Hermanland

When I have more than 20,000 photo in my collection, I start to wonder how I can ensure all of them are still being kept in the storage media properly.  All media e.g. hard disk or DVD will be aging and I may find some photos cannot be displayed properly when I open them some day in the future.  This will happen although no one can tell exactly when.  Regular data backup will not help because backing up rubbish gets rubbish.  My solution is to have the computer automatically create a digest text file containing a list of order pair of file name and checksum for the photos in my collection bucket.  And then, I visually verify these photos.  It is tricky.  Visually verifying photos and then creating digest is still not the safest.  Then, I can have the computer to automatically verify the photos regularly.  Whenever I need to copy or move the photos across partition, I also use a special tool with checksum verification to do so.

富士經典夢幻組Fujifilm made its name in high performance portable digital camera in its F series.  Fuji did it by leveraging the result of its continous R&D effort in sensor technologies and the careful balance in various factors in camera design.  I have no doubt the famous moonlight camera F31FD is qualified to be admit to my dream team.  The comparatively less well known F700 and F810 have recently joined my dream team.  Unlike F31FD, they are both capable of saving in raw format and supported by Adobe dng converter.  F700 is fitted with Super CCD SR to optimize the dynamic range while F810 provides 16:9 format.  A common characteristic of all these team members is that they all are not mega pixel blaster but still their humble 6 mega pixels sensors are producing pleasent image which can be seen from my online album http://hermanland.com/zp

Should I use raw format or jpg format when taking photograph? I had tried to explain to the beginners as most books do and still could not manage to get them understood with correct expectation. Recently, I think of a better analogy for easy explanation.  Just like raw food I got from the market, raw food is often not as tasty as the cooked food or raw format does not look as eye candy as pre-cooked jpg.  Well, some people prefer their dish cooked by P.  Here P may stand for chef from Pennisula hotel or the raw file processor from Pentax:-)  Oh, so Pennisula taste…oh, so Pentax color. If I cook the food myself, it may not taste the same as cooked by P or it may be even worse depending on my cooking skill or post processing skill to the raw file.  However, with the raw food on hand, I have the flexible to cook to whatever taste I want.

Although Fujifilm claims F200EXR as intelligent machine fitted with EXR sensor that auto switching between high resolution low noise mode aka the classic HR sensor and wide dynamic range DR mode aka the classic SR sensor, the end resulting image produced in its auto EXR mode is less than satisfactory except a better DR. In the Kim’s Fuji F70EXR – How to shoot it, Kim summaries his experience which also applies to F200EXR. 1) Use P mode for general purpose shooting, set M size to 5M, set auto iso 1600 or lower for people, set DR400 2) use EXR DR mode for super harsh sunlight, M size is fixed by the machine, iso is fixed at 200 by the machine, set DR800 3) Use M mode for special effect e.g. concerts or long exposure, set M size, set iso, set aperture wide open, set shutter speed.  For all cases, in film mode, use Provia.  Set -1 ev when shooting lights at night. Set -1/3 ev for general outdoor and -2/3 ev in strong sunlight.

The recent trend in portable DC to end the mega pixel war for better image quality is my long awaiting wish I was shouting for in hermanland.com back in 2006 when I got my F31FD which was my only choice of budget DC with well image quality at that time.  Despite I have the latest F200EXR and I appreciate its faster response and higher dynamic range, I am still using F31FD for its low noise, 35mm F2.8 lens, hence faster with less distortion for portrait.  The Fujifilm F series started from F10 in 2005 showing which can be achievable with the combination of Super CCD sensor and well balanced camera design among different factors.  In fact, Fujifilm made some DC with Super CCD before the F series glory story started and some of them had a funny upright format which look odd by today standards. One of them is Fujifilm F610 I recently got from a retail shop for HK$800.  It is brand new out of old stock and the whole package was made in Japan including even the battery.  I am happy to get an extra 1G XD card for free.  Following is its attraction to me:

1) Funny upright format
2) Funny dual LCD
3) Super CCD DC pre date the F series glory story
4) Can turn off the LCD and use the built-in optical viewfinder only
5) Faster lens with more portrait friendly focal length – 35mm F2.8
6) Bigger CCD size – 1/1.7
7) Aperture priority, shutter priority and full manul exposure mode

