lost data

No photo today - I have a little story to tell that might be of some use to you one day - but I hope not! You will appreciate the "hope not" when you hear what I have to say.
Yesterday a member of our Visions group rang me in a panic. She and her partner have just returned home from a four month trip and it was all recorded on her little hard drive camcorder. Approximately four hours of video.
What had happened to upset this lass was that the program she used to transfer some of her video to the computer did something unusual and everything disappeared. When the camera was removed from the computer it had a spine chilling message across the screen.
"No files to be reviewed"
It looked as if the camera hard drive had been cleared completely.
Over the phone I gave instructions on how to search for the video files on the computer. No files could be found on any drive and the voice was becoming more and more frantic.
I advised finding out about data retrieval and thirty minutes later I heard back - the cost is astronomical. $150 just to leave the camera and then possibly another $500-$600 to retrieve the files - but no guarantee of success.
I told her to drive down and bring the camera and I would see what I could do. We had a Visions meeting today and if she stayed the night I would be able to give her the camera back in the morning.
While she was on her way I downloaded a couple of freeware programs for data retrieval and tried them out on my son's hard drive camera. They both worked quickly and effectively finding the same deleted files from the camera hard drive. This gave me confidence in being able to help with this problem. The program I had purchased - also from the 'net - was for memory cards and this took forever but failed to find any files. If I hear a request in the comments to this mail I will give the names of the programs I downloaded.

To cut a long story short, I was able to find the files on the camera hard drive without using either of the programs. I have no idea what has happened but I do have an inkling - the files were in a named folder and then in sub folders which seems to indicate that when the movie files were being transferred they were actually being transferred to the drive letter that was the camera and not to the drive letter on the computer.
I was able to copy the folders (one with difficulty as it kept on breaking the connection between the camera and computer) and then copy the folders onto a Passport hard drive.
We now have one very relieved holiday maker who now has video to edit.
I have had an email this evening to advise that the files were transferred without problem from the passport to the main computer. no sleepless night tonight!
AJ

Wot a wet day!

We were awakened through the night with the sound of water running into the swimming pool - this only happens when the rain is heavy enough to run down the guttering and into the bypass that we have set up that allows the rain to top up the pool.

The sound of water falling on to water has a devastating effect on me which meant that sleep was over and I had to "go for a walk"! It rained steadily all night long and bu nine o clock we measured 55mm had fallen. That, by old measurements, is two inches of rain. A good fall of that wet stuff!

But it has continued all day long since then and it has been a good excuse to sit in front of my laptop and type and collate.

This evening we are supposed to get all dressed up and "go out" but it looks like we shall be dressing in practical gear rather than decorative! We are off to see how two of my videos fared in a local Video competition. I am not really a competitive person but I allowed myself to be persuaded to enter this competition! It will be interesting to see the videos that my two are up against. Maybe I don't stand a chance at all - but that truly does not bother me at all. I know that the videos I have made have been received well by the people I have shown them too thus far and that is what matters more.

While there is still enough light to see outside - it has been grey and dismal all day and what light there is will be fading soon - I took a photo from this room across the shade house and looking across the neighbour's land. The water from the creek has crawled onto the lower section - but it has been up and down a few times today so we shall not be having major flooding problems. As long as the water can get away when the rain eases it means that all is well.

f/5.6 1/13 sec 22mm ISO200

The second photo is taken across our own back yard looking from the veranda where I feed the birds.

f/5.5 1/20sec 42mm ISO200

I heard the familiar sound of a bird colliding with a glass window and went to investigate. Byron was at the ready to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. (He tried it once - and the finch drowned!) Fortunately there was no little body stretched out on the tiles so Byron's assistance was not needed. But seeing how the birds had returned to scrape the dish for any seeds that might have been missed this morning I retrieved my camera to keep a record. The lorikeets are not really seed eaters - they will happily eat sunflower seeds until they burst (I only give them a few so they don't do themselves damage) but the small grain is for the finches and thanks to the rain these tiny birds are showing no fear of the much larger lorikeets. I think there are two varieties in the dish - the double bar finches (they have several common names) and the red-brow finches. Click on the photos to see a larger version.

