Happy New Year!

Best wishes to everyone reading this—may the New Year treat you and yours even better than 2006!

A fish out of water PERMALINK

Update: This might be a Monkeyface Eel, Cebidichthys violaceus. See Apr 2, 2007 entry.

If you know which species this dour-looking individual is, please let me know. He (she?) was found loitering in a cranny during an unusually low tide (-1.6). More than one of these fish were in the same temporary predicament, but under no apparent duress. A fish that survives out of water?

A fish out of water
Photographed during a -1.6 tide Dec 3, 2006

The difficult angle, combined with slippery seaweed and the ankle-slap of incoming waves borne by the rising tide made quick action a requirement. And it’s yet another testament to the utility of a flash built into the camera body—the handy Nikon D200.

When are Nikon and Canon going to understand that built-in flashes are perfectly appropriate on their top-line models?. Or how about a pancake flash instead of the huge “on-steroids” models we are currently forced to lug around. Even the $30K Hasselblad H2D has a built-in flash.

Nikon D2x and backfocus PERMALINK

Reader D.S. in Ottawa, Canada writes in reference to Focus Accuracy:

I have just finished reading your excellent article about focus accuracy and backfocus on the D2X with wide aperture lenses. I have been looking for some explanations as for why my combo gives me consistently poor results (from 5-7mm off with a 50mm f/1.4 to over 10cm off with my 70-200 f/2.8.). I have done a lot of tests using all my lenses, and have discovered with horror that the camera only very rarely focuses spot-on. I have tried shooting hand-drawn paper targets, and obtained the same results: the camera always focuses 'after' the target. Oddly, when shooting portraits the effects are much less apparent, and the 50mm f1.8 lens gives me perfect focus every time. I have read on some forum that two adjustment screws exist on the side walls of the camera (mirror up) and allow the adjustment of both autofocus and manual focus by Nikon technicians. Should I send the camera back for repair, or is this problem common to all high-resolution D-SLRs?

Thank you for writing DS—I always like getting feedback from readers.

I’m reminded of my own experiences when I receive such emails (on a regular basis). I’ve experienced similar behavior, and it’s ruinous--you can “nail” a favorite moment but the shot turns out to be a throw-away with razor-sharp hair on the back of the head, but blurred eyes! Very frustrating. The much less expensive D200 has performed better for me than the D2x. See D200 vs D2x (paid review) for a specific example.

Yes, I strongly recommend sending the camera to Nikon service, ideally with 2 or 3 lenses (perhaps the 50 f/1.4D and the 70-200 f/2.8). Sometimes the problem is in the lens, and sometimes it is in the camera body. I’ve seen both situations.

One should also check that the lens mount is not bent. See Lens Mount Misalignment.

For checking backfocus (focusing behind the desired plane of focus), a “3D” target is extremely helpful. I created a target with 80mm of total “depth” for this purpose:

Hand-made target for checking focus error (click for larger version)

Certain older non-AF-S lenses, such as the 135mm f/2.0 DC and the 105mm f/2.0 DC are awful with their focus accuracy, apparently due to the clunky and slow mechanical focus. Newer AF-S lenses ought to be very accurate (though not perfect), and even the 50mm f/1.4D has been highly accurate (for me at least).

Note to DS: I was not able to reply due to a problem with your email address (email address and domain elided):

The following message could not be delivered to xxx because the domain zzz.com has no valid MX records.

Policy change on advertisements PERMALINK

The policy on advertisements at diglloyd.com is changing in a limited way.

First, ads targeting specific products by their respective manufacturers are a potential conflict of interest with the Pro Reviews (a perceived one at least) . Accordingly, the policy on not accepting such ads remains unchanged.

Zero revenue is currently derived from the growing amount of free content. Yet work on the free content substantially reduces the time available for preparing the Pro Reviews. To continue to expand the free content, some revenue is needed.

