Several folks at the Northumberland Photography club (NPC) including myself, were having problems when their images appeared very small when projected at club events. As well, some Windows users were not able to detach imbedded images sent by Mac Mail Users. This depended on which version of Outlook the Windows users had. Mac users can get around this problem using the following instructions:Mac Mail to Windows User Instructions
Float Your Fanny down the Ganny
Everyone had a ball at the Ganaraska river, Port Hope – 2010 event “Float your Fanny down the Ganny”. I went with the Northumberland Photography Club and shot these pictures.
Its handy to have a note created on either a Mac or iPhone transfer to the other device using Synchronization. For now Apple appears to rely on iTunes (not Mobile Me) to manage this or you can search for 3rd party tools. Here is how to do it in iTunes.
Create Note from a Mac: Use Mail application > File > New Note. Create the contents of the note in any manner you wish. Loading an address actually opens the Maps app on the phone and a URL will open iPhone Safari app. Images display a paper clip, presumably they are still attached but not displayed.
Create Note from iPhone: Use the iPhone Note app. Create notes in any manner.
To Setup Synchronization: With the iPhone connected to the Mac, use iTunes, click on the iPhone device in the left column. Then select the Info tab. Check ‘Sync notes’. This is required for Mobile Me users as well, since Mobile Me does not sync Notes.
To Sync: Connect the iPhone to the Mac, start iTunes and click on the iPhone. Click the Sync button in the bottom right corner.
Final Thought: Although this is not a very elegant solution, it does work. Hopefully Apple with sync notes using MobileMe some day.
If anyone finds a simpler method, please let me know. I would prefer not to use iTunes which is really clunky.
In order to determine how sharp a new lens is before purchasing or to compare the sharpness of different lenses, you can use an MTF (Modulation Transfer Function) chart provided by lens manufacturers. Here is how to read an MTF chart.
Note, this is a full explanation, a shorter version was published in the Northumberland Photography Club March Newsletter.
I have been trying to get some owl shots for a while now and while hiking on March 8 2010 we walked right past this guy. We took over 200 shots with a simple point and shoot Fuji. 
See http://gallery.me.com/gardner.jeff#100053/Snowy-20Owl-20Rice-20Lake&bgcolor=black
In my discussions with folks at the Northumberland Photography Club several people have commented that they were not aware of the Adobe PDFs containing the entire online help – in User Manual format. Here they are:
Lightroom Version 2 (PDF 10.7 meg)
Photoshop CS4 Extended (PDF 28 meg)
Bridge & Version Cue CS4 (PDF 3.7 meg)
Note – these are the exact same files as the online adobe help files, but I find it easier to search them using Adobe Acrobat advanced search.
See Photo Gallery fine art and wildlife
From our Sept 2009 trip.
I have been experiencing performance issues (5 – 20 second delays) with Lightroom 2 grid view when editing 20- 30 MB images across the network. My conclusion is don’t use LightRoom across a network, and connect the drives using eSATA instead of FireWire 800.
My Findings:
I use a MacPro to connect via an internal gigabit LAN to a server with a MyBook external hard disk (connected with FireWire 800) . At first I suspected issues with the server, then the network, but now I believe its just the accumulated inherent speed of all of the components. The largest bottleneck seems to the Firewire 800 with its maximum throughput of 100 megabytes per second.
When copying 286 GB of images from a MyBook, I measured overall throughput as 62.6 Megabytes (MB) per second. The copy was taken over a 1GB network between the two Macs.
Although that is not bad, the copy took 72 minutes. Given that a MyBook II supports eSATA this may be wise configuration enhancement for the future.
Measurements were taken using Apple Monitor.
The hardware configuration is as follows:
- Server Mac Mini – 3GB memory, 2 Ghz single Intel Core 2 Duo. (Macmini3,1)
- WD My Book Studio Edition II – 4TB - configured as Raid 0 – striped across 2 – 2TB drives, connect to the Mac Mini using a FireWire 800 cable.
- MacPro – 8 core. 10GB memory.
- Dlink DGS-1008D 1 Gigabit switch (1000Mbps)
One of the bottle necks seem to be the maximum speed of the FireWire bus transfer – in this case 100 MB per second (800 Mb/s). I also suspect the bus speed of the Mac Mini bus but have no way to measure that. Click thumbnail for larger image.
Both memory and CPU have been ruled out as a bottleneck so that left the network, computer bus and MyBook. I will test the local connection and report my findings.
Blog moved from Blogger after they dropped support for FTP access to self hosted sites.
Now back hosting this Blog on my own site to retain control over indexing.
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