Ever lost something that you loved? I have, I lost a necklace that my very first girlfriend gave me - I was fourteen at the time I think, All I remember is that she used to cry during “Listen to your heart by Roxette” I know, that’s touching… Anyway, I lost the necklace that she’d given me for my birthday. I realize that I couldn’t “Back that up” but I still remember how it made me feel…

Things that you can backup include your digital photos and the rest of the contents of your computer… These days drive space is cheap and easy to set up, but unless you follow some golden rules there is almost no point.

Erin from Fabrik dropped me an email with her ten points to a good backup for you all to try, I’ll post them below.

Win a G-Drive Q 1TB
That isn’t the only thing that Erin came up with, Oh No!..G-Technology have kindly donated one of their G-Drive Q 1TB external drives to us as a prize for this weeks DPS ASSIGNMENT. The topic for this week is going to be “Drive” You can translate that any way you would like, but to catch my eye you’re going to need to be creative and trying your very hardest!

Here are Erin’s ten tips to a decent backup…
1. Reliability - Select a storage solution that has a good reputation, and is built to last. For example, to ensure reliability, all G-Tech drives come in an all-aluminum enclosure (no plastic), which acts as a heat sink, keeping the drive cool. Heat kills drives.

2. Capacity – Select a drive with enough capacity so you have room to grow. Rule of thumb is to by 2x to 3x the amount of space you’ll need.

3. Connectivity – Future proof your investment. There are many solutions on the market, such as the G-Drive Q 1TB that come with USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and eSATA interfaces so you can be sure to connect with any system today, as well as in the future.

4. Local Backup Software – Mac users prefer to use Time Machine (it’s a beautiful app and is very simple). There is a plethora of PC backup software tools available – Arcsoft, EMC Retrospect and more. Any of them will do fine. The important thing is to just do it.

5. Online Backup – For added protection, in case of fire, theft, or other natural disaster, it’s wise to keep a separate copy of your most important stuff offsite, and available online. Solutions such as Fabrik Ultimate Backup offer 2GB for free of online backup space. If you want to upgrade, it’s only $4.95 per month for unlimited capacity.

6. Develop a Backup Schedule - Good backup software will require you to set an automatic backup schedule once – on a day or time that’s convenient for you; daily, weekly or monthly. You just simply set it and forget it. Rule of thumb, backup weekly at a minimum, or as often as you save/store important work or irreplaceable files to your hard drive.

7. Back up Everything - Today you can easily back up all of your hard drive data. No need to spend time sorting through every file or folder. Again, invest in a storage solution that’s twice the size of your internal hard drive, to give your system room to grow.

8. Rotate Backups – Even though they’re secure, some people are not comfortable using an online backup service. If this is the case, give yourself added protection. Use two drives and rotate one offsite. You should always, always, always have two copies of your most important stuff…did I say “always”?

9. RAID it – Solutions like the G-Raid Mini (it will ship w/RAID 1 later this quarter) or G-Safe solution provide RAID 1, mirroring. Whatever gets written to the first drive is automatically copied, or “mirrored,” to the second, so if anything should happen to either disk, your data is still there.

10. Don’t procrastinate – Unfortunately, the need to back up data is often a lesson learned from a bitter experience. Don’t let it happen to you.

Thanks Erin!

I work in IT and (All jokes about a missing necklace and a bad eighties pop song aside) have seen “Disaster” happen, The company I work for, due to documented budget cuts wouldn’t replace a piece of hardware, and as a result we had a massive failure of one of our nine tb disk arrays and lost just over a million documents, now, you may only lose a couple of hundred photos, but if you’d had that backup in place you would have lost nothing and you wouldn’t have that sad face on!

Join us in the DPS FORUMS this week for the assignment and win yourself a fantastic, award winning G-Drive Q 1TB

Sime

Top 5 Digital Cameras for Beginners

Photography is a way of life for some and at least a part of life for everyone else. In this day and age, technological advances await us at every turn, and the field of photography is no exception. Cameras have gone digital, and the potential is astounding. The following will take a look at some of the differences in the old and new ways, and weigh them out as either pros or cons of digital photography.

Scientifically speaking, the differences between the two are enormous. With film photography, light traveling through the camera’s lens is actually burning the images onto the film. With digital photography, the light of the images is being encoded as binary data and stored in memory as with a computer. These differences, while huge, can be unimportant to some though. No one is actually interested in the technical aspect of how the cameras work. The photographer is more interested in what it means to him in regard to the pictures he can take and what he can do with them.

One of the primary advantages of digital photography is versatility. Digital cameras can record not only the still images of film cameras, but also motion pictures and audio in some cases. While a film camera can be a specialized piece of equipment for taking still pictures, digital cameras can offer you an entire range of different equipment, all in the palm of your hand.