Just discovered that the upright format body of F610 is really handy for snapshot in coffee shop. Just set the timer and put the camera on the table. The view is less likely blocked by the table.  Here is the years my “antique” DC were made:
F610 (2003)
F31FD (2006)
F200EXR (2009)

What will happen when 2 image files with different keywords are brought together to form a version set? In Idimager, the labels are merged into the main version that can have label assigned while the other version cannot have. For example, the image A has 2 object label apple and fruit and the image B has 2 object label banana and fruit.  The object label item count is then 2.  The apple label item count is 1 and the banana label item count is 1 and the fruit label item count is 2.  After the 2 images forming a version set with image A as main version, the object label item count and fruit label item count are both decreased to 1.  The apple label item count and banana label item count both remain unchanged.  The label merging mechanism do not apply to auto label e.g. import session and that is why I found the auto label item count always decreasing after versioning as stated in my previous post.

After I added the meta data for my image file, where is the data kept? It may just be kept in the database, the XMP sidecar file or embedded in IPTC block or XMP block within the image file. Before I adapt a new tool to maintain meta data, I need to find out from where the tool will import the meta and to where the tool will keep the meta.  Adobe PS family software tends to use XMP sidecar for proprietary raw and even jpg.  For dng file, they keep the meta in the embedded XMP block. Because I prefer to keep the meta within the image file, I use PS Bridge purely as a media browser and avoid even doing any rating there.  I also turn on the ‘merge XMP’ option in file handling in Image Ingestor so that the batch meta will be inserted to the XMP block within the image file. From the product web page, I found quote “A little problem that this introduced is that there’s no way to prevent generation of XMP sidecars. This will be fixed.” Therefore, I need to manual delete the XMP sidecar files.  After ingestion, I keep my practice to maintain the meta always from Idimager because the tool maps its XMP based catalog to the EXIF, IPTC and XMP embedded block within the image file for maximum compatibility.

Wikka wiki 1.2 is available. The major enhancements to me are the support of table wiki markup and the nice looking ‘Light’ template. Same as previous version, I found the new version also stores the UTF-8 encoded non ascii characters as numeric reference e.g.  & # 915; & # 917; & # 925; & # 917; & # 931; & # 921; & # 931;
I need to apply the hack as I did for previous version to correct it. However, I found the search function to the non ascii characters did not work after the patch but there was no such problem with previous version with the same patch. Also, I just found there is a hack that may correct the search function but there seems to have some side effort but I have not tried this hack yet.

I expected the “import session” label under “Auto Catalog” label could keep me a record of how many image files I had imported to the Idimager database. However, I found a image file disappeared from the “import session” label after the file was made as a version e.g. album version of other existing image file. The item count next to the “import session” label also decreased accordingly.  The “import session” label will be more useful if its item count and pointers to image file not affected by versioning. Similar logic may also be useful for “download session” label.

With the observation above, I found I need to manually add the item count for versioned image files to find out how many image files that were originally imported and downloaded to the Idimager database. However, this method cannot be used per import session or download session.

Furthermore, for the item count in Version Place Holders, I found the item count of Versioned Images is not equal to the sum of the rest of the version place holders. The Versioned Images gave the number of version set which may be less than the sum of the rest of the version place holders because a version set may hold more than 1 version. Therefore, I should add back the rest of the version place holders to the import session to get back the number of image files which were originally imported to Idimager database.

For example, in the Idimager media explorer screenshot below, album display (11) + web display (175) + duplicate1 (85) + duplicate2 (8) = (279) which is not equal to versioned image (270).  Catalog  folders (15,205) = import sessions (14,926) + (279) which agrees with the WinDirStat screenshot result jpg (14,893) + avi (301) + mov (6) + mpg (1) + 3gp (4)

Idimager media explorer

Win Dir Statistic item count

I were suspecting there were some image files in the folder which were not known to the IDimager database yet.  I performed a “Search image files on hard drive” with “Only return uncataloged files” box checked.  However, I found the search result also included the “Uncataloged” labeled image files making the result less useful for my purpose.  A “Uncataloged” image file may still be known to the IDimager database.  For example, I imported (not downloaded) the image files to IDimager.  These image files were surely known to the database because they were referenced in the “Import session” label under the “Auto Catalog” label.  Some of these images were automatically labelled as “Uncataloged” during the import session because there were no keyword embedded in these image files yet.  The search function will be more useful if there is another check box to “Only return files not known to database”.