Craig Severson explained his backup system one time. it seems over the top until you hear, “I can take that drive over there, plug in, reboot and I’m back to five minutes ago.”

I needed a backup device that transparent like Apple Time, was more cost effective then a appliance NAS drive, give me the most storage for my money and it had to be something I could self repair. I ended up building a 10 terabyte server powered by FreeNAS for under a $1000.

the problem that caused the need for this project presented itself in a rude way. a hard drive died inside a MacBook Pro which had a backup but it wasn’t up-to-date. this was caused by the movable nature of notebook computers. you have to remember to plug things in so that other things can happen automatically. the back up drive for Time Machine won’t work otherwise. and because nobody thinks like, “hey, so I’m going to lunch I guess I will plug this in so it will do it’s thing.” we have to make sure that backups just happen.

which brings up an ugly rule: the only time you think about backups is when you need one.

the “backup” that you make is really only as good as four things: how fast you can use it, how simple it is to do, how cheap it is to use it and finally how redundant redundant it is. generally when a drive dies there a few files that a person really wants now if they had access to them now they could keep working. it’s usually something like my bookthesispaper, pictures, music, project and email. and not always in that order. and when it’s borked is not the time to know if your backup software is doing it’s job. you have to check it once in a while and even better you have to test restore on some random hardware to make sure it’s really working.

the G4 NAS drive MK3 is still doing work in the office but is showing it’s age. it will be forever stuck at Mac OS X 10.4, has limited options for SATA cards, and if it dies it will stay dead because it’s 12 years old. even though it’s old I won’t retire it because as long as it’s running it will stay running. think mighty machine that serves files.

it would be easy enough to use a Time Capsule. but a quick bit of math showed that the office would outgrow it. it’s not really made for a work group / office environment. but there are other problems that made me dismiss it. you can read why I’m not just using a Time Capsule here.

a better product are mini servers called NAS drives. these offer redundant media options, cross platform file sharing, printer sharing, even music sharing without lots of complicated configuration to go through. commercial products like ReadyNAS and Drobo are interesting. the ReadyNAS is a stand alone box that connects to your network. while the Drobo can either attach to a computer or operate stand alone with an additional network adapter. you can buy either product with or without drives. for my application either would work and I was interested until I priced it out. either box with no drives cost about double what a basic motherboard, case, processor and RAM cost.

philosophy
as grown up as these products are it’s still to you to make sure what you are buying is compatible. in the past Macs and NAS drives didn’t get along. the file system didn’t support Mac names as they were tuned to work specifically with Windows. this would cause files saved on the server to become corrupt. they would look like they were there showing the proper file size and icon so all looked well until you actually tried to open the file. the buying tip here is if the NAS only supports SMB keep looking.

there are some things that I know about technology products 1) support really doesn’t help you unless its to issue an RMA number 2) drives fail 3) long term and proprietary do not go hand in hand. 4) while the parts inside aren’t any different then parts you can get yourself you don’t know if the company cheap’d out to cost reduce their product. if a power supply goes bad I should not have to wait a week for a new one. and if a drive goes bad it needs to be replaced now. 9-14 days doesn’t cut it. if I don’t have to haggle with support about getting these things fixed I’m even happier.

remember my goal is to get as much for my money as possible. so I’m willing to forgo company technical support and possible future repair from a single source. besides, building a box is fun.

the downside of rolling your own box is there are lots of unknowns. will this work with that and for how long. fortunately we don’t have to rely on “press” reviews of products. the users community that feedback on sites like NewEgg are beyond helpful. sorting by 1 stars to see potential problems as well as looking at 5 star reviews for praise. both should be evaluated with your specific requirements in mind. what doesn’t work for somebody’s application might be perfect for another.

software is another consideration that must be understood before buying a bunch of parts. I ruled out Windows right away because of cost. adding this OS would put the box I was building near the same cost as the other commercial solutions. there are lots of choices of open source software. Open Solaris, FreeBSD and Linux are all server capable. of course these OS may be beyond your skill set. the command line isn’t obvious to everyone. fortunately there are two projects that make it easy to get a file server running without having to using a CLI.

