Not if but when continues.......

I falsely thought equipment failures where behind me, at least for a while. I was wrong. Ok I had been seeing times when my old portable USB card reader (hanging together with masking tape) would just refuse to read cards on different computers. Frustrating sure but it was intermittent and there where alternate ways to upload photo.

Now I find all my built in SD card readers on the three computers (that survived the windows 10 update) still working have stopped working over the past few days. Damn. Still I can upload directly from the Camera.

Clearly I spoke to soon. Is this bad luck and a massive coincident or is there a  SD card virus or similar data contagion out in the wild? I can't find any reliable reference to such a beast, at least at the moment.

So its off to replace my USB card reader and get some new cards, but keeping my fingers crossed.

Look after those SD cards

SD cards have become ubiquitous with digital cameras and microSD cards with smart phones. They are relatively cheap and generally robust. However they can be damaged and can very occasionally fail. My experience up till last week was that failure does happen but was very unlikely. I had one bad experience several years ago where a card came apart in my camera and jammed the card socket. With patients, a magnifying glass, a torch and the tweezers from a swiss army knife I did get all the pieces of plastic and gold foil contacts out of the card slot and no damaged was done. Luckily!

Another card last year just gave errors on two test photos when I loaded them. Picasa loaded in the photos ok but Lightroom reported corrupt RAW files. Surprising the paired jpegs were fine. At first I suspected the camera but I took some more photos using an older SD card and no problems. This was a cheaper brand card and I could see no obvious damage. I just  reformatted the card in my camera, and it worked fine. But I did buy a replacement card the next day. It is serving out its retirement in a relative’s photo frame and apparently enjoying life and behaving.

Two days in a row this week I had two cards develop problems with the little plastic slider on the side that provides write protection. I don’t normally touch this slider. The first problem was I managed to push the slider up inside the card and on top the contacts. I felt the card being blocked when I inserted into into the card reader. I could read the photos the card stuck again as I tried to removed it from the reader. I carefully applied more pressure and the card came out. Close inspection showed the slider had moved and was jammed (see picture above). The SD was immediately thrown out. Unfortunately the next day, same camera another same brand SD card, read the photos ok but when I put it back in the camera it reported the write protection lock was on and when I checked the card the write protect tab was missing. I carefully checked both the camera slot and card reader but that little bit of plastic was totally missing. Another card for the bin. Three new cards from a different manufacturer purchased.

By this stage I was worried either the camera or the card reader was damaging the cards. So an intensive investigation of cards and cameras and card readers followed, including testing the write protection sliders. No problems found and I breathed a long sigh of relief.

So What might have causes the failures?

Then I realised I had changed how I was using the cards on my recent trips. I was using a new card each day and not clearing it off. After being loaded I would put it back in an elasticized pocket in the camera bag. There were only three such pockets and six cards so there was doubling up and I remember a few cards slipped out and floated around in a mesh compartment which also house a few other accessories. I now suspect that is where the little plastic slide switches got damaged.

So I have gone back to my old practice of re-using the same card in the same camera and clearing off the photos after they are loaded. Only a singe SD card is stored in each pocket, as spares in the field. Any other spare cards are kept in those older little slide boxes, that SD cards used to come in before that where just bubble packed. They are robust but kept back at base with my backup USB drive, not floating around in my camera bag.

Before I try the rotating card process again I’m need to find a suitable protective wallet for the cards and take better care of them.

Recuva to the rescue yet again

I’ve had a few SD card trouble of late and have upgrade to a new set of SD cards (named brands 8GB and 10mps ie decent cards), No problems in the Canon but the cards with Pentax files have played up, on two occasions the files where not deleted by Picasa as I uploaded. No real problem I could clear the the photos in the camera. Then I uploaded a few photos and was looking at them in picasa on my laptop and picasa refreshed the screen, but the new folder had disappeared! Really disappeared! No amount of search the recycle bin or scanning for the photo file names of just recent files could locate them.

