Buying a monitor... for photography though

Ages ago I bought a Mac G5 this was because of my desire to have a box that was fast and easily upgradeable I can add Blueray writer internal HDs and even internal RAID something which I've yet to do admitedly but I will do in the future.

The final component is a monitor previously I was using it with a KVM switch to switch between my laptop and the Mac. Recently though have re-discovered the joys of working in the lounge in the warm with the TV doing it's thing in the background.

Anyway as I've done a fair amount of research on this thought I'd share some. Like most I started out with a search for cheap monitors that is monitors around the £100 mark. I ended up looking at Iayama which are good to be sure but I started doing some research and most interestingly TFT monitors or TN panels do not produce up to 16 million colors they typically do 6bits per pixel and then use dithering tricks to create the rest.

Here is the page I found but as links break I'll do a summary here as well. There are basically three types of panels. Actually there is even better info on Wikipedia.

IPS-Panels (Inter Plane Switching)

These come in two types. H-IPS Panels (Horizontal IPS) and S-IPS Panels (Super) which are based on Hitachi Panels.  As Wikipedia says on H-IPS Improves contrast ratio by twisting electrode plane layout. Also introduces an optional Advanced True White polarizing film from NEC, to make white look more natural. This is used in professional/photography LCDs. Hence my interest. As of writing January 2009 the most affordable seems to be the  NEC EA231WMI-BK. A brilliant site is TFT-central which has a buyers wizard as well to find good monitors. They also do the most excellent reviews.

TP-LINK ROUTER TL-WR1043ND

HOWTO CONFIGURE THE TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND 

Part 1
Introduction - The Motivation

Well my recent project has been to learn IPV6 after all we are running out of addresses 500 odd days now due to happen April 2012.
The BBC Article and the real time IP remaining counter which suggests April 8th, 2012 as the D-Day.  This article is being written on May 14th,2010.

Anyway so with that in mind I did some research.  I wanted Linux for stability and IPV6 compatibility. I wanted a USB port to plug in my printer and so convert it to an IPV6 one. I wanted Wireless N as it's the future and as I'm investing time in it.

So this is the one which is faster than the ASUS Premium v2 one by the way. I also figured 3 aerials is handy as can use one for an external aerial for amplification etc.

Here is the info page on the OpenWRT wiki both versions at the moment are supported. Look on the back to get the detail mine is a v1.5.

Step 1 Out the box

So normal procedure check the thing I bought works ok powersupply etc. I did this for 24 hours and then thought sod it. I'll bite the bullet on the firmware. Though I did have a spare router so this wasn't as stressful as it might have been if I was replacing a broken one.


Step 2 Firmware Replacement

The version I used is the Backfire 10.3 one which I got from here http://downloads.openwrt.org/backfire/10.03/ar71xx/ 

The one to download is  openwrt-ar71xx-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.sh the upgrade was smooth  Upon reboot you can access the box via telnet. 192.168.1.1 plugging in a ethernet cable of course.

Upon telneting in. You can go passwd and change the root passwd at that point  telnet is disabled and ssh is activated. I fired up another putty session to login.

 
Step 3 General Configuration


This first steps page is most useful to know howto login etc.
I would recommend setting the time zone.  Then you can use the web interface to change the configuration of the drop bear server. Change it to some port well above 1024 make it hard work for the port scanner man to find you. And then paste in a ssh key.
 
I used the line from the authorized_keys on a host I ssh too. Though I gather you can just past an BEGIN block and that will work also.



Step 4 Getting the WAN internet working.

For me I'm on a virgin cable box so the first step was to figure out howto clone the MAC address.  I did try the wizard http://192.168.1.1/ which was nice to explore around. I couldn't find howto set it though.


You can do it using these nice instructions 

uci set network.wan.macaddr=""
uci commit network
ifdown wan && ifup wan

or alternatively do it to the configuration network file /etc/config/network


config 'interface' 'wan'
        option 'ifname' 'eth0.2'
        option 'proto' 'dhcp'
        option 'defaultroute' '0'
        option 'peerdns' '0'
        option 'macaddr' '00:02:3F:21:D6:9E'


I quite like the uic commands though. If you do also then you can read more about them here.


So with that my wan came up with DNS etc ping www.google.com and all is well. Next stop getting the wifi working.


Step 5  Wifi LAN enabling


As it turns out the drivers for the card in the router are not installed fortunately there are handy package commands. This is also a handy trick if your like me and your inclined to completely bugger install commands you can use opkg install --force-reinstall to get thnings back to the defaults.


opkg install kmod-ath9k wpad-mini.

