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This is my first experience with a refurbished Mac. At 15% off, and with the same warranty, what's not to like? A refurbished model might actually be more thoroughly tested than a brand-new one, though perhaps that’s wishful thinking. So far, so good—no problems.
This thing is quiet. Amazingly quiet. Noise increases a bit with the installation of four hard drives, but that’s hardly the fault of the Mac Pro. And it’s fast, too.
I began, as I always do, by wiping out the pre-installed system. I don't want 2GB of Garage Band sounds and all the other assorted “goodies” (junk) taking up hard disk space. As is my practice, I installed the system on an external Firewire 800 drive, so that all internal drives could be dedicated for data use. This is my preferred approach, since any system problems can be rectified by wiping out the boot drive without affecting any data (I strongly recommend against making your boot drive a data drive, at least for serious use).
Apple’s installation process includes a choice to suck in applications, settings, etc from another Mac. It works tremendously well, and I used it to quickly make the Mac Pro have all the same applications and preferences as my G5 Quad. Even the desktop looked exactly the same!
In fact, it worked so well it was eerie—I felt like I had to double-check which machine I was using! I could even print immediately to my Epson printer. Wonderful feature, a savings of hours of effort. As usual, Photoshop’s authorization procedure was a needless hassle. I hope more vendors don’t follow Adobe’s lead—what would it be like to have to de-authorize and reauthorize a dozen programs? Shitheads. Finally, I installed the various system updates.
On to the hard drives: I removed the pitiful 250GB hard drive, and installed four (4) Maxtor 7H500F0 hard drives. Apple’s system for installing drives could hardly be easier; pull the mounting bracket, screw in four screws, and slot the drive into its bay. Great stuff.
I created two 4-way striped RAID volumes: “Master” and “Backup”. Failure of a single drive will of course destroy the data on both “Master” and “Backup”, but I keep multiple offline copies; “Backup” is for the convenience of a quick incremental backup of files. Users with less demanding performance requirements could make two 2-way stripes instead.
4-way stripe
Click for larger image
Finally, I copied my 533GB of data to the new striped volume. Everything seems to be working well, though this blog is being written with Macromedia Dreamweaver 8, which is not a Universal binary, and thus it’s even more sluggish than on the G5 Quad.
Mac Pro and Canon Digital Photo Professional
How much faster is DPP (Digital Photo Professional) on a 3GHz Mac Pro than on a 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5 Quad? Quite a bit faster—I converted 100 Canon EOS 5D “CR2” files on both machines to 16-bit TIF files. Here are the results:
G5 Quad: 16:47 = 10.1 seconds per file
Mac Pro: 10:32 = 6.3 seconds per file
The G5 Quad had 8X1GB ECC memory, and the Mac Pro had 4X512MB ECC memory. I’m expecting more memory soon, and will recheck the Mac Pro figures after installation.
Unfortunately, DPP cannot be commended for efficient usage of the four CPU cores. It averages somewhere around 130% CPU usage, out of a maximum of 400%. Pretty poor implementation, and sadly it’s not alone in it’s wasteful approach. There is a manual workaround, see Digital Photo Professional Batch Processing Tip.
I’ve ordered a 3GHz Mac Pro. For all you readers out there that have been waiting on the sidelines like me, take heart—now that I’ve ordered one, Murphy’s Law dictates that Apple will refresh the model line within a few weeks! I’ll post my impressions in the coming weeks.
See also my September 2006 article on the Mac Pro, written some months ago.
With kids in tow, one must often simply shoot through the window, handheld, though preferably with the engine off. Or make a quick grab-shot while hiking. With such constraints, results are often disappointing, but can succeed at times, and if you’re a geology fan like me, the tortured scenery is a real inspiration to go back and spend some serious time photographing. Perhaps later this year, or perhaps another, but definitely with two bottles of Slime.
The
700-foot-high Eureka Dunes in Death Valley, CA
For more Death Valley snapshots, click here (and use the Search page for more).