So I decided to run a disk recovery utility but it had been a long time since I had had to used such a utility and it was nowhere to be found on my computer or useful photo tools USB key. Also I had forgotten the name (which is recuva, remember that name) so I had to do a little search back into my blog and then check on-line, recuva still has a free downloadable version. Just 4mb, so I had it downloaded and recovered the files in just a few minutes. The two things that are important to note are. Firstly recover the files to a different disk (not the SD card). Second Recuva will not see the RAW files if you just ask to recover photos (it will however recover the .jpeg files). So it is important to recover all files. So I will make sure I keep an up to date copy of recuva on my useful photo utility toolkit

I’m a bit puzzled by the loss of files within picasa, this has never happened to me before. As a precaution I’ve also reformatted the SD cards in the camera I will be using the cards in and not swapping them between cameras.

Another SD cards bits the dust

I've had 3 SD memory cards give problems in the past two weeks. One has been giving a random memory card error in my Pentax (not in the Canon), it was as simple as removing and re-inserting the card to get it working. However I figured it was time to retire this cards. The next card lost the little plastic slider to lock the card so it now appears permanently locked (and thus unusable). Yesterday my last decent "brand name" card (picture on right) just split open!

They are all around the 2 years old mark, and I have heard many times this is the right time to replace SD cards (even though their theoretical memory life should be much longer) their physical robustness may not be as lasting. When replacing an SD card remember speed can be as important as size.

Size matters, but so does speed

 SD cards come in a large variety of capacities, in general the bigger the capacity the more expensive, but there is a second consideration speed. The SD Association have a speed class system that can help you understand the performance. the symbol is a number (the number of Mega Bytes per sec) inside a C, a bit like the @ symbol (see example on right hand side). Whilst most cameras will work the original the original standard SD cards (mainly still available in 2Giga Bytes) many older cameras cannot use the newer SD HC (High capacity) which general come in between 2 GB and 32 GB capacities, These newer card can have speed from 2 MB/s up to 10 MB/s. Understanding the performance is pretty simple if your DSLR camera writes a jpeg or RAW file that is 10MB in size it will take 1 second to write (with a tiny overhead for the cameras software). If you are still using a speed class 2 card that same file will take 5 seconds. A little more in cost of the card may make a big difference, particularly in bust mode.

This was all fine for still cameras but video is even more demanding, so there is now another class the SD XC or UHS (Ultra High Speed), which an come in capacities up to 1 TB (terra byte(more commonly 32GB).  Their speed class is shown in a U, The class U 3 is equivalent to 30MB/s (as shown on the left). Some newer cameras and particularly video cameras like the GO Pro actually require these higher speed cards.

So here is a guide of what size/speed card might suit you best

Type of Photography	Capacity	Speed Class
If you just shoot jpeg (or old camera)	2-4GB	C2-4
If you mainly shoot RAW	4-8GB	C6
If you shoot jpeg + RAW	4-16GB	C10
If you shoot video & RAW	8-32GB	U1-U3

Jpeg+RAW

I have been taking and saving both Jpeg and RAW on both my DSLRs for some time. There are a couple downsides to this, and a few issues to bear in mind.

1. They take up a about 50% more space than RAW alone or about 4 times more space than just jpeg alone. So you probably need a larger SD card and certainly more storage space.

2. They take longer to write to the card, It takes longer to write both files to the SD card, so you should consider a faster SD card. It does take a little time for your camera to “develop” the jpeg rendering but this is usually quicker than the extra time it take to write the RAW file, so if you want maximum Blust speed best to just use jpeg format.

Another aspect that doesn’t seem to get much press is the an unprocessed RAW file is generally flat and boring in comparison to the equivalent jpeg, the truth is the raw file has more potential, so I need to add another downside

3. Most raw file will be boring and flat until post processing has been undertaken to achieve its full potential. You will have to spend extra time nursing it through that process!

