I am about to have a very big moan, so apologies in advance.
My Windows installation died on me on Friday.
I opened my case up to install a new hard drive, and when I booted up afterwards, I discovered that my hal.dll file had been corrupted. I don’t know what a hal.dll file is, but on my technically cleverer than me friend Jonny’s advice, I tried to fix the master boot record on the DOS command prompt, but to no avail.
I’ve had to re-install Windows. Again. For the third time in as many months.
It’s not that I’m afraid of the process. I make a habit of re-installing once every 6 months or so, mainly to avoid the dreaded Windows registry bloat that’s the bane of so many slow Windows computers, but also because I’m a bit of a nerd and I kind of like doing it. It’s the same sort of feeling as when you decide to re-arrange all the furniture in your bedroom, or have a particularly in-depth spring clean - afterwards there’s a nice sense of calm and order, which I don’t mind admitting I get off on.
However, this time, the re-install has been forced on me. Again.
I don’t know if the problems I’ve been having with Windows corrupting are related, but 3 months ago I bought all the components for a spanking new machine. 3GhZ Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 2 x 8800 GT 512MB graphics cards and an Asus P5N-T Deluxe motherboard. One thing is for sure, I will never again buy an Asus motherboard.
The people in the shop told me it was a really good motherboard, designed for overclocking. “Overclockers!”, I thought, “They’re hardcore. I too am hardcore. I will buy this motherboard”. If I’d done my research properly I would have found an army of angry, disgruntled customers spitting venom on the Asus support forums about the problems this board has. Video card and RAM compatibility seems to be a bit of an issue, which is doubly frustrating seeing as the two graphics cards I bought are both manufactured by Asus.
What it all meant was that the machine froze up irretrievably at least once a day. Having already been back to the shop to get a different set of compatible RAM, and tried every BIOS update and system tweak that I could find, I was still getting regular lock ups. In the end I took another friend’s advice and splashed out another £100 on an 800W Tagan power supply, which seems to have done the trick, at least with the lock ups.
A big part of the reason for buying a new machine was my desire to get my head back into photography in a big way. That meant re-designing my website, starting a blog, re-evaluating my collection and adding everything to a new database, while at the same time trying to learn new techniques for taking a post-producing images, and trying to get involved in some projects with other people that would stretch me. My logic with the new machine was that I’d get something new and capable enough that the machine wouldn’t be an issue. It would allow me to concentrate on the images and not with trying to overcome the machine’s limitations.
Well it hasn’t quite worked out that way, and now I’m back at square one - an empty Windows installation. I’ve got to re-do everything - re-install all the apps and drivers and set everything up the way I like. Eungh. The thought of it is just so DEPRESSING.
The last time I did all this, I had a quick look at some disc imaging applications, but lost the initiative to actually go through with using them once I realised it would take me more than half an hour to do, but this time I’m determined. What they basically do is take a snapshot of your hard disc and store it on some other media - DVDs or another hard disc. That way, when your windows installation goes tits up, you can just re-install the image, and all your apps and settings have been preserved.
Anyway, sorry for taking up your time with a humongous grumble. Computers make my photography habit possible in so many ways, but for the last three months it’s just felt like it’s been holding me back and getting in my way. I’m starting to wish I’d saved up the cash for a Mac.
I’ve been listening to the really very good This Week In Photography Podcast for about a month now, and one tip that co-host Scott Bourne dropped in a number of episodes stayed with me as something I wanted to try out for myself.
The tip in question was intended for use as a studio portraiture technique, but we’ve been looking for a way to liven up some of the product photographs that we use at CNET, and I thought I would give it a go on some products.
Scott’s tip is basically this - in order to get really soft lighting from a studio flash head, don’t just use a softbox, but move your subject as close as you possibly can to the surface of the softbox without it getting in your shot. This is a pretty non-intuitive thing to do, as you might expect the light to get harsher the closer it is to the subject, but Scott assured his listeners that the reverse was true, and that the light would wrap around the subject and provide the desired effect.
You can see in the image on the left (click the image to enlarge) the setup I’ve used for these shots. Scott said that you should have your subject only a couple of inches away from the softbox - in practice I found this very hard to do without getting the edge of the softbox in the frame, so it was more like 5-6 inches away. The technique has produced the desired result - a really nice, soft light that you can see in the main image of the HTC Touch Diamond above, and also in the image of the Sony Ericsson W330i on the right (click the image to enlarge).
This one-light technique does have some limitations, however, largely that any details on the opposite side to the light remain in shadow. Scott did say that part of the result of having the subject so close to the softbox would be that the light would wrap-around the subject and do the job of rear lighting. I did not find this to be the case. As you can see in both the product images, there is no edge highlighting, and the rear of the products is in darkness. This isn’t really a problem for the HTC and Sony Ericsson shots, as all I’m really trying to do is show the face of the phone in detail, and the fact that the rest remains shadowy is part of the overall effect of the shot.
I also tried the technique with a digital camera - the Fujifilm FinePix F100fd. With this shot, the lens jutted out on the right hand side of the camera and blocked the light that was coming from the left, leaving the right hand side in shadow and the image looking unbalanced (click the image on the left to see what i mean). To solve this, I asked my lovely assistant Natasha to hold a white reflector (see the image on the right), which bounced the light nicely back onto the right hand side of the camera, allowing the details there to be seen (see the main image below for the results).
Overall I’m really happy with the results from using this one-light technique. The images that you see have been tidied up slightly in Photoshop, but appear pretty much as they did coming off the camera. I suspect I’ll be using this method quite a lot in the coming months
Many thanks to Scott Bourne of TWIP Photo for the tip, and to Natasha Lomas for putting up with me calling her Assistant Lomas.
