If you are headed to a place with a different electrical plug shape than your home country you can make a cord like this to add convenience and save a considerable amount of weight and bulk. Basically, it’s a couple of standard power cords cut and soldiered to a standard extension cord. This configuration can power up to 6 devices, which can be essential for battery charging.
It’s particularly valuable in a country where the plug adapters are as bulky as the ones in South Africa.
Here is the multi cord at work in Richmond, South Africa. It is charging my US phone, my International phone, Lumix, D7000 and D700 camera battery chargers and AA battery chargers, as well as my laptop. (You can also see DJ Clark’s phone in the photo, but I have obviously not mastered the art of light travel the way he has).
These chargers are all low-power-draw devices, so there’s no issue about overloading a circuit by having all these plugged in at the same time.
One note of caution – make sure that the chargers and other devices you use overseas are all rated for the voltage and Hz of the local power. It will be written somewhere on the charger – often in very tiny type. Most modern power supplies are auto-switching dual-voltage, and handle this without any intervention on your part. If they don’t, however, you will be pretty unhappy.
A second caution: I have worn out the solder joints on this cord once already as it has made its way around the world. In particular, a lot of stress is placed on the wires just past the end of the solder as I curl it up. It pays to inspect the cord under the electrical tape every now and then so it does not fail in the field.
Whenever I’m overseas for an extended period, I like to have a local phone. Whenever I get to a country I’ll need a local number in, I buy a SIM card at a local shop and put it in my travel phone. This way locals can call me, and I can make local calls for a reasonable price.
I’ll also keep my regular phone with me so I can be reached by phone and text from the US. But it’s expensive to use my iPhone overseas, even with an international plan activated for the duration of the trip. And international data usage can be the source of nightmare phone bills.
For the last 6 years, I’ve been using a pretty, um, basic device. It can text and make phone calls, but that’s it. No web surfing or email on this old school celly.
On my upcoming trip to China, however, I’ll be sporting my old iPhone 3Gs as my overseas phone. As of Sunday April 8, AT&T has graciously offered to unlock that expensive device I already paid them for. Yes, you read that right, AT&T is now allowing me to do what I want with a phone I already own (provided, of course, that I have fulfilled the contract it was purchased on, and signed-up again for a subsequent contract.)
In order to unlock the old phone, you need to call AT&T and request an unlock code. It can take up to a week to work its way through the system, supposedly. It took about 5 days for mine to unlock. Asking for tier 2 service may make it happen faster.
Having a local smart phone should be a real benefit when traveling. And since this one is already set up with my email account, web bookmarks and other apps, it should be pretty easy to put into service. Just put that SIM card in and go. I’m expecting that this will be particularly valuable in a country where I can’t speak or read the language at all.
I’m headed out tomorrow for the Palm Springs Photo Festival, one of my very favorite industry events of the year. Jeff Dunas does a spectacular job bringing an extremely high-quality group of international photographers together in a very intimate setting. I speak on Thursday from 2:30 to 4:30. Free for Festival attendees (sponsored by ASMP).
If you are also on the way there – lucky you. If you have not made plans, but you are driving distance, it’s really worth the trip. And if this year is out of the question, make plans for next year.
The ASMP Board is holding its annual spring meeting at the Festival, which makes a lot of sense given that there is such a large west coast contingent. I hope it turns into an annual event. It’s reasonably priced, compared to meeting in Philly, and offers a great opportunity to connect with other people in the industry in a relaxed yet stimulating environment. I’d like to see this become an annual opportunity for ASMP members to get to know their board better, and get a more clear understanding of how the national leadership operates.
As always, I’m more than happy to say hello to anyone who happens to be there (and even happy to answer your Lightroom/hard drive/metadata questions.)
I got my D800 today, and I feel a bit like Roy Scheider in Jaws after he saw the size of the shark. The files that come out of this camera are huge and remarkably good. The 36 megapixels are also pushing the envelope of all of the rest of my equipment.
Lenses The camera is so sharp that it is showing focus falloff where my D700 did not. Even great modern lenses like the 14-24 are showing signs of image imperfections that I have never seen before. I suppose I’ll need to test all of my lenses and see which ones are up to using on this camera. I also expect that I’ll need to test them at all apertures.
Lonaconing Silk Mill, Lonaconing, MD 60mm Micro Nikkor @ f/8
Click here for the Zoomify version
Cards I’m getting 175 images on an 8 GB CF card. That’s going to go quickly. I have a bunch of much larger SD cards (32 GB), but they are slower. Again, it looks like I’ll be doing some testing here. I want first to see if any of the cards will produce a slowdown in shooting speed as they struggle to keep up with the data writing. After that, I’ll want to see what download times are for the various cards. This will certainly be important in the field.
Hard Drives
I’ll be filling these up much faster with 40-50 MB raw files (14 bit, lossless compressed). This will certainly mean new portable drives for my upcoming trip to China, as well as for any extended location shoot. And the archive drives will also be filling up faster, so there’s another purchase there as well.
Computer
These files are big, and process slowly. I have a feeling I’m going to need as much speed as I can get. New iMac? New Macbook Pro? Not sure.