I think this remains dull and boringness has been essentially hidden issue because most of the packages only show one version. For example lightroom will only show the raw version (unless you check the “treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos” box under Edit/Preferences/General dialogue). So you will not see the jpeg version, except for a short period as the file is being imported in lightroom when it uses the jpeg preview embedded in the raw file, but once loaded it will use an “average” rendering of the raw file (aka that flat and boring look). There is nothing particularly wrong with the exposure of this image of the beach at Venus Bay but it doesn’t feeling of a clear winter’s day. Different packages will have different ways to do this rendering of the raw files but one approach seldom suits all and the power of raw is really in selectively changing and tweaking the many processing options anyway. Most packages however do have an Autofix or AutoEnhance feature and many will offer plug-ins and presets to automate the processing of your Raw files into something special.

I’ll let you into a secret, I didn’t spend ages post processing this image I just selected the OnOne’s Endless Summer 7 preset and eased back on a couple of sliders.especially the vignette. It has lifted the blue, whitened the  surf and added contrast & clarity, and I could have done that myself too but…

o the moral of the story is, if you only use your camera to take snapshots and photos to post on-line, perhaps saving your photos in raw format is overkill (and potentially unexciting) and you will do better setting your camera to take the style of jpeg you like. Whereas if you have good RAW photo processing software like lightroom, camera raw/photoshop, aftershot pro, aperture, rawtherapee etc. and you can put in the time, you will be able to get better results from the raw files.If you are ok with the extra storage required (and possibly have faster SD cards) and have the discipline to handle both format why not save both?

Being Hard on Card Readers

Whilst my Toshiba laptops do have build card readers I have always preferred to use external USB readers, because they are easier and not a fiddly to use. However when I prepare my earlier post I realized I had managed to break two card readers since the photo flow photo was taken last year. So I have been on the hunt for a simpler SD card reader with no rotate out connectors or short cables. Those two conditions rule our a large percentage of the USB card reader market. I’m now trying out a small USB key sized reader, no moving parts just a cap to remove. Fits in my SD card wallet. Fingers crossed what its life span might be?

When to clear your SD card

I have been using SD cards for a long while and have had little trouble (except for one card where the connectors peeled off the card in the camera, damaging the reader, I don’t use the cheap brands anymore), I have misplaced a few cards and deliberately dissected an old one. They have all given me good service and I have migrated to using the fastest ones I mainly still use 4Gb & 8Gb (giga bytes) in size (that's plenty of shots). I generally use Picasa to unload the cards on a computer and  I have always been happy to let Picasa delete the photos off the card (it does seem to do some form of verification after loading the files before it deletes anything from the card.) I have used lightroom (way too slow for me) and photo mechanic a few times with similar settings, and no problemsOne of my fastest cards has started to “forget” to deleted the previous uploaded photos. Which is not a real problems in picasa I just make sure I have the exclude duplicates button checked. Anything I have already loaded show up with a red cross on a white circle. So I have my little 1-2-3 checklist for any picasa import. 1. Excluded Duplicated, 2 – Delete only copied photos 3 – Import all. Works fine and it is now just a habit.

The majority of on-line sites and experts seem to recommend that you never clear your card till after you are sure the files are uploaded and safely backed up to a second place. Seemed overkill to me because as long as you have not taken new photographs you can usually recover deleted files from your card with suitable recovery tools. You should always review what you have just uploaded, and that will highlight if anything is missing. I know some people have months worth of photos on large capacity cards, which could make it hard to spot missing images. I prefer to off-load my cards as soon a practical (ie each day, or session).

The pesky little undelete was easily solved by deleting the files on my card on the camera before any new sessions. On my Pentax I just need to press the delete button twice, and then Ok to confirm when looking at any image, to delete all the photos on the card. On the Canon its a bit more complex because you have to delete the pictures individually, so there I have chosen to reformat the card. All easy enough. Then I discover on two occasions that the card was locked, the little plastic tab has moved down. That was the cause of the “forgotten” to delete issues the card was being pushed down a little as I inserted it in the card reader. So I have retired that card from active service.

