Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of products and services.

Reviews

A tangible argument for working in RAW format

I photograph exclusively in RAW format these days — unless I happen to be using a camera that doesn’t have that capability. This post is a small but tangible example why shooting in RAW is a good thing.

Have a look at the photo below. That’s what happens when you combine dark streets, tall buildings and bright skies. It’s hard to get the exposure correctly, especially if you haven’t got the time to sit there taking lots of photos of the same thing while you adjust the aperture and shutter speed manually. If you expose for the shadows, you get an unpleasantly bright sky, like here. If you expose for the sky, you get really dark buildings, and then you can’t make out the details.

Overexposed sky

Fortunately, I can adjust the exposure of a photo (within limits) after the fact if I shoot in RAW. I can also make tonal adjustments much better than with a JPEG file. Here’s that same photo, post-processed. I only used Lightroom, no Photoshop here. (In case you’re wondering, I also made contrast and color saturation and luminance changes.)

Cafe 123

I was able to recover the highlights and even get a decent amount of detail in the clouds. Yes, you can tell the sky isn’t natural, but hey, it’s a whole lot better than a blown out highlight. And there’s still plenty of shadow detail.

If your camera lets you shoot in RAW, don’t hesitate, take the plunge. Yes, the files will be a little bigger, but you get a ton more creative capability in post-processing. And you don’t have to use Lightroom or Bridge if you can’t afford them. (I know Bridge is free but you need Photoshop or another Adobe app to get it.) Both Picasa and iPhoto will work with RAW files. One caveat about iPhoto: at the time of this post, it does NOT work with DNG files (Adobe’s own RAW file format). It does, however, work with Canon, Nikon and other RAW formats. Your camera may also have come with software that lets you develop and manipulate the RAW files. Get started exploring this new medium — it’s the equivalent of a film negative — and have fun improving your photography!

Standard
Reviews

Two great utilities for photographers using Windows XP

I’m still on Windows XP (don’t think I’ll switch to Vista any time soon), and I’ve gotten accustomed to not being able to view thumbnails of my RAW image files in Windows Explorer. That is, until now. Just found two great little photo utilities from MS (surprise, surprise) and thought I’d share the info.

The first is called Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer for Windows XP. It’s a really long name but this little utility does just that. Once it’s installed, you can see thumbnail previews of your photos right in Windows Explorer, without having to open Bridge or Lightroom. That’s pretty nice! Not only that, but this lightweight app will also let you open up the RAW files and view/print them.

The second is called Microsoft Photo Info, and it will let you edit a photo’s meta data (EXIF, IPTC) right from Windows Explorer. Once installed, it puts a “Photo Info” option on the right-click menu for any photo (RAW files as well), and it lets you open up single or multiple photos and edit the EXIF data. It’s really handy, and I’m sure it’ll work great for those folks who don’t have Bridge or Lightroom.

By the way, I also talked about editing the EXIF data in your photographs in this post, where I outlined three other EXIF editing apps for Windows. Looks like there’s plenty of choice out there, so don’t be shy, dig in and edit away. Let’s all have nice, clean, crisp meta data in our photos! 🙂

Standard
A Guide To A Good Life, Reviews

Random Harvest (1942)

Just saw Random Harvest (1942), and had to blog about it. What a wonderful movie! I had no idea it even existed until tonight. Ligia spotted it on TMC a week or two ago, and we moved it toward the top of the queue of our Netflix account. I’m so glad we did!

The story is fantastically beautiful. A woman (Greer Garson), meets and falls in love with an amnesia patient (Ronald Colman), a convalescing officer from WWI. His life, until then a dreary, monotonous stay in an asylum, begins with their chance meeting.

They move to the country, and he begins to write. He’s quite good at it, and emboldened by his success and the prospect of making a living from writing, he proposes to her. She accepts, of course, and they settle down to a beautiful married life.

They have a boy, and one day he gets a job offer in nearby Liverpool. They’re both very happy about it, and he sets off for the city right away. On his way to the job interview, he has an accident, and a concussion brings back all memory of his previous life, erasing his current one.

Naturally, he goes back to his family home (he happens to be an aristocrat) and picks up his life, troubled as he may be by the lapse of three years from his life. His now ex-wife, desperate, searches everywhere, falls ill and the baby dies. When she sees his photo in a newspaper some time later, she applies to be his secretary, and gets the job, but does not tell him about her identity, hoping that he’ll recognize her. He does not, and things go on like that for years: he, tormented by unrecognizable wisps of memory from the past, and she, so close and yet so far from his heart.

