Techonology

First Look at Creative's VadoHD: I See Dead Pixels

Posted Tue 12/16/2008 @ 11:10 PM

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.

How To Manage a Collection of RAW Image Files, Cloud Backups?

Posted Tue 12/16/2008 @ 1:52 PM

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.

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