This weeks digital story podcast, has an interesting segment on how digital memory cards work and it reminded me of this. Derrick’s suggestion is to reformat the card to suit the camera and I had actually noticed that I felt my Canon was getting a little sluggish in burst mode but after I had reformatted the card it did appear faster, So I think his advice is good. If you swap cameras it may pay you to reformat the card so the directory structure suits it.

So my suggestion here is not to slavishly follow my workflow or anyone else’s, but figure out what is safe and works for you, and make it a habit to follow those steps, not a chore.

Waiting for the Watched Pot

Over the past few days I have been loading my photos (and Videos) from SD card onto my photographic laptop and timing how long it takes to load using various software packages. Its a lot like watching a pot to boil (yes the old adage is “A watched pot never boils”) it does but it takes a long time. At first the results didn’t make a lot of sense, The number of files or combined file size didn’t seem to relate to the time taken. Clearly Picasa was fastest and Lightroom 5 Beta (LR5b) was generally slowest, with Photo Mechanic (PM) and Lightroom 4.4 (LR4.4) occasionally taking the longest. This didn’t make a lot of sense because whilst a lot of folk seem to complain LR4.4 is slow, many have suggested that LR5b and PM are much faster. I suspect they are faster for JPEG and Cannon’s RAW format .CR2 but they don’t perform so well with .mov or pentax’s RAW format .PEF, then I realised there was a serious flaw in my testing. The cards I used in the two cameras were rated for different speeds, You can tell from the little number inside the circle that should be printed on the SD cards label. My Canon was loaded with a 10 (10mb/sec) but the Pentax was only a 6 (6MB/sec), clearly this has had the biggest effect on the results but like watching the pot I’ve lost interest in trying to be scientific and fair. I just need to only use SD cards rated 10 and load my photos onto my computer using picasa. Enough time has been wasted already!

Number & Size	camera	Type of files	picasa	PM	LR4.4	LR5b
52(640mb)	canon	.jpg .cr2	25	37
215(1.7GB)	pentax	.jpg .pef	32	75	80	73
11(1.13gb)	Canon	.mov	35	36	75	111
134(1.4GB)	pentax	.jpg .pef	42	54	104
184(2.4GB)	pentax	.jpg .pef	57	100	102	129
8(889mb)	Canon	.mov	28	53	86	103
13(286)	Pentax	.jpg .pef	6	22		19
72(920mb)	pentax	.jpg .pef	18		58.9	73
3(69mb)	Canon	.mov	7		15	22

Sharing DSLR Photos on the Net via Low-Fi

You actually don't need a lot of extra hardware, or fancy WiFi Cards to be able to upload your photos from existing DLSRs or compact cameras. If you have a smart phone that uses Mirco SD cards, and perhaps a healthy bandwidth/data upload limit for it. Here is a very simple and inexpensive (providing your on a good data plan), albeit not so high tech, way to do it.

• Make sure you have an SD adaptor that your mirco SD card slots into (reputable brands are generally sold this way)

• Use the micro SD card inside its adaptor in your camera (the camera will treat this as an normal SD card)

• After your have taken the photos, take the SD card & holder from your camera and remove the micro SD card
• Insert The micro SD card in your Phone.

• Upload the photo to the Social Web, Flickr, FaceBook, Google+ etc.

