Make mine a Mac!

About 300 years ago (in computer terms) I built a spiffy, all-balls PC workstation for my photographic work and blogged about it here.

About one year ago I bought an HTC Touch (Windows Mobile) phone and hated it instantly. So I took it back to Fnac and got my money back. Instead I purchased an Apple iPhone and instantly succumbed to Apple's cunningly-laid trap, becoming a full-on Apple addict from one day to the next. Yep, I went out and bought a Mac!

I've spent years of my life struggling with PCs, and especially with Micro$oft Windows. How refreshing it was to take my lovely new MacBook Pro out of the box and fire it up. I was "in business" within minutes. No fuss, no problems, no hiccups, no hidden obstacles.

Of course, there's no pain-in-the-ass like a converted pain-in-the-ass! Now I evangelise Apple's products and philosophy to anyone who'll listen.

Welcome back!

Well... it's been more than a year since my last confession post! How time flies when you're not having fun!

The last year has been painful for many people, myself included. My world was shaken up (badly) by this "self-inflicted wound" that they have conveniently termed a "recession" (as if it was entirely natural, like a receding hairline - but I'll try to stay off the subject of politics here).

I've resolved to start posting again on a regular basis, if only for the cathartic value of being able to address an imagined audience with my woes and worries.

DxO Optics Pro v5

Several months after its launch, DxO Optics Pro v5 continues to be a right royal pain in the ass! This is beta software inflicted on the public, a trick normally practiced by Microsoft. Which is a pity because a) the previous version of DxO is a fabulous tool and b) I really want to be able to use some of the new feature in v5.

The software is criminally unstable: I can't process a batch of RAW images (usually 500-600 from a real estate shoot) without it crashing multiple times. For the sake of my sanity, I'm now in the habit of saving the project after every minor adjustment to an image, which just makes the whole process even slower. And once it has crashed once, it seems to need a reboot to come back to a state of tolerable stability.

What bugs me the most here is that DxO appears to have burned up resources on making the new version pretty: it slavishly imitates the now de rigueur LightRoom interface. And in the process the workflow model took a giant step backwards. If, instead, they had kept or (just updated) the previous UI and concentrated instead on the clever stuff behind the scenes...

Ah, well! They've promised a new release in February, so I'll just have to be patient while I soldier on with the previous version.

Love you, Nikon! But...

I'm going to be ordering my Nikon D3 any day now. Great machine, great features, crippling price, etc. But there's one feature that really perplexes me:

They've built an electronic spirit level into the body. Great idea for levelling the camera without squinting at the bubbles in the cheapo plastic spirit level I use. But how come you only get left/right levelling? There's no front/back levelling! So the landscape photogs will be happy, but what about us poor architectural types? The left/right levelling is irrelevant without front/back feedback. So I've got to mount the pesky little plastic bubble on the hot-shoe, which means I needn't bother with the fancy built-in left/right leveller.

Silly Mr Nikon - an epic piece of professional camera engineering with just one (as far as I can see) half-baked, not-properly-thought-through gimmick feature.

Getting paid

Any professional photographer will have his or her own horror stories about the business of being a photographer. Unless you're a major name in advertising photography, or whatever, getting the work can be difficult. But there's another aspect which may be less obvious to the outsider: getting paid a reasonable fee for your work.

I get many approaches from magazines for editorial shoots. The exchange usually goes something like this:

Hi, I'm from XYZ Magazine. We're planning a feature on [insert subject]. We need a photographer for a whole day.

I duly confirm that I can do the job and that I'm available, then I ask how much they are paying. This elicits one of two possible responses.

Either: Well, our budget is really limited, so we're hoping that you'll do it for free. The exposure will be really good for you.

Or: Well, our budget is really limited. We can pay X. [where X is an absurdly low number that wouldn't even cover my gasoline for the day]

Two things about this nonsense irritate me. Firstly, the fact that these magazines set unrealistically low budgets for photography (and presumably for every other professional service they'll need). Secondly, the fact that this happens repeatedly indicates that there are (so-called) professional photographers out there who are accepting these offensively low rates, or working for free.

