If you would like to contact Digitalopia, we are always happy to receive your emails at the following address.
feedback [at] digitalopia.com.
Please do not hesitate to contact us, especially for feedback (both positive and negative) and any ideas you have for reviews and articles.
After a successful beta test, Adobe has officially released Lightroom 2.0.
Lightroom 2.0 offers some minor bug fixes and improvements over the beta version, however most of the features should be familiar if you have been following along with the beta. I will not be drawn into debates of comparisons with Aperture 2, as I fully agree that competition is key to drive innovation. However, it seems that Adobe are copying Aperture’s version numbers !!!
Lightroom 2.0 costs US$299 outright or US$99 for an upgrade from Lightroom 1. A 30 day trial is also available.
A comprehensive comparison between Lightroom 1 and Lightroom 2.0 is available from Adobe.
Not a major feature release for Aperture, but version 2.1.1 resolves general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues.
As with the previous updates to Apple iLife, support for the MobileMe service has been added.
The update is available here. The update is recommended to all users and is available as a 48MB download.
I received an email from a friend in New York that has just received their D700. The D700 is Nikon’s second full-frame DSLR, and is targeting the pro-sumer market or where people are looking at an upgrade to their D70/D80 models.
Our friends at Ritz Camera have announced a number of deals on the D700. To read more about the Nikon D700, I recommend the comprehensive hands-on preview by dpreview.com.
The following deals are currently in stock at Ritz Camera.
I have a short list of things I like about Vista and a growing list of frustrating things. I added another one of the frustrated list when I recently installed Gigabyte Easytune 6. Gigabyte Easytune is a way to make overclock adjustments to a Gigabyte motherboard. I was having no joy with NVIDIA nTune, and wanted to try something different.
I downloaded the latest version of Easytune 6 that included Vista 64-bit support (I am installing on an AMD FX). It installed fine and requested a re-boot. After the reboot Vista would blue-screen during the loading Vista screen. After trying a few times I decided it was time for Safe Mode. I rebooted into Safe Mode to uninstall Gigabyte Easytune. I tried to uninstall it through Control Panel -> Programs and Features, but it would complain about not being able to find the uninstaller file. Now what ? It looked like I will need to manually delete the installed files.
If it was blue-screening on bootup, then Easytune had introduced something into the bootup process. I first thought this was a new Windows service, but after looking through all of the services, there were no services for Easytune. This is where the msconfig tool comes in very handy. This is not available through the default Vista menus but it can be run from the command line or from the Start -> Search box. This tools allows finer-grained control of boot settings (effectively updating the boot.ini file), and also controlling UAC and Windows Services. This is where you can find the services that are not displayed through Control Panel -> Services. The Gigabyte Easytune service was set to start at bootup, so I disabled it and rebooted. Vista now booted smoothly, and I then had to manually removed all of the Easytune components, both from the file system and the registry. Note that searching the registry for related keys and deleting them can potentially break Vista, so please be very careful.
Now all seems fine, but I will definitely not be installing any Gigabyte tools in the future.
I recently went through the fun (and the pain) of re-building my main Windows desktop with Vista 64-bit. It was previously used as a ‘jack of all trades’ desktop (as my primary desktop is a Mac), running XP, Vista and Linux. However, it was time I put it to a more stable use, so I decided to re-install Vista and use it as my main gaming and Windows desktop. Also, as some of its components were used to build my new Media Center (I will be writing about that build in another story), it was a good time for a full re-build with some updated parts (I also removed over 3TB of storage !)
As I had removed the memory for my Media Center build, I needed to replace it with some more. With 4GB previously, the performance of Vista was very good, but as memory pricing has reduced significantly over the last year and I wanted to start using VMware more, I decided to go for 8GB. For full support of more than 8GB, Vista 64-bit is required. Also, the AMD FX-62 chip I was using is 64-bit. Now the fun begins …
When attempting to install Vista with my original 64-bit install disk, the install would blue screen when it was completing the installation. After some google’ing, I found it was a known problem where Vista would not install with more than 3GB of memory. It seems that a patch is required to allow the Vista kernel to boot with more than 3GB RAM. I have previously only installed Vista on 2GB machines, so the error had not occurred before. Considering I have 4 x 2GB SIMMS (dual channel) it was not possible for me to only install 2GB. I could remove 2GB from another computer, install Vista and the patch and then re-install the 8GB. However, this is less than satisfactory, so I looked for an alternative.