RAWing @ Picasa

I prefer to load all my photographs, jpeg, RAW and movies into picasa because it is much faster and easier than waiting around for lightroom. I also prefer to read the SD Card, rather than use a cable to connect to the camera, but this is just a matter of preference. I just leave the import folder at picasa default (date taken, in YYYY-MM-DD format so that an alphabetical sort puts them in date order). I have also experimented with the Windows live photo gallery to do the copy and it is pretty quick and easy as well, but it never grabbed me as better than picasa. In particular I got lost when it tried to guide me to download drivers for RAW format, like my pentax .pef and cannon .cr2  both of which I had already installed the drivers for? Picasa wasn’t perfect here but they provided RAW support some time ago. I got to see the RAW files much sooner than in lightroom but the renderings were sometimes well away from the paired jpeg and what the cannon, pentax utilities did or even what lightroom might do. I don’t really like the picasa rendering on most RAW files and prefer just to see the jpeg version, as the camera took it!

My solution has been to “ignore” the RAW files in picasa, which is very easy to do via Tools/Option/File Types, and just untick the box. However I actually like to make sure that I have actually imported everything (occasionally the import leaves the RAW files or movies on the SD card, not sure why). Also I find it best to delete the bad photos (both jpeg and RAW versions) immediately on my first pass view of the photos as they are uploaded. So I am usually toggling this setting on and off. In other words I like to see picasa load the RAW files but I don’t really look at them or do any serious editing of my RAW files in picasa. That is a job for lightroom, where I just to do a File/import photos and videos from the folder that picasa has loaded the new files into. All this might sound like double handling but it is still faster than loading directly into lightroom, (I can’t figure out why) and I get to cull the duds as a bonus.

Prodigal SD card returns

A while ago I lost an older spare SD card, it seemed to just disappeared “out of” my camera bag. Then miraculously it “reappeared” on the back lawn under the clothes line (luckily I spotted it while watering and before mowing the lawn). I can only assume it was most probably in the pocket of my clothes, went through the wash and fell out of the pocket whilst drying and sat on the lawn through 40°C plus heat and a couple of storms, I dried it off and was able to read it with no problems. Not a bad harsh environment test of the card and the case it was in.

I hasn’t been smooth sailing always for me with SD cards I have had a couple where the plastic tabs and separators around the connectors has broken off or fallen apart (and jammed in my camera!) so I’m very careful and throw out any cards that misbehave (mainly cheap noname brand ones).

Whilst on SD Cards I have found that the speed of the card makes a massive different in practice when you are using a higher end DSLR. Particularly if you are saving both RAW and jpeg version of your photos. I have been using and can recommend both the Scan disk Ultra and  Lexar Platinum II series (SDHC 60x) it’s the difference in being able to get 8 images per second or waiting more than a second between images. Only capturing in jpeg does makes things quicker (they require processing but are smaller files and therefore save quicker).

Useful Camera Bag Extras

I am trying hard to keep the ancillary contents of my new Lowpro backpack to a minimum, to give extra room for cameras and lenses. Sounds easy but modern digital camera come with a range of extras, some vital others less so. This is a collection of things I always carry. Most importantly I have spare batteries. I also have a few spare SD cards, not a surprise. I have found keeping a small USB universal card reader very handy. I usually have two 4GB USB keys on hand, one blank the other has a number of photo oriented portable apps and utilities. which are great if the only computer around is a cyber cafe. One big hassle is always cables, you seldom need them but then they are always tangled. I found this mess bag with a zip is a great way to keep my contents tidy and generally tangle free. The other important item is a small portable backpack style hard drive, with a 500GB capacity to keep backups updated (each day). At the end of the month I archive from it and clean it up to start a fresh for the next month.

I have an HTC android phone, which has become not only a camera in its own right but also a very useful support accessory. In particular it is the GPS source when I wish to geotag my photos but it also has a number of useful photography oriented apps. It lives in my pocket.

Not shown is my laptop, which does live in the Lowpro backpack as well, and all the charges and power supplies which I don’t carry around in the backpack but fit in my case when I travel.

