It now seem quite likely that we will see a D90 in September. There is an author that writes field guides that has a post on Amazon about the D90. He claims to know a price, and has a whole page devoted to specs for the new camera. These specs are what I have seen other places, so I don’t know who posted first. They are appealing though. 12 Mpixel, Live View, Video???, Larger LCD (over D80), 4.5 fps, GPS and HDMI ports. Sounds cool. I am starting to print some things larger, so I would like some more pixel room for cropping. Live View would be cool, and 4.5 fps would be a big improvement over what I have with the D40. I guess we wait and see what the real deal is…
Category Archives: Hardware
New storage needed.
I am getting tired of my linux based setup. It just doesn’t work well enough. The biggest issue I have is that everytime it gets powered down (vacation, storm, etc) and comes back up, it doesn’t quite. I always have to execute some command line magic to get everything recognised. I have tried Gentoo, Ubuntu, Mythbuntu, all with the same issue. I think it is the add in SATA card I have in there, but I don’t want to swap out more computer hardware this time.
Delicious 2
Delicious 2, an update to the del.icio.us web site is now out. They are now just delicious.com thank you very much. Delicious is a web site that allows you to store bookmarks out in the cloud (apparently our new word for server) so you and anyone else (if you want them public) can access your bookmarks.
I decided to enter this yummy new world, and uploaded my list of bookmarks. Fast. Looks neat. I have been using the foxmarks plugin for firefox to store and sync my bookmarks, so I am not sure how much I will use this. I haven’t used social sites very much in the past, but who knows.
No D90
Disappointing. I was hoping to be wrong. I really wanted a D90 to be released on July 1. The D700 is an interesting camera, but a full frame sensor worth a few thousand is not what I am looking for. I am hoping though that the newly released SB-900 flash will put downward price pressure on the SB-800. The new tilt-shift lenses they announced are also interesting, but not what I am looking for.
Bring on the cards.
The cards are here. The fedex truck drove away a few minutes ago. I blogged about this deal here. The deal is even better than I thought. There is more in the box than just the card. With each 4gig Extreme III card, there is also a card reader, a little pouch that can hold at least two cards (in their tiny cheap plastic cases) and some rescue software. Sandisk also claims to warranty the cards for life. Pretty sweet. Now to see if I get the rebate, which would put the price at $20 apiece.
I also ordered a batery for my D40. I am going to try the Adorama branded one. Hopefully it will work fine as a backup. Not sure how to test it short of just holding the trigger and counting shutter clicks vs doing the same with the Nikon version.
Support your local camera.
I have a tripod. I bought a Slik Sprint Pro a while back. It was a tough decision. I didn’t have the money for carbon, so I was pretty much left with, kinda light, but not the most stable, or kinda heavy, and quite stable. I went for the kinda light option. I figured that if I got something too heavy, I wouldn’t take it anywhere. What good would that be?
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Want to take more pictures for cheap?
I was just about to order a couple of SanDisk Extreme II 2gig cards for about $20 a piece. Then I saw that SanDisk has a rebate going until the end of June. Different vendors have different rebates, but through Adorama, you can get a 4gig Extreme III for $19.95 after a $30 rebate. Their rebate gets you a Visa gift card you can use anywhere. If you want, Adorama will add 10% if you want an Adorama gift certificate. Shipping is free too. Buy two, and you get a $70 rebate total. Yikes. Sign me up.
Check your backups
In my backup strategy, I mentioned, like Scott, I had a small 2.5 inch drive that I could use to keep a backup of my data when on the road. I don’t use it much. I don’t travel often, and I am not allowed to use it at work.
So, with a trip coming up in July, I thought I would test it out. From a short trip to Rochester MN last weekend, I had some images on my laptop. (I hadn’t deleted the cards before getting the images to the main computer though) I copied the masters to the portable, then imported them into Aperture from the external drive. Oops. Several garbled images. Reformated the drive and I tried again. Same thing, different images. Dead drive, or housing. Guess I am going shopping.
I need more space.
So after I talked about my backup strategy, I went and started my command to sync my pictures. I went to checkup on it, and it was stuck. I checked, and I was out of space. Oh oh. I stopped the sync. Now what? Well, the drives are sporting LVM2, and I had extra space available, so I just added some.
First add some more space to the volume:
# lvextend -L +1G /dev/vgnas/pictures
Then tell ext3 about the extra space.
# resize2fs /dev/vgnas/pictures
Thats it. I did it live, without unmounting. I then went back to my rsync command, and it continued right where it left off. Sometimes I really like linux.
Backup Strategy
Scott Kelby just posted his backup strategy, and I thought I would follow up with mine.
The thing that is really interresting about Scott and my solutions, is that there are a lot of similarities. But mine cost a lot less.
His first step is to save on location to an Epson P-500 (link). That would be cool. I have looked at those wistfully before. I don’t have anything comparable. I don’t travel as much as he does, so I just have to put in my empty card and go from there.
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