Photography

Find great jobs and hire the best talent

David Vidmar — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:44:39 GMT

Users that actually visit vidmar.net site have probably noticed there has been job board embedded in this site. At first I tested the field with my own version of it, but that was later replace with a professional service Hidden network by Alex Papadimoulis, legendary MVP for MS Paint and author of The Daily WTF.

I believe this service on my blog will be of use for both job seekers and employers!

If you are looking for a new challenge, just browse jobs and subscribe to the feed. Just don't forget to report back when you get that dream job, ok?

If you are employer, you can post your jobs for free (international) or with a huge discount using these codes:

100OFF0712 - $100 discount ($199 for first listing)
200OFF0712 - $200 discount ($99 for first listing)
299OFF0712 - $299 discount (free first listing)
INTLFREE7 - free international (non US/CA) listings

When you apply, please enter my referral number 1159. Thank you!

Take a look at some others blogs that are part of Hidden Network:

Technorati tags: job, job ads, employment

Photology - real life WPF application

David Vidmar — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:35:29 GMT

Photology is a new photo cataloging software from company called Enoetic. There are tons of photo cataloging programs out there so company really needs a good reason to develop a new one. And I need a good reason to test out another one...

But Photology has two good reasons:

It promises I can search for pictures querying for pictures using their features. So I can do a query for "yellow", "plant", shot in the "afternoon" that is out of "focus. That sounds cool!
It's using Windows Presentation Foundation, which is spankin' hot Microsoft technology everybody is drooling over but I have some trouble jumping into.

So I gave Photology a spin.

Here is a really quick rundown:

The good:

innovative - I can think of situations I would want to search for "pink", "faces" "indoors". And I don't know any other software that would let me do that.
design - It looks alright, but it's not far better the Picasa for example.
ease of use - just a few buttons and clicks, not million of options.

The bad:

no browsing - I didn't find any way to browse photo like we are used to. I can only see searching photos as a supplemental features of regular photo cataloging software, not as a separate piece of software.
search isn't terribly accurate - searching for "outdoor" and "beach" gave me some beach shots. But also gave me shot from top of the mountains, kids in backyard and an really old clock tower in Prague.
ease of use - I'm digging simplicity lately. But there is a thin line between featureless and simple. I missed a lot of things, for example "restore". Program was maximized all the time so I had to lower screen resolution to make screenshot.

What about WPF?

I wouldn't know. I didn't notice it. Nothing spectacular for users, I hope developers found working with WPF easier that with regular old Windows Forms.

Photology somewhat does what it promises but there is a long road ahead of the team to make it really work. It is definitely not something I would buy right now.

But I can see Google buying the company and incorporating technology in Picasa 3. Not that would be cool!

Technorati tags: photography, software, review, windows, wpf

No "links of the week" this week

David Vidmar — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:50:14 GMT

I was offline for most of the week, so no links this week, sorry. I have a great excuse, though!

We were sailing around some amazingly beautiful places that are way to crowded during summer but fantastic in autumn or spring. We had lovely weather with mild winds for start and ended with some serious sailing gin winds up to 35 knots which rose to 50 while landing in home marina.

Komiža, Vis

Milna, Brač

Technorati tags: sailing, adriatic, vis, brač, croatia

Canon EOS XTi/400D firmware 1.1.1 released

David Vidmar — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:34:26 GMT

As kind reader has notified me Canon recently released another EOS Digital Rebel XTi / EOS 400D Digital Firmware Update.

Firmware specification changes

This firmware update (Version 1.1.1) incorporates the following fixes and improvements.

Adds detailed information about three new lenses.
Polish has been added as a new display language in the menu screens.

The Version 1.1.1 firmware being released this time is for cameras with firmware up to Version 1.1.0. If the camera's firmware is already Version 1.1.1, it is not necessary to update the firmware.

As really well put in this dpreview forum thread, there is nothing new that average owner will ever notice, unless Canon sneaks some fixed without stating that in what's new.

As usual, I'll update my firmware. And if I don't post anything about it again, it just means everything went ok. ;)

Technorati Tags: canon, photography, firmware

Stupid TV puzzles

David Vidmar — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 22:33:00 GMT

I really hate stupid TV. I barely stand the regular TV. I like Lost and maybe a soccer game, but that’s it. Honest!

But I can’t stand to see a puzzle and not solve it. Solving it by hand (by head?) is nice, but I really like using technology.

So if I see a “spot the difference” on TV Paprika or DSF I get really pissed. But I just can’t channel surf pas that. So computers to the rescue!

Take a screenshot of the TV screen. If you are using TV card on your PC be sure to switch to VMR9 setting or you will just get a blank screen. If you don’t own a tuner card use digital camera to take a photo of the TV screen (don’t forget to turn off flash). If you don’t have a camera you are pretty much over with this exercise.

