Christmas brought the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II to my camera collection. I’m looking forward to exercising its 1080p video and high ISO capabilities. In addition, I’m pleased by its reduction in size of my current 1D-series cameras. For the past six years, I’ve been stuffing my cameras into a Domke F-3XB bag.

The F-3XB is made primarily from ballistic nylon (unlike the F-3X, which is made from cotton canvas) and can hold a surprising amount of gear. As you can see in the photos below, my F-3XB has seen much usage over the years. It’s not as worn as this guy’s F-3, but it’s getting there. The shoulder strap has started to fray so much so that I’ve taped it up with gaffer tape. There’s a hole at the bottom of the left side pocket; once again, gaffer tape came in to save the day.

The lack of padding in most Domke bags is what makes it able to hold so much gear. This is why many people have praised them as being excellent bags to work out of.

I used to wonder why Eric’s bag always looked bigger than mine until I realized that he had the larger Domke F-4AF bag. A 1D body + attached lens fits in the F-3XB, but it’s tight. With the new 5D Mark II, there’s now plenty of room for the camera, an attached lens, and a couple of extra lenses. And, because the 5D is much lighter than the 1D, the bag feels much better on my shoulder. I still might pick up an F-4AF in the future once I can no longer patch up the F-3XB. I may also get the backpack strap, which will make the bag much more comfortable on a long day of shooting. Until then, the F-3XB remains my favorite Domke bag, and the one that I turn to most often when running out the door. For Domke lovers, there’s a new forum on Tiffen’s (the owners of Domke) website. Jim Domke even posts there from time to time!

It’s been awhile since we had a bag night at COBA. Perhaps it’s time to organize a session for the first meeting of 2009 in February.

Update December 30, 2008: Sean left a comment on my site to check out the F-6. I’m going to have to go to a camera shop to see this in person. From photos that I’ve seen on the web, the F-6 looks like a shorter, but longer version of the F-3 without the side pockets. I have a four-section padded insert from my Domke J-1 and it manages to fill up the main compartment of my F-3XB. In the photo to the right, the space that’s to the left and right of the insert in the F-6 is about the same amount of space in the F-3’s side pockets. It’s a nice looking bag, and can be purchased for under $80, unlike the F-3, F-4, and F-2, which are all over $100.

Like I said, I’m going to have to check these bags out at a camera store in the future. Maybe the best decision is to own all of the bags!

Update #2 December 30, 2008: I caved in. I found someone local selling a Domke F-2 in ballistic nylon for a price I couldn’t refuse. It’s smaller than my J-1 bag and wider than my F-3XB bag. In the end, having the side pockets pushed me to get the F-2B instead of the F-6.

Went to Old Pro in Palo Alto today to watch the Detroit Lions fall to a historic 0-16 for the season with Joon-Mo, Felix, and Johnny. I never knew that there were two Old Pro’s in Palo Alto. I once went to the old location near El Camino and Page Mill Road. The Lions played hard, but they just didn’t have enough to beat the Packers. My beloved Chargers went 1-15 a few years back, but I can hardly imagine going 0-16. It’s got to be tough on the Lions fans, who have had to suffer for many years under Matt Millen and Wayne Fontes.

WP-SmugMug 2 is here! This plugin completely replaces the previous version that I wrote several years ago. It has a number of great new features, including the ability to display photos from multiple galleries within the same post or page in WordPress. Read more about the plugin here.

Here’s an example of the plugin in use from my wedding invitations gallery on SmugMug:

The plugin is also available on WordPress’ Extend Plugins website.

The final meeting of 2008 and the last meeting in Stanford’s Cordura Hall was held last Wednesday. Members heard two great presentations from Oliver Klink on the parallels between wildlife and people photography and Edward Casati on the San Francisco Lines Ballet Dance Company Calendar.

We also had our holiday party; thanks to everyone who brought snacks to the meeting. Rae and I are finishing the leftovers slowly every day!

For COBA next year, we’ll be meeting in a new location. I’ll have more information in January. The first COBA meeting of 2009 will be held on Wednesday, February 11, 2009. Until then, happy shooting!

The Rising Sun lives to dawn another day! A week ago, we celebrated Felix’s birthday party at Dashi’s in Menlo Park, a Japanese restaurant that was highly regarded on Yelp! Johnny, Felix’s brother, brought Felix early to the semi-surprise dinner, though we suspect Felix knew beforehand of the impending party. The whole gang was there, and we gorged on yummy sushi rolls while watching Felix down special drinks made by the Dashi proprietors. Kevin dared Felix over a beer to eat an entire wasabi ball, and Felix complied. I remember one of the DVF Fellows from Kenya once though wasabi was green ice cream. I think I’d choke eating that much wasabi!