Now you can create a wifi default configuration by deleting the wireless  file /etc/config/wireless and then running wifi detect

root@OpenWrt:/etc/config# wifi detect
config wifi-device  radio0
        option type     mac80211
        option channel  5
        option macaddr  00:23:cd:19:0d:3a
        option hwmode   11ng
        option htmode   HT20
        list ht_capab   SHORT-GI-40
        list ht_capab   DSSS_CCK-40
        # REMOVE THIS LINE TO ENABLE WIFI:
        option disabled 1

config wifi-iface
        option device   radio0
        option network  lan
        option mode     ap
        option ssid     OpenWrt
        option encryption none




It does seem odd doesn't it but mac80211 is the correct name I was expecting atheros myself but still. 


The next step is to remove that line to enable it.You can go wifi and it will start.

Step 6 Wifi Making visible and my final configuration file.


To make visible the trick is to add the line.


option hidden   0

Step 7  Configuring Encryption

This is straightforward when you know how. In my case it was a nightmare as I tried to wing it. Basically if you set encryption as wpa and don't have the correct librarys installed your router will seem to disappear. It's at this point it's worth nothing the command to read log files is "logread". What you need is

opkg install hostapd 

I got my information from here but don't you hate links so I'll paste my configuration file and the two key lines.

config wifi-device  radio0
        option type     mac80211
        option channel  5
        option macaddr  XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
        option hwmode   11ng
        option htmode   HT20
        list ht_capab   SHORT-GI-40
        list ht_capab   DSSS_CCK-40

config wifi-iface
        option device   radio0
        option network  lan
        option mode     ap
        option ssid     OpenWrt
        option encryption psk2
        option key      "mykeytext"
        option hidden   0



This is as it stands at the moment I'll be changing the SSID just as soon as I'm happy with everything. The key line is psk2. If you use just psk one you get all sorts of nasty dependencies openssl etc being some of them and then if you reboot you'll find your router unaccessible by wireless again.


You could also do it using uci but I didn't so can't comment.

root@OpenWrt:~# uci set wireless.@wifi-iface[0].encryption=psk2
root@OpenWrt:~# uci set wireless.@wifi-iface[0].key=
root@OpenWrt:~# uci commit wireless
root@OpenWrt:~# wifi

The channel line made me go out and seek a wifi scanner since it's been a while  since I checked my local area out. 

inSSIDer is the lastest one for WIndows VISTA that looks well nice you can get it here http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider  

and it's free. 

On the option htmode HT20 the 20db thing I don't know either I've left it as is.

 
Step 7 Configuring DHCP tricks for SIP and mobile phone.


What I did for this was to take a dump of my old configuration  of the main router. There are a couple of gotchas. I'd backup the configuration file. I put 24hrs instead of 24h for the lease time same applies for minutes 720m not min. The other thing is to watch for duplicate IP addresses.


Another tip I do recommend long leases as it prevents the log file being cluttered up. Type logread you'll see what I mean at one stage mine were set to 1 minute because of that config error so couldn't see old messages.



The problem I had was getting my mobile phone and my SIP phone connected as they use primitive DHCP the trick is a flag which is documented here. The trick is to   remove the "filterwin2k" line from your configuration that will sort it out.
 
Step 8 Configuring reserved addresses

For this I used the web interface alot easier to see what's going on. You can use custom from the drop down to enter them or pick from ones already present. I used my existing configuration file and typed them in and then powered stuff up and verified.


Once I had the router functioning as day to day router for work  then the fun can begin adding ipv6 functionality,  wake up on lan, dynamic DNS etc.


Step 9 Browsing the packages


/tmp/opkg-lists/packages.

Less seems cripped on this box so I vi the file and then forward searching becomes possible. You can also do opkg list, opkg list-installed to see what you've got. 


Before you get carried away installing stuff there is the Gargoyle interface which adds QOS lots of nice bandwidth graphs and what not. The requirement however is 2M of free space.


Step 10 Backing up Configuration


I use the web interface it makes a nice little .tar.gz file of the config directory. And come to think of it opkg list-installed would be useful as well. You can then scp it off there is no sftp btw.


Closing Thoughts


I could have choosen DD-WRT but it seems that is such a feature loaded distribution you don't have room for IPV6 according to the latest forum entrys. X-WRT is based on OpenWRT anyway. Tomato not sure about it might be fringe anyway. This brings me to the end of the initial configuration. Next part I'll discuss the juicy stuff




The end of part 1. 