As this issue is fixed in Vista Service Pack 1, I decided to look at creating a SP1 install disk. This required me to slipstream the Vista install disk with SP1 and burn a new disk. I will be including details of this process in another article. It is interesting that such a fundamental flaw would have been present in the official release of Vista. With Vista 64-bit, its primary use is for users with more than 3GB of RAM. As Vista it cannot be installed on these computers (without first patching the install) it seems a very big omission by Microsoft.
Vista SP1 64-bit installed with the full 8GB and so far (fingers-crossed) I have had no problems.
At the recent WWDC conference Apple released details (and an early developer build to attendees) of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the next planned release of the OS X operating system.
Apple have also added a page to their Web site, giving some initial details of the new features of Snow Leopard.
At first glance this may seem to be a pretty limited set of features for a new OS X release, but there are a few clues and pointers as to where Apple may be heading with Snow Leopard.
The move from Leopard to Snow Leopard indicates a minor advance for OS X. Unless they have run out of wild cat names, by simply tagging Snow to the front of Leopard, Apple are hinting about the ‘minor’ update this release may represent. In fairness, I think they are saying it will be a minor update from a users perspective, in regards its appearance and feature set. However, most of the changes seem to be aimed at the core of OS X operating system.
With the release of the iPhone, Apple are starting to use the OS X platform on a wider range of devices. Microsoft previously tried this with Windows CE, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, etc. However, Microsoft basically re-wrote the operating system to support these devices, causing a fork in their ongoing development strategy. Apple seem to be tackling the problem in a cleverer way. If they are looking at reducing the footprint of OS X Snow Leopard, allowing it to be run on lower powered devices (perhaps tablet or hand held computers) they will be able to have a single code base that can be deployed across a wider range of devices. This can represent a significant cost saving for Apple, allowing them to streamline their core OS X development and allow them to concentrate on adding functionality, rather than having to manage multiple operating systems. Microsoft is struggling with multiple versions of the Windows platforms, and with the increased size (read bloat) of Vista, you can see that unless Microsoft pulls off a miracle with Windows 7, they will continue to struggle to keep up with the faster release strategies of Apple and the open source Linux platform.
It will also be interesting how much Apple will charge for Snow Leopard. If the feature set is limited, many people may not see the value in upgrading.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard is currently scheduled for release in ‘about a year’, so we can expect a Q2/Q3 release in 2009.
Over the last few months I have tried to ensure that Digitalopia remains true to its original direction of ‘Digital Photography with the Apple Mac, from Amateur to Professional’. However, my interest, experience and work goes well beyond digital photography and the Mac platform.
I have decided to expand the scope of Digitalopia to include all aspects of my involvement with computing and digital technology, not just being limited to digital photography and the Mac platform. Whilst I can say that a large part of my personal computing is with digital photography, I would also like to share my experiences and thoughts with regards other areas of computing, from the trials and tribulations of using Vista Media Center to building a Linux NAS server from scratch. I will also be expanding beyond the Mac platform, including my adventures with Microsoft, Linux and the occasional foray into Unix.
Note that I will be continuing to share my passion for digital photography and the Mac platform, including my journey into Aperture 2 and the new Aperture plug-in architecture.
I hope that you continue to enjoy the articles that we put together.
Nik Software have today released the Viveze Plug-in for Aperture 2.1. The plug-in was one of the original plug-ins listed by Apple as being in development upon the release of the Aperture Edit Plug-In SDK.
I will be interested in looking further at the features of the plug-in, and to be honest, the descriptions do not really tell me how the plug-in differentiates itself from the features already available in Aperture.
A 15 day trial is available to allow you to try out the plug-in and it is available for purchase direct from the Nik Software Web site at $249.95. Yes, this is another Aperture plug-in that is more expensive than Aperture itself, as the Tiffen Dfx Digital Filter plug-in costs $299.95.
I am often asked about the best types of storage a digital photographer should use, especially if they should use RAID storage. In this series of articles, I hope to explain some uses for each of the most popular RAID types, especially in the context of digital photography.
RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is the use of 2 or more disks to achieve greater reliability, greater performance or greater capacity.
In this article, I will be describing RAID level 1, or Mirroring. Looking at the above definition, RAID level 1 provides greater reliability, but neither greater performance or capacity. I have previously covered RAID 0 Striping in a previous article.