Back from Death Valley National Park
Never take anything but excellent-condition tires on some of the rough roads in Death Valley. Though some wear remained prior to entering Death Valley, 3 of 4 “All Terrain” (A/T) tires were destroyed by the sharp rocks somewhere along the way (Cottonwood & Marble canyons, Titus Canyon and the road to Eureka Dunes). I learned later that serious off-roaders use 10-ply tires, and that the Pirelli Scorpion A/T models are only 2-ply.
Four miles from Eureka Dunes, I swapped in the compact spare for the left rear tire, whose sidewall showed a 1" gash and 0 psi. The spare inflated without incident, and after reversing course, the right rear began to leak steadily two miles later, due to a sharp cut through the center of the tire. Adding 5-10 psi every 3-4 minutes for the next 40 miles and 4000' of elevation gain, I managed to nurse the tire to within eyeshot of the Eastern Sierra town of Big Pine, where a Verizon cell signal finally materialized, allowing a call to roadside assistance. The benefits of an air suspension and the built-in air hose should not be underestimated when considering an SUV! A flatbed-truck ride to a Bishop hotel finished out the evening.
The next morning (Wednesday) , I ordered four (4) new Pirelli Scorpion A/T tires at Bishop Automotive. The tires showed up early on Thursday, except that the fourth tire was the wrong size. I considered replacing just the rear tires, but inspection of the right front tire showed a 3/4" flap of rubber cut right down to the threads—not good. The 4th tire showed up at 1pm on Friday. Our vehicle now shod with new rubber, we zoomed uneventfully over to the Eureka Dunes and enjoyed a spectacular view of these magnificent dunes, sculpted by a yellow sun and brilliant blue sky.
Away to Death Valley National Park
A family trip to Death Valley will be enjoyable, though photographic opportunities will be constrained. Articles purchased after 10pm Feb 17 will not be delivered until Feb 25.
Canon 300mm f/2.8L IS in infrared
Initial testing with a resolution chart suggests that the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM might well be the most remarkable lens I’ve ever tested on my Canon EOS 5D-IR infrared camera. Stunning image sharpness wide-open, barely changing as the lens is stopped down, coupled with perfect focus in infrared suggest that this lens is highly corrected for chromatic aberrations. It is rare to see both visible light and infrared light focus perfectly. In fact, I’ve never before seen it with any other Canon EF lens, and I’ve tried about 15 of them. The following image is an actual-pixels crop taken from the extreme corner; it represents as good a result as one can expect from the center of most lenses at f/8:
Canon 5D-IR, autofocus
EF 300mm f/2.8L @ f/2.8
extreme corner
Depth of field is often discussed in technical ways, and new photographers might not understand what it means in terms of image sharpness as actually perceived by the eye. I thought the image below was illustrative. I shows how the plane of image sharpness cuts like a razor through the subject—sharp detail exists only in a 3-4mm-deep plane (at most). This is why focusing accuracy is critical for many types of work.
Depth
of field—Canon EF 105mm f/2.8 @ f/4
Click for larger version
I would gladly have ordered extra ink for my Epson RX580 at the Epson Store. But they were out of stock on the high capacity cartridges—and having 4 of 6 cartridges doesn’t work! Very, very few online outfits even list the high-capacity cartridges as available.
So I tried a new store which claimed to have the high capacity cartridges: clickinks.com. On Jan 31 I placed an order for two complete sets of ink (12 cartridges). On Feb 15, not only do I not have my ink, I have nothing to indicate the order has shipped or ever will ship, and I’ve mailed and phoned twice (answering machine, even for new sales). But I do have a charge on my credit card, which I “disputed” with the credit card company yesterday. Do not buy from clickinks.com!
Caveat emptor—see also my entry on the fake SanDisk card. I’ve noticed an increasing number of dubious vendors on amazon.com—the morons at Amazon are going to debase their own cash cow by allowing sleazy sellers, just as ebay has done (I used to consider ebay as an option, now I avoid it for the most part). But I still like amazon.com, and use the optional Amazon Prime service as a faster and cheaper and more efficient substitute for driving my car.
