Applepie

Photography Haiku

From a post on dpreview.com...

"It is all about the moment…

once passed…never retrieved…
once captured…never forgotten."

The death of an Enzo - Part 2

Lots of details and more pictures on Wreckedexotics.com.

At least he was driving the car the way it was meant to be driven! Unfortunately, he should have used a race track instead of public streets. But not many people in this world can say they racked an Enzo going at 162 mph and lived to tell about it.

See details here: Enzo Crash in Malibu.

The death of an Enzo

A Ferrari Enzo is snapped in two on impact with a power pole 5 to 10" off the ground. Engine is found more than 100' behind the front of the car.

Check out the story on NBC4.TV, and view the video on LATimes.com

Neither the driver, nor the passenger, were injured, but the car was totally destroyed. $600,000.00 at least buys you a great safety cage! Too bad it doesn't include lawyer fees.

Tilt and Shift Lens

I am seriously considering adding a Tilt & Shift lens to my line up. T&S lenses enables one to optically correct the un-natural optical shift that occurs when you tilt the camera upwards to photograph an object/structure - see example:

You can correct this in photoshop, but it is just not the same as properly recording the imagine in the first place.

Tilt movements allow you to obtain a wide depth of field even at the maximum aperture and still keep the entire subject in focus. Shift movements correct the trapezoidal effect seen in pictures taken of tall objects, so as not to distort the subject.

The problem is that a T&S lens is not for the faint of heart, and it is most certainly not a lens for snap-shots, nor is it a lens that you can hand-hold. Canon has 3 lenses in their line-up - all are manual focus lens, and only one is wide angle; the price is not cheap, over $1k - ouch.

I can just see my wife patiently waiting for me to setup the tripod, frame, and focus as I photograph a building during a family trip :-)

Africa - 93 days to go

Only 93 days left until I depart on my African safari - while the photography gear is in place (except for a backup camera), I still need to get my Tanzanian visa, and prepare the non-photographics items - clothing, medicine, supplies, and last but not least, my vaccinations. I am hoping to have it all done with 60 days to spare.

Culture Shock

I consider myself well traveled, having covered over 1,000,000 air miles world-wide, and having lived in Brazil, USA, England, Venice/Italy, and Brussels, as well as traveled to every continent except Africa and Antarctica. But this past trip to Spain caught me unprepared.

While using the bathroom facilities at the 3GSM conference I literally jumped back when two women walked in and proceeded to clean all around me. What gives? I noticed that no one else seemed surprised or bothered by it, so I zipped up, washed my hands and walked out - that's an experience I could have lived without. Apparently this is pretty common in Spain, as this scene repeated itself multiple times throughout the week. At least one cannot complain that the restrooms are not clean.

Ciao Roma

My 3GSM conference was cut short by an unplanned trip to Rome. What was going to be a short 24h stay turned into a weekend long visit as my friend and travel buddy took ill with influenza. While he stayed locked up in a hotel room for 4 days straight, I had a chance to visit the Colosseum on Sunday evening.

It had been over 15 years since I had toured Rome as previous business trips had not afforded me any spare time. What a city, so full of history - breathtaking. (and packed w/ tourists, myself included, even in the middle of winter).

Canon EOS 5D, 24-105 f/4L at 24mm, f/8 at 3 sec, ISO 400, tripod

Patent Idea! Flash Photography

Here is an idea that will improve people's snapshots ten fold - I should patent it! Camera manufacturers should program their flash systems to not fire if the focus subject is greater than 15' away.

How many times do you see people with all kinds of cameras (even D200 users) using their nice built-in flash to photograph objects standing 200 feet away? Countless people lined up near the Colosseum after sunset, standing at least 100' away, and happily snapped away w/ their flash turned on.

This problem is everywhere. It's common to see people at stadiums photographing with their flashes firing at players who are standing dozens of feet away. Why do you think the players in the field do no flinch at all with the flash photography? And why do you think that not a single pro photographer sitting at the field's edge uses a flash?

I can understand the urge to capture the beauty of the Colosseum after sunset; I dragged myself across Rome to be there just at the "magical hour", but using a P&S flash will not help you capture the Colosseum. It will, in fact, ensure the opposite - you will capture the grass in front of the Colosseum and nothing else.

Sure, turning off the flash will cause the shutter speed to slow down, way down, so much so that camera shake will be a real problem - but at least people will know that they must brace their camera before they snap the photograph.

