The Assistant’s Journal

In narcissistically checking my stats today, I noticed that one of the search terms that led someone here was “photo basset hound with raincoat.” And as soon as my ankle is healed up enough to dig up a raincoat from our over-stuffed basement, and as soon as Hank (a basset mix, but close enough, eh?) is tired enough to be costumed, I will deliver.

Come to think of it, he hates rain so much that he might actually appreciate having a rain coat…

For reasons which I will later divulge, we got our happy hands on a Nikon D90 a couple of weeks ago. If you want an exhaustive review, check out dpreview, because that’s what they do much better than I can. I did, however, want to throw out a few reasons why I like it so much, and why it’ll probably be the camera I recommend when somebody’s cousin decides to move up from a point-and-shoot to a DSLR and asks “Which camera should I get?”

Price: Right around $1,000, $1300 or so with a kit lens. For a starter DSLR with some room to grow, that hits right on the mark. And I know people make fun of kit lenses, but not all of us can or are willing to shell out $1K plus for an f/2.8 zoom.

Size: I can hold a D90 in one hand and not get fatigued. My hands aren’t particularly big or small, and the D90 seems to be sized and weighted just about right, especially for people who aren’t used to holding a DSLR.

Video Mode: The D90 records up to five minutes of high-def video — a first, as far as I know. Now you can put your pet’s antics on YouTube, or better yet, Vimeo, like the rest of the internet.

Buffer: When shooting full-size RAW+JPG, the D90’s buffer can handle seven frames in succession. Once the buffer is full, it’ll let you shoot as space clears — in-studio, once the buffer was full, I managed a frame a second. Seven frames (at 4 or so fps) is probably enough to get you through that miracle catch at a high school football game, or to capture your hyperactive dog at the apex of a jump.

Self-cleaning Sensor: Dirty sensors cause a lot of sighs around our office, and sometimes a blower bulb just doesn’t cut it. (I’m too chicken to use any contact-based cleaning methods.) Wonder when this will show up in the top-of-the-line models…

Live View: The mirror locks up so you can see what you’re shooting on the LCD screen. Ideal in situations where you can’t put your face against the optical viewfinder. And you can turn it on with just one button.

Highly customizable via menus: I set up a D3 for Joel two days ago, and a D90 today, and I’ll be darned if many of the same options aren’t available on both of them.

The High ISO Magic of the D700: I’m not sure if it’s the exact same sensor as the D80, but I do know that it goes up to ISO 6400 and still produces something recognizable, and printable with a little finessing.

In summary, the D90 is a richly-featured camera with many of the latest-greatest bells and whistles for a basic price. I’m amazed at how far DSLRs have come, even since the D2X three years ago. (Gracious — has it only been three years?)

NGM’s Director of Photography, David Griffin, had an interesting post on the balance of film vs. digital stories in this month’s issue of the magazine. Joel made the switch later than most, starting with Nikon’s D2X back in the summer of 2005. Three years and several massive investments later, we’re fully digital and adapting to it.

One of Joel’s main reasons for a late switch is the potential incompatibility or obsolescence of digital media. The example he usually cites is the original moon landing data — NASA still has it, but no longer has the machines to read the media. With slide film, you hold a transparency up to the light, and voila, there is your image. No special light or eyeball is required.

I recently had a personal run-in with the film-digital divide. Last Wednesday, I broke my ankle (in a very un-dramatic fall down all of three stairs.) The first set of x-rays from the urgent care doctor were digital, and they burned them to a DVD so we could pick them up and take them to the orthopedist (who would be casting my ankle once the swelling subsided.) Because my husband and I are what some people might call huge gigantic nerds, we brought along a laptop so we could have a gander at the disc ourselves. For those of you who are curious, here’s the fracture:

The DVD contained an auto-running program to read the x-rays, which were in a DICOM file format. Amos got them pulled up in Photoshop, no problem. The orthopedist, however, tried the disc in three different computers and couldn’t get it to work on any of them. We pulled them up for him on the laptop and saved Blue Cross Blue Shield the cost of three more x-rays.

They x-rayed me again once the cast was on to make sure everything was held in the right place, and I talked with the x-ray technician about their decision to still use film. He said they were waiting for the technology to improve a bit, and that their thirty year-old machine let them do things that they just couldn’t do digitally.

There’s no real moral to this story (except, perhaps, be careful on stairs.) It’s just interesting to see the analog/film – digital switch play itself out in another industry.

… we leased an Apple XServe/XServe RAID system. In a way, it went against every fiber of my do-it-yourself being. Pay that much for hardware when I could build something similar for 2/3 or less of the cost? But then I started thinking about the logistics of rack-mounting a monster like that. And power supplies. And cooling. And backup. And expandability. And how much time I wasted getting our last server up and usable.

I kid you not, the hardest part of getting the Apple system up was mounting all the rack hardware and then wrestling the gear into it.

