It’s “Quick Blog” Tuesday
>> Dead MacBook Crisis: Day 14
Howdy folks! That’s right, I’m still battling with the massive hard drive crash I had the day before my Lightroom Tour in Denver last month, but after jumping through a few hoops (and with some help from Apple), I believe that by the time you read this my MacBook Pro will have been fully restored from my Time Capsule backup, and my work life will be somewhat back in order.
There are half a dozen reasons why this restoration took so long, most of them are my fault, but I’m just glad it appears to be behind me (for the most part), and I can get back to full speed.
>> The Review That Could Have Been
I’m still working off a stripped machine for this post, so I don’t have my review of the Topaz Adjust plug-in for Photoshop that I hoped to have for you today, but if all goes well, I’ll have it for you on Thursday, so keep your fingers crossed for me.
>> The Crazy Numbers Continue for the Worldwide Photo Walk
I am just amazed at these numbers, after only two weeks:
- 665 Worldwide Walks are now active
- More than 8,000 photographers have already signed up to participate in their local photo walk.
I don’t know what to say, but “Whoo Hoo!!!” This is going to be a blast!!!! (here’s the link to a list of active cities).
>> Online Gear Guide for Photo Walkers
If you’re going on the Photo Walk, B&H Photo put together a brief Photo Walk Gear Guide with some tips, and links to accessories used by photo walkers. Here’s the link.
>> Auto ISO for Sports Shooters
On last week’s episode of D-Town TV (the weekly show for Nikon DSLR shooters) I did a little tip for sports shooters on how to use the Auto ISO feature for making sure you’re able to freeze the action no matter what the lightning conditions (well, within reason, anyway). This tip is especially helpful for anyone shooting night games, and we’ve gotten lots of great response from that tip. In the same episode Matt has a great segment on our #1 most asked about feature from the past few weeks—Active D-Lighting. You can watch the episode online right here.
>> Moose on “Nikon’s Best Kept Secret”
When I was out shooting in Portland, Oregon a couple of weeks ago with Laurie Excell, I saw Laurie shooting with Nikon’s 70-300mm f/4.5 – f/5.6 VR lens, and I was surprised to see her shooting such an inexpensive lens (around $500) because Laurie owns about every high-end fast lens known to man (after all, she runs “EquipmentLady.com“). Anyway, she was raving about how incredibly sharp the lens was, how surprisingly lightweight it was, and that it worked with the new full frame cameras without cropping the frame, and so she let me shoot with it for the rest of the afternoon, and as soon as I got back, I ordered one myself (it came in yesterday). Anyway, so I’m on Moose Peterson’s blog tonight, and I see a post called “Nikon’s Best Kept Secret” with a video clip from Moose himself, and son-of-a-gun if it wasn’t about this very same lens. Take two minutes and watch Moose’s video (here’s the link), and check out the shot he got of the Thunderbirds using that lens. Amazing!
>> Tomorrow’s Guest Blogger is…...
…a guy who’s taught me a lot about shooting sports, and about getting access to shoot professional sporting events, my buddy (and pro sports shooter), Mike Olivella.
Mike has picked a topic that I’ve had so many requests for here on the blog, and it’s something you’re not going to see just about anywhere else, so make sure you’re back here to see what Mike’s got up his sleeve tomorrow.
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That’s it for today, folks. Thanks again for stopping in, and I hope I’ll catch you back here on Thursday. There may well be a photo there that will give you a flashback to a simpler time, when there was no Internet so we didn’t know we weren’t supposed to wear parachute pants or thin ties.
Hey Scott,
There is always a positive from all bad things no matter how bad. I would bet that you won’t be caught in this ‘hard drive’ situation again.
Does Canon have a lens like the one you refer to?
See ya,
Mike
I am not a professional, but I recently got the Canon EFS 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS and think it is a great walk around lens for my Canon Rebel. It’s about $530 on Amazon.
Thanks Julie, I’ll check it out.
Mike
Actually Julie, Canon has an exact equivalent in the EF 70-300 f/4-5.6 IS Image Stabilizer USM Autofocus Lens. While not “L” quality, I have heard it is just as sharp as its more expensive counterparts. While I don’t personally own the lens, the camera shop owner that I visit quite a bit with uses it all the time. I was of the same perspective that Scott writes above, not giving it much thought because it’s not L glass, but apparently, it’s a really nice lens. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/397663-USA/Canon_0345B002_70_300mm_f_4_5_6_EF_IS.html
Hi Mike,
I have the canon EF 70-300 mm lens, and I have gotten some great captures with it. I don’t see any difference between the canon and nikon lens. I like mine a lot. I bought mine from B&H Video for $549. I use a canon 40D camera. I’ll be taking it with me on my photo walk in Denver!
Dennis
Take care,
Dennis
Scott,
if you are using a MacBook exclusively here my tip for backups. Get an external firewire 800 drive (eg. Lacie Rugged drive) and use SuperDuper to do full drive backups.
That you can do a full drive backup while the OS is running is in my opinion one of the killer features of OSX. You can setup SuperDuper to shut down the computer once it’s done with the backup. That way you simply start the backup when you leave the office and that’s it.
Once the backup is complete you can boot directly from the Firewire drive if you need to (ie if you internal hard drive dies). Even better, you can take your firewire drive to any Mac (and I mean any Mac) and boot as if it was your own computer. So if you Mac dies or gets stolen you can continue to work by simply getting hold of another Mac. Then once you get your own Mac back simply boot from the Firewire drive (which now acts as your computer) and use SuperDuper again to restore the OSX, Applications and your data from the external drive to the internal hard drive.
As I said this so simple with SuperDuper I am surprised Apple hasn’t bought the company yet and build this tool into the OS.
Yes, Time Machine works as well. But it’s by no means as convenient as doing a full drive backup in my opinion.
BTW, I am in no way affiliated with SuperDuper or Lacie or Apple.
Tom,
Thanks for this great tip on SuperDuper. Just bought it (very reasonably priced at http://www.shirt-pocket.com) and am copying a bootable external OWC Firewire drive now. I believe this will be a much better strategy for an on-the-road hard drive crash. Hope Scott will consider giving this a look.
I am not affiliated with any of these guys either. Just a photographer who spends time on the road.
Thanks again,
Stan Burman
Page, Arizona
I’d love to know where you can get the Nikon 70-300VR for just over 400.00!!! I know that you could get it for about 425.00 a year ago, but I haven’t seen it anywhere that low in the past 9 months or so. Maybe Moose knows something that we don’t?
Thank you for a really great heads-up.
The Australian dollar is bad at present, but over here we’re always ripped off big time.
My usual photography shop has this lens at just over $1000, and the cheap online store I use lots is $783 plus freight.
I’ll put it at the top of my wish list!
The 70-300 VR is a great little lens. I have had mine since last year and it works just fine for me. I often take it along instead of the 70-200 2.8, it weighs less and is smaller.
Hi Scott,
I’ve been shooting with the 70-300 VR for almost a year and I love it! It’s saved me from spending $1900.00 on the 70-200 VR, which my wife is very thankful for. I use it to shoot portraits, wildlife, and even some products. It is very sharp, very light, and the VR works well. At f 5.6 you can easily blow your background out of focus, especially at 200mm and beyond. I don’t shoot a lot of really low-light situations, and if I needed to I would just rent the 70-200 VR. The gang at B&H recommended this lens to me over the 70-200mm VR. It’s great to see that photographers like yourself, Moose, and Laurie are using it too!
Take care,
Stephen
I’m glad the secret is out! I’ve had the 70-300 VR lens for about a year now and it’s been a great lens, but nobody believed me. I think they’ll listen to you and Moose though.
Can you lend moose some bandwidth
It is better to watch Moose Peterson’s video podcast through iTunes.
Scott-
I was looking at at the NIkon 1.4 teleconverter the other day for my 70-200 2.8 VR. Teleconverters are supposed to be a great way to extend reach without purchasing another lens—with a slight loss in sharpness and a loss in maximum aperture. Your comments (and Moose’s) make me wonder if the 70-300 VR would be a better investment then the 1.4 TC. Other than having to find more room in the camera bag, seems I might get better sharpness with a similar loss in aperture at a slight premium. Hmm….
The Photo Walk is getting BIG. Now, a listing by state would REALLY be helpful.
Keep the city listing, but a list by state (and country for non-US) would be be most helpful in helping us see the picture with perspective, keeping tabs on walks near us.
I own Topaz Adjust and wanted to let you know that there are problems with the product. It appears that they also know there are problems with a constant error messages relating to”proengine 1000″. If you go to their web site there are many complaints regarding the product. from their answers it seems to revolve around memory problems.
Reading the first part about tomorrow’s guest blogger almost made me panic…I thought you were talking about ME!! (haha!)
I agree with L Lancaster – a list by state would be extremely helpful.
Also frustrating is that we want to join the photo walk this year, but I had a question for the leader running the one closest to us, and he didn’t bother to email me back (I emailed him over 2 weeks ago, and any response didn’t get picked up by our spam filters). I’ll have to hope there’s another one reasonably close to me which gets added in later.
I couldn’t agree more the 70-300 VR is a great lens, and in my opinion the biggest bang for the buck! I’m on a tight budget and really happy I could get such a sharp and handy lens!
Hi. Love your comments regarding the 70-300 but I have a question I have never been able to get an answer to.
I have a 2.8 70-200 and a x1.4 and x2.0 TC. Will the performance with the TC’s be as good as the 70-300 and 200-400 lens. Also am I better off cropping or using the TC 2.0.
By the way, with your tips I used the 70-200 with extender shooting racecars (and Patrick Dempsey) and got to use the photo holes and had a blast. Thanks for the tips!!!!
Hey Scott,
Consider reviewing the rest of the plug-ins from Topaz! The noise reduction plug-in looks quit promising. Also, I am researching plug-ins and I was wondering if you thought the niksoftware lightroom plug-in is great, or if you thought it was gimped and people should buy the photoshop plug-in (they have the complete suite for both).
Joey
I’ll echo the comments about the 70-300. I bought mine last summer (acting on the adivce of Laurie as well!) to haul up a mountain on the annual guys backpacking trip. It’s taken me awhile to learn my way around it, but when I do things right, it produces some great shots!
So what went wrong with the TimeMachine BU? I’m using it and I’m a little scared.
JT
Hey Scott.
What scary me is how much money do I need to prevent situation like yours. From my experience I separated two types of crash.
1. Data lost with my work ( clients files, projects etc.)
2. System failure which stopping me to do my work
You have very good system to prevent first option. I read your advices and I think it make sense.
Case number 2
What I figured out, the most important thing is data, software I can install from cd.
This is why I’m using software like Sugarsync or VNC. This allowed me to download any data from any location with internet around the globe.
I will see you in Ybor City.
Hi Scott- I am so a fan of your books, they are awesome. But now I need some help. I was reading your Digital Photography Book 2 and decided to try the wireless flash idea with my Nikon D100. I’ve owned an SB-8090 for years now yet never played with that before. I can’t seem to figure out how to get my flash OUT of the wireless mode now. I have gone back to the manual, tried all the buttons and combinations, even taken out the batteries overnight to no avail. It’s still in the “remote” screen, rendering the flash useless at the moment. Any ideas how to unfreeze it? Thanks for any help you can give me.
Press and hold the ‘Sel’ button in the middle of the multi-function button for approximately 2 seconds. A menu will come up; scroll down until you see two squiggly lines (think snakes) with two flashes. With that menu item highlighted, press the ‘Sel’ button again. Scroll up from ‘REMOTE’ to ‘OFF’, press the ‘Sel’ button again, and then briefly press and release the ON/OFF button. This should take you back to the main screen and you will no longer be in ‘Remote’ mode.
Hope that helps,
Stephen
Thanks for your comments regarding the 70-300. It got me over the threshold. Just now I arrived back from the dealer, around the corner, with my own Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5 – f/5.6 VR lens for my D200.
Thanks for your response, Steven. I tried this suggestion again and it doesn’t appear to work for me. The only screen that pops up next is the one with the four boxes on the left side. The bulb, “LCD, light and dark box. I know the screen you mentioned with “Remote” and “Off” etc. I saw it briefly once and it was gone.
Diane
Diane,
That’s the screen you’re looking for… the four boxes you see. When you see the ‘bulb’ and ‘LCD’ then scroll up until you can’t scroll anymore. You should then see the ISO and squiggly lines with a blank box and A/AA below it. Highlight the squiggly lines and press the ‘Sel’ button. Then scroll to ‘OFF’ and then press ‘Sel’. Press the ON/OFF button and you should be all set.
GOT IT!! I just didn’t keep scrolling after going through the four boxes. Thanks so much Steven, for your time too, I so appreciate your help! I had pulled out my other 800 to use but glad to have this one back up and working.
Very sincerely,
Diane
I shot 1000 pics using the 70-300VR at an airshow this past Saturday – I only had 2 that were blurred.
Steve
Scott, you might not realize who the biggest salesperson for the 70-300 was at Photoshop World this year in Boston: Jay Maisel. I ran into him in the food court and he raved about that lens and said that since he had been in Boston, he’d gotten a bunch of people to buy it, including Laurie (don’t know about Moose). His recommendation was so powerful that I ordered one that night! Considering the source, how could I not? Great lens!
Steve
I completely agree re: the 70-300 VR, excellent. Moose has used it for awhile now – you can search his block for that lens and it was actually his blog that turned me onto it. Thom Hogan has an excellent, critical review of the lens up that was incredibly informative. (Thom’s reviews are always very well done and although he shots Nikon, he’s doesn’t write useless ad copy but rather very good reviews that highlight the pros and cons: http://www.bythom.com/70300VRlens.htm ) I ordered one from B&H mid-summer last year and I sent Moose a thank you email after a few days of using it, because I appreciated his highlighting it on his blog.
The 70-300VR is a decent lens for the price—gotta remember the “for the price” part though. If you compare it to the thing that Nikon made earlier—the 70-300G which has to be one of the worst lens in the history of the universe even considering its price. You can still find the 70-300G new in Tokyo for nearly the new price (now at apx $170) when many wouldn’t accept it if they were paid $170 to take it.
Sorry ’bout the Mac. Got one in January after years of PC. While there have been a number of other problems and some hardware failures, knock on wood, at least the hard drive hasn’t melted down yet.