I won’t tell you more, because I don’t want to spoil the movie for you if you haven’t seen it. Suffice it to say that it’s absolutely excellent. It’s a perfect screenplay, and Ms. Garson and Mr. Colman are absolutely marvelous in their parts, and they’ve now made my list of favorite actors and actresses. I was left speechless at the beautiful ending, and could only think “Bis, bis, bis!” I’m truly shocked that I did not hear of this movie until now, and want to find more like it. Record it, rent it or buy it, but see it. You must. You won’t regret it.

Standard
Reviews

The new and improved Google Analytics

I’ve just been playing with the new Google Analytics interface, and wow, that’s a seriously cool improvement over the old one! Google announced this a few days ago, and I waited to see when the change would take place in my account.

I logged in a few minutes ago and was given a choice between using the old interface and the new one, which is still in Beta. Chose the new one, of course, and was blown away by the overhaul! My gosh, it’s clean, crisp, much easier to use, and it lets you dig down as much as you want to, but doesn’t overwhelm you if you just want to get the bird’s eye view.

What I also like is that they’ve buried the AdWords campaign tracking stuff down toward the bottom, and it’s even less visible than before. That’s great for me, since I’m not currently running any AdWords campaigns for ComeAcross, and wasn’t tracking the conversion anyway. My traffic’s pretty much organic, and it’s been steadily growing since I launched my blog last year.

You’ve got to have a look when you get a chance. Log in, and definitely play around with the new interface if you’re given the option. You will not regret it! I criticized Google Analytics for their hard-to-use interface in a previous post, but that was before this gorgeous new overhaul.

Now if they’d only fix their persistent login issue… Just about every other Google property knows I’m logged into my account and lets me right in, but Google Analytics always asks for my password, and that’s a bit annoying.

Standard
Reviews

Getting good site stats

I’ve been using both Google Analytics and FeedBurner‘s own Site Stats service simultaneously for the past couple of months, and I thought I’d give a comparison of the two.

They both use little JavaScript snippets that you copy and paste into your web pages. They’re both good at eliminating false traffic (bots, etc.). That’s where the similarity ends.

Google Analytics gives more detailed feedback that’s targeted toward marketers and webmasters. It’s also tightly integrated with Google’s AdWords program, so you can track the success/conversion of your campaigns. But, it’s got so many options and menus to dig through, that it’s hard to use overall. You really need to spend some time learning it.

On the other hand, FeedBurner’s Site Stats service is simple and easy. They present the data in a way that’s easy to understand. And while at first you may think you’re not getting all of the data that Google Analytics provides, in practice, I’m getting all the data I need. It’s just organized so much better, that I need to go through less menus to get at it.

Want to know the best part? FeedBurner’s Site Stats provides almost instant feedback on what’s going on with your site. Yesterday, one of my posts about Zooomr got dugg, and made it to Digg’s front page. It was already more than three hours since it had been dugg, yet Google Analytics provided me with no data to indicate the Digg traffic. FeedBurner was right on top of it. I’d been getting data almost instantly and could monitor the traffic very nicely. This has been the case all along. I’ve been using Google Analytics since May of 2006, and I knew there was a significant lag, so I couldn’t use it to monitor my live traffic — I could only tell what happened to my site afterwards.

As any web developer will tell you, the ability to monitor your site traffic live is a huge benefit. What’s even more important is the ability to get great customer service. FeedBurner provides that, and has done so from the start. When I email them, I know I’m going to get a reply from a real, live, person, not a bot, and not a canned reply. That’s really cool. That’s why, even though their Site Stats service is free, I opted to purchase their detailed feed stats, and pay a little every month for that. It’s much better to pay a little and get something worthwhile, than always go with free and get what you pay for.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking Google Analytics. It’s a great service. But Google’s getting bigger and bigger these days, and they’ve never made it very easy to get in touch with one of their “humans”. Just a few days ago, I had a question about my AdSense account, and needed to get in touch with a person, because I couldn’t find the answer in their documentation. I emailed them and got an auto reply back, which said I should reply back with certain further information if I wanted to reach a human. I did that, and I got what looked like a canned reply, so I’m not even sure if it was a human being, or another auto reply. Not fun, and my problem still didn’t get solved.

On the other hand, I know the FeedBurner folks. I met a few of them in person, and I know the others via email. They’re real, helpful people. So if I were to recommend a stats service to you, I’d say go with FeedBurner’s Site Stats. That is, unless you absolutely must monitor your AdWords conversion campaigns through Google Analytics. Or use both services, and do your own comparison. I think in the end you’ll be happier with FeedBurner, like I am.

Standard