People's faces were priceless after they looked at their digital display in dismay and disappointment that their photograph did not at all resemble the scene in front of them. I guess what frustrates people the most is that the image on the preview window on P&S cameras looks perfect before the photograph is taken, but the resulting photograph in no way resembles the preview window.

Maybe camera manufacturers can now address this issue instead of pursuing an ever bigger mega-pixel camera.

BBC Click - cool!

It has been a long, long week, with over 80 one-on-one demos to pre-screened customers.

I thought I would have had time to read, to blog, to chill, to plan for Africa. But no, this 3GSM conference has been the busiest since I started attending in 2001. There is absolutely no time left for any social or personal activity.

One cool thing is that we were featured on BBC Click program!

Check it out here. (Windows Media Player or VLS player required). Or go to BBC Click home page and select "See the Show".

In case you are wondering, we are the first featured story - 1-view!

Update: Web Access in Barcelona

Amazon, GMail, and Wordpress work great from the 3GSM show floor. The problems I am having can only be caused by the internet access in the hotel. I don't know why, but something with the hotel network is preventing access to amazon.com, wordpress, and my gmail account (and probably other web sites as well). Go figure.

Web Access in Barelona, Spain?

Something is definitely not right with my internet access at Hotel Arts Barcelona. They seem to be blocking some perfectly normal web sites.

I cannot access:

Amazon.com
Wordpress - nor any wordpress RSS feeds either
Google Mail - via web access or POP3 access.

I am sure that these 3 web sites have not been down for 36h. I can't imagine that you can't access them at all from Barcelona. For some reason the internet in the hotel we are in must be blocking access to some web sites - unknowingly I suppose.

In a few hours, I will be able to try these sites from the 3GSM show floor and get a better sense if this a localized access issue.

GMail in Spain

GMail does not seem to work from Spain. At least not from my hotel (Hotel Arts), I will try it again from the 3GSM conference tomorrow.

Mac mail fail fails to connect to GMail, Safari and Firefox are both unable to open http://mail.google.com. My Windows laptop has the same issue.

I can't understand why it does not work, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Corporate Email, and Mac mail all work fine. it is just GMail that is "down".

Sandisk Extreme III 4GB

I have recently had 2 Lexar 4GB 80x cards go bad on me after only 1 year of use. I don't want to run the risk of having a bad card while on my safari, so it is time to replace the Lexar with something else.

The Sandisk Extreme III 4GB cards have just come down in price to $239.95 (from over $400 not more than 1 month ago). That's a great deal for a high speed 4GB card - matches nicely with the high performance capabilities of a Canon EOS 1D MK II N

If high speed is not critical to you (not shooting to many 8 fps bursts), then you could get the Sandisk Ultra II for $179.95, or even the Sandisk 4 GB Compaq Flash Card for $149.95.

GMail for your domain

It seems that Google Mail is down. I can't access it via Apple Mail, I can't access it mail.google.com on Safari or Firefox. Bummer, I was just going to try and register my personal domain email to be hosted by Google's latest service - GMail for your domain.

The Brown Bears of Katmai

Joseph van os Photo Safari has a photo safari to Katmai National Park in September to watch brown bears feeding on salmon as they get ready for their long winter hibernation.

Katmai National Park is located on the Alaska Peninsula, across from Kodiak Island. Park Headquarters is in King Salmon, about 290 air miles southwest of Anchorage. The park is open year-round, but the ideal time to visit is July and September.

The trip is scheduled from September 9th to 14, 2006.

Fat 32 vs Mac OS Extended Format

Just ran into an interesting, but non scientific, discovery in regards to OS X support for Fat 32 drives.

I was packing my photos onto a portable hard drive and noticed that it would take 2.5 hours to transfer - via Firewire. This portable drive was formated as Fat 32 just in case I needed to use the drive on a Windows PC.

I canceled the download, and formatted the portable drive as Max OS Extended format (to possibly prevent a "blue screen error" that has been plaguing my iMac). When I proceeded to copy my photos to the reformatted drive, OS X indicated that it would take 50 min to copy all files - via firewire.

Could it be? Could copying files to a FAT 32 drive really be 2.5x slower than copying to the same drive formatted as Mac OS Extended?

3GSM World Congress

I am on my way to Barcelona, for the 3GSM World Congress.

I am taking along my "travel photography kit", hoping for some photographic opportunity while in Barcelona.

My kit consists of:

Canon EOS 5D
Canon EF 24-105 f/4L IS
Canon EF 85 /1.4L
Gitzo G1027 CF Tripod
RRS BH 25 Pro Ballhead

Should be fun.