 

My Choice iPhone or Google Android HTC Desire

Well this is a tough decision as I'm both a Apple fan and a Linux fan. I aplaud Steve Jobs ingenuity in creating the iPhone. I fear that yet again the closed nature of Apple versus the open nature of Google will once again prove their undoing.

By being open and encouraging competition and creativity the Android world will leapfrog the Apple world even though it is a late starter. It's already started really there are numerous Android devices which are getting better.

The HTC Desire for instance has it's own Sense UI which itself is an innovation.

To run through some key features for me.

• The display 800x480 AMOLED this makes it ideal for videos and picture showing actually it has as much resolution as some digital photo albums.
  
• The Sense UI  I do use facebook and twitter. What I like though is they have thought this is a communication device first it's built to tie all your contacts information together. This is very good and has required some thought and recognition of the way the internet and the world is connected.
  
• The camera 5 megapixels ok it's not all about megapixels but it sure is nice to have that bit extra. Perhaps nicer is you can record 720p video.
  
• Cost cheaper £30 a month verus £35 a month for iPhone. This can translate into more minutes for the same money also.
  
• Works with GoogleMail and Google Mail is free and also open. You have to pay for Apples email service.
  
• You can change the battery yourself. This could be very handy on holidays not to mention adding to resale value later on.
  
• You can change the SD card this could be very important later microSD 64GB anyone? But anyway 4x 16GB cards is 64GB I'm thinking already one for movies and one for music.
  
• MULTI-TASKING I really do find it ironic that Steve has a Unix underneath but chooses to only run one thing at once. I'd like to be able to write an email . Change the content of a document before uploading it without having to restart the email writing process. Or make a note while reading an email copy key text out of it. Or perhaps log entrys from a shell. I guess all this is impossible on the iPhone.
  
• Little things like inbuilt FM radio nice no add-ons here. The iPhone will start to look ugly with such addons.
  
• Simple Open USB charger. This will make life easier later.
  
• Macromedia this is a biggy really. Steve has just said no what's he thinking Flash is out there. Flash is important for Youtube and rich content.

On the downsides I put.

• Not as slick as an iPhone in the sense of applications
  
• Not yet as popular as the iPhone yet so some apps might not happen.
  
• Constant changing device specifications. I wonder if the same thing that happened to windows will happen to the Android. Diversity creating buggy drivers and all sorts.
  
  
• Popularity might affect other things like availability of hard covers nifty sexy ad-ons. Video Glasses Projectors and what not.

Weighing up the pros and cons though I think the HTC Desire wins for me.

Prior experience.

I did become an iPod owner though once it was out of warranty I decided to put Rockbox on it. I thought it was crazy not to be able to use the iPod as a storage device.

As an aside note I actually got fed up with iTunes because it was always crashing I ended up putting  Rockbox onit because it was simple and less buggy.

So my HTC Desire is now pre-ordered roll on April the 12th is it. I ordered it with 16GB microSD card which should be enough.

Why the Desire and not the Nexus?

Money was the simple answer. At the time of writing I can get the HTC Desire on two networks with 900minutes on T-Mobile and unlimited internet.

I would probably prefer the noise cancelling facilities of the Google Nexus but reality I really like the idea of HTC Sense I feel I will personally use this more so am keen to get it from the source with it's updates.  I believe the Desire also comes with a FM radio and a better media player which is important to me. Also having widgits will make it more useful. I'm not too bothered on OS updates though I'm sure Googles will be better for this. Once I have things all setup with games I like and music and contacts and what not I will be reluctant to take the chance of breaking my device by risking an upgrade to say Android 3.2 by the time that happens I'll probably be thinking of a new phone. I doubt I'd want to upgrade to Android 3.0 that'd be risky a completely new version and I'd have to wait for my favourite apps and what not to be migrated and/or tested.

 Thanks,

Recent musings on cropping

Active readers will notice I've been alot on my workflow last year and this year.  First I made the switch to DNG and iViewMedia to catalog and organise my files in a way that they can grow infiitely and solved my ahh nightmare I lost all my photos issues with a RAID array which I can back up as I have a spare module and as the folders are DVD size I can burn them to DVD also.

Anyway the last step is publishing to paper and screen. First I've looked at paper which I actually wrote up in a forum post which I will reproduce here:



I was doing some research on getting photos printed it seems the most useful crop aspect ratio is 3:2 as it more closely matches a wide range of prints you can get at your local photo printing place.