those projects are OpenFiler and FreeNAS. installing either is as simple as downloading an ISO, burning a CD, booting it on the target machine and following the instructions. which is as simple as it gets. both tools auto-detect network interfaces and hard drives. all you need to do is enter a fixed IP address and decide which format you want your storage drives to use.

we know that open source software can be a pain to work with because of sparse documentation and unfinished features. fortunately both projects have documentation that is good enough to help you get setup in case you can’t figure it out on your own. I installed both tools on my hardware before deciding on either.

the build
based on my research and testing I made a 10 terabyte server for under a thousand bucks. it’s been running for a while now so I have hindsight about the build, care and feeding and what I would change. here’s the specs:

SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SPE-HF-O Flex ATX Server Motherboard
2 gig of RAM up’d from 512M because ZFS complained

Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB 3.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
a 4G SATA SSD based on a Compact Flash Card

Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Computer Case
power supply / whisper fans
powered by FreeNAS

building the 10T wasn’t any harder then making a PC from a box of parts. it’s simple. attach a motherboard, bolt in hard drives, and connect everything to a power supply. something I’ve done a hundred times. it was built and posting in less than 30 minutes. installing the OS on the compact flash drive didn’t work when I tried doing it on a Mac. however, it worked without a hitch when I did the install it from a proper PC. it took about 5 minutes

so there were problems right off. which I attribute to the nature of open source software. it’s not always obvious how to set it up! I did the install of the OS 4 times before settling on a version that worked. I partially blame this on the documentation. OSS doc is notoriously out of date. for example the use of “compact flash cards” was discouraged because they fail after a number of writes. except modern CF cards don’t suffer the same way cards used to.

performance issues and solutions
the next steps included formatting the drives, pooling them for ZFS, making users and then creating Time Machine mounts for all. between the false starts and learning how not to do it I spent about 2 hours with this setup. and now that I’ve done it a few times I could easily set up a new server in about 15 minutes.

the first big problem that came up after the initial configuration was that file copies were incredibly slow over the network. copy was at lest 5X slower compared to copying to the G4 NAS. poking around the UI for settings didn’t reveal an obvious solution but I found one in the freeNAS forum and it was in two parts.

the first problem was that the Western Digital Green drives that I choose can be slow on any system because they use a modern 4K block. you need to tell your OS that this drive uses that otherwise it won’t go fast. after the drives were reformatted and re-ZFSd performance increased. but it wasn’t go fast yet. checking the a box labeled “Enable tuning of some kernel variables” in the Advanced tab got copying to network saturation.

as you poke around you’ll find other tools and options that you can turn on. one configuration option is for email notifications. I made a new email address on my server. then I filled in the form with the normal log in information then clicked Send Test Email. it worked. 10 days in and then 4 months in.

10 days later I got an email that… oh no. one of the drives failed! it emailed me that a failure had happened. and I was like, oh YEAH! it worked!!! hell ya. I shut down the server, replaced the drive, then pointed ZFS to the new device allowing it to resilver the zpool. next I filled out the WD replacement form is on the web, packaged the drive and send it back. it’s replacement arrived back in days. I keep spare drives are in stock as a precaution. I bought 2 more because they were on sale. although I will very likely use these drives for other tasks because the shelf life of a idle unspun drive has proven to be short.

I set the server to email status updates once a week. at first I read them every time. now I don’t bother unless it’s not from a scheduled time. the only thing to note here is to be sure to enter the DNS settings otherwise the messages will never get sent.

all the problems I mentioned earlier got solve because I wasn’t in a hurry to get this running. I didn’t rush to get it done. because this software was a new thing for me I wasn’t promising when it would the project online. I had a bunch of false starts, reformats, and re-doing everything was okay. had this been a production file server instead of a back up server I might have been even more cautious about announcing it’s “on” to the people using it.

cutting costs
could the 10T be made for less money? certainly. I’ve got an idea of what would I change if I was building it with my new found experience. the case and power supply is the first stop in cutting costs. rather than using a new parts I could have used an old “found” case and supply. and if I found the case there might certainly be a motherboard loaded with a CPU and RAM inside. I could have chosen cheaper parts trading off looking good for basic functionality.

it might be nice to be able to swap a drive without opening the case. but “hot swap” drive holders start at $20 per drive and you have to have the right case to use them. I think if it’s job was production file server this would be worth the extra expense.

