Losing It - Exporting To Nowhere

Novice computer users have it good. They do not know what they are doing and anything that works is a victory - even if it is occasionally a pyrrhic one. As long as the screen does not go solid blue all is good.

Further on, when we get to our digital adolescence and the html hormones start to surge, we get more adventurous. We load our computers with a bazillion files and then try to save them, export them, or back them up somewhere. We would, in many cases, be better backing up an articulated bus through the back streets of Balga. At least when it all went pear-shaped the bus would be wedged into someone's lounge room - not vanished into the aether...never to be found.

I still do this - the files, not the bus. While the makers of the computer and the various programs are experts and provide clear questions and instructions about where the files will be going to...sometimes they use words differently than I do, and I fail to understand what they mean. Sometimes I also fail to see some part of the specifications and it results in me launching a file to nowhere. I can only assume it reaches this destination, because I never find it again.

The iMac computer at home does have one little section that seems to find things. I can ask the hard drive where a file is and eventually it will report a location. The macBook Pro here at work may have this facility as well, but I haven't found it yet. As a result, when I lose a bit of work that I have just saved, I resort to the trick of making another one of the same sort and then watching it step-by-step as it is exported. Frequently I can find where the first stray has gone - and almost always it is because I failed to specify the right target before I pulled the first trigger.

Please note: If things go wrong for you, it is sometimes because your computer has mutated all on its own in the night. The simple pathway you learned to take when you did your first work has been changed by secret command from the computer manufacturer or the software company. They do this after you have gone to bed at night. It's best to unplug you computer entirely after use and put a tinfoil hat over it to prevent alien cosmic space commands from doing this. Also wear one yourself. I favour a metallic pie plate strapped to my head in summer...

Uncle Dick

Save Everything - Whales, The World, Old Soap Wrappers, Jpeg's

Everything.

Save it on your computer drive, back it up to your Time Machine hard drive, then back this up to your Drobo, then burn CD's of the files, then print them out on an Epson printer, then rephotograph the prints with a 35mm copy camera and archivally process the film. Then store it in acid-free sleeves in a fireproof contaner.

Then take the discs and the film and the prints and any spare pixels that have fallen out of the back of the machine and put them in a safe deposit box down at the Bank of New South Wales.

You may want to ask the bank to sandbag the St. George's Terrace entrance and post guards armed with Stirling SMG's there - better safe than sorry.

After you have done this, go back and look at the images you started with. Are they really all that good? Is your student portfolio of 365 daily images of a banana on a plate really the stuff of your dreams? Have you advanced? Would it be a good idea to keep one picture of the banana and clean the rest out of the drive?

Just this thought occurred to me some time ago when I noted that the content level indicator on the Drobo drive I use got past half-full. Now the Drobo is a wonderful device for keeping things safe, as long as you keep it safe. I can re-disc it to far more capacity than it bears now...I'll do that eventually, but decided to look into the thing at present to discover what was in there.

Well, I didn't find the missing sock but I did find damn near everything else that I had dumped into it. Including jobs that had a set of RAW files, jpeg finder files, working psd files, and finished jpeg output files. Plus a few tiff's and something that looks suspiciously like a tram ticket. It was like an overgrown garden of pixels.

I set aside my ruth and weeded relentlessly - gaining back valuable disc space and concentrating each division into work that I am happy with. I did allow some wiggle room with RAW files that I may re-work...but even there I have been realistic with what was actually worth re-working. Let's face it folks, we usually get better as we go along, and it is retrograde to go back and try to make silk purses out of our sow's ears. They are never good and it annoys the sows.

Spring cleaning is not just for the carpet - try it and see.

Hand Of Cards - Two More Possibilities For The Digital Shooter

We have a lot of options presented to us in photography - cameras, lenses, lights and flashes. The range of accessories is mind-boggling, and once your mind has been boggled sufficiently you are generally only fit for light duties or election to the local council...

What we tend to forget is that there are options also in the memory cards we use. Of course we sell SanDisk cards here - they have always been good and reliable in the major cameras. We have been selling Hoodman cards, and Promaster, and in each case the ratio between card success or shutdown has been wonderfully high.

I have also been testing two brands of card and can report 100% success so far - I've got Lexar and Panasonic cards in my Fujifilm cameras right now. They are fast enough for any still work I do, and would probably be fine for small videos.

The prices are sensational - cheap as chips when you think of the comparable film stowage. and as they are proof against all the x-rays and magnetic fields that I might encounter on an air trip, I can feel confident that whatever images i put on them will come safely home.

Share Seamlessly Amongst All Your Devices With Drobo

I love advertising. I can't pass a billboard offering worm powders for budgies without experiencing a thrill - and the desire to spend money on worm powder. I don't have a budgie but wouldn't it be great to be prepared for one - just in case...

The same can be said about camera advertisements. I still keep a stack of pictures of 35mm systems from the 1970's under my pillow, and pull them out and stare at them. I cannot focus on the bellows close-up system for too long - I have to peek at it and glance away. The image is too powerful and I have been known to faint and fall to the floor. I'm sure a lot of the clients of our shop feel the same way.

Given this susceptibility, can you imagine how the advertisement for " Share Your Images Seamlessly To All Your Devices " affected me. I looked around wildly - the television, the computer, the mobile phone...the toaster, the vacuum cleaner, the croquet set...the world whirled. Digits everywhere.

I am terrified. What if I cannot escape the march of the images? What if every time I look into the mirror I see something different in the background. I am just now getting used to the old balding guy in there ( and he's getting more HDR as the years go on ). If he starts being backed up with a paddock full of ghost gums or a harbour full of French fishing boats all hell will break loose.

Will the images from my Drobo sneak out of the hard disk and seep over into the neighbour's house? Who knows - I can't watch over them all the time. They might be going out and having a better time that I am. they might come home late and covered with chromatic aberration.

I have long become resigned to having every blessed thing I do monitored by management, the CIA, the NSA, Mossad, The KGB, and Coles-Myer. Which reminds me, I must look out my KGB card as they are doing a 2 for 1 sale this weekend in brainwashing. I've seen the state of my brain and it could certainly do with a rinse. But I do hope that the pictures can be left alone.

How Cute Is This - Drobo Mini

 Statement of Interest:  I own a Drobo storage unit. I paid for it with my own money. I installed it into my digital system myself. It has worked flawlessly since. It is likely to be all I need to safeguard my digital images.

Now that we have that out of the way, here is the latest cute-as-a-bug idea from Drobo. They have made a mini version of the big Drobo FS unit I use for people who want security in a smaller space.

The unit operates very much like mine - Up to 4 SATA hard disk drives are slotted into the unit at the font and configured with the software. They then receive the data and parcel it out amongst themselves so that no one unit has the entire key to the liquor cabinet. Should any one of the hard disk drives look like it is going to fail, the Drobo alerts the user to replace the dodgy disk before it is dead and the data marches merrily on. No loss, no risk.

Mine uses big disks, this one uses small disks - but as time has advanced the sport, this unit can work even faster than mine - it is fitted with USB3.0 and Thunderbolt entry ports. It will work fine for USB 2.0.

There is good provision for cooling round the back of he unit and you'll notice from the back view that there is a lock on the power supply socket. In my case my biggie is locked into a vented steel cabinet, so ( hopefully) no-one can run off with the unit and the data.

$ 730 will get this one in your home or office, and then add the SATA drives. The box does contain the Thunderbolt cable and the setup is deliciously easy. Hey, I managed it, and I trained on Fisher-Price computers...

PS: Apple not included - that is my lunch.

Uncle Dick