OS X Hacked

Security Focus is reporting that "At the recent ShmooCon hacking conference, one security researcher found out the hard way that such venues can be hostile, when an unknown hacker took control of the researcher's computer, disabling the firewall and starting up a file server".

Scary, but not surprising. Have you noticed that Mac OS X comes with its firewall disabled by default? And that most Mac users do not run a virus checker - myself included.

The tides are changing, and I hope Apple has big plans for Leopard as far as computer security is concerned.

OS X Blue Screen

My 20" iMac G5 has not gotten much use lately, the PowerBook G4 does most of the work I need. The other day I went to use my iMac G5 and found it with the Windows blue screen equivalent.

The iMac screen was was dimmed, and a dialog box in the center of screen indicated that OS X had encountered a fatal exception and had to be rebooted. The message was displayed in multiple languages. The computer fan was running at full force. I thought it odd, but rebooted the system and I ignored the error at first, not knowing how long it had seen since I used the machine last, and didn't have time to investigate it further anyway.

This morning, I encountered the same error again - something is definitely amiss with my iMac G5.

Here is the error report I get when I reboot the system

Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 0): 0x300 - Data access DAR=0x000000000000007C PC=0x00000000000FA454
Latest crash info for cpu 0:
Exception state (sv=0x3C83F500)
PC=0x000FA454; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x0000007C; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x4569A928; R1=0x2C72BAB0; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:
0x000D66A4 0x456A1FD8 0x456A2080 0x000FC7F4 0x456A0838 0x000E4870
0x456A08E0 0x000F92F0 0x000EC7AC 0x000E8F74 0x000EC7F8 0x002AA304 0x000ABEB0 0x030C030D
backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0xBFFFFD80

Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.filesystems.msdosfs(1.4.3)@0x45698000
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x3C83F500)
previously dumped as "Latest" state. skipping...
Exception state (sv=0x44E8C500)
PC=0x9003B0EC; MSR=0x0200F030; DAR=0xE0006000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x00002FE0; R1=0xBFFFFD80; XCP=0x00000030 (0xC00 - System call)

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.4.0: Tue Jan 3 18:22:10 PST 2006; root:xnu-792.6.56.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xFFFF0003): 0x300 - Data access
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x00095718 0x00095C30 0x0002683C 0x000A8384 0x000ABD00
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x3C83F500)
PC=0x000FA454; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x0000007C; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x4569A928; R1=0x2C72BAB0; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:
0x000D66A4 0x456A1FD8 0x456A2080 0x000FC7F4 0x456A0838 0x000E4870
0x456A08E0 0x000F92F0 0x000EC7AC 0x000E8F74 0x000EC7F8 0x002AA304 0x000ABEB0 0x030C030D
backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0xBFFFFD80

Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.filesystems.msdosfs(1.4.3)@0x45698000
Exception state (sv=0x44E8C500)
PC=0x9003B0EC; MSR=0x0200F030; DAR=0xE0006000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x00002FE0; R1=0xBFFFFD80; XCP=0x00000030 (0xC00 - System call)

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.4.0: Tue Jan 3 18:22:10 PST 2006; root:xnu-792.6.56.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC

San Diego Wild Animal Park

I had been planning to visit the San Diego Wild Animal Park since a trip to CA last year. I thought it would provide a great practice run for my safari later in the year.

I just read an article on USA Today that reaffirmed my commitment to visit the San Diego Wild Animal Park in near future. Here is USA Today's arcticle: San Diego's Wild Animal Park thrums with exotic creatures.

From reading the article and visiting the web site, you get a sampling of what's offered at the Wild Animal Park:

• Photo Caravan Safari

• Roar & Snore camp-outs

• Cheetah Run Safari

• Balloon Safari

The San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park is located at 15500 San Pasqual Valley Road just east of Escondido, northeast of San Diego. The park is open from 9 a.m to 4 p.m., 7 days a week.

Contact Info: 760) 747-8702, reservations for special tours (619) 718-3000.

Time to hit expedia.com for travel arrangements.

T-Mobile and Account Security

Here is my vote for the "stupid idea of the year".

t-mobile provides you with the ability to manage your account online - great! If you ever lose your password, just go to www.tmobile.com and the system will automatically SMS the password to your phone. Sounds smart at first.

What happens if you lose your cell phone? Now anyone who finds your phone can go to t-mobile.com and have full access to your account, including payment information.

One would think that t-mobile would have been more conscientious about texting a password that gives the user of the phone full access to the online account. But no, t-mobile wants to save on support calls and chose instead to compromise system security.

Not smart.

6 months Anniversary!

Today marks my 6 month "switch" anniversary!