My Way of Importing into Picasa

Apparently I didn’t give enough detail on how I actually set up my normal Picasa import in my previous 3 step dance post. So here is just the import step in a little more detail. You don’t need to follow my settings exactly but your should get the idea that I am trying to make it KISS (Keep It Simple S…). 9 times out of 10 imports I will just leave the setting as they are just press Import all button.
1.1 The Import from selection bar, should automatically select the drive slot that your SD card is inserted into  ( H: in my case). My wife prefers to load her images directly from the camera using a USB cable and I occasionally load from my mobile phone that way. In this case you should see the name of the camera or the phone in the drop down list. If you don’t see any thumbnails of your new photos displayed below this bar you should check that you have selected the right input source.
1.2 The exclude duplicates check box, is very useful because it will avoid having duplicate copies of your photos clogging up your computer.
1.3 The directory naming conventions you wish to use are really up to you. I decided long ago that a chronological system was best for me. I keep each days photos in a separate directory and use the default DD-MM-YYYY format for the sub-directory name within the My Pictures directory. I use the date taken rather than Todays Date (the date loaded) and the date is actually written in the reverse format YYYY-MM-DD which nicely sorts the directories “numerically” accenting order.
1.4 The way images on the card are treated after uploaded photos are copied to your computer is set in the final drop down selector (after Copy). By setting this to delete only copied photos you will ensure you card is cleaned up but only those files copied will be deleted (usually this would leave the duplicate files or file you have de-selected from the upload)
1.5 The only step I actually need to do is click on Import All button at the bottom of the import screen, because I just leave the setting above as my default settings.
Because you are removing files from the SD card after they are uploaded you will get a “are you really sure” type message to check that picasa can removed the imported files from you card when it has finished the imported. This seems unnecessary, of course that is what you selected, but do check the message just incase you accidentally asked for everything to be deleted from the card

KEEP IT SIMPLE

My comfort 3 step travel dance

I have again been suffering a bit of disobedience from my laptop, refusing to wake up. It has become terminally slow a waking up if it wakes at all. I assume it is a Vista thing. Something I’m not really stressed about, because it means I don’t have to check on email etc. However it does take me outside my comfort zone of taking photos and managing them as I travel. It would seem I have become very confortable with “the Picasa 3 step”, and without my laptop (and thus my version of my Picasa database) that dance is a little difficult.
I must admit I have been a bit skeptical of the elaborate digital photo workflows, generally originating from the USA. I suspect much of their origin lies in the complexity to understand photoshop and apple centric expectations (ie there are way too many mouse clicks man!). If you like those workflows use them but understanding what you want to do and doing that quickly and efficiently is the real aim. Still there is a lot to be said for being so familiar with the flow that it is a habit that lives in you comfort zone and does not feel like a chore.
So here is my comfort zone Picasa 3 steps, when travelling
1 Import into Picasa. This is simplicity itself, I just slide in my SD card and get Picasa running, and then press the import button up at the top of the screen, or as I prefer the short cut keys <Ctrl><m>.
2 Weed & Star, I like to scan through my photos and look at them for the first time on a bigger screen (my laptop is not a “calibrated” screen but I am used to it). I usually star, or use the short cut keys <Ctrl><8>, any really good images as soon as I see them. I also get rid of the “total duds”, the unfocused, overexposed, the accidental photos of my feet, duplicates and the just straight “bad”. The short cut to delete forever is <Ctrl><Del>.There might be one of two marginally blurred or underexposed that I decide to keep but I am learning to more be brutal in the weeding.
I once upon a time used to do my “tagging” at this time but it can be too time consuming and hinders the like/dislike selection process. I also avoid doing a lot of image tweaking (exposure, white balance, colour saturation, red eye, cropping) because this also eats up time and diverts attention away from image selection/ranking and is better done on my larger desktop screen that is calibrated.
A really quick way to see an image full screen is to hover the mouse point over a thumbnail image, then with your other hand press and hold <Ctrl><Alt>. The image will instantly be full screen and releasing the <Ctrl><Alt> keys will restore the normal thumbnail display.
3. Backup to my backpack disc. Sometimes I use the Picasa backup, it can be found under tools on the drop down menus, which has the advantage of Picasa then knowing what and what has not been backed up, but just copying the latest directories, via drag and drop out in windows, works just as well.
Whilst on things Picasa, there is a pleasant surprise for Picasa Web Album users, Google have rejigged its quotas for free accounts, Photos less than 800x600 pixels and videos less than 15 minutes in duration no longer count towards your 1GB quota. As I deliberately keep my blog images small (It makes the blog display faster and also tiny images are a little less desirable for people to steal) I went from about 60% to 28% of my quota without having to do anything.