Accordingly, the new policy is that generic advertisements might appear on certain pages. At this point, it means “ads by google”. As google chooses the ads that appear based on site/page content, and diglloyd.com does not, I consider this an acceptable compromise which maintains editorial impartiality (real and perceived). I do not like the visual distraction of advertisements, and will strive to minimize that issue.

Thank you for your understanding, and comments are welcome.

Keyboard mapping in Windows XP (Apple keyboard) PERMALINK

Those of you running Windows XP with Apple’s Boot Camp will find this tech note helpful: Apple keyboards and keyboard mapping in Windows XP. I use Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro; highly recommended if you need to run Windows.

See also PC or Mac — Making a Sensible Choice for my views on Mac vs Windows.

Screaming deal on 500GB Maxtor Maxline Pro 7H500F0 PERMALINK

This deal might last only a few days, or even hours, so act quickly. However, it has appeared once before, and might appear again, should you miss out.

Thanks to amug.org for this tip—a group well worth joining for their reviews and timely news of computer deals.

If you’re looking for more hard disk space, or setting up a RAID, now is the time—750GB drives still sell for about $400; a 500GB drive for 1/3 that price is an incredible deal; it’s $0.26/GB vs $0.53/GB.

NewEgg.com is offering the 500GB Maxtor Maxline Pro 7H500F0 hard drive for only $129.99 using coupon code “FREDSMAXHDD1211”, with free 3-day shipping to most states. You can read about the performance of this drive in my Hard Drives article. TIP — If you order more than one drive, order each drive separately, and the $20 coupon will apply to each.

The 7H500F0 [Maxtor specifications] is my hard drive of choice for RAID, and a perfect way to fill the empty bays on a shiny new Mac Pro. It spins at 7200RPM, and has a 16MB cache. A 4-way striped RAID has a combined cache of 64MB and can sustain about 260MB/sec over a good portion of the drive. (A future diglloyd.com article will distill my years of experience in this area for you to configure your own high performance storage setup).

Note that drive sizes format to less than the official size. This is mostly due to the definition of gigabyte (1000 X 1000 X 1000 vs 1024 X 1024 X 1024), and partially due to the space required to format the drive. A 500GB drive is really a 488GB drive using the power-of-2 gigabyte definition (this is what Mac OS X uses).

Printing on canvas PERMALINK

I’ve posted a new article Printing on Canvas, which covers my experience with this material, as well as matte/satin/gloss finish.

Amazon.com comes through—counterfeit SanDisk refund PERMALINK

As discussed in the December 24 blog entry, Amazon.com had requested I send the counterfeit 8GB SanDisk Extreme III card to them prior to a refund. I did so, and a refund has been issued:

This notice serves as confirmation that we have processed your claim
and have issued a refund in the amount of $253.58 for the following
item:

"Refund for SanDisk Extreme III - Flash memory card - 8 GB - CF
[Electronics]" (Order ID: 058-2528764-4368536)

Amazon Payments has refunded your Visa credit card. The refund should
appear as a credit on your next credit card statement.

Thanks to Amazon.com for following through on their guarantee. Note to Amazon: please don’t allow fly-by-night vendors on your system—you’re not ebay!

Eight internal hard drives in a Mac Pro? PERMALINK

Thanks to barefeats.com for bringing this to my attention—maxupgrades.com is offering an internal Optical Bay assembly that with the removal of the DVD drive allows four (4) additional hard drives to be installed, or 2 drives while retaining the DVD drive.

I don’t really want to externalize my DVD drive, but you can bet that when I acquire a Mac Pro I’ll be adding a total of 6 internal drives—4 in the Apple standard bays, and two more using the Optical Bay assembly. How to configure them for performance, reliability and backup? Stay tuned for a future article on configuring a system’s storage for digital photography.

One should keep in mind that adding additional drives does add more heat into an area which might not have been designed for that level of ventilation or power usage (this will depend somewhat on the drives).

Also, the Mac Pro has six (6) built-in internal SATA ports to which six drives may be attached; more than six means you’d have to obtain an internal SATA card.