I might not use this specific motherboard. you don’t need lots of power for a file server. anything 1GHz and up will do. although 2G of RAM is a must if you plan to use ZFS. the SuperMicro board has 6 SATA ports and the processor is built-in which swayed my purchase decision. it’s certainly easy enough to find a cheaper solution using a hardware search tool. remember that you you don’t need a “RAID” card because freeNAS does this job in place of specific hardware and a dumb 6 port SATA card is cheap.

finally, the cost of drives has plummeted since I made the 10T. I’ve seen the specific drive for half of what I paid in July of 2010. the specific thing to watch with drive is the length of the warrantee. a bargain drive will often have just 1 year from the manufacture. this is not a drive you want to use for a 24/365 production server. and it’s certainly not good for storing backups. always mind the age of your drives with a plan to retire them as they as they approach the end of their warrantee.

wrap
Time Machine backups from all the users happen transparently. since it’s been in place I’ve used the going back in time feature a few times to get files that I stupidly changed without making a new version (open somefile_r4, save as, somefile_r5). having this much storage on the network means that nobody can make the excuse “I forgot to plug it in”.

the 10T has been in service for 9 months and has proven itself beyond my expectations in terms of cost, performance and uptime. I did expect drive failures because that is the nature of drives. that the server tells it’s status via email means means I’m not having to actually check it’s logs periodically for failures is a feature that I know works. hopefully you will have a similar experience if you decide to roll your own 10T (or bigger).

good luck. have fun.
YMMV.

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I read a Rudy Rucker book where lots of the tech is mindblowingly complex. tech that was so hard that a humans couldn’t even be involved after a certain point. yet interfaces to tech creation allowed the characters to control making without thinking about who made who (robot making tech based on human interaction). the book Makers mentions combining complex programming projects into a greater object. this concept of reusing code is tossed out there like it’s no big deal. but fiction always over simplifies making because the story would become boring otherwise. to most people man landing on the moon is a sound bite even though it took the better part of 20 years (don’t forgot all the work before the Kennedy speech) to get there.

I’ve had a lot of printers in my life from letter quality daisy wheels to dot matrix to dye sub to laser. and at some level the businesses I ran wouldn’t have been possible without the leveraged use I got from printing without limits. Tom pointing that this same thing is right here with 3D printing is telling.

1) it’s ground zero. think of MakerBot“>Makerbot as a Epson MX-80
2) there potential for hundreds of new business
3) be prepared to see lots of failure as it engages
4) plastics and resins are toxic. stand by for regulation in California.

the discussion last night over dinner before the show was about lots of different things but one subject was “I want one but I don’t know why I want one.” this was Kanen answering the question do you want a 3D printer because making 2 is just as easy as making 1.

I think wanting one of these is the same as back when I had an Apple II of wanting a MX-80 printer. or a printer of any kind. it wasn’t that I needed to print lots of things. it was the idea of having a printer right there next to me. that way I didn’t have to wait to use somebody else’s. over time printers got better. my Epson became a C-Itoh, then it was a Panasonic, next it was a ImageWriter and not too long after became an ImageWriter II which was my last dot matrix printer. after that it was lasers and film printers all the way.

there is something satisfying about printing a stack of paper that is the manuscript / report / script / outline or whatever needs to be on paper to use properly. when tracking takes for a voice production I can’t imagine NOT doing that on paper. and proof reading copy just looks different when it lands on dead trees. [note about editing: the trick of course is to make the copy look different. I can write all day long in whatever typeface but if I want to proof read it I have to copy paste into a different werp and change the font and size so I can "see it".]

so yeah, that’s been my question since the possibility of having one came up back in May. these things are all around me. really. there’s a MakerBot an email away. and Shapeways will send me anything I can dream up. I even bought some tools to help me make things.

so here’s the very thing that I’m getting my head around in making my lens mount. I don’t have to fab it think about “machining” like I would if I was building from PVC, aluminum and other hardware. right angles aren’t even a requirement. one thing that comes to mind right off in learning to think like this is what Apple is doing. the original Mac Mini was the first thing that was made from a block of aluminum. it might have come out of a poured mold in approximately it’s final shape and then milled. but I bet it was milled from a block. hatched as a plan to learn how to make more complex shapes from the beginning. look at the white keyboards. those are bi-products of iMacs. and iPhone 4 is a complex shape made from even more exotic material.