f/5.6 1/15sec 52mm ISO 200

I have a pot plant garden on my veranda too and a pair of lorikeets had made themselves quite at home roosting cosily side by side on the branch of the potted tree nice and dry under the veranda roof!

f/5.6 1/8 sec 78mm ISO 200

AJ

Using the flash gun

This month our Visions group of photographers and video makers have "musical instrument" as one of the topics for the photographers. I had not used the flash gun on my new Nikon D90 up to today so when I realised I had a musical instrument sitting ignored and silent in the hallway this was the trigger for me to fire the flash! (very "punny"!)
To begin with the camera decided it wasn't going to recognise the flash and my spirits sagged.
I removed the flash and replaced it and set the camera to Aperture priority - on f/5.6
I wanted a fairly shallow depth of field - there is no point having a decent camera if what you take looks like a snapshot from a point and shoot! Unfortunately I am slipping into the DSLR "snobbery" of making my shots look "special"! Well, why not! When you have a good camera , you should try to take good photographs!
The first photograph I took was educational. I knew that the flash needed to be bounced but I did not realise just how the angle of the bounce would make such a huge difference to the lighting. It makes sense of course but this is the first shot. The timber at the far end is over bright and has a cloudy appearance. The position of the camera is not good either - the nearest side of the electric organ is an unsightly blur in the foreground and is very distracting. The blur seems to hold the eye rather than the eye be taken to the sharpest part of the photo.

f/5.6 1/30 sec 52mm ISO 200

The second photo is a lot better both with the bounce of the flash and the angle across the keyboard. The flash was tilted to 90% so that the bounce comes from the ceiling - which is quite a low ceiling at 9'. To get the camera down to the level of the top keyboard I went into "live-view" which then allowed me to see my subject without trying to keep my eye at the viewfinder. The bounced light has definitely improved the colours and the definition of the shot.

f5.6 1/30sec 26mm ISO200

Still not really comfortable with the end result I tried for a shot from the opposite end of the Electric Organ, I think that this one is the one for me! The lounge chairs in the background are a bit of a distraction and with a bit of playing around I could diffuse them so that they were not so obvious - but this little exercise was to show the results of the flash not the results of my Photoshop abilities!

f/5.6 1/30sec 24mm ISO200

By the way, I should point out that the day light had gone and I had to turn on the wall light to enable my camera to have enough light for the focus to work! The alcove where this instrument is positioned is not bright and the wall light gives a soft light so has been completely over-riden by the camera flash.
AJ

change of settings

Just sharing the results of changing the Settings in Steve's little Sony hd camcorder,the settings were on standard and everything was quite "woolly" even when viewed in the LCD screen, The camera is now set to High Quality and while it is still only VHS quality when viewed on a TV it is a lot better than when it was on the other setting!

This camera shoots in mpg format which is a compressed format. When any editing is done it is compressed even further. Digital video on tape is a large .avi file and is sharp, movement is smooth and the only thing better is hi-def. When digital video is edited and exported to DVD (which is the accepted format for sharing) it is converted to a compressed format - mpg and quality is lost.
The cameras are improving all the time but the better quality is lost once it is put onto DVD. By the time we can all afford blueray burners and players the shooting quality will once more be higher and the same annoyance will be there!
AJ

Birds at breakfast

Yesterday I took a little bit of video using my son's little hard drive Sony DCR-SR47 and I was rather disgusted at the quality of the images - especially since I had taken video on a boat cruise last week using the same model camera but belonging to a friend. That video was sharp and well coloured and quite comparable with stuff taken with a tape camera.
Last night I delved into the menu of Steve's camera and found that he had it set on "Standard" quality. Of course I changed it to the high quality setting and immediately the LCD screen showed a marked difference. This camera is "on" when the screen is opened. Of course the screen was open for me to access the menu. Using the menu is by touching the screen.
This morning was warm enough for breakfast on the veranda. There was no wind to give that chill that drives you indoors!
At eight o clock I put out food for the lorikeets and seeds for the finches (all wild birds) so they were all full of excitement as we sat down at the table.
I have not used the Nikon D90 for video very much so I used it today to record this little incident. The video will be added to this post as soon as it has been uploaded to Flickr (it is going to take ages today, for some reason! I suppose it is because the quality is higher than what I had yesterday!)