Mike Chambers* of Picture Element discusses the way he makes his canvas prints, discussed in yesterday’s entry:
Whatever the process, the results are terrific.
* Mike Chambers of Picture Element is not related to Lloyd Chambers (author of this blog), nor is there any financial relationship—just a satisfied customer.
In Printing On Canvas, I reported how much I liked prints on canvas as prepared by Picture Element of Santa Clara, CA.
Today, I took delivery of two 36" X 24" canvas prints prepared with the “satin” finish, one of Egret in Reeds and another of One Eye In the Kingdom of the Blind.
WOW! The black blacks are stunning, and the images appear more 3-dimensional than any prints I’ve made before. The satin finish certainly brings out the dark tones, increasing D-MAX, yet beautifully preserving the subtle detail in the dark window of “One Eye...”. The effect is one of richness and depth, with deep, clean detail.
A sample of Epson’s canvas showed less image detail, perhaps due to its coarser surface, and more glare. My prints are on Something Else (not Epson canvas).
The relatively new SanDisk Extreme IV 8GB Compact Flash card is indeed speedy. I tested it with DiskTester 2.0 using the SanDisk Extreme Firewire 800 card reader.
----- Averages for "SANDISKIV-8" (1GB/start, 3 iterations) -----
Chunk Size Write MB/sec Read MB/sec
4K 1.2 8.4
8K 6.8 13.3
16K 11.7 19.9
32K 14.7 27.3
64K 25.4 33.3
128K 31.5 37.1
256K 31.4 38.1
512K 31.4 38.9
1MB 31.5 39.3
The results reveal that the maximum claimed speed is not achieved for writes, but that is relatively unimportant, since a card reader is used almost exclusively for reading files. Whether the write speed can be achieved in digital cameras is highly dependent on the camera. Note that large transfer sizes are needed to exploit the speed of the card for either reads or writes. A “dumb” camera will never achieve the claimed speeds.
Faster speed doesn’t translate to improved performance in my Canon EOS 5D, at least not subjectively; it doesn’t feel any faster when taking pictures or playing them back or zooming in.
However, after a $75 rebate, the Extreme IV 8GB card is actually less expensive ($234.95) than its predecessor, the Extreme III ($239.94 after $30 rebate) [B&H prices]. Go figure. Future digital SLRs might well take advantage of the increased speed. Of course, the interaction of new card technologies with existing cameras does not preclude the possibility that the “faster” card could be slower in some cameras, though I’m not aware of any such problem.
The robgalbraith.com Performance Database shows that a 4GB Extreme IV card is a paltry 10% faster than a 4GB Extreme III card in the Canon EOS 5D for RAW writes—an insignificant difference for real work. Nikon D200 results are even less impressive. So the real value is only in improved download speed eg “read” speed, which DiskTester suggests is quite speedy.
On a 2.33 GHz MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo, I copied 6.02GB of image files (1GB = 1024MB) to the Extreme IV and Extreme III cards. I unmounted the card and removed it, then reinserted it and timed how long it took to copy the files back to the hard disk using the Mac OS X Finder (very fast striped RAID hard disk). I used the Extreme reader for both. The speed gains are indeed very real for copying files in a card reader...too bad the gains aren’t applicable to cameras.
| Extreme IV 8GB | Extreme III 8GB | |
|---|---|---|
| Write files | 4:05 (25MB/sec) | 9:01 (9.76MB/sec) |
| Read files | 2:42 (38MB/sec) | 7:31 (13.7MB/sec) |
Bottom line: if speed in downloading your shoot is important to your workflow, the Extreme IV is
clearly a huge advantage. Perhaps the Extreme III card would perform better in another card reader, but the
results above are consistent with previously tested results
using a Lexar Firewire card reader.