Printing on canvas PERMALINK

If you’ve enjoyed the free content on this site, and you haven’t already purchased one of the paid articles, doing so is the very best way to help—and you’re likely to learn something too!

Now’s the time to support this site! PERMALINK

If you’ve enjoyed the free content on this site, and you haven’t already purchased one of the paid articles, doing so is the very best way to help—and you’re likely to learn something too!

For long-lasting benefits to your “keeper” ratio, consider The Sharpest Image—even professional photographers report that they’ve learned useful things from it. It is based on my extensive research using Nikon equipment, but much of it is just as relevant for Canon users. Moreover, the techniques and results discussed are valuable for evaluating your own specific equipment to see how it performs.

Talking around the real problem—can’t make use of my RAM PERMALINK

Scott Byer’s blog at blogs.adobe.com is a case of more is less in the discussion of 64-bit applications. He starts out with the outlandish claim that “applications don’t allocate RAM”—which is both true and false (depending on how strictly you define “RAM” and “allocate”). See sidebar.

His statement obfuscates the discussion, while talking around the real issue with Photoshop’s performance—the sluggish swapping of image pixels, history, etc to and from the hard disk for lack of adequate virtual memory (backed by real physical memory).

Today, a 32-bit Photoshop can’t allocate more than 3GB of virtual memory, even if there is 16GB of physical memory installed! So you spend $5000 on 16GB of Mac Pro memory, and Photoshop uses a paltry 3GB—now that’s a bummer. As a practical matter, Mac OS X 10.4 makes it very difficult to write a 64-bit Photoshop, but Mac OS X 10.5 might change that with the availability of all the 64-bit libraries required to produce a 64-bit application (32-bit libraries will still exist). I haven’t followed “Leopard” closely enough to understand if Apple will finally put this problem to rest.

Mac OS X 10.4 is already 64 bits in key low-level areas—otherwise it would have no way of using the 16GB or RAM a Mac Pro or PowerMac can physically accept—it uses physical memory not allocated to applications or other system use for disk caching.

Photoshop CS2 and CS3 exhibit the sluggish disk-swapping behavior today whenever opening a large file with numerous layers, large enough history, etc—all while another 3-4GB of my 8GB memory sits idle (except for its marginal value for disk caching). If one were to stuff 16GB of memory into a Mac Pro, and if there were a 64-bit Photoshop, it could allocate 14 GB or so of virtual memory, most or all of which Mac OS X could readily assign to real physical memory—goodbye disk/memory swapping.

A true 64-bit Photoshop (one having a 64-bit address space) could allocate virtual (aka “pretend”) memory sufficient for any conceivable image that could be stored on a hard disk. Coupling that with sufficient physical memory “backing” the virtual memory, performance-robbing memory<=>disk<=>memory swapping would be eliminated, or at least minimized to an insignificant amount.

Byer’s “lack of any sort of other performance win” argument is specious—the performance gain of keeping the image and associated information in virtual memory (backed by real physical memory) for real-time response is huge compared to having to swap to disk. Any Photoshop user who has experienced Photoshop disk swapping knows this to be true to an extreme—try editing a 1GB image with only 512MB of memory in the system.

To say otherwise is just an excuse—all the yack about how pointers are now 64 bits instead of 32 bits, 64 bit math, etc is a distraction. The real issue is that the code base is probably like most code bases—full of latent correctness bugs that don’t manifest themselves only because pointers and other scalar quantities happen to remain 32 bits. Recompile as a 64-bit application, and all those latent correctness bugs suddenly appear; code that worked fails when 32-bit pointers now occupy 64 bits, data structures suddenly are a different size, optimized loops that made assumptions about sizes now fail, plugins and their APIs break, etc.

So yes, it is a real challenge to move to a 64-bit application. Adobe would have to support multiple combinations of Intel/PowerPC at 32/64 bit. But Adobe could also keep the PowerPC and Intel version at 32 bits for Mac OS X 10.4, and move to 64 bits only for Intel and Mac OS X 10.5. I think that is an acceptable compromise, and it’s 3 builds versus 2 today. The bugs exposed by building a 64-bit version are still bugs, even if they don’t manifest themselves in a 32-bit version, and fixing them will make for a superior code base in the long run. And a thorough test suite, a requirement for releasing any quality software application, should make short work of testing 95% of Photoshop functionality for each version.