6 months without a virus scan!
6 months without a spyware scan!

It must be the water - Seahawks

To keep harmony in my household, I will holdback my true feelings about the Seahawks' performance at today's Super Bowl game and will choose to instead look forward to XLI.

OS X Utility: GL Image Browser

"With the GL Image Browser, you can open a folder on your computer and look for all the pictures that are inside, even in subdirectories if you want. It is no iPhoto or Picasa clone, GL Image Browser is a tool to quickly browse through thousands of pictures"

In some way, GL Image Browser enables me to do much of what I do with Photo Mechanic - not as complete, and not as fast, but still it is a better photo viewer than what you get from OS X Preview app.

Best of all - it is free! Get it from Geekologic.com.

OS X Tips: Command-Left/Right Arrow

Just discovered, by accident, that you can use Command-ArrowKey to move back or Forward in Safari - same as pressing the buttons.

Go Seahawks!!!

Typepad - time to move blog providers?

For over 2 months now TypePad system uptime has been abysmal. Right now, 11:15 pm PST, on Saturday February 5th, 2006 TypePad is down. In fact even their homepage is down. I can't post a blog entry, I can't configure my blog.

All week, TypePad statistics have been turned off. Give me a break. This is not a free service.

Maybe It is time to move on. I do have a Wordpress invitation, I wonder how difficult it is to migrate systems.

The best part is that if you view the official Six Apart status page, they tell you that their system is fully operational.

intel Macs - staying put

My primary complaint since switching to OS X is that system performance is not up to par with Windows machines - at least as far as raw image conversion. But now Apple has launched their first Intel based Macs. Apple claims that the Intel iMac is 2x faster than the G5 version (and the MacBook Pro 4x faster than the G4 PowerBook). Naturally, I started wondering about upgrading.

After reading various reviews on the web:

See AnandTech article "Apple Makes the Switch: iMac G5 vs. iMac Core Duo"

and Rob Galbraith article "Benchmarking the MacBook Pro"

I came to the conclusion that it is better for me to wait until my existing OS X apps are ported to Universal Binary format - at least the photography apps that make the bulk of my digital workflow. Based on the reviews above, I can't afford to run these apps under emulation software - the performance penalty will make them un-usable.

Current apps that make up my digital photography workflow:

Photo Mechanic - v.4.4.1 is now available as a universal binary
Bibble 4.5 Pro - not yet available as universal binary
Photoshop CS/2 - not yet available as universal binary
Noise Ninja - not yet available as universal binary
Aperture - not yet available as universal binary
iPhoto - v.6 is now a universal binary

On the plus side, I hope that when I do upgrade, Apple will have truly new machines (new designs, new features) instead of just replacing the CPU on the existing models.

Meetings, Demos, Schmoozing

It has been a crazy week so far, average sleep per night - 3h. All in preparation for a big VIP demonstration earlier today, followed by a dinner with 50 of my closest friends from the top 50 enterprises in Europe, all while preparing for the big 3GSM conference in Barcelona on the 13th of February.

In case you haven't run into Guy Kawasaki blog yet, it is a great read, especially for those who present and "evangelize" their own products.

If you are heading over to 3GSM to present, do yourself a favor and read the following blogs from Guy.

The Art of Schmoozing

How to Be a Demo God
How to Kick Butt On a Panel
How to Get a Standing Ovation

Who is Guy Kawasaki?

From Answers.com - "Guy Kawasaki was one of the original Apple Computer employees responsible for marketing of the Macintosh in 1984. He is noted for bringing the concept of evangelism to the high-tech business. Kawasaki was a former Apple Fellow"

iWeb and .Mac hosting - problems accessing site from Scotland?

A friend of mine is purchasing a home here in the Pacific Northwet. He asked me to host some pictures of the house he is interested in purchasing up on a web site so his wife in Scotland could view the house - easy enough, I thought.

I imported his photos into iPhoto and proceeded to posting a simple web page using one of iWeb's standard photo template. I then sent him the web link to forward to his wife.

http://web.mac.com/cpierry/iWeb/Site/JimHouse.html

To my surprise, he was not able to access the web site from Scotland - he gets a 404 error each and every time. I thought that maybe he was doing something wrong, not clicking on the link properly, etc... and left it at that.

My friend came to visit this week and had no problems opening the site from here in Seattle. He re-sent the link to his wife in Scotland and she once again is getting 404 errors.

Has anyone had problems accessing their web.mac.com sites from Europe?

I will be in Spain next Saturday and plan to test this out myself.

Very bizarre.