Digital cameras are also commonly found on other pieces of equipment. As technology advances, cellular telephones and MP3 music players now often have built-in cameras, which are always digital. This may offer some extra convenience to digital camera users, considering that they can decrease the overall number of devices that they must carry with them and use.

Printing your pictures is also very different from digital to film photography. In both cases, though, you have many options. Professional film photographers may develop their prints on their own, in their very own dark room. Amateur or casual film photographers may simply drop their film off at a one-hour photo place. With digital, your pictures are recorded as electronic data, so you can use your computer to print them. Or, if you prefer, you can still drop them off at a photo shop and have it done for you. So as far as printing goes, it seems it is up to you how deeply you want to dive in. Both film and digital offer you a range of options, from the hands-on to letting others do it for you.

So in the end, choosing between digital and film may mean considering the application. Hobbyists may stick to film, while technology buffs and burgeoning photographers will choose the brave new world of digital. Either way, it looks like both styles of photography are going to be around for awhile to come.

About the Author

Markus writes and publishes articles about Digital photography , and other unbiased topics on Independent-views.com.

Source: Article Devil

by Kerry T. Giviens, MD

1. BE SELECTIVE. At a flower show , there is an enormous number of beautiful flowers. Don’t rush to photograph the first blossom you see. Find a plant with the best combination of form, color, lighting and background.
2. ISOLATION. For impact, isolate your subject. Find a camera angle that minimizes distracting elements, such as other flowers or spectators. Take the time to try low angles, high angles, or moving to the right or left. A wide lens aperture ( a lower-numbered f-stop on and SLR camera) will enhance this effect by softening the background.




3. COMPOSITION. Pay attention to the position of your subject in the viewfinder. Putting the subject in the dead-center of the picture is often the first instinct, but is not always the most aesthetic composition. Concentrate on what you see in the viewfinder, and recompose the picture until it looks the best to you. And don’t forget to try vertical framing, as well as horizontal.
4. TRIPOD. Because the light in parts of the Conventions Center (or building) is varied, you may be forced to use slow shutter speeds. In this situation, hand-holding your camera might result in vibrations and unsharp pictures. Use a tripod to steady your camera if it has a tripod screw-socket. If you don’t ( or can’t) use a tripod, try to steady your camera in other ways- nestle it on a bean bag or your coat; brace the camera against a wall; or at the very least, take a firm stance while shooting, with your legs slightly apart and your elbows braced. When using and SLR camera on a tripod, cable a release can significantly reduce unwanted vibrations.
5. PATIENCE. When photographing flowers outdoors, be aware of small breezes that might set the flowers in motion. Likewise, breezes can be caused indoors by the opening of a door or the brisk movement of people. For sharp picture, you must be prepared to wait for all movement to cease before releasing the shutter.
6. ENVIRONMENT. Wonderful photographs can be created by showing the relationship of you subject to its environment. A simple way to achieve this is with a wide- angle lens on a SLR camera, or the wide mode on a dual-lens or zoom lens point-&-shoot camera. Position your subject as close as possible in the foreground.
7. EXTREME CLOSE-UPS. Flowers take on an entirely different look when viewed in extreme close-up. Use your viewfinder indicators to move in as close as possible, while still maintaining sharp focus. If you are using a 35mm SLR camera, your macro (close-up) capabilities can be extended with accessories such as a macro lens, a macro teleconverter, or even screw-on supplementary close-up lenses or extension tubes for your present lenses.
8. THE WHOLE PICTURE. Consider the whole plant when you photograph, and not just the colorful bloom. Examine the fascinating textures and geometries of leaves, seed pods and fallen petals.
9. EXPERIMENT! Don’t be afraid to shoot a few extra pictures. Try different angles and different lighting. Also depict your subject from several different viewpoints.
10. LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES. If your picture don’t convey what you saw in your mind’s eye, ask yourself: “What went wrong?” If you study your mistakes, you will be rewarded wit a greater number successful photographs on your next outing.

by Richard Lynch
Many DSLR cameras have more than one color space (reflecting the gamut of color it can capture). You can change this based on what you establish as a workflow and how you want to handle color. You will want to consult your manual to find out how to make the change.

Let’s look at how to change color space on a Nikon D70 as an example:
1. Press the Menu button on the left of the camera back.
2. Scroll down to Shooting Menu and press the right arrow.
3. Scroll to Optimize Image and press the right arrow.
4. Scroll to Custom and press the right arrow.
5. Scroll to Color Mode and press the right arrow.
6. Scroll to your desired space.
7. Click the right arrow to accept.
The color space you choose should be one that you can incorporate logically into your workflow.