if hindsight tells us anything it’s that getting in on the ground floor is a good idea. you don’t have to be the first in line but being there is that important. while I didn’t have the first laser printer I had the next one. and that was a better printer. it was fast, consistent and the type looked better than what came out of the letter quality printer. and what did I make with my printer? a software publishing business. back then software was as much about paper as it was the program.

but what could 3D printing do as a future business? printing “wood” gives a whole new way to look at “cheap wood pulp waste.” there’s no need for things to be cheap looking just because the manufacturing process prefers flat, wide, long that gets made in to shelves, entertainment centers and desks. using a combination of materials could automatically build in great surfaces that live on top of super strong latices grown out of a nozzle. this kind of thing would change the place of manufacturing. no need to make in China and ship it. just ship goo to Walmart. and because waste is every where goo doesn’t have to be made in a specific place. it’s just like concrete.

I’m interested because I see opportunity. it’s curious that the businesses popping up around 3d printing resembles the floppy in a zip lock bag stage that software publishing went through in the 80′s. that somehow buying a hardware kit and some precut wood is going to make your build much easier than just going to Home Labyrinth and finding the same thing there. I don’t think I’ll start a kit business printing printer parts. think been there somebody is already doing that. I am excited to see what my mind will come up with then the rig is sitting there wanting to do something.

and that’s why “I want one!”

links you might like to read:

why I love my 3D printer from a 10 year old’s perspective

trillion dollar industry and the age of 3d printing.

Print Crime and Makers

hopefully they won’t screw up 3D printers

Alibre Design

printer as part of it not the end of it

the people of Know Tech are divided on the care and feeding. Chris has a Windows centric attitude causing him to rebuild and reinstall the System and all his apps twice a year. Kenji lived with a broken MacBook Pro keyboard for nearly 2 years before he bothered to get it fixed. Craig has a detailed backup system. Kristin just uses her Macs. and all the Macs that John takes care of just seem to work without any messing about.

so why do people have a need to maintenance their Macs? it’s something that is built into all consumer products. your car needs regular care, you have to put chemicals into the pool, the heater filter gets changed, the coffee maker needs de-liming and the refrigerator needs to be de-iced. maintenance is all around us and were programmed to accept doing it. some people actually like the peace of mind that they’ve “done something” and other people “just like doing” maintenance because it makes them feel good.

but it can’t hurt? if you listen to the guy that runs “some maintenance tool every week” he’ll exclaim “I never have a problem with my system therefore what I’m doing is working!” you have to weigh that against our own findings that show you don’t have to do anything at all and all is well. sometimes “doing something” can make it worse. look at the Oynx forum here you will find some of reports that a Mac sometimes breaks after running this tool. this makes the “solution” worse than the “problem” in our mind.

the thing with maintenance tools is that they often get used at the wrong time. these tools usually get pulled out when something is horribly wrong with the a Mac like it won’t boot, applications won’t launch, something takes forever to open or it’s just slow. what happens next is a person will start to “try things” in the hope of making it better.

reboot
command option P-R
remove the battery and hold down the power button for 5 seconds.
reset-nvram
reset-all
repair permissions

if you phoned tech support at any company you will be asked to try it these things because it’s on a list. the thing is that none of the above will actually fix anything. and doing it regularly won’t actually make your Mac run any better than it already is running.

almost nobody suspects that the actual problem is a hardware problem. the modern computer is a highly reliable tool. but it’s not infallible. parts wear out, static takes it’s toll and that time you dropped it yet it still worked has caught up with you. instead of resorting to a long list of tricks the first thing that you should make happen is busting out the backup drive to make sure all the photos, music, writing and email is up-to-date. you do have a backup drive right?

if you don’t buy one right now.

there are quite a few “maintenance tools” that will invoke various scripts that clean caches, dump logs and do other repairs. these tools include applejack, TinkerTool, mainmenu and OnyX.

