Fish tank pics

I'm sitting here at work as I write waiting for a huge, critical server-to-server file transfer. While I've been waiting, I've taken some photos. Here is a set of fish tank pics I've posted to Flickr.

PS: I wrote this at 1 AM and then got distracted. It's now 6:30 AM, and the big transfer is done, but I am waiting on a smaller one now. I should be able to go home in the next couple hours.

My new digital photography workflow

Since the recent addition of my new work camera (a 6 megapixel Casio Exilim -- a tiny thing!) and my new personal camera (Canon PowerShot S80 -- a thing of wonder; such an excellent camera!), I've been working on a new photo workflow. I think I'm settling down on my tool set and workflow.

Both cameras shoot to jpeg only, so raw isn't an issue; that keeps the toolflow much simpler.

Side note: raw will be an option in my next camera, which will be a digital SLR.

I'm not using a Mac (yet), so iPhoto isn't an option. My next personal computer will very likely be a Mac.

I start out with my favorite file manager, xplorer2. I use it to copy my files from the card reader to my "raw" (meaning unretouched in this case) pics directory, which is broken down by camera and date.

I right click on the raw folder and click browse with FastStone, my favorite image browser/viewer. In the past few days, I've tried a bunch of image browser/viewers, including Picasa, ACDSee, IrfanView, and Photoshop Elements. For browsing and viewing, nothing beats FastStone's fast, flexible, and powerful interface. IrfanView (free, as is FastStone) is the only one to come close in speed. ACDSee is $50 and terribly slow.

Picasa is free as well, but takes a long time to import new photos. It seems more like a cataloging tool (and a powerful one at that). I think Picasa deserves more of my attention. I'll try to play around with it more in order to discover its other strengths. I've already started creating photo groups within it.

Photoshop Elements 4 seems powerful as well. I'm trying it out now. Its browser/cataloging tool seems quite powerful. It feels rather slow, but not as slow as Picasa. I haven't fiddled with its editor yet, but it looks to be very powerful, according to the reviews I've read. My Dad uses Elements 2 as his only image editor. At $100, it's a bit expensive. But I've not yet made my final decision.

Once I've selected the "keeper" images from the raw directory, I copy them over to my working directory. Here I process and then resize as necessary. I shoot 6 megapixels in the Casio and 8 megapixels in the Canon, and I upload 3 megapixel (2048x1536) images to Flickr.

From FastStone, I open each file with Paint Shop Pro X for processing, including resizing, cropping, and color/exposure correction. Why Paint Shop rather than Photoshop? Photoshop is huge, slow, and complicated. It has its strengths and purposes, but I'm really not yet ready to use them. Paint Shop is small, fast, and it's easy for me to get the simple stuff done quickly. I've been evaluating Paint Shop for a bit more than a week, and I think it's worth the $100 registration. I'll likely be registering it soon.

At work, I commonly shoot pictures for special events, such as the annual Halloween party or various birthday parties. I usually run the full-size images through LView Pro 2002's Web Gallery tool, and then publish the gallery on our intranet. I'll be looking for a more modern web gallery tool the next time I undertake such a project; there's got to be better tools for the job.

I prefer Flickr for sharing my personal photos.

So that's my digital photography tool chain for now. It's going to get a workout at work, as I've got an employee photo directory due soon. I've taken half the pictures with the company Exilim camera; they need to be processed. I'll be taking the balance in the next few weeks with my new S80 and my new tripod.

A nice day off; pictures taken; flickr account updated

I had a very nice day off today. I spent the morning lazing around the house with my brother. I mostly read the manual for my new Canon PowerShot S80 I got for Christmas. I took a few pictures at home as well.

We finally left the house around 1:30. We went to Taco Bell to get lunch. After lunch, we went in search of a new tripod for my new camera. We tried a few different places and ended up at Wolf Camera in Dublin. I found a very nice tripod there and purchased it.

Our next destination was the local movie theater to see Narnia. We went to my parents' house to pick up my Dad to go with us. Upon arriving at the theater, traffic was the worst we'd ever seen. It took us a few minutes to just get into the lot to park. I dropped of my brother Ryan and my dad to go buy tickets. As soon I parked, they told me that the next two showings were sold out. Oh well. So we went back to my parents' house.

I gave my brother my old 3 megapixel Toshiba camera for Christmas. I had my camera and tripod with me and my brother had his camera. We puttered around the family room, kitchen, and living room, taking pictures. I'm a bit of a photographer, as I had an SLR from late high school and I worked in a photo lab my freshman year of college. My brother has only had point-and-shoot cameras, and had never really shot digital, so I gave him a few pointers. I think he's an excellent photographer. You can see some of his work here.

You can see some of my photos made with my new camera here. I took quite a few available-light tripod photos at my parents' house this afternoon; some are labeled as such.

My new camera has motivated me to take more photos. Therefore, I've upgraded my Flickr account and purged all of the ugly gas pump pictures. I've created some new sets, updated old ones, and uploaded a whole bunch of new photos. Please let me know what you think. When I've uploaded a substantial group of new photos, I'll post here to that affect.

Check this out

Users are amazing. This happened when one of my users dropped his laptop and attempted to catch it by grabbing the display.

I gave him points for the interesting artistic result.

Thank goodness for Dell's CompleteCare warranty, which covers accidental damage. They replaced the display this morning.

Click for a larger image.

Miscellaneous updates

Dang, it's been a while.

I went on a road trip with my family for Thanksgiving. We spent a few days in Las Vegas, visiting my uncle and his family, then continued to Cortez, Colorado to visit my paternal grandmother. Much fun was had.

Got home and hit the ground running with work. Still behind, but getting caught up slowly. It's not proving to be as brutal a week as I thought.

I found out this past Tuesday that Threshold was cancelled by finding an unlabeled TV show in is place on my DVR, which I deleted once I figured out what was going on. That kinda sucked. I like the show, but its writing was the weakest of the shows I'm following now. I hope they do a DVD set, as there are four unaired episodes. I'm a big fan of Carla Giugino. I hope her next series is more successful than her last two.

I found out yesterday that this will be the last season of Alias. Oh well. I think the show has run its course, but I'll be sad to see the new pretty blonde go. She's just amazing.

Oh, Skype has released a 2.0 beta. It's got built-in video chat support. I've got my camera plugged in.