Rich reviews all the consumer cameras for CNET.co.uk, and a bang up job he does of it too.
Part of that job is recording video reviews, the setup for which he can be seen enduring here in our second studio.
He occasionally lends me neat bits of kit that he’s got in for review, like the Aiptek graphics tablet that’s sitting on my desk as I write, for which I am ever appreciative.
This is the irrepressable Rory Reid, PCs Editor for CNET.co.uk.
I take a lot of straight headshots for work, and most of the time the images are pretty bland. They’re not meant to be anything else, simply to use on the internal “phone book” site. I take them for the HR department. We arrange a time and line people up outside the studio and they come through like a conveyor belt. Almost everyone hates doing it, so I keep it as quick and painless as possible. Pop! Pop! - two or three shots at the most and it’s over.
Rory is a journalist, though, and needs shots taking for the website he writes for, so he’s been in front of my lens more than most. I must have taken hundreds of photos of him, though I’ve never really been happy with any of them. At least, none that I’m really happy with, if I have my critical faculties engaged. But I like this one. I like the portraits I take to be neutral, to have something sombre about them going on, and this has that, I think.
I had the pleasure of visiting the Emirates Stadium recently - quite wonderful piece of architecture that strangely seems to lack the blood curdling atmosphere of other stadiums i’ve been to. The sound seems to waft straight out of the top of the stadium. In contrast, the new Wembley, which I went to a few weeks after this, had much better acoustics.
Arsenal were pretty spectacular that day, humbling poor Derby by five goals. I’m not an Arsenal fan, I should say My heart belongs to Liverpool.
Post production notes: This is a panorama made up of 5 different images. Getting good panoramas is tricky. The key, for me, is getting the right manual exposure. I hold the camera up and take exposure readings across the range that I want to photograph, from left to right. Usually you get a range of readings back, as some shots will be darker than others. The trick is to set your camera to something roughly in the middle and then take all the shots at that exposure.
Then you need to download an amazing little application called autostitch which does all the hard work of melding the images together. It really is incredible how accurate it is - i’ve been trying to do good panoramas for years now, and autostitch is by far the most usefull tool i’ve come across. Once autostitch has worked it’s magic, I brought this image back into photoshop and cropped and straightened and did the usual saturation boosts and contrast adjustments.
We stuck mainly to the area around Tate Modern, including the Millennium Bridge. It provided some lovely backdrops for the images, and we met some splendid people who were happy to let loose about how little they knew about World Environment Day
Sarah, pictured above, was the catch of the day for me (photographically speaking!) As soon as I spotted her strolling along on the Millennium Bridge, keeping the sun off her back with a parasol, I nudged Marian in her direction. She was one of those disarmingly proper elderly English ladies. Look at that neat, buttoned down collar. They just don’t breed them like that any more.
Kuku on the other hand (below) was on his holidays and didn’t speak much English, though he had a charming way about him, and was at ease while I buzzed around snapping shots off.
The images on the SmartPlanet.com had to be turned around quickly, so I just did some basic touching up and cropping on them and sent them over to Marian, but the versions on the site here I’ve spent a bit more time with, and I’ve got a couple more that I’ll process over the next few days and post up here.
To get this shot, I used two Canon 580 EX flash guns (one a 580 EX II, one a 580 EX, which my friend and work colleage Drew Stearne kindly lent me for the evening). As you can see in the image on the left (click to enlarge, nextGen gallery style), the key light was placed camera left, facing in at about a 30-45 degree angle to the subject. I used a snoot which I knocked together out of an old mobile phone box, with the CTO gel gaffa taped over the front (see image on the right). I also used a white umbrella to diffuse the light. To mount the whole thing I setup my Manfrotto tripod and gaffa taped the base of the flash to the tripod head. Ordinarily I’d use masking tape to do the job (gaffa tape leaves nasty, sticky marks on your kit!), but I’d run out and gaffa was all that was to hand.
The second 580 EX was placed on a stool to the right of the camera, slightly behind the subject (image below). I was using it as an edge highlighter, and left CTO off, to give a nice blue tinge to the right edge of James’ face and body. Unfortunately I didn’t have it dialed in quite right and the highlight isn’t as strong as I’d like, but nevermind.
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Once I had the kit in place, I exposed for the sky and then dialed the flash heads in until I was happy with the balance. Both flash heads were triggered using the Canon ST-E2 wireless trigger.
For post, I used Lightroom to crop to 2.39:1 aspect ratio, and then did a little selective dodging and burning to boost contrast here and there, but not by much. What you see is pretty much how it came off the camera, which is such a rare occurance for me that I’m really happy with how it all came out
See the rest of the entries for this assignment on the flickr group.
He proports an interesting idea; the image of terrorists snapping covert shots of potential targets in movies is a primary reason behind the average security guard’s belief that all photographers are attempting to bomb their buildings.
Terrorists taking pictures is a quintessential detail in any good movie. Of course it makes sense that terrorists will take pictures of their targets. They have to do reconnaissance, don’t they? We need 45 minutes of television action before the actual terrorist attack — 90 minutes if it’s a movie — and a photography scene is just perfect. It’s our movie-plot terrorists that are photographers, even if the real-world ones are not. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/05/news.terrorism
The reality is that there’s a distinct lack of evidence that terrorists ever use photographs to plan their mis-adventures.
The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn’t photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn’t photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren’t being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn’t known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/05/news.terrorism
Comforting reading from the article …
… there aren’t many legal restrictions on what you can photograph from a public place that’s already in public view. If you’re harassed, it’s almost certainly a law enforcement official, public or private, acting way beyond his authority. There’s nothing in any post-9/11 law that restricts your right to photograph. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/05/news.terrorism