The justification for all this is that there is a tiny 64-bit user base—zero for Mac OS X 10.4 and very little for Windows. But with Mac OS X 10.5 expected to ship about the same time as Photoshop CS3, the justification seems a little stretched—the high-end Mac OS X user base is likely to switch over rapidly to 10.5, and any Photoshop user whose time is money will quickly switch if promised a big speedup for huge files—witness the frustration in many online forums. Still, Byer makes a solid point for the next 9 months or so, but by fall of 2007, there are likely to be millions of Mac OS X 10.5 users out there.

  As a professional software developer with 23 years experience, I have more than a little expertise in this area. It’s true that applications don’t have direct control or direct access to real physical memory. That has been true since 1980 or so in some operating systems, even when machines had less than 1MB of physical memory (VMS and BSD Unix for example). But it’s also true that they make system calls to allocate more virtual memory, which, if there is enough to go around, works out to allocating more physical RAM to that application.
   Furthermore, it is only the action of “allocating memory” (eg malloc()) on the part of applications (or drivers and the like) that ultimately causes the operating system to go through its own machinations of assigning some amount of physical memory for the requested amount of virtual memory (this assignment varies continually, as the physical memory is shared among applications).
   The details are unimportant, but suffice it to say that I can write an application which uses less than a megabyte of memory, or one that allocates as much as 3.6GB on Mac OS X (using suitably-sized chunks). The impact on other applications is real, and is caused by the application “allocating memory”, or rather requesting virtual memory that ultimately results in the allocation of some amount of physical memory by the operating system, up to and possibly as much as the entire amount of virtual memory. In fact, Mac OS X offers system calls to lock down that memory to real physical memory, making it unavailable for sharing with other applications (DiskTester does this for its disk speed testing).

Followup on counterfeit SanDisk card PERMALINK

Amazon.com came through on the counterfeit 8GB SanDisk compact flash card—though not quite in time for the Calm after the Storm preceding the Frenzy just before the Orgy☆.

Although I was first required to contact the seller (who never responded), Amazon’s seller protection system appears to have saved my bacon; I’ve sent the failed counterfeit card back within the required ten days. (Ten days is not a very generous time allotment this time of year or if one goes on vacation when such a response is received, but it’s better than nothing).

Here’s how Amazon handled the incident:

There is no mention of taking action to kick the fraudulent seller off their site. Legal action would be even better (and a nice lump of coal for the seller). But even SanDisk (which has the most to lose in getting a bad “rep” for their brand), seemed unconcerned about the counterfeit when I called them. I have never had any of my genuine SanDisk cards fail.

I’ll follow up when I receive (or do not receive) the actual refund.

☆Christmas Day after Christmas shopping preceding the post-Christmas sales just before the New Year celebrations.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM PERMALINK

A brand spankin’ new Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L in hand today, the few shots I took show a lens that so far appears to be a stunning performer, at least in infrared (no shots in color yet, as I don't have a color-capable EOS body at the moment).

Never have I seen such outstanding performance at f1.2 with a normal lens, eclipsing the 58mm NOCT-Nikkor, though backfocus in infrared similar to the 85mm f/1.2L must be dealt with. The detail in the near-corner actual-pixels crop below can hardly be criticized for f1.2, given that focus probably wasn’t optimal.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L near corner, f1.2, Canon 5D-IR

Not convinced? Here’s a near-center crop at f2, handheld at 1/2000 sec; observe the exceptional fine detail, shot into a very strongly backlit sky. The very finest twigs are clearly rendered, with no evidence of flare:

Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L near center, f2, Canon 5D-IR, 1/2000 sec≠

I will be exploring the performance of the 50mm f/1.2L over the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

Counterfeit card confirmed PERMALINK

I called SanDisk today, and they confirmed that all SanDisk cards have an edge code. As the failed card has no edge code, it is clearly counterfeit. See yesterday’s discussion below.

