photo/video storage and backup recommendation

For a large bulk archive:

Onnto DataTale 4-Bay RAID System w/Quad Interface:
http://oyendigital.com/hard-drives/store/RS-M4QO.html
Simple unmanaged FW800 RAID. Just works. I've had good luck so far.
$380

4x Seagate ST31500341AS Barracuda 7200.11
$130 each = $520

Benchmarks of this combination:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=r6AbEE-_mVjw4xA1uGHeaAg&gid=0

So $900 for 4.5TB of RAID5 bulk storage that outperforms your laptop's
drive, and might outperform your desktop's drive. Fast enough over
FW800 that you can do your edits right on the array, rather than
copying back and forth. If you have an SSD, you might want to do the
copying anyway.

But RAID isn't a backup. How do you back up 4.5TB of stuff?

Quad Interface FireWire 800/400/USB 2.0/eSATA - SATA I/II Hard Drive Docking Bay
http://www.newertech.com/products/voyagerq.php
Just got this today, haven't had a chance to evaluate.
$100

Use the same 1.5TB Seagate drives as backup disks. Keep a few
off-site. Should a drive in the array fail, you can repurpose one of
your old backup disks as a replacement for the dead drive.

I think what I've outlined above should be pretty close to the current
price/performance sweet-spot for FW800 storage and backups.
Everything has been dead-simple so far, and hasn't involved anywhere
near the amount of tinkering I had to do with my NAS. If the docking
bay behaves as expected, I'm a very happy camper. Any suggestions for
improvement, or am I spot-on?

color calibration eats babies

I want six hours of my life back.

The windows on the top are Lightroom. The window on the bottom is Finder. The image was color-corrected in Lightroom to have pretty golden colors. In Finder, it takes on a reddish hue.

Approximate sequence of events:

1. N weeks ago: calibrated monitor with USB calibration device A
2. Rebooted computer.
3. 2 days ago: calibrated monitor with USB calibration device B. Did not notice a visible change. No reboot.
4. Restarted Lightroom.
5. Color-corrected image to have golden tones.
6. Saw icky color disparity between Lightroom and finder.

The problem is 3). The calibration device is broken or confused. It has lost the ability to properly calibrate the color red. After calibration, red is rendered as a lovely shade of the color puke. No visible change was noticed after calibration because there was no red on the screen.

The computer booted with a correct color profile. Finder loaded this correct profile on startup, when first logging into the machine. Lightroom loaded the busted profile on startup, and the new busted profile was used for color-correcting. Finder was still running with the old correct profile, so it rendered the colors differently. Relaunching Finder caused it to load the new busted profile, displaying the same golden tones as Lightroom.

Red herring: Photoshop CS 3's "Save for Web" preview renders the image in a color profile that doesn't seem to be sRGB and doesn't seem to be the monitor's color profile. This threw me for a loop for a while. Internet sleuthing showed that lots of people rant about this preview display. Decided to ignore Photoshop for now.

Take-away:

Sanity-check the results of your monitor calibration against another machine, either uncalibrated or calibrated with a different device. A perfect match isn't going to happen, but you should see something in the right ballpark.

Relaunch all applications (including Finder) after changing the monitor color profile. Rebooting gives some additional peace of mind.

iPhoto sucks, PicasaWeb sorta sucks

When I was shooting with my D40, I did my post-processing in iPhoto.
I saw very washed-out colors when I uploaded jpegs to picasaweb.
Since then, I purchased a D700 and I've been shamed into using real
editing software. Now I'm using Capture NX 2 for editing.

Tinkering I've discovered or verified:

• Unless told otherwise, Nikon DSLRs create RAWs and jpegs with the "Nikon sRGB" color space.
• iPhoto generates jpegs with the "Generic RGB" color space.
• Picasaweb strips color profiles from images.
  
• When saving jpeg from Capture NX 2 _with_ an ICC color profile and viewing with PhotoMechanic:
• There is no perceptible difference between an sRGB jpeg and my "Nikon sRGB" reference image.
• My "Generic RGB" test image has faded highlights and _less_ vivid color than my "Nikon sRGB" reference image.
• My "Adobe RGB" test image has faded highlights and _more_ vivid color than my "Nikon sRGB" reference image.
• When saving JPEG from Capture NX 2 with or without an ICC color profile and viewing in picasaweb:
• There is no perceptible difference between a non-ICC sRGB jpeg and my "Nikon sRGB" reference image.
• My non-ICC "Generic RGB" test image has _much_ darker highlights than my "Nikon sRGB" reference image.
• My non-ICC "Adobe RGB" test image has _much_ less vivid color than my "Nikon sRGB" reference image.

Conclusion:

• iPhoto is generating jpegs in a non-sRGB color space that looks substantially different when rendered as sRGB. Fail.
• Picasaweb strips color profiles from images, causing them to be rendered as sRGB even in colorspace-aware browsers like Safari. Fail. But at least behavior is consistent across all browsers.
• Don't use iPhoto if you want to put your images on the web. Outside of Safari, your images will look like crap.
• Only use Picasaweb with sRGB images. Images in any other color space will look like crap.
  

Independence Day

Macbook IO Benchmark

External RAID5 Enclosure:
Oyen Digital RS-M4QO
4x Seagate ST31500341AS Barracuda 7200.11

External SSD:
Oyen Digital EB2-S
1x Intel X25-M SSD

XBench Results

Conclusions:

eSATA is ~50% faster than FW800 for large block size reads and writes on RAID5, and large block size reads on the SSD. It's worth picking up an eSATA card if you want peak performance from fast external storage.

A consumer-grade 4-disk RAID5 array can hold its own against an SSD for sequential access, but is much slower for random access. It's worth making your boot drive an SSD, but not worth paying for an SSD for (say) video editing.

If you RAID your SSDs, you have too much money.

GoogleServe - Science is Fun IV

On Thursday, 60 Google employees volunteer to help RAFT package science kits for schools. RAFT is Resource Area for Teachers, a Silicon Valley non-profit that provides K-12 teachers with materials to teach math, science, art, and technology in fun and creative ways.

Maker Faire

Star Trail Time Lapse

I started with this picture, taken two weeks ago:



I loved the colors, but obviously should have been standing in a better place. I went back a few nights ago, and grabbed this much cleaner shot of the same ride, this time from the other side:



Then I decided to set up a time lapse of 13 second exposures, every 20 seconds, so that I could watch the stars move. I managed to snag only 43 frames before boardwalk security found us, and kicked us out. And fog rolled in, right in the middle. But the video drips with potential, and makes me want to go back and get kicked out a few more times:



I also want to tear down the metal guard rail around the ride. :(

Coastal Wandering

Big Basin Hike