So this afternoon I finally addressed something
I have noticed when processing SRAW1 files from my Canon 5D Mark II.
SRAW1 files are being converted to a DNG file
that is almost twice the size of the native CR2 (RAW) file in Lightroom
v2.3.
This is a huge filespace premium to pay for maintaining my archive in
DNG. A quick search of Google turned up nadda.
Also annoying but minor, CR2 and DNG SRAW1 files display as an image
with 0 x 0 resolution, and no preview image is displayed in Finder in
MacOS v10.5.6
Here's the down and dirty:
Original Canon 5D Mark II SRAW1 .CR2 file: 10MB
DNG, no JPEG Preview, Preserve Raw Image, Uncompressed: 57.2MB
DNG, no JPEG Preview, Preserve Raw Image, Compressed: 18MB
DNG, no JPEG Preview, Convert to Linear Image, Uncompressed: 57.2MB
DNG, no JPEG Preview, Convert to Linear Image, Compressed: 24.9MB
DNG, no JPEG Preview, Preserve Raw Image, Uncompressed, Embed Original RAW file: 66.4
Update 5/13/2009 @ 5p: According to this post in Adobe Forums, "The sRaw format is not covered by the DNG specification. When
converting, it must be changed; in fact, the amount of data needs to be
increased by 50%."
Like any self-respecting photog, the first thing I do prior to leaving on a shoot is format my compact flash card in camera. It's something I don't even think about anymore, it's just automatic. So, naturally the first thing I did upon receiving a new Transcend 16GB compact flash card from Amazon last night, I popped it in my Canon 20D to format it. The 20D showed it as a 7.4GB card, with space for 770 RAW images on the card. Uggg.
When I got to work this morning, I tried it in a 5D, and 1Ds Mark II. Even though it showed in both as a 7.4GB card, after formatting in both, it shows as 14.9GB. OK, so it's an issue with my 20D with firmware v2.0.3 unable to format cards larger than 8GB. Freegin Canon.
After trying (and failing with a critical error) to install the software programs TextPad, MacDrive and even Adobe Acrobat v8 in Microsoft Windows 7, I found this suggestion in the "Important Messages" flag in the tray icons in the bottom right corner of the screen, which immediately fixed the install failure issue for me. Leave it to Microsoft to cause bad customer experience through a customer experience improvement program :)
An issue with the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) client in
Windows 7 beta is causing Explorer and some MSI-based installers to stop working
properly.
To solve this problem, follow these steps:
Click the Start button ,
click All Programs, and then click Accessories.
Right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as
administrator.
In the User Account Control window, verify that Program name is Windows Command Processor, and then click Yes.
In the Administrator: Command Prompt window, type or paste the
following text at the prompt:
Introducing Madeline Rose Wren, born 1/5/2009 at 7:19pm. Delivery was easy for Mom, and the subsequent two-and-a-half days have been a cakewalk for Dad, thanks to family and friends! The above photo was snapped when she was only 12 hours old; Folks in the know say they have never seen a newborn so wide-eyed and checking out the world around them. All we know is that she's the love of our life and we're really looking forward to the rest of our lives with her!
Updates will be added as we have time in between feedings, changings, and sleeping, probably in the wee hours of the morning, like now. Thanks to everyone for the amazing well-wishes and support!
I only realized it after he mentioned it, but even through the ice storm last week and the snow this week, I haven't received any watches or warnings either. However my wife has been thrilled not to be woken up by the shrill alerts.
My dad called the NWS field office in Buffalo, where an unnamed meteorologist told him they were under a directive not to issue watches via the weather radio. We both remember receiving watches during the summer thunderstorm season, but it's been very quiet the past few months. Too quiet.
I emailed Raymond O'Keefe with the NWS Albany field office about this, and confirmed that while they do issue watches via weather service radio (as in, they announce them via voice), they do not SAME encode them. He also said this isn't a new policy for them.
This weekend I will be digging into this issue while digging out from the snow while we impatiently await for our new arrival.
A big bug in Vista Media Center that I have encountered twice in the past two months, which required me to completely wipe and reconfigure my channel list guide and scheduled recordings has been fixed. But only in Windows7, according to mikehayton, a Microsoft MCE Team Member:
"This is a known bug fixed in Win7. At this stage there are not
sufficient instances of it reported to warrant backporting the fix (and
then doing the full test pass to ensure that in this version of the
code that it hasnt broken something else)."
Seriously? Is Microsoft even supporting Windows Vista with bug fixes these days or what? When I purchased Vista Ultimate two months ago, I didn't realize that I was buying into an end-of-life product. (I know, I'm not even supposed to have TV Pack 2008, but it was applied to a fresh Vista install, per Microsoft's instruction to OEM's). But seriously, this really can't bode well for users of Vista hoping for fixes to their documented bugs.