Travelling with a Sleepy Computer

I’m travelling at the moment (you should have noticed by now) and on my last night in the Auckland I shut down my computer and it stayed asleep for way too many days. I didn’t discover this until I’d reach Lake Taupo and no amount of button pressing and rebooting attempts got any response. So what do you do? When you are surrounding by such natural beauty and want to take hundreds of photos each day. You personally might not want to take so many but I was still keen too. So here are my strategies to stay on top of my photostream (ok photo river in flood). I have mentioned most of this travel stuff before but lessons hard learned are good lessons.

1) Use all available SD cards (I have two 4GB cards on 2 GB and 3 single GB cards). This is a really simple solution as SD cards are getting cheaper and have larger capacity so they a lot like purchasing more film. However not all the places I visit have SD cards for sale  so I always carry a few spares.

2) Switch over to taking mainly JPEG files rather than RAW. On my camera this reduces a typical landscape shoot from 14MB to 6MB (under half the size). The trade off here is quality, or so many “internet” experts would have you believe (I’ll do seperate post on this). Both HDRI Bracketing and multi-image panoramas force me to take lots of images but my software of choice for both techniques just use JPEG file in any case.

3) Use cyber cafes, to download, review and backup/archive your photos. Cyber cafes are getting very common at all the tourist destination, but they probably aren’t as fast and reliable as you might prefer (Uploading to flickr or even just looking at your flickr stream will probably involve many tedious time outs and lost uploads.) Yet most computers will have a USB port so I can attach my cheap portable cards reader (which worked like a charm) to upload my photos to the computer (temporarily), If I have time I can also one or more of my stable of favorite post-processing software on my portable apps USB key

3.1) Autostitch is the multi-image stitcher of choice and is a big bonus that I can run it off my memory key. It only handles JPEG files and can be slow and memory intensive for big output files so I just use it to preview the stitching on the road.

3.2) Picturenaut has become my default HDRI tool the fact that I can run it off my USB is a big bonus. It only works with JPEG files

3.3) Noiseworks is a bit luxury but if I have to take photos in lowlight with Higher ASA I know I will need to do some noise cleanup.

3.4) If the cyber café computers don’t have Picasa or Microsoft Photo Gallery (many do) I find  XNView Portable, a fast and reliable photo viewer and manager that can handle RAW format images.

I always carry a little seagate free agent USB Backpack style hard dick(its getting on now but it does have a handy 120 GB of storage) and I use this routinely as my working backup/archive for my photos as I travel. Its only downfall is it need two USB cables, one just for power and some special drivers. Whilst most cyber café computers will let it load and connect a few don’t seem to set up the right drivers and was a bit flakey on some file copies (I never lost any files but….) However this mean I was able to confidently remove my photos from my SD cards every third of forth day.

The slow internet speeds here in New Zealand & bandwidth issues means I have avoided on-line storage like Sky drive, flickr or picasa web.

Don’t forget to empty the recycle bin on any public computer after you have deleted your images. This ensure that your precious photos are not “found” (aka Stolen) by other at the cyber cafe

So taking my own advice a little bit of preparation (extra SD cards, my PortableApps USB key with a few key programs, Card Reader and Backpack Drive) I was able to avoid undue stress and I could carry on taking photos just as I wanted too.