New Canon digital bodies rumored
The online discussion boards are abuzz about Erwin Puts’ comments on new Canon digital bodies—rumored for some time now, including a 22-megapixel 1Ds and a full-frame and high-speed 1D without a buffer (dual CF slots?). Erwin Puts is widely respected as a Leica expert, and has used the Canon 5D and Canon optics in various comparisons. Is he in-the-know about a pending announcement? Or just taking a public stand as Chief RumorMeister? Perhaps this week we’ll see.
UPDATE: The “comments” link referred to above, along with its entry in the table of contents has been removed (http://www.imx.nl). Here’s another link to a similar conversation: http://pma-rumours.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html, and another at dpreview.com with Put’s original post.
For some time now, I’ve been considering a switch to Canon from Nikon.
Yes, really. Read why.
A friend of mine reports trouble and confusion with his rebate from Canon. See also the discussion thread at dpreview.com. I’ve included his experience verbatim below (spelling and grammar have not been modified). Judge for yourself and see also March 26, 2007.
I just purchased a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L. I had wanted a long prime lens, especially one that performs in infrared, and I have to say I am pleased with the relatively compact size (for a 400mm lens), surprisingly low weight, and very convenient and sturdy built in lens shade. These are all are traits that mean it’s likely to be used regularly, rather than sitting home in a drawer. Brief field testing suggests that the lens is remarkably free of infrared hot-spot issues.
There’s only one problem: to my consternation, the lens performs no better than my EF 100-400mm f/3.5-5.6L zoom at f/5.6 and f/8. The zoom, despite a 3.6% disadvantage in magnification, is at least as good if not better than the prime! [Assuming the 400mm f/5.6L is exactly 400mm, the zoom is equivalent to 385mm]. The prime does offer lower distortion, slightly longer reach, and less chromatic aberration.
Especially given the 3.6% magnification disadvantage of the zoom (the tripod remained in a fixed position), I’m hard pressed to make any claim that the 400mm prime is better; in fact it appears to be inferior to the zoom in terms of contrast, and it has more astigmatism. Field shots confirm a slightly smeared look at f/5.6 and f/8, so I’m 90% certain the poor performance is not due to focus error.
| Center crop, actual pixels | |
|---|---|
Canon EF 100-400mm f3.5-f.6L @ f/5.6 |
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L @ f/5.6 |
 |
 |
| Little or no astigmatism Near-equal horizontal and vertical resolution/contrast. |
Astigmatism Vertical resolution/contrast ≠ horizontal resolution. |
| Center crop, actual pixels | |
|---|---|
Canon EF 100-400mm f3.5-f.6L @ f/8 |
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L @ f/8 |
 |
 |
Only by stopping down to f11 does the prime outperform the zoom, but given the 3.6% disadvantage in resolution
of the zoom, it’s not clear that the outperformance isn’t simply the slightly higher magnification; I’d
call it a draw:
| Center crop, actual pixels | |
|---|---|
Canon EF 100-400mm f3.5-f.6L @ f/11 |
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L @ f/11 |
 |
 |
| Slight loss of contrast from f/8 indicates that the lens reached optimal performance at f/8. | Continued improvement in resolution/contrast to f/11 indicates a likely lens defect. |
The f/11 performance is how I’d expect the prime to perform at f/5.6; one uses a prime hoping to get excellent
performance wide open, or near to it. The continued improvement by stopping down likely indicates an optically misaligned
lens, or just a poor sample. I could detect no left/right or top/bottom inconsistency in performance, so focus error
remains a possibility, though I did force refocusing 3 times with identical results. When a lens can’t focus accurately
on a high contrast black and white target, it isn’t going to do so on a “real” subject! But 3 chances is two too many.
These conclusion are in direct contradiction to what Michael Reichmann reported a few years back with these two lenses. And they don’t jive with what ought to be observed. So I’m returning my sample to try another one.
I can’t vouch for this personally, but a friend of mine recently had a disturbing experience with his Canon USA rebate. For a discussion of this issue, see this discussion thread at dpreview.com. There is the usual amount of noise in the thread, but also words to the wise—keep a copy of everything, and send it certified mail.