we aren’t not recommending these tools. nor are we flat out saying don’t use them. the point of all this is to know what you are getting into before you click GO. pretty much don’t take the word of “my Mac friend” just because they sound like they know what they are talking about. look into the forums before you commit to running because there are reports of problems. now, to be fair, maybe these tools didn’t cause the problem at all. maybe this was what got tried in an attempt to undo some other hail mary attempt of a fix.

remember, if you aren’t totally sure about something don’t use the tool.

okay so commercial software is better? there’s is a list of these tools as well: Drive Genius, Drive Tool Box, Disk Warrior, Tech Tool Pro, and Disk Utility (included on every Mac). yep, sometimes these tools actually do things that will fix your broken Mac meaning running them once in a while help eliminate potential problems? maybe. but more likely not. we consider these tools to be rear view mirror apps. you would use them when the problem is so big that it’s a last ditch. maybe because your backup drive is hosed (aka you never had one).

a very important thing to note about maintenance tools is that you must check to make sure the version you are about to run is compatible with the system you have. that 12 year old copy of Norton Utilities is not going to help you. and it may do lots of damage to your system if you actually got it to run. but any out of date “fix it tool” will have the same issue. what worked for OS X 10.2 is out of date for 10.6 as lots has changed. find a way to check to make sure you have a compatible version BEFORE you subject your Mac to it’s fix.

another common maintenance problem starts because an application appears damaged or doesn’t run at all. Final Cut Pro has this problem as do some Mail programs. the hidden “holding down the shift key or option key while starting the app” will reveal a secret maintenance mode. sometimes these the repair will make it work again. but sometimes the only way to make it work again is to reinstall the application or worse (only because it’s so time consuming) rebuild the entire system.

96% of apps uninstall simply by deleting the app. the applications that that don’t are from Adobe, Microsoft and Apple. for example Garage Band puts all the samples and loops in the Library folder so deleting GB from the Applications folder won’t get you 12G free. you could “use a good uninstaller” but there’s few 3rd party tools and the rest of them come from the maker.

the biggest problem is that doing things like re-installing often won’t help because the installer doesn’t kill all the old files in the installation process. if a pref or a .plist or some hidden file is corrupt no amount of reinstalling will fix the problem. one of the wonkiest problems we ever saw was when a user deleted a Microsoft Office demo instead of using the Remove Office application. when they tried using the real version it acted weird. in this one case it took copying a Demo folder to it so it would uninstall using the dumb app. the newer Uninstaller for Office seems do a better job of finding deleted versions.

and then there is Repair Permissions. this is here because that it’s part of the Apple support check list. they do it because sometimes, and this is only once in a blue moon, a problem is actually fixed by running it. and they will run whenever there are weird problems reported even though the failure is clearly hardware. we had a MacBook with a SuperDrive that would burn CDs but not DVDs. the first thing they wanted to do was re-install the OS. they being the airquotes Geniuses. booting from a different drive proved that it was the hardware. but the airquotes G insisted on Repair Permissions, Zap’d the PRAM and some other rubber chicken waving. finally convinced that it wasn’t software the hardware fix commenced.

the user desperate to have a working Mac again will try anything to get it to work. the problem with having a button called “repair” in a app is that the user will trust it implicitly. they will try it and try it all the while ignoring the tell tale signs of a dying drive—clicking, popping, long delays, beach balls, etc. using Reparing Permissions as a gauge for drive health is interesting. thing is, that Mac with that drive would have already been slow. and having it take an hour plus shows how bad it was. we’d say that Permissions fixing was never the issue at all as the drive had been dying for a weeks.

Permissions have not been a big problem since 10.4 was released. which means we really need to understand exactly what Repair Permissions does.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1452
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repair_permissions

one of the things that gets this feature so much attention is the word Repair. it became the catch-all task to do first for any problem that arrises. like magic is going to happen every time this runs. here’s a quote of what you usually see in a forum post:

“This is on an older PowerBook G4 with 10.5.8. I ran Fix Permissions and it made no difference.”

duh, right? the thing to note is that the user wrote it as “Fix Permissions”. there it is FIX as in FIX my problem! I bet we could release a series off apps called “Error Tools” that essentially do nothing yet that everyone would report in “dude, it fixed my problem!!”

so what is the best thing you can do for Mac maintenance? have a backup. and have another backup. but remember your backup is only as good as how fast you can use it and how complete it actually is.