I eventually managed to “wake up” my computer with a cheap set of jeweler’s screw drivers and carefully removing both the rechargeable battery, backup battery & hard disks and equally as carefully replacing them.

Travelling Stuff

To say I travel a lot, is an understatement! I am well over the implied romance of flying and I particularly zone out through the airport ordeal. With security now beefed up it is time to slim down the stuff inside my camera bag, which I always hand carry on flights. I haven’t got enough trust established to let anything breakable go into checked in baggage. I also always hand carry my laptop computer. None of this seems to come under special scrutiny from the Security X-ray team.

So what to I like to carry?  As little as possible. Extra memory cards, SD cards are getting cheaper and are the best way to give yourself extra capacity. Don’t be afraid to buy extra cards along the way (but they will be overpriced in those duty free shops). Next I have a simple USB memory card reader. I have an SD card reader built into my laptop, but not many cyber cafes do. I can also easily transfer stuff to clients computers via this card reader. This has saved my bacon many times. Next I have my phone and a cable to connect it to my computer, and still use it occasionally as a GPRS modem (this is painfully slow but works reliably). I also have a Next-G modem (not shown, because it lives with my laptop) with which I have a love/hate relationship (its broadband and fast but annoyingly flaky).
The gem in this collection is the USB key. It is loaded with camera friendly Portable Apps, an open source open platform that allows programs to be run from a USB key, without requiring anything in the registry or to be installed on the host computer. Here are a collection of utilities I like to travel with and have used a lot.

• Autostitch (*), my favorite panorama stitching program.
• Cornice Portable, is an image viewer has thumbnail previews, full screen modes, rotation, slideshow modes and EXIF support.
• Exif Reader (*), is a small freeware utility that extracts image information from EXIF/JPG files.
• JpegView Portable, is still an unsupported test version, is a small and fast on the fly viewer/editor.
• GIMP Portable, is the popular open source image editor packaged. Has lots of features but comes with a longer learning curve. It has a massive fan base and good on-line Tutorials & Forums.
• Mosaic Creator (*), this is a wonderful collection of photo mosaic tools. I use this for my photo impressions.
• Noiseware (*), is a really good digital/heat noise remover.
• Photormin, a really simple image editor for fast resizing, basic retouching, and cropping. Probably I will replace this with JpegView before long, but still like its speed.
• Picturenaut (*), if you don't have version 3.0 download it now, this a very easy to use HDRi tool and does a beautiful job without lots of tweaking. 
• XnViewPortable, to be honest I’d rather used picasa, but in a pinch this is a very competent photo simple editor/ photo  manager/ viewer/ converter that can even be used in a cyber cafes. There is a decent community of  XnView fans out there and the on-line forum is a great place to get assistance.

(*) These are not a specific Portable Apps versions just the freeware/ shareware /demo versions that runs perfectly from the USB key. To install them on the USB Key simple copy the installed software directory into the PortableApps directory on the USB key.

A new acquisition to the kit bag is a Sony Walkman Series B USB MP3 player. It is the size of a normal USB key but it is primarily an MP3 audio player, but unlike my IPod nano it receives FM radio and it is a one button to press Voice recorder. My Olympus software bundled with my older CX4000 incorporated support for sound commentary on each photo and at the time I though what a waste of space. Now I’m changing my mind, I have found having an easy to use dictaphone that can hang around your neck is very useful when your hands are full of camera. Music & Podcasts sound pretty good on it as well. I also now have all my camera manuals stored on it.  Something indespensiable when you are out the back of nowhere. It is labbelled 2GB but I have found there is only about 1.7GB of usable space left for other things. Still that is plenty of space for all sorts of stuff not only music, and I prefer to keep it only half full incase I have a lot to say. One downside is that Photo Kiosks don’t seem to be able to read it. So I don’t recomend it as your only transfer key or for the PortableApps.