Pictures lost—counterfeit SanDisk 8GB Extreme III card PERMALINK

A few hours worth of shooting are now in digital heaven thanks to a counterfeit SanDisk 8GB Extreme III card which failed and won’t read in two cameras or a card reader (I purchased it at amazon.com Nov 2, 2006 from seller grimesrh@gmail.com).

At least I suspect it strongly of being counterfeit. The card arrived in what looked like legitimate packaging, complete with all the usual literature, plastic packaging, etc. Here’s why I believe it to be counterfeit:

1. no edge code (on any of the 4 edges);
2. “ESP” logo on the right instead of on the left (see the SanDisk site for a picture of a legit card)
3. no “do not trash” logo on the back label;
4. different material; looks like cheaper plastic and cheaper pressed metal;
5. squared-off metal corners vs rounded ones on the rear; different sized “CE” log, etc.

Am I wrong? On Monday, I’ll call SanDisk for confirmation, but the lack of an edge code (I checked all 4 edges) means that my chances are slim. In retrospect, I was foolish to dismiss the slight cosmetic differences. If it turns out that the card is legitimate, I’ll of course post that in this blog.

Legitimate card (left), Counterfeit card (right)

Legitimate card (left), Counterfeit card (right)

Legitimate card (left), Counterfeit card (right)

I’ve filed a claim with the seller, and we’ll see how he responds—amazon has no choice for “counterfeit item” in its claim handling form. Amazon.com will not even consider its seller protection policy unless the buyer first deals with the seller—OK for legitimate sellers, but not so in cases like this. That’s like having to negotiate with the burglar to get your stolen goods back before the police will take action—and it makes me think more carefully about amazon.com—I thought this sort of thing was an ebay trap only. The card was somewhat cheaper, but it wasn’t at a large discount to other vendors. Live and learn.

Printing on canvas at Picture Element PERMALINK

A few weeks ago, I had my first print made at Picture Element (see business card below) on a new type of canvas “paper”—wow!

Picture Element printed my image on an Epson Stylus Pro 9800, and then wrapped it onto a wooden frame—the same type of frame you’ll find when you buy an artist’s original painting; a wooden square with the canvas stretched over it. Picture Element also applies a special coating to the image, which both protects it from ultraviolet light, and increases the color saturation and the richness of the dark tones.

The end product is stunning, and best of all it is ready to hang on the wall (I like that part a lot). With the right image, viewers might well mistake it for a painting. There is simply no comparison in viewing quality to the banal (and distracting) white matte surrounding an image, with reflective glass making it a chore to view.

I’m a longtime fan of not framing images under glass, because even with the most expensive “museum glass”, reflections can still be an issue (and museum glass is very expensive, and size limits are also an issue). So I prefer to frame my prints without mattes or glass, using GatorFoam and a custom framing around the mounted print. Let the print speak for itself without unnecessary distractions!

Picture Element prefers not to go into the details of its proprietary approach, but I can vouch for the outstanding results—the finished image shows excellent gamut, deep blacks, well saturated colors, little or no reflective glare and moderate texture—all on a print that doesn’t crimp or tear or stain (at least not without deliberate effort). Great for houses with kids!

By comparison, the Epson canvas “paper” and a few other brands I’ve seen are relatively glossy, and create troublesome reflections for the viewer. For that reason, I hadn’t really considered canvas a viable option before.

Mike Chambers (no relation) is the proprietor of Picture Element, having years of prior experience, most recently at Calypso Imaging (formerly in Santa Clara, now in Santa Cruz). While Calpyso Imaging is an excellent company to do business with, Picture Element deserves your strong consideration, especially if you live in the San Jose area. It’s a small shop, offering a number of services such as print-making, fine-art reproduction, GatorFoam mounting and personal attention—give them a try!

Picture Element—cilck to go the company’s web site