If you’ve lusted after the full-frame Canon EOS 5D, now might be the time to buy. Rebates are doubled if
you buy any two qualifying items, such as the EOS 5D and certain lenses. See the rebate
form for details. Please help support this site and click
to buy an EOS 5D at amazon.com 
The rebate is $300 on the 5D, so doubling it means a $600 discount, bringing the cost down to around $2200. Of course, Canon could announce a $1999 5Ds soon (just guessing), so it’s a sucker’s game. But the 5D is nothing to snivel about.
Nikon’s response to 16GB card in D200
Nikon responded to my technical support question about the Nikon D200 and 16GB cards with candor, a big improvement over Canon’s initial response (later improved).
The response is disappointing, but at least it’s an honest answer:
At this time we have not tested any 16GB cards but may do so in the future. Watch this page for updates:
Title: Approved CF Cards - D200
http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=13795&p_created=1135004263
Sorry we can't help more—David
Of course, it’s not true that Nikon “can’t help more”—Nikon can proactively buy a 12GB and 16GB SanDisk card and test them! For that matter, I’m skeptical that Nikon can’t get a free or loaner card from SanDisk! In fact, I’d be surprised if Nikon doesn’t already work closely with SanDisk (and Lexar) to ensure card compatibility with their DSLR cameras.
Most likely Nikon engineers are already preparing a firmware update to solve the problem, but as usual Technical Support will learn of it only once the firmware update is already posted.
What a rip-off—Epson ink.
Why? At print 250 or so (6X4", best quality), I’ve now gone through the original Light Cyan and Light Magenta cartridges as well as two each of the high capacity Light Cyan and Light Magenta cartridges. The original Black and Cyan cartridges are still going, but the high capacity Magenta and Yellow cartridges (having replaced the supplied cartridges at about 80 prints) are close to needing replacement also. At $120 for a set of 6 high-capacity cartridges, it appears that the ink cost for 6" X 4" prints will be approximately $0.50. Add $0.14/print for Premium Glossy paper.
A cost of US$0.64/print is four times the cost of a $0.17 Costco print on Fuji Crystal Archive. While I prefer the Epson prints, the Fuji Crystal Archive paper is well beyond acceptable for snapshots—and many Costco locations offer printer-specific profiles, so it’s not like one must accept inferior color rendering.
I really like the RX580. But I don’t want to spend $640 for 1000 prints! I feel duped. The Epson representative at MacWorld Expo claimed the RX580 would print several hundred prints on the regular (lower capacity) cartridges. The recent Kodak announcement might put pressure on Epson to bring down the outrageously expensive ink. Certainly a bulk ink system is attractive, but how can one know whether it will clog, and whether the color rendering will be comparable to Epson-brand cartridges? Please email if you have experience with a RX580 bulk ink system.
I have an Epson Stylus Pro 7600 (predecessor to the 7800), an Epson R2400 and an Epson Stylus Photo 1280. So why would I want the consumer-grade Epson RX580, at $179? Well, perhaps because printing snapshots is tedious—and with 20,000 images taken over the last six years, and not a single album, I finally realized that there’s value in printing the dang things out—but not if it takes a lot of time. The RX580 has a small LCD screen for its settings, selecting pictures, etc, and there is no need to connect it to a computer!
The RX580 makes average prints easy—just shoot RAW+JPEG or process RAW files into JPEG, then shove a compact flash or SD or xD card into it, press a few buttons, and wait while it spews out rather nice 6X4 snapshots every 30 seconds or so. It’s rather addictive—and highly recommended if you’re feeling the time pressure of printing one-by-one in Photoshop.
One caveat is that printing 16:9 images on 6:4 paper is frustrating—the printer just doesn’t have any “print the whole picture without cropping” setting. This requires using the little buttons to crop each 16:9 photo—precisely the kind of tedium I wanted to avoid. Nevertheless, being able to just run off a set of snapshots is handy enough to make the printer worthwhile.
The image below was taken with a point and shoot camera of a print made by a consumer-grade printer (Epson RX580). The image was printed on the white cardboard packaging sheet behind the last sheet of 6X4 Epson Premium Glossy paper, which I had forgotten to remove.
