jims musings

Just wanted to throw a quick note out to the inter­webs.
Last month, on a trip to Bryce Canyon, I was tak­ing pic­tures while stand­ing in the mid­dle of a small creek.
Sec­onds after I took this shot…

… I took another step for­ward, still look­ing through the viewfinder, and the bot­tom of the stream dis­ap­peared from beneath my feet. I plunged down into a waterfall-carved pit as deep as my waist. My cam­era slipped from my hands. The strap may have been around my neck, but as I floun­dered, try­ing to get my foot­ing and get out of the hole, I saw my cam­era– galunk- into the water. Lens first.

It was only under­wa­ter a few sec­onds, and as soon as I was stand­ing again– maybe fif­teen sec­onds– I had removed the main bat­tery and opened all the ports to allow the cam­era to dry. I set it in the dap­pled sun­light under a tree to dry out and hoped for the best.

It must be said that the lens is a Canon L series, equipped with a polar­iz­ing fil­ter. I wasn’t wor­ried about the lens. I wasn’t wor­ried about the cam­era, either. At worst, I’d have to buy a new cam­era (7D, any­one?). Still, I was quite pleased that, after a few hours of warmth and 9% humid­ity, the cam­era worked per­fectly when I replaced the bat­tery and turned it back on.

So, for those of you out there who won­der about the effect rain may have on your non-pro cam­era body, I wouldn’t worry about a few drops of rain.

While out in the back­yard last night, I was treated to this remark­able sun­set. Thought I’d share.

View from my back­yard last night

I like pho­tog­ra­phy, and I’ve been using a Nikon LS-5000 scan­ner to bring my old slides and neg­a­tives into the dig­i­tal world.
Nikon, on the other hand, hasn’t been coop­er­at­ing. I’ve been using 64-bit Win­dows 7 for, wow, nearly a year now. No updates from Nikon for any­thing beyond 32-bit. Great scan­ners, Nikon, it would be nice if we could use them!
Any­how, I found a great site that tells how to get your favorite Nikon Scan­ner (LS-40, LS-50 and LS-5000) work­ing on 64-bit Win­dows.
http://axelriet.blogspot.com/2009/10/nikon-ls-40-ls-50-ls-5000-scanners-on.html

Okay every­one… we’re well into the 21st Cen­tury. It’s time to fig­ure out how to store all that dig­i­tal media.
For most of you, this cur­rently means dig­i­tal pho­tos, but dig­i­tal media means all sorts of stuff, includ­ing audio, video and doc­u­ments. Let’s dis­cuss how to han­dle all this stuff.
Back in the day (the 20th Cen­tury), peo­ple would stuff their photo neg­a­tives into shoe­boxes and stuff the boxes into a closet. Slides– often in carousels– would live in the closet, too. Those ‘Super-8′ movies would also be stuffed in there, per­haps with a pro­jec­tor and screen. Doc­u­ments would live some­where else, usu­ally in a fil­ing cab­i­net or desk drawer. Music was stored else­where, usu­ally with the record player or stereo. Finally, video tapes or (gasp) laser discs would be kept near the TV or player.
In short, things were kept all over, and rarely orga­nized.
Now, with all this stuff con­verg­ing to the PC, it is crit­i­cal to keep it orga­nized. I per­son­ally have about 40,000 images using 280 GB of disk space. This amount of mate­r­ial must be orga­nized.
Thank­fully, the orga­ni­za­tion is sim­ple.
First, you must break out of the Win­dows ‘My Doc­u­ments’ or ‘My Pho­tos’ struc­ture.
On your hard disk, cre­ate a folder to hold your data. I’m a geek, so I named my folder ‘Data.’ You can call it ‘Per­sonal’ or even ‘Sally’ if you’re feel­ing friendly. The name doesn’t mat­ter, but the loca­tion does. It needs to be out­side of the ‘My Doc­u­ments’ struc­ture (so every­body who uses the com­puter can get to it) and easy to find.
Inside of the data folder, I have more fold­ers, each folder being named for a year, like this:

C:\
   +- Data
       +- 2009
       +- 2008
       +- 2007
       +- 2006

Within each Year folder, I have more sub­fold­ers which rep­re­sent the dates and events that pic­tures were taken, like this:

C:\
   +- Data
       +- 2009
           +- 2009-04-05 Kindergarten play
           +- 2009-06-17 Yosemite Trip
           +- 2009-08-21 Disneyland
           +- 2009-09-03 Cousins Party
           +- 2009-11-26 Thanksgiving
           +- 2009-12-25 Christmas
       +- 2008
       +- 2007
       +- 2006

You place your pho­tos and videos into these dated fold­ers. I actu­ally have an addi­tional level, since I have mul­ti­ple cam­eras. Under each dated folder, I have another folder for each cam­era involved, like so:

C:\
   +- Data
       +- 2009
           +- 2009-04-05 Kindergarten play
           +- 2009-06-17 Yosemite Trip
               +- Canon XSi
               +- Canon SD880
               +- Casio ZX-55
               +- Apple iPhone
               +- Processed
           +- 2009-08-21 Disneyland
           +- 2009-09-03 Cousins Party
           +- 2009-11-26 Thanksgiving
           +- 2009-12-25 Christmas
       +- 2008
       +- 2007
       +- 2006

The final break­down may seem unneeded, but it helps keep things orga­nized. My cam­eras do auto­matic file nam­ing, and occa­sion­ally there are name col­li­sions (where the file names from dif­fer­ent cam­eras match). Keep­ing the pho­tos seper­ate pre­vents over­writ­ing pic­tures.
You’ll also noticed the ‘Processed’ folder. This is where I keep pho­tos that have been altered in some way– thus I always have the orig­i­nal.
Hope this helps every­body. This struc­ture keeps my pic­tures orga­nized, allows me to find things very quickly, and makes back­ups easy to do.

I don’t get out nearly as often as I’d like, but yes­ter­day I was able to sneak down­town and take a few shots around sun­set.
It had been stormy all day, but the clouds were break­ing up around dusk and I was able to get some nice color in the sky. These shots were all taken hand­held with my Canon XSi at ISO 800. I used my 50mm f/1.4 lens, stopped down to f/2 or so. The first two pic­tures are actu­ally three pho­tos stitched together with PTGui. The last pic­ture is nine expo­sures. I ran a cou­ple of the images through Noise Ninja to remove low-light noise and grain.
Aside from a strong breeze, it was a great evening to shoot.

Salt Lake Tem­ple 1

Salt Lake Tem­ple 2

Salt Lake Tem­ple & Reflection

I know, these ought to be in the photo album. I’ll get them there, just as soon as I remem­ber the pass­word for doing so. (You betcha, I use pass­words.)
Any­way, I came across these pics recently and thought they looked pretty good in black and white.

These were taken May 10th around the LDS Tem­ple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah.