Friends and colleagues, the internet is an amazing source of information and resources. In that spirit, I've created this html email to share with you some of the things I've gleaned from recent jobs, exploits, and adventures. I'll also share some goodies that I've located by either dilligent work or in some cases, dumb luck. I'm trying to post this quarterly but we'll have to see how it goes. Thanks, -Eric

RECENT JOBS

Just got back from the Fellows Conference in San Jose. Although I was hired primarily as a "Speaker Ready" tech by Advance Concepts, Inc., I was also charged with getting some grip and grins of the attendees for an end of conference slide show. It was wet and windy all three days making an exterior of the Fairmont Hotel dull. Therefore, I decided to shoot the exterior at night and test the dynamic range of the Olympus C-7070. With the help of bracketing and a little Photoshop wizardry, I managed to get this image. Even though the front of the building was very poorly illuminated, it did get some light from the surrounding sources. Not bad for a point and shoot.

The entire crew of that show were a real pleasure to work with and many thanks to Advance Concepts for hiring me for the gig. During that show, I met an outstanding sound guy: Michael Knowles, or "Bink" as he likes to be called. Not only did he have the best remastered, high bit rate MP3s I'd ever heard but he was a great source for freely offered audio advice. His site is equally as helpful with very useful information including a great downloadable audio test CD that he assembled.
www.binkster.net/extras.shtml#cd

ON THE NET

It's approaching the 100 year anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and I recently began to seriously consider off-site digital storage for my bookkeeping and image files. It was surprisingly difficult to locate a reasonably priced service that doesn't require you to use their software or sells only by the terabytes of space at a time. After a half days hard labor, I finally found one. Although they are located in LA, they are in a recently retrofitted building and I assume if we have a quake up here that it probably won't occur on their fault lines at the same time.
www.MyNetStorage.com-5GB's of Data Storage for only $3.99 a month!

If you're interested in getting your computer to auto upload while you sleep, I recommend SyncBack. It's a simple backup utility for only $25.
SyncBackSE V4.0.6

Yes, I'm an affiliate of these products and will get a few Sheqals if you purchase through these links -but it doesn't effect the end price and I've done the leg work for you.

If you shoot buildings digitally with the SLR type cameras, you're probably getting some barrel distortion and convergance in you wide angle shots. There's hope for those of us who don't yet have Photoshop CS2. ePaperPress has made PT Lens a stand alone or Photoshop plug-in that corrects the problem. In addition, it also corrects chromatic aberration, vignetting, and fisheye distortion. But best of all it's FREE! I do however, recomend a donation.
It's very small and entitles you to the manual.
http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/

TECH TIP

If you're involved with shutting and or restarting down multiple Windows computers at a time you'll save some time with the following key code shortcuts:
Win, U, U to close all programs and shut down Windows.
Win, U, R to close all programs and restart Windows.

It works with nearly all 3rd party programs- give it a try.

PHOTO TIP Hunting Rainbows

With the enormous amount of rain we garnered in Northern California this season, rainbows are a fitting subject. Yes, yes I know that they are cliché and notoriously difficult to predict. There are however a few tricks to finding them and Galen Rowell was paid an extra $10k by National Geographic for his rainbow shot of the Potalla Palace in Tibet

1) Rainbows are best observed towards sunrise or sunset when a rain storm is dissipating or approaching.

2) The apex of the arch will be at 180° to the Sun and the sides to the right and left are at equal distance. Sometimes not all of the rainbow is visible and knowing this will give you a direction to look.

3) The higher the sun is in the sky, the lower the rainbow will be to the horizon.

4) The vividness of the colors the rainbow depends upon the size of the rain drops. Larger drops refract the light with greater purity and definition.

5) As Galen Rowell knew you can place a rainbow towards a subject by changing your position. But you will need to move quite a bit to see the change -macro moves, not just a few steps away.

6) Exposure is normal and no filter will improve the refraction in the water drops.

While rainbows are not as elusive as lightning bolts, it can be frustrating. The results though, can be very rewarding. Happy hunting!

NEW EQUIPMENT

ESP has acquired the Sony Z1U. It's one of the better HVR series camcorders allowing me to shoot in HD, SD, DVCAM and direct to DVD.The Z1U uses a Carl Zeiss lens with an impressive 12:1 zoom from 4.5mm – 54mm. Its dynamic range is phenomenal and the 16x9 format is truly impressive. I'll post some footage when I complete some other upgrades to the web site.

But do keep me in mind for camera work -my rates are very competitive.