually not empty. The things like holding down "Option" while emptying the trash or using SuperGetInfo to make the files go away hasn't worked. If you do a get info on them, try to rename them, or try to drag them to the desktop, they just disappear... and then magically re-appear in the trash again. (I'm writing an awful lot about a problem I haven't really tried to fix, huh?)

Another thing that I am really, really, missing is the ability to use Shirt Pocket Sofware's SuperDuper to back up my laptops. It has been my nearly perfect tool for backing up the MacBook and MacBook Pro to external portable firewire drives so that I have a bootable backup ready to go if something goes amiss in the field while on a shoot. The thing I love about SuperDuper is that it is simple and after you do the initial backup, you have the option to do smart backups so that it is only updating what has changed since the last time you backed up... it doesn't copy everything all over again. It will also make the copy bootable so that you can plug it in and boot from the external drive if necessary (it does need to be a firewire drive for this feature.) They are furiously working on a Leopard (10.5) compatible version and neither I nor my Macs can wait!

What I am liking about Leopard is that it is fast, has some cool new tweaks, and is no less reliable than Tiger (10.4).

What I'm really digging right now is Time Machine. Under Tiger, I used Apple's Backup program (which is free if you have a .Mac account - another good idea... but we'll get to that another time.) for daily archival backups to an external drive and then would do a full bootable backup of the system using SuperDuper every few weeks.

On my desktop system, I care more about my data (address books, photos, invoicing, receipts, passwords) being backed up than keeping the machine instantly re-bootable if there is a hard drive or software issue. After all, if I am sitting in the office, I have both laptops and all the install CD's to re-install everything anyways. So I can always pull the backup off the external and run things off a laptop if I need to. But Backup was always slow and I would set it to run at 2:30am so that it wouldn't choke whatever else I was doing... plus there were occasionally issues with programs like Mail if you were using them when Backup started running where the backup could fail when you went to recover it.

I have found that Time Machine is fast and seems to use disk space very efficiently (in the time I have been using it.) I have recovered files from it and found that it recovered thing much more quickly than Backup ever did. Part of this could also be attributed to the fact that I don't have weeks and weeks of backups stacked on the drive yet. I would imagine that the performance could decline some over time as there are more backups it will have to sort through to pull out the right data. From my experiments, it doesn't seem to matter to Time Machine. It seems to make good backups of things even while you are using them, or at least must have the sense to avoid backing up the things that could cause problems down the road.

More about Leopard later...