Pacific Image Powerslide 3650 Rolling Case

Having to move around a lot of equipment over the last few weeks I found out that a Pacific Image Powerslide 3650 will fit into a Think Tank Airport Security rolling case.

You can add a loupe and a few extra things and have an easy way to move things around. The Think Tank isn't cheap and if you are a DIY (Do It Yourself) type you could easily adapt a rolling suitcase for the task.

Here is the link to the Think Tank website: http://www.thinktankphoto.com/

They make some of the best photo gear I've ever used and it's really well made. If you need to take a scanner on the road you it's a great setup.

Photos Are Important Save Them!

A photo from a family reunion in the 1940's.

We spent the weekend going to the Cupp Reunion in Briery Branch, VA and it just reaffirms the power photographs have to suspend time and help us travel back to places and events in the past.

On the table was a photograph of a group of people taken sometime in 1940. There in the middle of a group of kids was my wife's mother. Beside her were some other kids who became her aunts and uncles.

I hope that the images we are creating now will still be around 70 years from now for others to enjoy.

Goodbye LU!!

It's official today was my last day at Liberty University. It came down to a choice between continuing in my position at the university or starting graduate school full-time at Radford University.

I think they were left with a pretty good workflow process and I hope someone else will come in a pickup the process I started. I'll miss my coworkers

I'm looking forward to getting my MFA at Radford and plan on keeping this blog current and active.

Goodbye LU!

The Image Numbers Add Up Differently Today

Some Wolf Pack action from the 90's.

If you start to go through a lot of film negatives to decide what you want to digitize you may find there is a lot less to choose from than we have in the digital age. Let's take a basketball game for example.

At most games it's not unusual to shoot 500 to 700 images per game some even shoot 1,000 or more and out of that around 50 or so may get posted onto a website and around 150 or 200 will get archived.

When I worked as a photojournalist using film I'd shoot about two rolls per game. That's 2x36 or 72 exposures for the entire game. For two games I'd shoot four rolls or 144 frames. Why you ask? Well when you went back to the paper you could dunk four rolls of film in a tank and be done. If you shot more than that it required a second film run and there wasn't time on deadline.

Also, unlike today,  there was a cost with shooting more images. Compact Flash and SD cards have a one time cost but after that you can use the same cards for years if you treat them well. Just remember things were a lot different not that long ago.

Library of Congress site on Digital Archiving

If your looking to start archiving digital materials you have around the house you might want to check out the Library of Congress site on Digital Archiving. It has tips on how to go about archiving photos, video and audio files, and even websites and email.

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/you/

It has a lot of good trips and best of all you've paid for it with your tax dollars.

The art is a little bit lacking but it wasn't done by a photographer.

Now if they can just fix that deficit thing.

Pacific Image Power Slide 3650 and Mac OSX Lion Driver Issues

If you have a Pacific Image PowerSlide 3650 slide scanner and have just upgraded to OSX Lion you'll find that your scanner will no longer work. I tried using the VueScan software and it is still looking for the Rosetta driver that doesn't work with the Lion software.

The Pacific Image support page isn't much help.
It tells you the scanner you have will be supported in the near future. Thankfully the OS 10.6 Mac I have will still allow the scanner to operate.

The Big Move

The collection is now in a new home.

 

 

   Today was the day of the big move. We are reorganizing at Liberty University and moved the archive negatives, slides, and prints into a new location.

We have a collection of images from around 1974 to early 2000 that needed to be moved and reshelved.

My coworkers Meghann an Kevin helped get things together and worked hard all morning putting binders into place.
Things went pretty well overall. Now it just needs to be edited, scanned, retouched, captioned, moved onto the server, and archived. In a few years it
just might be finished.

iPod Touch plays with Lion

As part of moving on to the Mac Lion operating system I had to sync my old iPod touch to the new machine.

Everything went OK except for a few issues. First the Mac tried to import all of my music not my playlist. It couldn't so then it quit. It deleted my photo galleries and didn't like to play with some of my apps.

Because I'm a good Digital Asset Manager I had a backup, actually two, of my photos from my iPod.
Using my network connection I copied them into iPhoto and put them onto my iPod Touch.

I would have hated to have lost my photos from Greece.

Backups are a very good thing indeed!

Stories of 911 Photographers

It's not really about archiving but it makes you appreciate what someone must do in order to record history as it happens.

http://news.yahoo.com/lenses-shield-9-11-photogs-capture-history-041242188.html

It's important we record and save the images we take today in order that they can be remembered tomorrow.

I want my..... I want my....... I Want My META TV!!!

OK, so this is a new one on me. Metadata embedded into TV programs so you can easily find your favorite episode of "Lost" or whatever.

In case you didn't know it Metadata has been apart of photography since digital cameras were first introduced in the mid 90's. It keeps track of the data recorded by the camera when it creates a photograph. You can see exposure, color space, and other items. More importantly it allows digital asset management software the ability in input keywords an descriptions that become part of the digital file.

It's been a part of still images for a long time but TV. Interesting, here's the link:

http://mashable.com/2011/08/08/tv-everywhere-metadata/

Rain in the Clouds??

Ok, so now I'm on the Mac OS 10.7 Lion operating system. Is it time to move the personal photos I have onto the cloud? One look at a CNN Money story tells me I'm going to wait.

Here is the link:http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/02/technology/flickr_deletes_account/index.htm

I'd be a very unhappy camper!!

Mac OS 10.7 Lion Upgrade

I've upgraded to OS 10.7 Lion and haven't seen any issues with using Photoshop CS 5.1 or PhotoMechanic on my machine. The only issue I've had is with the Adobe Flash 10 player. It still doesn't like to play well with Mac and the version they have for 10.7 is a beta.

DAMMY Awards

Who knew there were awards for Digital Asset Management!

A company called Createaspher is sponsoring the second annual Dammy Awards for "Excellence in Digital Asset Management.

Here's the link: http://createasphere.com/En/dammys.html

I'd personally like a DAMMY of the Year on my resume.

Scanners may have a problem with Lion OS

If you are looking to buy a new Mac and have an old scanner you may end up having some issues. For some of the older scanners, like the Nikon Coolscan, they will not work with the Mac OS 10 Lion operating system. They require Rosetta (A software app that was still in OS 10.6)  in order to run.

Hopefully some third party software maker will come up with a solution.

Portfolio 10 Released

Extenis has released Portfolio 10 for Digital Asset Management. We're in the process of getting a new server and upgrading to the newest version.

I've used their products for years and think it's one of the best DAM software programs available.

http://www.extensis.com/en/digital-asset-management/portfolio-server-10/index.jsp?id=hpb

Lots of Books

An interesting story about a guy trying to build an archive of real books.

http://news.yahoo.com/internet-archivist-seeks-1-every-book-written-183621648.html

Sounds like a big project. I hope he has time to read a few.