Having seen… nay, experienced what can happen in the space of a year, I was going to say that things can change within the space of five months.
But those changes are nowhere near as life-changing.
Ok, so there’s been some changes. Nothing you’d really notice. Updates are still sporadic. Photos are still being taken. It’s the “behind the scenes” stuff that’s changing.
First of all, I’m weilding a new (read ‘different’) camera. I happened to stumble across a second-hand Canon 50D body, and a Tamron 18-250 lens. Not the usual bargain stuff I land, but I felt I needed to upgrade the old 350D. And I’m noticing a marked difference in the newer photos. The 50D shows what the Tamron lens can and can’t do, good and bad respectively.
Second, my aging PC is in the process of being upgraded. And as the old PC was 9 years old (yep, 9!), I’ve had a hell of alot to learn, in terms of new hardware. I now have an AMD 3.0GHz quad core thing, housed in a big black Coolermaster HAF922 case. The video card is the only bit that’s given me headaches, but that’s going to be resolved this week… hopefully.
Actually, this post was going to be a “This is the last post from me, this place is being mothballed” thing. But the new changes have unearthed a bunch of nice grating niggles. So, from the top…
I got the Canon 50D before the new PC was fully built. The new PC was delayed due to video card issues. So, the test shots from the 50D were to be ‘developed’ on a 2.0GHz AMD XP system.
Gripe #1: New camera + old hardware = software update fun.
I couldn’t update my image editing software because my PC was too old! So, the workaround was to convert the RAW files… each one being around 13MB in size… into DNG files, so the image editing software wouldn’t kick up a fuss. The problem was, there was no way of seeing what photos were of what, Windows XP wouldn’t (and still doesn’t) make thumbnails for the 50D RAW files. Two solutions. Solution A: to use the camera itself as the RAW previewer. Solution B: to install Canons own image handling software.
Solution B would be nice, if I had the software CD that came with the camera, so solution A was used. It felt clunky and tedious, but it worked. I viewed the RAW files on the camera, chose the RAW file I wanted to use, set the convertor off doing its job, and went for coffee. Upon returning, the converted DNG files were waiting, yadda yadda.
I managed to get a copy of Canons image handling software, and that was it… I was ready for anything. Just don’t ask about the slideshows I experienced when I was working with the RAW files, ok?
Gripe #2 will be in the next post.
Time for some photos… all done with the new Canon 50D…
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