How many other issues will only fixed in Windows7? For me, it doesn't matter... For my last remaining home Windows OS, Media Center, Mac/AppleTV can't come soon enough.
This is just one more, and likely the last, nail in the coffin for Microsoft operating systems for me. Since buying a MacBook last week, I've only needed to boot into XP once, and that was to Remote Desktop into a client's workstation.
UPDATE 1/26/2009: The dead pixel issues seems to have resolved themselves, as the no longer appear to be an issue. However the lack of image stabilization continues to be an issue as I struggle to find clever ways to handle the VadoHD to minimize shake, including even this trick.
With my wife and my expected addition (T minus 6 days!), we needed to procure a portable video capture device (video camera) with video quality at least better than our Canon SD800 point & shoot.
In phototography as in life, timing is everything. Very recently, the pocket high-def (HD) camcorder market started heating up, most recently with Creative Labs' VadoHD.
I ordered on Monday, 12/8/2008, the day they were offered on Creative's website... 720p for $200 delivered, and in a form factor that's about the size of my iPhone?!? Sure, don't mind if I do!
So by Friday, 12/12 when I didn't recive any shipping notice, I emailed customer service.
"We were expecting to have the Vado HD's in our warehouse on the 8th,
however, there was a delay in the delivery. We received them yesterday
and immediately shipped out the orders."
OK, no sweat. I received the VadoHD tonight, and immediately put it to use with the requisite cat snaps. Luckly, Chairman Meow (aka Evil Kenny) was feeling camera happy. However the results were less than encouraging upon reviewing via included HDMI cable to my 1080p 40" Bravia: Two dead/stuck pixels, about two pixels apart, near the center of the screen. Stuck on green. I hate green.
I am a digital photographer and archivist. At work, my digital photography
workflow is largely dictated by a multi-user networked environment. In
addition to myself, I have at least one (sometimes as many as three)
people adding and editing metadata on a collection of over 45,000
images, growing at a rate of 1,000 images weekly.
Adobe Lightroom won't work because it cannot handle more than one
person editing photos and metadata at a time. Lightroom also doesn't
particularly play nice with networked volumes, either. Our tool of
choice was iView Media Pro (IVMP), but that puked once our collection
reached around 30,000 images (it cannot handle a database larger than
2GB, including thumbnails). IVMP also isn't really a multiuser editor,
we used it via Remote Desktop (RDP) on the server, allowing one person
at a time to do work. It was really kludgy and I was rather happy when
it broke.
Now, we are using IDImager, a
very reasonably-priced photo metadata editing and import/export package
that is truely multi-user, via a database backend. It feels slightly
laggy at times, but it is fantastically aware of external metadata
changes (made via Bridge, for example).
Anyway, back to my personal digital photography workflow, which I
have largely ignored over the past year as we refine things at work. It
should be much easier to deal with, at least in theory. With my recent purchase of a MacBook, I am taking a fresh look at my own personal work habits.
It looks like I'll have to add a new tagging keyword for blog posts: Mac.
Last
Thursday, after years of frustration with the state of Windows
operating systems and the poor build quality and support of laptop hardware, I decided
to give Apple a shot.
Increasingly, Windows XP has felt like the wrong tool in my digital
photo arsenal. From the lack of real DNG thumbnail and metadata editing
in Windows Explorer, to kludgy network fileshare support in Lightroom and
iViewMediaPro (now Expression Media), I wanted something new. Something easier. Vista, the
current upgrade path offered by Redmond, is what I have been trying out on my Home Theater PC (HTPC) media center. The 10 foot interface in Vista Media Center is
arguably the best user interface (UI) Microsoft has ever released, but the
desktop feels like a new wrapper on the same old backend that will
invariably become more laggy as it ages.
Steve Jobs' strategy of getting iPods and iPhones into the hands of
Windows users as an evil gateway drug was a success for me. I'm
drinking the Kool-aid, smelling the coffee, or whatever mixed metaphor
you want to use. After four days and probably 20 hours of use, I completely get
it. OS X's layout is logical, and it makes sense, once you know where to look for stuff, and once
you learn the basic operating system and application shortcut keys.
I pitty my wife, pets, friends and family who will now be subjected
to those "a-ha" moments and the overall evangelism that will
undoubtedly occur over the next few months. I apologize in advance.
Thanks to my MacGeek friends for helping me on this journey, including MrLint and PJP. I'm archiving links to the software tools and general infos which I found most useful, in the hope it will help others along the way:
It will be 15 years this December since we lost one of the most
prolific song writers the world of popular (and unpopular) music has
ever known: Frank Zappa. One of the bands continuing his live music legacy
is Project/Object, which has several members of Frank's live
band, The Mothers.
Frank's wife, Gail Zappa, in what she claims is an effort to protect his
legacy, only allows sanctioned CD releases and live performances.