Remember when Macworld used to get 30k people coming to it? Well we have days were over 1m people visit our stores.
steve jobs

Macworld Expo has been “the tradeshow” for all things Mac for the last 25 years. there was a time when it was mandatory for anyone who had an interest in Mac to attend. companies came here to announce products, users came to learn, buyers came to do deals and the press could see all their contacts. it was all under one roof.

today it’s not the show that it once was.

the show has become filled with hodge podge of iPod, iPhone and iPad accessories and software for those devices. granted that Mac is only a third of Apple’s business it makes sense that the show would reflect this. which is why we think that Macworld should not be the name of this show. it’s time for Macworld Expo to die.

trade shows in general need to rethink why they exist because the internet has changed the way that we do business. there is less of a need to rely on “events” for product launches. companies no longer have to deathmarch to make a show date. they can release a product when it’s ready which generates its own buzz around the launch.

what has gone missing from the show? practically everything: 3D, CAD, design tools, database, word processing, page layout, business management, utility, development and all the other wacky ideas that people brought to the show. you can blame the spread sheet for the wacky. that’s where somebody uses the 1-10% of the show attendance to base how many of something they will sell. you know the thinking, “if we can sell this many of our thing we’ll be on our way to success!”

but all the vendors that we used to see at MWE have decided that it’s better to stay at home, concentrating on keeping the user base they already have then it is to find 50 new users. all of these tools haven’t gone away. no, lots of things are alive and well. like MacDraft made by MicroSpot a company that started 26 years ago on what would have been a Mac Plus. think about that… CAD running on a 4 megabyte computer with a 512×384 screen!

Macworld Expo was a catalyst that held together a community of users and vendors. it was a place to meet, learn and grow. which is hard to say about other “trade shows” and we know because we’ve been to lots of them. there are similar things. ComicCon, WonderCon, and APE come to mind right away where the line between the stage and the audience blurs together into a mass of mutual admiration. the hacker conferences bring a different kind of respect both in code and finding out that everyone you thought was more l33t is just like you. or the conferences on specific things like Photoshop, Flash or 3D where you come away smarted and inspired.

all of those things used to be found at Macworld Expo. but it’s been several years since we’ve left the show with feels of wanting to change the world with new found powers.

and that’s why it’s time for it to go. at the very least it’s name should change to reflect what it’s become.

AsseenonTVhat.com
youbiq tripod
iGrill
Vogel Ring Mount
L5 – universal remote

the Robert Hess “party list” wasn’t ever updated this year. it was taken care of by Ilene. we hope she is okay.

Adam Christianson from MacCast joins us on the talk.

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some cameras have a PANO mode. this is nifty tool but we have some issues with this mode. first thing is that you have to practice using it because it forces you to shoot a specific way. you don’t need that mode to make a 3 shot pano.

how to take a 3 shot pano. start with your lens as wide as possible. later you can change to a more zoomed in setting. the cameras orientation can be either taller than wide or wider than tall doesn’t matter but stick to one as you are learning. if there is a way to lock the exposure do that so your frames look to be about the same exposure. when you start taking your pano be quick about it but don’t rush.

all the 3 shot panos that we take are hand held but you need to mind some things. the pivot point of the camera. if you get really far off it makes it harder to stitch back together without distortion. exposure is a factor so find a way to hold a setting. framing the important parts of the pano so those subjects are in the middle makes certain you won’t cover up those interesting bits.

other tips
hopefully the scene not moving much but if it is so what. the blurs in the frame can be cool looking. it’s always a good idea to take more shots than you actually need. or take the same “positioned shot” a few times if the action is not right or it’s blurry.

one fun thing to do is to have the same person in each frame. that way when you stitch your subject will be everywhere.

lots of tools can put it together
Adobe Photoshop since CS2
Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 (Win/Mac)

[more list goes here]

print and mount
print your shots and mount them on a board
has an organic displaced look to it.

so what is Continuous mode good for? it turns out there are lots of things that you can shoot. it’s a great way to get perfect candids. group shots are always a problem. don’t forget squirming kids and pets. you get that winning moment for sports photos. in a nut shell Continuous mode is good for anything that moves.