Web publishing technology
There’s also a need to be able to view these images over the web. Photoshop has come with something called Zoomify – linked here – that can help with this. But there’s some new technology called Piqsure that does this with HTML5 in some pretty cool ways. More on that soon.
The DAM Book was unavailable recently as the current press run sold out. O’Reilly has reprinted the book, and it is back in stock. Note that this is the Second Edition of the book, the one written in 2009. It has been reprinted without changes. Due to the number of books printed, the production of a third edition is not even on the radar. They have more than a year’s worth of books.
While the shelf-life is pretty unusual for a technical book, it turns out that not a lot has really changed since it was first written. Some of the Lightroom dialogs have changed, Bridge and Photoshop have gotten a facelift, Expression Media has become Phase One Media Pro, and the DNG has gotten even more capable. But the basic principles, workflow, and structural underpinnings are all pretty much the same.
You can buy from us, and getting a signed copy, or you can save a few bucks and go to Amazon.
I’ll be at the annual Society for Photographic Education conference for the next few days. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be doing a new lecure – Media Management and the Creative Process. This is a fun one for me because it’s less about technical details than the it is about understanding the digital photo ecosystem and how it relates to your own creative process.
Unfortunately, the entire conference is sold out, but if you happen to be here, please feel free to find me an say hello.
Here’s an iTunes link to the TWiT Photo episode from yesterday (as well as an embedded version) I had gig fun with Leo and Catherine – thanks for having me on.
I have the pleasure of apearing onTWiPTWiT Photo tomorrow – This Week in Photo. This is part of Leo Laporte’sTWiT media empire. I’ll be speaking with my friends Leo and Catherine Hall, who host the program. It’s a fast moving and informative hour, covering lots of ground. You can watch it live or download it from iTunes.
Okay, so this is embarrassing. TWiP is This Week in Photography, run by my friend Frederick Johnson. TWiT Photo comes out of the same building, but is an entirely different show. For those of you wondering “what the heck”, well, that’s what the heck.
Here’s a simplified outline of the problems, as I understand it.
The bill seeks to let the government create a naughty list. If you are on the naughty list, or if you link to content hosted by someone on the naughty list, then your whole website can be shut down. The government will block the site by closing the series of tubes that make up the internet.
There are two big problems with this.
1. The first is that the list is not created by standard court proceedings.
2. The second is that the machinery to enforce the naughty list totally screws up internet addressing and security, and is not workable.
Getting on the naughty list
In order to get someone placed on the naughty list, you do not have to sue the accused. You don’t have to provide proof that you own the content that is being infringed. And the accused does not have conventional rights to challenge the blacklisting: to present an argument that they also might have rights to the content.
This is, as I understand it, injunctive relief. This is normally used for some kind of emergency action by the court. The bill creates a perpetual state of emergency where lots of action would be be taken outside of conventional legal channels.
Any site that allows users to post content is at risk of being shut down, so the naughty list can expand like crazy.
And don’t hold out much hope that photographers and other independent creators can get nbc.com or capitorecords.com or universalpictures.com put on the naughty list simply because they violate *your* copyright. This is a hammer built for the interests of big media.
Breaking DNS
While #1 is a big problem, the bigger problem is the mechanism that the bill proposes to enforce the naughty list. In order to block a website, you need to make sure that no request to see that website (take me to www.Amazon.com) actually goes to Amazon.com.
In order to accomplish the blocking, you need to break a fundamental part of the DNS system (the thing that makes sure that you are at the real Amazon.com). This is not really possible, since there are so darn many tubes.
The official DNS list is sent to all ISPs worldwide, so that requests for websites can be routed properly. SOPA and PIPA want the US government to be able to edit the list used in the US, removing sites that are deemed – outside of a traditional court – to be in violation.This breaks the integrity of the DNS system in a fundamental way.
At best, we could be like China, and block access to naughty sites for web surfers that are located within US borders. But circumventing that is pretty trivial. Millions of foreign portals will spring up that will let you access the real DNS list that the rest of the world uses. Once you go through that portal, you are in a world where all websites could be easily spoofed, since you are outside of the (formerly) standard DNS system.
Once you break the universality of the DNS list, you totally screw up security for nearly everyone. And policing that is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.
But aren’t you in favor of copyright?
I say all of the above in the context of an independent creator – photographer, author, videographer. Yes, I am infringed every day by companies and individuals and websites in all kinds of ways, including offering free copies of my book to paying members. And I believe that this is a big problem for people like me. I don’t know what the real solution is, but I can definitely see what the solution is not.
Hopefully this thing is dead. Congress is learning that you don’t want to get the internets mad at you.
Here’s a few tips on backing up Lightroom catalogs. It’s reprinted from a post I made on a photo message board.
I must have missed the discussion about backing up Lightroom Catalogs. Why isn’t Time Machine a good method?
The problem occurs if the catalog is backed up while still open. If the database (the .lrcat file) is changed during the backup, then it may produce a corrupt backup. You would not know unless you tried to restore from the backup.
Apple may have fixed this – they did for Aperture, as I understand it. The fix involves not backing up the database while it’s open.
Even if that’ s fixed, however, there could still be problems for people, depending on how you use the program. Perhaps you leave Lightroom open most of the time, and there is limited opportunity to do the backup in the background.
The best method for backing up Lightroom has a few components.