In the UK we have Jessops and actually most others seem to do these sizes as well but anyway they do sizes in inches.

6x4 which is of course 3:2 and
9 x 6 that's the normal print choices
12x 8 is the first enlargement size also 3:2
18 x12 which is a poster size and also
24 x 16
30 x 20

As you can see that's a good amount of choice for one crop ratio.

There is the 7x5 size which doesn't fit but ahh well 6x4 albums are very common and 9x6 albums are available and a decent impressive size too boot and the advantage is then the small print is the preview of the larger 30x20 print.

Also I have a D300 and the resolution 4288x2848 is very close to the 1.5 aspect ratio or 3:2. In fact 4272 x 2848 is an exact match so you lose the least pixels from the original this way.

At first I thought there were no 3:2 aspect photo frames but 720x480 is a resolution that is 3:2 aspect.  Size 800x600 isn't but still you could always use the existing crop and then add a frame around it with a caption so the pic would be 600x400 say 3:2 aspect with a 100 pixel border left right  to make 800  and a  100 pixel border top and bottom to make 600 or 750x500 works as well that's only 25 left/right 50 top bottom which should work quite well with same for a caption at the bottom.

As for the big daddy photo digital display such as using a 16x9 tv well to be honest I'd forget about the 16:9 crop and use the TV as a preview for a 30"x20" print a 42 inch LCD TV has enough width and height to show you what a print would like this size as in life size you just have to do the dpi calculations and work out the size. My TV alas is a Sony 40inch and as it's only 500mm vertical picture height not 550mm so it's not quite big enough to display the 20 inch side of the 30x20 inch print.

Just thought I'd share my research. I'm also currently writing shell scripts on a Mac using software from Macports and NetPbm and ImageMagick to do the image conversion and captioning on mass. I'm sure the Caption Maker scripts are very good but I hope to produce multiple perhaps even 10 or more types of output format with one command.

Some recent research.

The size of Jessops prints appear to be really in inches. Admitedly I've only had one set done which is 7x5 inches and it really is 7x5 not 13 x 18cm in mm the size is 25.4 * 7 = 177.8 and it is indeed 177mm and abit on one side
and 5 * 25.4 = 127 mm and it is indeed 12.7cm on the shorter side. So despite the claims of 13x18cm it is not that size. Next time I'm in I'll take a ruler and measure to see if they other two 6x4 and 9x6 are also in inches.

I'll just publish this now and write some more later.

Printing Photos costs 7x5

Well thinking more and more about printing at home versus in lab. Doing some calculations on how expensive it is interesting.  For a start you can get 100 prints from Jessops at 7x5 inch for 0.14p a sheet.

So if you buy paper from say Staples even Kodak paper...

7x5inch   is  £7.08 for 20 sheets which works out at  £0.35p a sheet this is Jessops most expensive price for 1-4 sheets. But anyway the price of ink calculation.

HP 343 Cartridge  7ml is £13.20 for 260 pages at 15%  coverage which is 39 pages at 100%
39 x 4 = 156  @ 4 per page so final cost is 0.0846p a page this is a guesstimate I'll do this properly later.

So we need to find paper at less than 5p a page to make printing at home really competitive with Jessops.

Best price I've found so far is Mirror paper from Amazon search for Photo Paper 7x5.

Mirror 260GSM Resin Coated Gloss Paper 7x5" 50 Pack for £6.65 so £13.36 for 100 sheets which is 0.1336p a sheet.

Now Jessops prices are for 7x5 as at Dec 09. Yes I know others will vary but Jessops is everywhere so it's interesting say printing on holiday versus waiting till you get home.

1-4 35p
5-49 26p
50-99 17p
100-199 14p

So printing yourself is cost efficient if it's a batch of less than 50 copies your printing.
As 14p a sheet + 8p ink = 22p a photo.

Now perhaps the ink calculation isn't exact as 39 pages would actually be 39 * 11.75  (3/4) * 8.24 (1/4).
3780 square inches and 7 x 5 = 35 square inches = 108 prints not 156 pages. So £13.20 / 108 = 12.2p a sheet. So final cost is 14p a sheet + 12p ink = 26p a sheet. So in actual fact you can print at home for about the price of Jessops for 5-49 sheets of course there's always parking to consider £1.50 for a couple of hours will add 3p to a print for 50 sheets.

Boots is also available everywhere so to be fair let's compare prices  this is for 7x5 next day.