Continuous mode is not stop motion or time lapse. you can’t set the frame rate to a specific speed. this makes time lapse a different problem and one your camera might solve with a mode specifically for it that function.

shooting group shots can be hard because everyone is moving, getting ready or talking with one another. getting the perfect group shot is a bit of luck but if you take enough pictures Continuous mode will catch everyones eyes open eventually. use a tool like Photoshop Elements to combine the best of everyone.

kids are squirmy worms. they make faces, they move around. if you take 60 shots in two minutes ONE of them will be awesome!

pets are the same thing as kids. only worse. they won’t stay, they won’t look, but they can hear the shutter and the flash. the camera making that noise may get Fido’s attention.

in sports you know when the action is going to start and where it’s going to go. using Continuous mode all you have to do is point there and you’ll get your shot.

but use Continuous mode anything else that moves. why? because it’s really hard to snap the shutter right at exactly the right moment. unless you learn to anticipate it lag is the biggest problem to overcome. but don’t bother learning because it will only screw you up for shooting on other cameras. better to have before and after and THE shot instead of a happy accident.

speaking of happy accidents try this for party photos. you need two cameras. one has the flash on while the other is in continuous mode. start shooting continuously first. next say cheese and shoot the flash shot. you get this nifty light filled shot in the middle. and that’s often THE shot!

the problem is that this makes 100′s of photos you will never ever use. but you will want to use them somehow. here are some ideas. make a thumb nail page of the whole thing with the shot in middle. flip books are easy enough to make if you have some patients. or you can print a mini book using a service like iPhoto or Blurb. a photobooth strip is easy to make using Illustrator, Comic Life or Pages. and you can always pick THE shot and print it. here’s a nifty movie we made with QuickTime Pro. it’s set to 2 FPS. drinks

there are some problems to watch out for Continuous mode. first is that have to hold the camera steady in low light otherwise you’ll get a series of blurry pictures because both you are your subject is in motion. it’s always better to shoot Continuous mode outside or in lots of light. you’ll want to have extra cards on had because Continuous mode chews through memory cards.

there are several things you can do to make shooting Continuous mode even better. turn down the quality/size of the image will speed up the time between shots. and if it isn’t turned off automatically the flash should be set to off.

the only way to get good with Continuous mode is to go shoot! here’s some assignments:

bus / car / train drive by
kid playing with something
group shot
skate boarders
fish tank
busy street corner

link mentions from the show:
there are two Casio camera with high speed modes. the Casio EX-FH25 and the Casio EX-FH100

Shape College

the good news is that doing a 12, 24, 36, 52 or 365 project is much easier today because of technology. there’s a nifty iPhone app called 365. there is a facebook tool to help you manage. you can use flickr with the tag 365. and there’s a web tool called 365 project. there’s lots here. you don’t have to use any of it if you don’t want to share.

your daily photo session has some rules. the first is simple. take 1 picture every day for the express purpose of the project. no multi shots. it must be one shot. if you want to simulate doing it with a film camera then no post processing. but we’re okay with some touching: color correction, balance, cropping and vignetting. but no heavy lifting like using Photoshop unless the photo is a panorama or one of those multiple snaps to remove all the people, or a photo college of a place that you shot specifically for the day. the final rule is simple: no time travel. if you miss a day you miss a day. it’s up to you if you want to fill it in with another picture. but don’t make a habit of it.

what you get out of doing a 365? the best gift you will receive is something called “photo reflex” which is being able to see pictures before you take them. it’s what every photo journalist develops and it’s why their pictures look like they do. some of it is luck but most of it is about seeing.

you will want to share you photos along the way meaning you’ll obtain mad posting skillz. by the end of the year putting a photo on the web will be very simple for you. in fact you might scrap one system for another several times before the year is out just because a process annoys you.

a 365 project can end up being your very own coffee table book. every photo service offers books. some will even “automatically lay them out”. just select you photo album, choose book, and it’s ready to upload for purchase.

anytime you accomplish a year long project is cause for celebration. have a party and show you images on the big screen. if you show one picture every minute your party will need to be just about 6 hours long.

but the best thing about a 365 is the shooting experience. you will definitely approach pictures and picture taking differently by the end.

if you don’t know if you’d like to commit to a year long endeavor try shooting for 30 days first. you’ll know right away if you up to the task of every day. and if you don’t get into it after a month you won’t feel like a big knob for jumping off the project 4 months in.

rules
0) start any time. you don’t need to wait for Jan 1.
1) you need a camera with you all the time

• iPhone is fine. blackberry is fine. crap cam is fine.
• it’s okay to use different cameras for your project.

