How does a photographer fix a broken light switch?

How does a photographer fix a broken dimmer light switch in their office that is stuck on high and making the light too harsh?

No, the answer is not to call electrician.

Nope, it's not to get out the tools and replace the switch.

You also guessed wrong if you think the lights would simply be turned off.

The correct answer is in the full post.

Nikon D3x announced, Where's the new 70-200mm?

All the rumors are no longer rumors. Nikon officially announced the Nikon D3x SLR today. This professional digital SLR features a new Nikon designed sensor that delivers 24.5-megapixel resolution and RAW files that are at least 138 MB each!

The camera is strictly of interest to professional photographers and lawyers/doctors/dentists that can afford its estimated selling price (ESP) of $7999.95.

All the online forums and mailing lists are jumping with lots of Nikon and Canon users opining or making fun of the price. But to be truthful, I'm not too surprised by it. Its fair when you compare it similarly specced cameras.

Most of those complaining are making comparisons to the Canon 5D Mark II. But is this a fair comparison? While the Canon 5D Mark II is used by many pros it is certainly not pro-grade in terms of waterproofing, shock resistance, dust resistance, reliability and build quality. It's a "prosumer" product even according to Canon. A fair apples to apples comparison is the pro-grade Canon 1Ds Mark III which was released at $7999.00. Oh. My. God! What a nerve of Nikon to charge .95 cents more!

Besides, we all know no one charges the ESP after the initial shipments are sold. The prices start falling tens of dollars within 2 or 3 weeks of that and hundreds within 2 or 3 months. It should level off at $6,500 not before long.

I can't wait to start seeing the reviews of the Nikon D3x as I'm very eager to know if the 24.5 MP sensor lives up to the hype. Does it really perform as well as the D3 in low light? I wouldn't be surprised if it does but I wouldn't consider parting with any of my cash until confirming it does.

My biggest concern is that Nikon still hasn't refreshed the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom Nikkor Lens. While this workhorse lens is nothing less than fantastic on 35MM film bodes and digital DX sensor SLRs, such as the Nikon D300, it shows its age and deficiencies on the Nikon D3 and D700. In my opinion, it shouldn't be used on these bodies for professional work. So I always keep mine on my D300.

Nikon has released new lens essentially optimized for the FX sensor DSLRs such as the stunning 14-24mm and 24-70mm but there is such a large hole in the line up until you get up to the 200-400mm. Many pros that still had the 80-200mm on a shelf switched back to it. Others are using the Sigma 100-300mm F/4.

I must admit that the problems with the 70-200mm on the D3 has made me regret buying the D3. Had I known how it performed on it, I would have held off!

Short of an updated lens with F/2.8 and VR that covers the 70-200mm range on the market I'd hold off on even considering buying the D3x or any other FX sensor DSLR body. Nikon needs to fill this hole and fast! I cannot believe we're still waiting for it.

It was rumored to be announced on two previous occasions and many were saying up until last week we'd see it tonight too. I held out hope and thought we would see it updated along with the D3x tonight and possibly even seen the 80-400mm refreshed too. I have a feeling that Nikon is experiencing production delays or manufacturing problems that led them to pull back on announcing it. I really hope this is the case. I would actually feel better if I we heard this from Nikon, because it would be very alarming if they're not working on an update and no announcement is imminent! Nikon really needs to address this issue soon or at least speak out about it.

The D3x press release follows.

Why I don't waste my time with new IRC networks

Earlier today, I was repeatedly asked why I won't help others start IRC networks, and why I won't even join any other networks. This person made some silly statements, and put me on the defensive about the issue.

I always politely decline these requests and state that I have too many windows open so I cannot connect to anymore networks, which is actually true. I run Parallels just so I can run mIRC, and it can barely handle all the channels I'm in on the three networks I connect to.

It's also a time management issue, especially when it comes to starting a new network. Explaining this is usually good enough and puts the issue to bed. However today, he kept pushing me for a more direct answer and I just didn't know how I could answer this question without offending the person asking.

FolderShare works so of course Microsoft plans to FUBAR it

When Microsoft acquired FolderShare in November of 2005, I immediately started to wonder how long it would take for Microsoft to FUBAR it.