1-49 25p  Less than Jessops but only 1p difference but still cheaper than at home but then you have quality control and convenience.
50-99 17p Same price
100-149 15p processing More than Jessops which is 14p.

That's all for now I guess the next step is to do the calculations for A4 paper though it's hard to find printing prices for these.

My Photographic Workflow so far

Well the history of my photographic workflow is interesting an evolution as it were.

It started as you do using the software that came with the camera to download JPEGs from a Nikon coolpix 995.

I then bought Thom Hogans guide and began to keep things in directorys of sorts. I think this was at the Coolpix 5700 stage

Then finally after getting a Nikon D70S I decided to make the most of the camera and shoot raw. First I bought a raw converter Bibble Pro and ran the software on Linux. Then I discovered the joy of file renaming problems. I renamed my files on mass and lost all my changes as all the settings were kept in sidecar files.

Of course being in Linux while I love the ideals, someone hasn't decided to scratch the itch properly of doing 48bit photography. So I thought I'd like to be able to keep Unix and still have Photoshop and colour management so I made the switch to a Mac. Which lead me to Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Photoshop of which I bought in the form of a of Adobe 6.0 and an upgrade to CS2 which will do me just fine. Finally of course I needed a cataloging piece of software and a guide to howto best organise my images. 

The final solution I found The DAM book Digital Asset Management by Peter Krough.
Step 1 was getting the hardware. Naturally I had the MAC and decided on a G-Safe storage drive.
Networking via Gigabit would be expensive and unnecessary. RAID 5 would be a nightmare in terms of rebuilding the drive array and other hassles. The simplest way to go would be a mirrored solution with a removeable drive. I wanted the array in hardware so I could simply move the whole collection to my laptop if and when I get a Mac laptop. It's also handy as I can hide it quite easily before going on holiday for instance.

Upgrading only requires x2 drives actually when one drive failed I managed to get the array upgraded to 1TB sadly my backup module is 500GB so am stuck with that for a while. So setup is G5 with G-Safe 500GB drive and a western digital small back temporary backup option.

Step 2 was getting my existing collection organised in terms of year and folders of DVD size this enabling my photos to be backed up.  This took ages somehow photos were just everywhere all having to be brought together, converted and renamed into the standard Lower_date.dng format. In the end I treated the images as raw pictures with folders like RAW camera folders as if straight from the camera and re-imported this way.  By this stage I'd found the wonderful ImageIngesterPro application to streamline the whole importing process a great piece of software a real life saver. It will copy the files and back up and put things in a nice neat hierarchical strcuture and convert the photos to DNG and verify them at the same time. 

So now it's all
ORIGINAL_01
 CAM_00001  <- this folder is DVD size about 4GB or so.
  directory date _ directory description
 
all in sequential order this is essentially the bucket system that Peter described. What's important though is never to add anything back to this structure as everything fits DVD size . What you do is create derivative files if you work on any image and use a seperate piece of software to organise images called iViewMediaPro thus allows you to create a virtual directory structure so you can keep the sequential order. It allows you to keyword your files as well so you can search for things.  The ORIGINAL_01 in the name is the first drive of originals and when I do run out of space it comes ORIGINAL_02 though to be honest I'll probably upgrade my drives before this becomes a problem. I currently have enough space for about 10 years worth of shooting.

So my current work flow now I'm really getting more into using iViewMediaPro rather than just stopping at using Adobe Bridge. I was initially using Bridge to rate and label the images for upload. The end goal being publishing on the web. Now though I'm trying to switch to use iView first as that is the place you can add real-value keywords virtual directorys by real value I mean being able to find them months later with the goal to make photographic books. I've now discovered just how many of my images are missing keywords and ratings that are appropriate.

I've come along way but still much more darkroom work to do. In particular another goal of image organization is to make it easier to find photographs to learn Photoshop Photography tutorials. I have a couple of books on Photoshop well 4 really though one is a magazine supplement.

Well I'll leave it here and add some more later. Hope you find it useful.

Aha so i was right the Kata 3N1-30 has won bag of the year

Notes from Bogen  Imaging Bag of the year of course it doesn't include a tripod holder but surprisingly I'm not missing it as much as I thought. You can attach a small tripod holder accessory B&H sell it I believe or a gorilla pod even as a lady did in one of her youtube videos and actually here is a video of the B&H tripod holder.


But still it holds a great amount of kit and is perfect for London/Town and adaptable enough for country walking.
The ease of accessibility somehow gives you more confidence to take a camera when you wouldn't normally bother.