2) shoot something every day.

• make a recurring alarm
• set a time aside
• or just watch for that photo

3) doesn’t have to be something special

• moments happen so be ready to capture them

4) use your tech

• flickr, blog, Mobile Me, print it!
• iPhoto and Picasca have albums

5) don’t flake
6) the photo doesn’t have to be great. and it doesn’t have to be a photo shot for the purpose of the project if you want to be flexible.
7) one picture every day goes in to a pool that you can look back on a year later
8 ) no multi shots (unless it is a pano or a collage)
9) no post processing vs

• okay, post processing is okay. color correction, balance, cropping and vignetting

10) no time travel!

links to things mentioned in the show:
sorry, it takes a while to make this list

the problem with any of these is that 1) the require lots of light to work 2) they could introduce some kind of distortion (barrel, flare or plane) to the image 3) you didn’t know if you got the shot until the film came back.

the good news is that practically every cheap camera has a macro mode. and while it is not perfect (we’ll talk about the why in a bit) it is a fun way to get really close to your subject. you won’t have to spend any extra to find out if you want to push into macro because you won’t need to have any specific gear or special lens for a DSLR camera.

on most cameras the Macro mode can be entered in 2 clicks. on the Canon it’s the button on the left side of the circle. pressing it twice will put it in “flower mode”. on other cameras the word “macro” might be used instead of a universal icon. other cameras change settings with a dial on the top. if you aren’t sure how to enter “macro mode” check the manual or do a search.

the settings for the camera are very important to have success for macro. you must turn the flash OFF. otherwise it will blow out the object. if you can use a fast shutter which will keep things from blurring if you hand holding your shot. and try to shoot with lots of light. which might require a light box, direct sunlight, defusers in front of shop lamps or a simple desk lamp.

macro is not always easy and you will run into issues as you learn about it. first off the focus range is really narrow. 1/4″ too close (or too far) and it will not focus. this will require you to move the camera in and out from the subject to find the range. the narrow focus happens is because the lens aperture is wide open which causes the depth of field to decrease. in this example picture of dimes the middle dime is sharp while the top and bottom is not. if you forget to turn off your flash the first shot will remind you to turn it off.

there are technique issues that go with macro. we already know that the biggest problem will be keeping your subject in focus. most of the time you won’t actually know if your image is sharp unless you look at it on your computer screen. the tiny screen on your camera won’t help you here. you’ll have to download your shots and look light can blow out edges easily because of the narrow focus range. hand held shots can be a problem because even the tiniest wiggle is like 100x amplified because of the closeness to the subject. rock steady is the only way you’ll get shots that look good.

there are two additional things you can add to make taking macro photos more fun. make a copy stand so you can position your camera in the same place every time. adding adjustable lights will help keep your subject sharp and well lit.

a light box is another tool that will help in getting consistent pictures of objects. you can buy light box for not much money or make a light box from things around you. we plan on talking about light boxes in length soon.

shooting macro with a cheap shot is fun but it does have some downsides. the first is that it’s limited to how close you can get. there are sharpness issues because the lens is not made specifically for macro.

this is just the beginning for macro. there are lot’s other ways to get close up shots using DSLR cameras, eye piece projection from a microscope, stack reversing a normal lens and using traditional macro gear with modern cameras.

so now it’s to you. the best and only way to find out more about macro is to go shoot. your assignment is as follows:
find out how to turn on Macro mode in your camera
shoot things on your desk
find a toy and pose it
ARMY MEN ARE GOOD POSERS, SIR!
flowers are fun to shoot

send us your awesome macro shots and we’ll post them to the gallery.

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1000 true fans is the number that you need to find success as an artist.

links to Devon McClive
blog
itunes
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cdbaby

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