Do you like the effect? I love the painterly quality, and I actually like it much more than the “correct” print on Epson Premium Glossy, on which it renders as a boring snapshot. The rendering below captures the feel of the place much better than any sharp, color accurate print could. The next time you print, try printing on the packaging material and get it totally “wrong”!
3rd-generation image
Canon’s response to 16GB cards in EOS 5D — More
See today’s earlier entry. Persistence pays off, with a different Canon support engineer taking the time to research and answer my query. This is what I had expected, and I’m glad it happened, though the answer is not necessarily a happy one for the 5D. Note that the original tech-support dweeb gave me an answer in direct contradiction to the subsequent response—Canon had indeed tested and known that cards up to 8GB were the limit.
Thank you for your reply. We value you as a Canon customer and appreciate the opportunity to assist you with your EOS 5D.
According to our tests, only memory cards up to 8GB are supported. This has also been confirmed by SanDisks tests http://www.sandisk.com/Compatibility/Device(8208)-Canon-EOS_5D.aspx.
As of today, Canon USA has made no announcements regarding the development or release of a firmware update related to the issue you have described. This does not mean that a firmware update to support 16GB is not in the works.
We hope this information is helpful to you. Please feel free to contact us again if you have any other questions or concerns.
Thank you for choosing Canon.
Sincerely,
Chris
Technical Support Representative
So it looks like it’s just a waiting game with the 5D. Now to ask Nikon how the D200 will handle the card...
Canon’s response to 16GB cards in EOS 5D
You can’t make this stuff up (uninformed “support”)— I previously reported that my SanDisk 16GB Extreme III card formats to only 8GB in the EOS 5D, even with the latest firmware update. Here is Canon’s response to my inquiry
on the matter:
Thank you for your inquiry. We value you as a Canon customer and appreciate the opportunity to assist you.
Due to the ever-increasing number of companies manufacturing and selling CompactFlash cards, we cannot test and evaluate all the different brands, sizes, and speeds of cards available in the retail market. Any card with a capacity up to 2048GB that adheres to the Type I or Type II CompactFlash card standards, and is formatted with either a 16 bit (cards up to 2GB) or 32 bit (for cards larger than 2GB) file addressing system, should work in your camera.
Unfortunately, because we have not tested the camera with all speeds, sizes, and brands of CompactFlash cards, we are unable to speculate as to the performance of the camera with a particular card installed, or to recommend a specific type of card.
We hope this information is helpful to you. Please feel free to contact us again if you have any other questions or concerns.
Thank you for choosing Canon.
Sincerely,
Josh
Technical Support Representative
Canon can’t buy a few SanDisk cards to see if they work in the 5D? From the leader in compact flash cards? I wonder how Canon verified that the latest firmware for the 1Ds series cameras works with 16GB cards, since SanDisk is the only vendor offering them, AFAIK.
Perhaps “Josh” is correct that Compact Flash supports capacities “up to 2048GB” which is two terabytes, a single-disk capacity I hope to see within a few years in my desktop computer.
If he meant 2048MB (2GB), then he might want to refresh his stale knowledge of the current compact flash market, which has long offered both 4GB and 8GB cards, and both of which work in the 5D.
Let’s evaluate the idiotic platitudes in the response:
- “valuing me as a customer” — So long as I just buy their products and don’t actually ask for support which might fall outside the Top 10 Dumb Questions.
- “serving me”, “assisting me”— How exactly did a technically-incorrect canned response serve me?
- “We hope this information is helpful to you” — Hope is the first refuge of the incompetent.
Why won’t companies take responsibility? See yesterday’s blog entry on ATI’s response to the X1900 G5 sleep problem. Technical support is a bouncer-based system.
© Copyright 2007 digLloyd, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in any form requires explicit, written permission. No part of this document may be copied, distributed, disseminated in any form, electronic or tangible, whether in whole or in part, without the prior written authorization of digLloyd, Inc or its authorized representative.