Following dinner, we headed back to Daniel’s house, where was watched the De La Hoya/Pacquaio fight on Pay-Per-View. It was like the Hatfields and the McCoys between Osvaldo and Sheryl and Dan G and Juliana. In the end, the “Mexicutioner” Manny Pacquaio won a decisive victory over the aging De La Hoya.

Cake and Rock Band 2 soon followed, with Johnny atoning for bringing Felix early to the party by having the XBox 360 ready and waiting. I even got into the act, playing guitar on one song… albeit on Easy mode. Johnny apparently only plays on Expert level.

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I recently bought three Seagate 1.5TB drives from NewEgg. Before I bought them, I had read the reports of drives freezing under certain operating systems and conditions, but I was crossing my fingers that I wouldn’t experience any such issues. Well, count me wrong on this one. This morning, I started a SuperDuper Smart Update backup on one of the 1.5TB drives before leaving the house. Four hours later when I returned home, I saw that SuperDuper had not progressed past the 20% mark in the progress bar. Was this an example of the freezing issue that other people were experiencing?

I pulled my drives out and noted the serial number and firmware version. Sure enough, the drives had the dreaded SD17 firmware on them. I called up Seagate Support, and a few hours later, they sent me a link to a website where I could download the SD1A firmware update. The process to do this on Mac OS X involved the following steps:

1. Burn a CD-ROM that will boot up the Mac Pro.
2. Insert only one drive at a time to update
3. Boot up the computer holding down the Option key
4. Following the on-screen instructions that resembled the old DOS computers from the 80s
5. Power cycle the computer and repeat steps 1-4 for the remaining drives

Right now, I’m putting SuperDuper through its paces on PhotosOne. My fingers are crossed again that this will resolve any freezing issues with the drives!

Update December 21, 2008: So far, I’ve had no problems with the 1.5TB drives freezing
after nine days of daily use. It also looks like Seagate is shipping versions of the drive with a different firmware version.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at our final COBA meeting of 2008. Tomorrow night’s presentations by Oliver and Edward are going to be great; plus, it’s our end-of-the-year Holiday party!

Longtime COBA members will remember we had to change locations in 2006 after the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center changed its policies regarding outside groups and SLAC’s Orange Room. I’ve just been informed of some changes at Cordura Hall, the site of our meetings since May 2006. Sadly, we won’t be able to meet there following this Wednesday’s meeting.

We’ve had a good run at Cordura Hall for two and a half years, but now it’s time to find a new home for COBA in 2009 and beyond!

If you know of any building that offers free meeting space for clubs and organization, I’m all ears! We’ll discuss this further at the Holiday Party tomorrow night.

I’ve been making backups since I started using computers back in the early 1980s. Software at the time came on cassette tape and 5 1/4-inch floppy disks before transitioning to 3 1/2 inch floppies and CD-ROMs. When my love affair with the Mac began in 1989, I knew what it was like to have a cavernous storage system. I recall thinking to myself, “I’ll never run out of 40MB of hard drive space!” I still have old issues of MacUser magazine advertising 20MB hard drives for thousands of dollars. Now, you can get a hard drive with 50,000 times the storage capacity for a $100!

My current camera generates files that are 14MB in size. Two photos alone would almost fill up my poor Mac SE/30’s hard drive were it still spinning today. My current data set is topping 4TB these days, so my need to keep my data safe and sound is critical. I’ve personally experienced hard drive crashes before, and they are not fun to recover from without backups.

Over the years, I’ve gone through many types of backup strategies: multiple hard drives, NAS boxes, storage robots, online, and off-site storage. I’ve finally developed a comprehensive multi-pronged approach for keeping my data safe and available.

This article will be useful for those who have massive amounts of data to be backed up. If you just have a single hard drive to worry about, get a couple of external hard disks or a Time Capsule. Use Time Machine and be done with it. On the other hand, if you have to worry about backing up terabytes of data, read on!

1. Goals
2. Tools
3. Methodology
4. Future Plans

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This is a reminder that the final meeting of the year and holiday party for COBA will be held this Wednesday. Bring snacks, food, and drink and learn about bird photography from Oliver Klink and dance photography calendars from Edward Casati.

As is traditional this time of year, the former gang from Palm’s Content and Access division got together for its annual holiday party. Big thanks go out to Fanny for continuing to round up the troops. This year, we had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in Palo Alto. We had the pleasure of welcoming two former colleagues back to the Bay Area. Stanley has been in LA and London for the past several years, and Jon has been working in Manhattan until recently. I hadn’t seen either of them since my time at Palm ended way back in 2001! Everyone looks pretty much the same as they did back in 2000. Eight years, man, that was another tech bubble ago!