To my surprise, Microsoft somehow managed to avoid messing with it too much and it's been a great program and service that performed nearly problem free and even saved my butt just days ago and it wasn't the first time it did that. However, I worry that they are finally getting around to "improving it" because of this notice posted on FolderShare.com:

I'm not resistant to change. I could care less about name changes. Even UI or other changes don't scare me. I only care about FolderShare's feature set and its reliability. FolderShare has been nearly perfect because it does what it advertises and does it well. With Microsoft driving things and now making changes to it, I'm concerned that this could be a downgrade instead of an upgrade.

In the bullet list the announcement states, "sync up to 20 folders with 20,000 files each." But in the next to last paragraph it confusingly states, "...up to 20 libraries and 20,000 files." Did they mean to say, "...up to 20 libraries and 20,000 files in each," or did they add the first "each" by accident? A global maximum of 20,000 files will be a huge problem for a lot of us. Certainly for me! Even 20,000 files per library is hardship but I can move things around and create some more libraries.

Additionally, the official announcement makes no mention of a new Mac client but this post on their blog does. Why the omission in the official notice?

I hope they quickly clarify these confusing and conflicting statements and somehow avoid FUBARing FolderShare. It'd really be a shame if Microsoft screws up this fantastic program/service.

FolderShare to the rescue! Mozy fails, it's gone!

I've had an unbelievable frustrating few days thanks to a significant OS crash Thursday. It was the first crash I've ever experienced like this since I switched to Mac. It locked the system completely; it wouldn't respond to any keystrokes or mouse movements and was repeating over and over the last second from a podcast that I was playing in iTunes. After waiting over 30 minutes hoping it would start responding I had to do the unthinkable and power the system off using the power switch.

I'm not positive what caused the crash but I highly suspect it was Parallels Desktop 3.0 (5608) as WindowsXP running in it was having window draw errors moments before.

In any case, the crash corrupted the volume on one of my Drobo storage drives. It houses over 14,500 photographs: ALL of my personal photography projects from the last 6 years, most of which are wildlife, nature and landscape photographs I've carefully labored to make across the state of Vermont. Without exaggeration they're the sum of hours of work from almost every single day...countless hikes and long drives, late nights and extremely early mornings!

At first I thought I was able to fix the volume with Tech Tools but after a reboot I got an error message that stated something like, the drive volume is damaged and needs to be reformatted; it has been mounted in a temporary state so you may copy all the data that can still be read.

I was livid! Over 1/3 of the files were suddenly missing completely and many more were corrupted!

As you might remember from a previous post, I pay for Mozy backup service to backup these photographs but since I've been throttling the re-upload of all these photographs (see that previous post for why) it still hadn't finished re-backing up everything on the Drobo.

It was percipient that I had FolderShare, setup to synchronize everything on the drive to another Drobo connected to another computer. If it wasn't for this, I could have lost most, if not all, of my photographs and I WOULD HAVE FELT DEVASTATED!!!

I finally got everything back in place yesterday and I was "up and running again" but if all the stress from this wasn't enough, Mozy decided it wanted to re-upload everything on the Drobo yet AGAIN. For frack sake, NOT AGAIN!!! Mozy service is going to be canceled at the end of the month.

My advice to Mozy:
Get your act together and make it so in the event a "deleted" file reappears within 30 days it doesn't have to be re-uploaded! Fix this BUG and I'll gladly pay for the service again.

I'm calling it a bug, as it is ridiculous: Files shouldn't be "marked as deleted" immediately. There is no reason to! Everyone deletes files by accident or has similar problems like this fiasco and get the files back in place without having to download them from Mozy or maybe they do have to re-download them from Mozy. But, in either case, there is no reason that the files should have to be re-uploaded again once they're back in place on the user's system when they're still on your servers. FFS WHY DO YOU GUYS THINK THIS IS A GOOD IDEA??!

Until and unless this bug is fixed I'll just use Amazon AWS S3 for off site backup as I do for all my commercial photography.

One thing that's important for me to clarify: I don't think it was Drobo's or Mac's fault.
I believe that this volume corruption could have occurred with ANY external hard drive and wasn't anymore likely to happen because I had a Drobo. I've read it doesn't matter if you're using Mac or Windows and nor does it matter how the drive is formatted. It's just one of those unfortunate things that can sometimes happen because the drive isn't properly unmounted due to a crash.

Readers: What do you use to backup off site?
Please let me know your recommendations or thoughts on this fiasco in the comments.