If you're one of those photographers: shame on you!

If you're one of those magazines: shame on you!

Parking madness

What is it about parking in Portugal? Portuguese drivers seem to think they can double-park wherever they want, blocking other people in.

My apartment is in a backstreet of Loulé. On the ground floor is a popular café and several solicitors' offices. On my side of the street cars park along the kerb. On the far side, there is a parking bay for cars to park perpendicular to the street. All day long cars arrive to visit the café or one of the offices and, if no parking place immediately outside their intended destination is available, they simply double-park, blocking in two or three legitimately parked cars. Naturally, when the owner of one of the blocked cars wants to leave, they lean on their horn to attract the attention of the offending driver. This means that, sitting here in my office, I have to listen to the insistent blasting of car horns all day long. And frequently, when I want to go out, I find myself blocked in by one of these arrogant idiots.

Furthermore, often when I arrive home in the middle of the day and wish to park, I find an empty parking slot blocked by a double-parked car - yes! they are even too lazy to turn into a vacant spot, preferring to block it and two other cars! I've even seen an offending driver come out from the café to let someone out, then reverse back into his original position, thereby blocking the now-empty spot from being used by anyone else!

When the offenders do eventually emerge to move their car they rarely, if ever, show any sign of remorse or guilt, or even haste. On the occassions when I have challenged them for their arrogance and rudeness, they bristle with offence at my anger, claiming variously that they "were only five minutes" or "this is how it's done in Portugal".

Well, enough is enough! I'm going to start a one-man campaign against these rude, arrogant morons. If the police won't help (which I strongly doubt they will), I'm going to print up some multi-lingual notices and spend a day or two gluing them to the windshields of offending parkers.

Does any other country suffer from this kind of pig-headed, self-centred rudeness by drivers?

Cinema Disgrace

Teresa and I are avid film fans. At home we have a ginormous plasma screen and regularly rent DVDs. We'd given up going to the cinema because our local establishment (an 8-screen complex in Algarve Shopping Centre, Guia - operated by a company called Castello Lopes) consistently disappointed us on every visit - poor focus, poor sound, pour ventilation, exhorbitant popcorn prices and so on.

But the new film about Queen Elizabeth I - The Golden Age tempted us back. What a mistake! Castello was once again spectacularly successful in spoiling our evening out. First, the men's toilets stank of stale urine. A neatly printed label above each urinal declared that the flushing mechanism had been disabled "to save water" and that instead there was a special chemical block with a "microbiological action" to ensure that everything would smell fresh and hygenic with just one flush per day. Well, Lusmundo management, it doesn't work - the toilets in a Moroccan bus station smell better. And when I pointed the problem out an employee in the foyer, he simply said "Yes, I know." So if he knew, presumably "the management" knew, and yet it still stank.

The next jab at one's sensibilities was the price of the popcorn and drinks - the Ritz in Paris wouldn't dare ask that much.

Once in our seats, it was quickly obvious that the auditorium ventilation was not operating - it was unpleasantly hot and stuffy. Since the outside temperature was mild, I guess they thought they could save money by not running the ventilation.

Then the film started and, guess what? It wasn't properly focussed. After an eye-straining ten minutes I got up and went to find a functionary to fix the problem. A few minutes later it was apparent that someone in the projection booth was attempting to set the focus correctly. The picture snapped into focus, then quickly blurred again. This was repeated three or four times over a five minute period. Then all activity stopped - with the picture still out of focus.

What's more, the projector appeared to be having a problem with it's power supply - the screen image was constantly flickering and oscillating in brightness.

At the interval, Teresa and I got up and walked out in disgust. We'll wait for the movie to come out on DVD. And we are never going back to any establishment owned by Castello Lopes - ever.