Now follow instructions:

launch your favorite image editor (I use Paint.NET if Photoshop isn’t handy)
paste the image in new document
select one of two images
cut the selection and paste in a new folder (Photoshop will do this automatically for you in Paint.NET you have to create new layer)

left. Paint.NET, right Photoshop

turn the new layers blending mode to “Difference”
drag the cutted image over the original
two images cancel each other out, what’s left is the difference

One more sample:

Simple, isn’t it? Now, go win yourself a washing machine or something.

GetCanon 1.6 Release Candidate

David Vidmar — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 21:28:00 GMT

New version available: GetCanon 1.6 has been released!

It's beta and CTP world. So I figured it can't hurt to post another prerelase for GetCanon 1.6.

It should be completely stable so I recommend upgrading. Some translations need to be checked before full release. My trusty translators are working on that as we speak. Thanks to all of them!

New since GetCanon 1.6 beta:

Hungarian and Portuguese translations

New since GetCanon 1.5:

built against Canon SDK 7.3 - added support for PowerShot S2 IS, PowerShot A520, PowerShot A510, Digital IXUS 700 and Digital IXUS 50
better error handling
new version checking at startup

Downloada:

GetCanon 1.6 Release Candidate

Please report any bugs!

Thanks to Marko and Adam for new translations and all other testers and translators for their work.

Beta version of GetCanon 1.6

David Vidmar — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 22:04:00 GMT

Warning: There is a newer version available: GetCanon 1.6 RC

I just uploaded the beta version of GetCanon 1.6. This is what's new:

built against Canon SDK 7.3 - added support for PowerShot S2 IS, PowerShot A520, PowerShot A510, Digital IXUS 700 and Digital IXUS 50
better error handling
new version checking at startup

The translations are not in place yet and as this is beta it means it is not fully tested yet.

Download:

GetCanon1! 1.6 beta 4

Please report any problems in comments or through my contact form.

[Update] I updated the beta a bit. Reinstall is recommended.
[Update] Yet another update, let's call this beta3. I added almost all translations and updated the installer.
[Update of the last update] I uploaded the wrong file. Sorry, I blame the weather.
[Update] Yet another beta. Smaller installer and another nasty crash fixed. Can anyone still reproduce the crash?

Master of lost data

David Vidmar — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 08:03:00 GMT

I just might hive myself a "Master of lost data" award. Ok, maybe not the first place, but I'm in the medals for sure! I did it again. I lost data. This time I lost a super important picture from flash memory card.

I use GetCanon! for image retrieval from digital camera. It has a really nice feature of transferring new pictures only. This way you don't have to empty memory card and can still quickly access new pictures. So I empty my cards when they are completely full. On Sunday I had a different plan. I felt an urge to empty data card immediately after I transfered pictures to PC. There was just no other way. I felt really good, like a real man. Now that my memory card was empty, I was free to fiddle with pictures. Resizing sounded really good. I use ACDSee 7 as my image browser and if I just need to just resize, why bother with opening Photoshop... Just use ACDSee's resize. Quick, painless. But somehow resizing settings decided they need to change to the most stupid combination ever: "Remove/replace original files". But some designer had a plan. He figured disabling the "Overwrite existing" option would be fun. It would be an insider joke or and global-office prank. I bet he was drinking a nice Canadian beer a friends were watching over his shoulder and chukling... Yes guys, it is fun. I laughed hysterically when your program overwrote original 2 MB picture with it's 14 KB copy without asking! Really hilarious!

But with a help of some friends (tnx Dejan for a SW hint, tnx Mare for a laptop) I managed to save my ass. I used Zero Assumption's Digital Image Recovery (FREE!). I mounted flash card as a drive with a PCMCIA Flash Card adapter and rescued 223 pictures with one click. 10 minutes of staring at the screen. So much fun.

Thanks you, Alexey V. Gubin of Russia. You are the greatest.

Bug Attack!

David Vidmar — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 09:31:00 GMT

(Click on a picture to get the original version, 1.9MB)

Picasa and Lookout

David Vidmar — Sat, 17 Jul 2004 07:30:00 GMT

Google just doesn't rest. They acquired the company that made Picasa which is now a free download. Picasa is great picture organizer for all your digital photo needs. At 3.5 MB in size and a price of $0 you should definitely check it out. It has oh-so-cool UI, it's fast (even on my home 333 MHz monster) at it has really nice time-line feature which reminds me of Microsoft Photo Triage! (I tried to grab a screen of this time-line but all I get is blank screen. I guess it has to be DirectX stuff or something like that.)

On the similar front. Lookout was acquired by Microsoft, but the download link was removed. Lookout is lightning-fast search for your email integrated with Microsoft Outlook. Maybe you can still find it somewhere on the web or drop me a line.