Lumix LX3 in Poor Light Conditions

Metallica @ AhoyLast Monday I visited the Metallica Death Magnetic Tour concert in Ahoy, Rotterdam (NL). A relatively small establishment for a rock band like Metallica, but great for the fans (if you got tickets), since the podium was centered in the middle of the arena. So everyone was relatively close to the stage.

I brought my Lumix LX3 for this occasion (since I won't be allowed entrance with my D300 + 70-200mm lens). This was the first time I brought a (P&S) camera to a concert, so I had no idea of what to expect of the quality.
I must say that I did try several settings, but the iA (Intelligent Auto) mode left me with the best images. Downside is that this mode produces only JPEG's and no RAW files. The A, P, S and M modes are too susceptible to the light changes (over- or underexposed, or just blurry images), and the light conditions change a lot (almost every second).

The movie-mode of the camera performs relatively well. Extremely bright lights results in vertical lines across the movie. The audio is not that good, but hey... it's a digital still camera with filming capabilities.

The only downside of the camera was (and still is) that it lacked zooming to 400 or 600mm :).

The photographic results can be seen on my flickr page.

Why Linux Won't Work

.... for me at this moment (and probably for most others).

I'm still in the fase of migrating my Windows server to a more 'reliable' Operating System. The new server should cover the following basic functionalities:

• Filesharing (either via Samba or NFS)
• Webserver with PHP and Coldfusion
• SSH server
• RADIUS Server
• Central user database (e.g. an LDAP server)
• a NZB downloader of some sort
• etc.

Up till now I've tried several Linux distros (Ubuntu 7, Ubuntu 8, and CentOS 5), and none of them are that easy to configure.

It seems that NFS isn't that easy to configure, since Apple OSX requires some special features (standards anyone??). Especially when you want some sort of user authentication. Just do a search on Linux, NFS and Apple OSX.

So after NFS didn't really work, I tried SMB for filesharing. While CentOS has some GUI to configure the shares, it lacks the interface of permissions for users...
You create users within the Linux environment, and if you wanna connect to a Samba share you need to configure additional users (in a different userdatabase).
This can be done by synchronization, but you need to do some scripting etc.

So far I've managed to install a working SSH server (with x509 authentication) and a Webserver.

When I compare this with Windows.... Well, there's no real comparison. Windows has a real central user database (not talking about the Active Directory here, but the local user database). And every service I need can talk to this database, and every service recognizes this database. No need to start 'hacking' some configuration files to make it work.

Well, as long as there's no new (read:better) interface of configuring those services and combining them with a shared user database ....

LINUX >> /dev/null

Recommendations can be left in the comments (if there are any)......

Unpredictable Exposures

When shooting from a tripod and/or with Live View on your (d)SLR you may find strangely exposed photos. Some are darker than others.

This could be related to the light seeping in through the ocular on your camera. Normally you have your eye against the ocular, but when you use e.g. Live View on your camera, you watch the LCD. This leaves the ocular 'open', and unwanted light might enter the camera and screw up the exposure of the photos you're taking.

I created a small example were I shot several high-speed images (in Aperture priority mode) while I used a small flashlight to pass a beam of light over the back of the body (e.g. car lights passing by in low light circumstances). I made sure that I also 'touched' the ocular with the beam of light.

You can see that the exposure goes from normal to dark, and back to 'normal'.

I haven't found any real differences when you're shooting under normal circumstances, but when (a strong) light is shining in or on the ocular, you might be in trouble.

Career Change??

We had a presentation of a local photo journalist this evening on our camera club. It was to hear what his job was about. But after hearing his story, and seeing some of his portfolio I decided to stick with my current career. I'm just not that type of a photographer. I like shooting what ever I want, and not what someone else wants. I guess I would be a terrible wedding photographer :).

Thankfully not everyone likes the same thing, otherwise it would be a boring (grey) world.

During the break I had a little conversation about the photos taken by the National Geographic photographers (which is also a form of photo journalisme). That it might be nice to do those kind of photo shoots.
But if you've seen the National Geographics  'The Photographers' DVD you might change your mind on that as well :). It's not as romantic as you might think.

More Forks

This is the final version which I presented during the cutlery results evening. One of the local camera club assignments.

Twins

More photos on my flickr page.

Backup Strategy

Most things, if not everything, are stored on digital media nowadays. Parts of your life are registered on your hard disks, CD's, and DVD's. But what if one of those fail? Do you have a backup?

Backing up to optical media (like CD and DVD) is cheap, but with cheap also comes questionable quality. Will those files you've backed up two years ago still open? I don't know, and I don't care actually. I back everything up to external drives. A 500GB drives is cheaper than a spindle of DVD's matching the storage capacity, and a harddisk is faster and can be reused if nessecary. Another drawback of DVD's is that they have a relatively small capacity. I would need tons of DVD's just to backup my photos.

