Category Archives: Photography

Image recovery

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Coming back for a couple of days in Rome and a full memory card in my Pentax DS *ist camera, the first thing I do is, of cause, to copy the files to my computer and look though them .

Except that I got an error half way through the copy process.

This has happened before, but a re-insertion of the memory card (in my card reader) solved that problem and I didn’t think more about it. But now it happened again, with still about 46 images not copied of the card. Firstly I try the windows dick checker (right click on the drive->properties->tools), xcopy, xxcopy and Pc Inspector Smart Recovery which I’ve used for this before. Non of this worked. I’ve used the Inspector for this before and it worked really well, but this was with jpeg files and this is Pentax Raw files (.pef). Didn’t find anything.

So I try:

  • DiskInternal Flash Recovery:  Finds nine images, but can’t display them, and thinks they are jpeg. Probably found bit and pieces of the internal jpeg preview in some of the files. Does claim Raw support but doesn’t mention Pentax, so… I guess they don’t over sell.
  • PC Inspector Smart Recovery: Doesn’t claim to support Pentax, and didn’t find anything.
  • CardRecovery: This claims Pentax PEF support, but didn’t find anything at all.
  • TransPict Recovery Pro: This program also claim to support Pentax Raw files, but doesn’t say which Pentax cameras. It did find all the files but couldn’t display any of them and claimed that they where probably incomplete. Locked up hard, halfway through.

So TransPict wouldn’t respond, so I decided to reboot my computer. But I forgot to remove the memory card while doing this, and windows actually picked up on the fact that there was a problem with this drive. And fixed it!.

There where two bad blocks on the sd-card, and window fixed this as good as it could. There are errors in the two images in question, but they are just to images and I can live without them a lot easier than without the last 46 images (the last day).

I guess that I was lucky. There are probably more image media recovery program out there to try, but I’ll save that for next time. If that card had been in a whose way, the disk-fix by windows might have ended in a disaster, with a worse result than if some program (that actaully know and understand the image file format) had tried to rescue my images.

But it would have been even if I had take the words of TransPict at face value and just give up….

(as to why it was only 46 images – this wasn’t a photo vacation, it was family time)

What I want in a photo workflow application

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I never go far without my Pentax *ist DS camera. I take a lot of pictures.

Normally when I move pictures from my camera to my computer and do the first raw sorting, it’s a fairly manual process, involving things like the windows explorer (copy), a small file renaming tool (to rename to the exif date/time), IrfanView (browsing) and The Gimp (for crop and levelling).

I want to try and automate this process a bit, make it work better with raw files and add delta edition (the original picture is left untouched, changes applied is saved to a seperate file).
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Pentax *ist DS: First impression

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I never became really happy with my Nikon 8800 (loved the zoom and the Vibration Reduction, but it was also slow and had to much noise in the images), so I sold it and got a Pentax *ist DS D-SLR instead. My first impression is very positive.

I got the camera Friday evening and I had to use it Saturday for a wedding. That didn’t really leave me any time to get to know it, so I mostly let it do it’s own thing in auto mode, occasionally turning of the flash.

I took around 600 pictures and a no time did it handle unfavorably.
Always ready to take another picture and fast autofocus being the two high point. The final results where stunning. I’ll add some test pictures to this entry later.
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OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta logo

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The OpenOffice.org page has gone to a new design and while the main product is the 2.0 beta, they are using Seagull Egg logo…. guess who took that picture, yes! I did! Just move your mouse cursor over the image and it will popup a small message saying this! I’m especially proud about this as I’ve been using OpenOffice.org for a long time (it’s a replacement for Office) and it feels good to be able to give something back.

Model Toby

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The German Science magazine: Morgenwelt has used a couple of my pictures for their web-magazine.

They’ve used a picture of my son, Tobias, for one article and one of an old lady, for another article. Kind of cool if I have to say it my self.

The pictures where published using a Creative Commons license, saying that the pictures on my gallery can be used by anybody as long as it’s non-commercial and that they give attribution to me. So I’m not making any money of this, but the simple fact that something I created, was useful for somebody else, simply warms my heart.

Nikon Coolpix 8800

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I went at got my self one of these babies yesterday.

I haven’t really had the time yet, to play much with it.

The short days, here makes it kind of hard to get of from work, while there’s still a bit of light left. But I’ve managed to take a couple of pictures. Absolutely nothing special, just testing.

But I do think that this picture came out quite nice. I’ll have to test a lot of stuff on it in the near future to get a good
feel for it. Needs to find the noise level of the ISO setting, the usefulness of the Noise Reduction system and the Vibration Reduction system.

Things may not be what they seem…

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Greg’s Digital Portfolio has a great collection of images that Greg “Photoshopped”. Which basically means that he change, more or less, real images into something more selling. Often the results are stunning, but also a but boring.

Take a look at this image if you are wondering how come girls in magazines look so good. No wonder girls have a problem with reality and their looks…

ALE

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No, it’s not about beer.

ALE is a Anti-Lamenessing Engine, but sadly I got no idea what “Lamenessing” means, but that doesn’t stop me from using it.

What it does is, it take a series of frames from a movie and combines them to a high resolution image. The frames need to be nearly exactly the same, but with a small movement of the camera, which means that edges will be place differently on pixels.

I’ll get back when I’ve played with it for a bit and post examples.

P.S.: Played a bit more with it – it’s not that fantastic at doing really large versions, but it may be useful when trying to get a better quality pictures in not much higher resolution. I still may post some more information in it later, but probably not.