This seems to have been the mildest winter I can remember. There has been no ground frost this year and although there have been a few days that have been cold - they have not been too difficult to take! One year we had such a severe frost that it killed the leaves on most of the plants in my garden including those on the palm trees. The palms took over 12 months to shed all the brown leaves. I am not sorry that it hasn't happened this year.
Changing the subject!
When I edit my videos I often need to replace sound. Recording the images when the action is interesting does not always coincide with the best sound. For instance, on a recent boat trip my video was taken out on the deck in a strong breeze and the camera microphone picked up that dreadful roar. Even when the wind was not the problem the sound was more of the engine rumble than of the water splashing against the boat. This is why I have always tried to record my own background sounds - this has a strange name "foley". when I edited the video of the boat trip I was able to remove the bad sound from the sound track and replace it with sounds I have recorded and saved. Sometimes this sound was actually recorded with video - my sound recording is done with my video camera - and using "Audition" (in my case - but I think any audio editor will do the same thing) I could locate the file on my computer and click on "extract audio from video" and the sound would appear on the Audition timeline - where I could edit it. When I say "edit" that means I can remove sounds from it that are not wanted, such as shouting, dogs barking, the bang of something being put down heavily, and so forth. Once the sound is edited it can be saved with a new name as either a .wav file or .mp3 file - I usually save as .mp3. Once saved it can be used anywhere, in video or in photo montages.
My bird file is only 6% uploaded after all this time so I will publish this jotting and add the video once it is available.
My Internet connection is so slow, anyone would think that I am on dial up! Anyway, while waiting (and I am still waiting) for the movie to upload to youtube - it is only 45 seconds long!!!! - I have had time to make a batch of marmalade!
I have looked to see if adsl-2 is available but of course it is not for this patch of the Gold Coast! I should move into the country!
The speed of uploading a couple of short clips has put me off trying to put "real" videos in Youtube. The size of the movie I am trying to load is only 105mb on my hd.
AJ

Video of my dogs

I have just taken a few seconds of video of my "family"! Introducing my two boys checking out the swimming pool. It is the middle of July and this is supposed to be winter. The temperature is 21 outside and jumpers are not needed today!

Sunset at last!

I have been hoping that the sky would behave one evening so that I could try my new camera out on a colourful sky. (Nikon D90) Well tonight was my night! Admittedly there was colour but it only covered a fairly small area of the huge expanse of sky that I can see from my back veranda so I did have to use the tele end of my 18-55mm lens.

The camera was put into full manual mode - I did not want the camera to compensate for the darkness. The aperture was set on f/8 and left on f/8 and the shutter speed was varied according to the results I got. (After each shot I get a couple of second's preview of the image).

Composition is always important to me so I had to carefully choose which trees to include and where to position them and still get the sky colours I was after.

The first shot I am sharing was taken in the area of sky where the sun actually goes down - because it is winter time and I live in Australia, that area is in the North West. (In the summer time the sun goes down in the West).

f/8 1/25sec ISO 200 55mm

The next two photos were taken looking North at the colours reflected on the sky over the horizon. This always happens a little after the brightness in the west and is worth waiting for. The colour is softer but beautiful.

f/8 1/10 ISO 200 22mm

I just had to include the palm tree to show this sky as a tropical sky!

f/8 1/20 ISO 200 55mm

The shutter speed was varied to compensate for the darkening sky - I like to keep the darks "dark", this way the colours are richer. I have not "enhanced" the colours, I know this is easy to do but today was not necessary!

AJ