This week I was over at a photo studio and one of their new long-term storage drives, a brand new Western Digital Studio Edition 750 GB external, massively failed for no apparent reason. We didn't have a lot of data on it yet, probably only 100 gigs or so, but the thought of losing that drive didn't sit well with me. I immediately pulled out DiskWarrior and was informed that the drive was too damaged (fsck claimed it was a "bad super block: wrong magic number"). Nothing I tried would get a result short of reformatting, which I didn't want to do since as far as I knew, nothing wrong had actually happened. So I sent off a quick note to Alsoft asking for advice. I was very surprised, and impressed, when I got note back from Marc telling me to IM him with some details and he'd try to help out! I got online and we tried a few different approaches through DW and the command line and after about an hour we were able to make a full recovery of our photo data on that drive! Amazing. Alsoft went above and beyond this week and the studio was most grateful. WD, on the other hand, is now on my short list of drive makers to think hard about before purchasing. We'll see how they handle the return/claim on this bad drive. Huge thanks to Marc @ Alsoft and DiskWarrior! Go buy yourself a copy if you don't already have it!
Good morning! If the Canon 5D Mark II press release doesn't get you revved up today, even without drinking your coffee, you might not have a pulse!
The press release claims: "Along with the ability to capture full HD video clips at 1920 x 1080 resolution, Canon's EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR camera features a 21.1-megapixel full frame 24 x 36mm CMOS sensor, DIGIC 4 imaging processor and significantly lower noise, with an expanded sensitivity range from ISO 50 to ISO 25,600."
Things that caught my attention: The expanded ISO range (how well will that high end really look? Could it be better than the new Nikons, which look amazing?), the multiple RAW sizes (three), and of course the HD video features.
The video features seem to be fairly well thought-out, unlike all the (premature, in my opinion) buzz around the Nikon D90's features. Where the D90 limits video to 720p and five minutes per recording (and a few other restrictions), the Canon 5D goes up to 1080p at 30 frames per second and either a 4-gigabyte recording size or a 30-minute duration, whichever comes first. I also particularly like that the Canon 5D uses MPEG-4 Quicktime and that the camera actually has a stereo microphone input! It would seem that Canon wasn't reacting to a possible Nikon advancement in this area, but to the RED HD video cameras taking the movie world by storm. The thing to check out will be how well does the Canon CMOS sensor handle video and the inherent skew and wobble of slow imaging chips (ie: "jelly vision" - see this clip of the D90's nasty motion).
There is plenty more to check out in the press release, so take a few minutes to read it and get your credit cards ready for November!
Hard Disk Warning!
OK, that caught my attention, and probably yours as well. So what gives? Why the alarm?
According to research and conversations with several hard drive experts conducted by Final Cut Pro whiz Larry Jordan, there is every reason to be more cognizant of your long-term offline drive storage. Your existing plan of backing up data to removable or external drives might not be so full of peace of mind as you thought. In his research with several disk companies he discovered that the magnetically-stored data of a disk is designed to be refreshed periodically. Your online drives perform this action automatically but your offline drives in your vault are at risk.
"According to what I've been told, the life-span of a magnetic signal on a hard disk is between a year and a year and a half..."
So, what is the solution? Put an automatic reminder on your calendar every year, or every six months if you want to be really safe, and spend that day hooking up your drives and doing a complete scan of the contents (Larry recommends TechTool Pro or Drive Genius). One day a year is a small price to pay for long-term viability of your valuable archives.(Via Hard Disk Warning!, from Larry Jordan's Final Cut Pro Newsletter.)
Elvis may have left the building... but he should still be lurking around the archives.
With the ever increasing capacity and falling price of storage, is there a good reason to delete unused digital images from a photo shoot? Take a look at what happens when context changes (history happens) and old photos suddenly have new value (intrinsic and financial): new photos of Elvis Presley performing in 1972 have recently surfaced.
Kalinsky said he didn't realize at the time that he had so many good shots. "When I photographed the show, I thought I only had a few good ones," he said. "I just never really looked at the files until recently."
Now, truthfully, part of the excitement and big news from this story is that the photos were just found after 36 years and the subject has been deceased almost as long. But celebrity or not, when your subject dies/marries/lies/wins/etc, your images may hold brand new meaning, perhaps foreshadowing the current event or evoking sentiment or just uniquely bolstering the story. Why toss images away at all?
Of course, saving everything requires that you have a decent way of tracking what you have... and that's a post for another day, but you already know how important digital asset management (DAM) is, don't you?
The beta of v2 of Microsoft's iView ExpressionMedia is now available for you to check out. It will run for a few months and give you a chance to kick the tires of the new version that claims improved speed, network sharing and other improvements. I'll check it out ASAP and see how it runs...
I know this is late late notice but I'm joining up with The Foundation to present a seminar on Digital Asset Management (DAM) for their Third Thursday session. You may have seen the emails from them or from Apple about this event and I certainly encourage you to attend the (free!) session at Dunwoody Technical College on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 from 2:00 to 4:00pm. I'll probably post some of the presentation here the following day, so check back afterwards!
TWEAK Digital joined up with Kevin White Photography once again and this time produced the cover shot for the October 2007 issue of Minnesota Monthly magazine. Retouching, color, digital tech by TWEAK.