Most of my work is being done on my iMac. Attached to my iMac is a Firewire drive configured for Timemachine. This is done for quick and easy access to the average screw-up on my behalf (like deleting a file or directory by mistake).
At least once a week, or after certain events, like shooting a gazillion photos, I make a backup to my local server (which could as well be a network attached storage device, or a USB/FW drive). This backup remains onsite. For real disasters (like the burning down of my house) I have an offsite backup. This backup is made on a small 320GB 2.5inch USB drive (<€100) and runs whenever I think I need to do that.  This drive is encrypted with Truecrypt, so if someone steals the disk, they don't have access to my (precious/private) data.

Ideally, you could store drives with a friend or family. Every time you visit you exchange the drive. You do need at least two offsite drives for this to work.

The only thing that can go wrong (in the terms of data loss) is that the house burns down with me in it, while I'm backing up for offsite storage. Well, in that case I don't need the backup since I won't be around needing it ever again...... Or when Murphy visits.

I did think about a real online offsite storage solution (like Amazons S3 service), but the problem is my Internet upload speed. E.g. if I shoot 8GB of photos on one day it take almost two days to upload that to any service. Furthermore, online storage of >100GB of data aint cheap either. So, the offsite disk drive is a relatively simple, easy and cheap solution giving (me) a good backup strategy.

Amateur Photographers Stealing Your Bread

Every now and then, I stumble on a discussion about stealing the bread out the professional photographers mouth.

These (forum) discussions start with a amateur photographer asking advice about settings (like ISO, Aperture, etc), equipment etc. regarding shooting photos in a certain area (groups, head-shots, whatever). At first; some quick and helpful answers from other enthusiasts, but then the 'pro' photographer enters the 'room'.

Within minutes they turn the original question into something else.... A discussion about fairness, skills, and stealing the bread from someone else has begun....

Somehow they (the pro's) feel threatened by average Joe holding a digital camera (dSLR), and shooting (a cousins) weddings, or doing some work for a foundation or whatever. In most cases a low/no budget shooting.

On one hand, I can sort of sympathize with the pro's, because it's not pleasant to see other people 'stealing the bread from your mouth'. On the other end, they should (or could) have seen it coming.
Ever since the day digital photography became affordable to the public, more and more people started carrying cameras, and they are all photographers (technically). Just because you made it your profession doesn't mean that others can't play that game in their spare time.

If you don't have much money, and you want a photographer shooting your wedding pictures you might end up with a nephew (or another acquaintance) shooting those photo's. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. It just means that you've got competition. The bad competition might produce crappy photos, but then again 'you (the customer) get what you've paid for'.

If you don't want to give advice to an amateur photographer don't start moaning and bitching, but make sure to make a difference in your line of work (value added services e.g.) or find another job. Shooting photos is no longer for a select few. You are the professional. Act accordingly!

Nikon 10-18mm f4 G ED N Rumor

Rumored Nikon AF-S Nikkor 10-18mm f/4 G ED NNikon Rumors (among others) has a posting about a rumored Nikon 10-18mm f4 lens.

If this ain't just a rumor, it would mean that a full Nikon transition can take place, because it could replace my Sigma 10-20mm lens... 'Could', if the price ain't too high (<1000 euro's).

Unibody MacBook Memory Upgrade

My MacBook shipped with the standard 2GB of memory. I had the idea of adding the additional 2GB myself since Apple charges you more money than needed. Downside is that the new MacBooks are kinda sensitive about the memory you use. Regular Kingston / Sandisk memory could result in kernel panics (or other strange behaviour).

After some googling I read some forum posts on OCZ memory and the new aluminium MacBooks. Today I added 2 * 2GB of OCZ memory to my MacBook, and it runs fine (at the moment).

As long as there aren't any updates on this post it probably means that I'm not having any problems with the new memory.

Memory details:

OCZ SO-Dimm 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-8500, 1066Mhz

OSX Finder Replacement [Update]

A while back I wrote something about Path Finder as a probable Finder substitute. Well, it's been a couple of months, and I must say that  I'm still using the crappy Apple Finder.

Why? Well, I guess that it kinda grows on you, eventhough Path Finder has 'some' neat features. It just didn't feel like a real substitute. It felt more like an add-on.

So, back to Finder with its little annoyances like;

• Not being able to move or delete files when the OS is busy creating the thumbnails.
• No Cut&Paste (⌘-x, ⌘-v) in the file system.
• ⌘-o to open files instead of hitting the Enter-key.
• Sort folders before files. Not mixing them.
• Clock/Date format (I want the date also to be visible).
• Manual refresh option for (share) folders.
• etc.
  

I have high hopes up for Snow Leopard. Hope that Finder gets a real good overhaul.