Anything she doesn't personally approve, is threatened in the media and/or sued. This time, she apparently threatened a lawsuit against a live music venue for allowing Project/Object to perform a show. [photo credit: ink19.com]
Last Friday's Project/Object show in Boston was the most recent
evidence of the decade-and-a-half pissing match between the Zappa
Family Trust and Project/Object.
Maybe I'm biased and think she's a bitch with a capital C. While the Zappa Family Trust absolutely deserves whatever royalities they are due under United States copyright law, her tact certainly seems heavy handed, and doesn't jive with Frank's own attitude towards the industry, and his own musical legacy.
Music is best.
Andre Cholmondeley's post to myspace.com after the break.
Update 1/12/2009: I have confirmed that, at least for the HVR-1600, the registry update below do in fact work on the official public beta of Windows 7 Ultimate released by Microsoft.
I have also confirmed that the TV Pack 2008 update blows chunks, is very unstable, completely rendering my Vista Media Center useless. Microsoft is aware of the issue, and is refusing to offer a fix, except for telling users to upgrade to Windows 7. $150 for two months of Vista Ultimate OEM. Thanks Microsoft!
The Ray Pickens Memorial Newbie Net podcast has been accepted by Apple's iTunes Music Store! Ham and non-hams can find and subscribe to the Newbie Net podcast in iTunes by browsing the Technology podcast category, or by searching "Newbie Net", "Ham Radio", "Amateur Radio", etc.
Thanks to Paul K2FX for his weekly efforts in discussing topics of interest to both new and old hams alike, and Brad KB2CHY / RRRA for use of the flagship repeater, K2RRA 146.880 MHz in Rochester.
My computer and technology milestones are usually imprinted on my brain by the
purchase of a new hard drive. For geeks that have what I call the
"Archivist Gene" (like myself) tend to be digital packrats. We file,
store, organize, and keep safe from entropy information because we can.
In
the case of the lossless live music guys (etree.org, Furthur), we, or at
least I, felt a
cultural and historical obligation of preserving digital audio.
Geographic redundancy just happened to be a happy happenstance. But
that's offtopic.
I vividly recall the family's first computer, some 8088 clone, and it's fantastic 20MB harddisk, circa 1988. I think the pricetag was still on the bottom of the drive, $350.
I can remember the joy of having a separate
6GB D:\ drive on my FTP server, sparkle.etree.org, dedicated to sharing
only SHN files, back around 1998 or so. I could literally hosts five
or six
shows at a time!
When hard disks broke the
$1/GB barrier around the end of 2002, I can remember telling non-geek
friends what an important milestone it was. I remember getting the
phonecall
from a buddy in spring 2005 telling me to get my ass over to CompUSA
because
they had 400GB Seagate drives for $150 without a mail-in rebate.
Walking out of a store with over 1TB under your arm was a big deal!
As Richard Garriott W5KWQ starts to go through his checklists and rounding up his stuff after a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS), he's still finding time to make contacts and send down the occasional slow scan TV (SSTV) images.
He's really been a fantastic ambassador for amateur radio and space tourism.
Here's a collection of the sights and sounds I've collected during todays passes.
Like any self-respecting photog, the first thing I do prior to leaving on a shoot is format my compact flash card in camera. It's something I don't even think about anymore, it's just automatic. So, naturally the first thing I did upon receiving a new 
After trying (and failing with a critical error) to install the software programs TextPad, MacDrive and even Adobe Acrobat v8 in Microsoft Windows 7, I found this suggestion in the "Important Messages" flag in the tray icons in the bottom right corner of the screen, which immediately fixed the install failure issue for me. Leave it to Microsoft to cause bad customer experience through a customer experience improvement program :)
,
As the entire Northeastern United States is getting 
A big bug in Vista Media Center that I have encountered twice in the past two months, which required me to completely wipe and reconfigure my channel list guide and scheduled recordings has been fixed. But only in Windows7, 
I am a digital photographer and archivist. At work, my digital photography
It looks like I'll have to add a new tagging keyword for blog posts: Mac.
It will be 15 years this December since we lost one of the most
Update 1/12/2009: I have confirmed that, at least for the HVR-1600, the registry update below do in fact work on the official public beta of Windows 7 Ultimate released by Microsoft. 
The Ray Pickens Memorial Newbie Net podcast has been accepted by Apple's iTunes Music Store! Ham and non-hams can find and subscribe to the Newbie Net podcast in iTunes by browsing the Technology podcast category, or by searching "Newbie Net", "Ham Radio", "Amateur Radio", etc.
My computer and technology milestones are usually imprinted on my brain by the
As Richard Garriott W5KWQ starts to go through his checklists and rounding up his stuff after a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS), he's still finding time to make contacts and send down the occasional slow scan TV (SSTV) images.