I’m even getting used to the slightly-different keyboard shortcuts. Networking between the two Mac Pro workstations and the PC and the printers hasn’t been much of an issue. And the workstations seem to require less fussing-over than the old PC ones did. We spend more time up and running (and working) and less time setting up, fixing and recovering (and not working.) It’s nice.

Something else that I suspect will be nice, very nice indeed: Nikon’s new D3.

In other news: August marks my eighth year at JS Inc, and just under 30% of my life spent doing this job. It would be an understatement to say that the job has changed a lot since I first learned how to file slides. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the good feeling I get from working here and surfing on the chaos.

My beloved, Amos, is a Beastmaster and Cat Magnet. He is shown here playing some ‘tendo as Midget (so named because she was once the runt of the litter) lounges on his legs.

Oh, the time I could spend going over WordPress templates…

That’s my better half in the new header photo, by the way. It was taken by yours truly during our honeymoon in London this past October. He’s using my Voigtlander R2 to take some snapshots. But really, with a rangefinder, there are no snapshots.

There are a lot of “utility” things made of fabric, and they’re usually super-expensive (think camera cases, laptop bags, etc.) Every once in a while, I’m called upon by work to come up with a home-made alternative. This week’s challenge was a softbox mask:

The model shown retails for $113.50 at B&H, plus shipping. For the non-photo-geeks, a softbox diffuses light from a flash. If you’re photographing a critter with a softbox, it will reflect in the critter’s eyes. Especially up close, square reflections look very un-natural. Since the sun is round, circular reflections don’t seem quite as artificial. At least, that’s what I’m told.

Armed with $26 worth of fabric and $10 worth of generic hook-and-loop fastener, I set to work. The first round was for the larger softbox, so I did the mask in two pieces. I ended up adding fabric on the edges of the first side since it was a bit small (and I also screwed up the seam allowance — 3/8 instead of 5/8). It looks a little … strike that … very …. very cobbled-together but should be functional. Since I cut the other side properly, it looked relatively normal.

Since the second mask was about half the size of the first, I made it all one piece. This turned out to be *much* easier and faster, and is what I should’ve done all along. Live and learn.

Things learned along the way:

1. If you’re going try industrial sewing, make sure your machine is a beast. Mine’s motor operates at full strength at low speed, which is ideal for going through 4+ layers of cotton duck plus velcro on corners.

2. It’s worth hunting for generic Velcro. The name-brand stuff is between $3-$4 a yard regularly, and the generic version is $0.99/yard. Not so bad if you only need a foot, but if you need ten yards, it starts to get pricey.

3. Iron, iron, iron.

4. As in carpentry, measure twice, then check your measurements again, and then cut. Failure to follow this advice may lead to emergency fabric store trips.

Anyhow, a few (probably four or five) hours I came up with a $36 solution to a $113.50 problem. Craft-power!

Once the masks get back from their trip with the boss, I’ll try to remember to post some photos.

Last night I came to the somewhat saddening conclusion that my job is going to be more and more about maintaining computers and less and less about pictures. Between this week and last week, two computers were slugged up with full hard drives (will be more vigilant from now on), one of our RAID arrays crashed and we had a scare on our big 1 TB backup drive. For a few terrifying hours, I was certain that we were down to one working backup of our entire digital archive. The RAID array is rebuilding as I type, and the TB drive works just fine with other machines, so the immediate crisis has passed. Still, I am left shaken and with a terrible case of The Fear.

A year ago when Joel first went digital, I thought that a terabyte would last us at least two years. We’re currently at 70% of capacity, so it’s time to expand. That means rackmounting our file server, which will be sort of a time-eater, and buying more drives, which will be a money-eater. Joel is a good guy and willing to put money where it needs to go, but it’s never fun to tell somebody they need to spend $1600 plus, especially after they just shelled out for a dual-Cinema display AMD X2 system (which, by the way, is freakin’ sweet) the month before, and a new laptop the week before.

The rackmounting will buy us some time — we’ll be able to expand our two current arrays to eight drives each or bridge them for a sixteen-drive array. The base system (mobo, etc.) it’s working off of should be adequate, I hope, for another couple of years. Any way you slice it, though, computers are expensive to build and keep running.

I’m working from home, proofreading massive amounts of information on endangered species today. I’ve gotta say, it gets a little depressing after a while.

In other news, the RAID server I’ve been plotting for so long is now up and mostly running. Being somewhat new to 5+ drive systems (this one has ten, total) I under-bought on the power supply and will now have to upgrade. It’s been one of the most humbling computer experiences of my life trying to get this thing to work, but I’ve learned a lot and am no longer so afraid of Linux and the command line. The two most difficult things so far have been finding the right distro so the driver for the RAID cards will load properly and configuring Samba. My genius brother saved my bacon on the second count this past weekend.

Also, there is now a buffalo head in the studio. I would upload a photo of it for you, but I’ve lost the password to my ftp account so it’ll have to wait. Happy New Year!

Check out the search field!

Yep, that’s a real database, it’s really searchable, and it’s finally online. There are still a few pictures that need to be uploaded, but most of it’s there.

Many thanks to Amos Joseph for his help with the database and MySQL.