Photography

I work for Microsoft now

David Vidmar — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:00:27 GMT

It’s been quiet around here and for a good reason. As I hinted before there has been many changes in my life recently. In same week I became father for second time (father of three boys now, twins and a new baby!), finally finished my engineer’s degree and finally, I joined the ranks of best company in the world to work for – Microsoft.

I’ll be working as I consultant for Biztalk Server and Forefront Identity Manager and from time to time a Dynamics CRM consultant.

So, what can you expect? Occasional dry stints, lots of BTS and FIM links, Windows Phone 7, Azure and Windows 8 and other cool Microsoft stuff.

If you are fellow Microsoftie, please look me up and drop me a note – let’s connect!

Site troubles

David Vidmar — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 06:50:31 GMT

This site has been experiencing technical difficulties in last couple of days. As far as I can see, it’s been some hackers playground. Things are returning to normal.

Thank you all for your patience.

Zenfolio Referral Code

David Vidmar — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:42:29 GMT

I have lately began using Zenfolio as my main photo repository and gallery. Why?

Picasa Web Albums is great for albums I want to show my mom/mother in law/sister/… since is dead simple to browse. I still use it.
Flickr is great, but not for galleries and albums, only for couple of photos ni the series. Also, it’s not mom-friendly for kids photos and stuff.
Smug Mug is missing something. Don’t know what, but we just didn’t click.
Zenfolio looks great, it’s easy to browse, can store all my photos in original format. It’s Picasa Web + Flickr + Smug Mug. I love it!

If you are going to buy a paid account, this is my referral code. If you use it, it’s $5 off for you and a 5$ bonus for me. Win win.

My Zenfolio Referral Code: NPG-DD8-JZE

GetCanon! 1.7

David Vidmar — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:28:42 GMT

This is a minor release that I made since users asked for it. Please read the note below before asking about why new cameras aren’t supported and why it doesn’t work on Windows Vista!

GetCanon! is a image downloader for Canon digital cameras. It's small, quick and simple. It can download images, rotate them automatically and delete them from camera. If you hate the "designer" interface of Canon utilities and hate Windows messing with image filenames, this is the right tool for you.

GetCanon! is freeware. It includes open-source program JpegTran from Independent JPEG Group's JPEG software.

The program has been downloaded more than 30,000 times from my own server only and is hosted on many sites around the web. This is what user of GetCanon! think about it:

This application is exactly what I've been looking for.
I found GetCanon! as a very useful tool for my PowerShot camera.
Thanks this is exactly what I was looking for: something that just works! Thanks!!!
Wow -- this is a great utility!
I like your hassle free program a lot. It's much better than the annoying canon software included with my camera.
Thanks very much for writing GetCanon and thanks, too, for making it freely available. I love elegant, snappy & simple programs ... just like GetCanon.
GetCanon is the _only_ software, including Canon's CameraWindow, that is able to transfer a ~900MB AVI File from my Cam, at all. I don't know why, all the others crashed, freezed, or produced a NULL Byte file after working for ages.

Download: GetCanon! 1.7 Setup (1016 KB)

This software requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. You probably have it on your computer but if you don't you can download it free from Microsoft.

What's new since version 1.6:

Added Czech language.
Fixed some minor glitches in Dutch translations.
Other minor fixes.

Acknowledgments:

Big thanks to all of translators and testers. These include: Marko Juvančič, Gregor Šuster, Mojca Knaus, Roberto Boriotti, Tobias Sürig, Jac Willekens, Patrick Abi Salloum, Kasper Garns, Adam Nemeth, Marko Justinek and Steffen Klemichen, Josef Remes.

Supported cameras in version 1.7:

PowerShot A10, PowerShot A20, PowerShot A30, PowerShot A40, PowerShot A60,
PowerShot A70, PowerShot A75, PowerShot A80, PowerShot A85, PowerShot A95,
PowerShot A100, PowerShot A200, PowerShot A300, PowerShot A310, PowerShot A400, PowerShot A510, PowerShot A520,
PowerShot S10, PowerShot S20, PowerShot S30, PowerShot S40, PowerShot S45, PowerShot S50, PowerShot S60, PowerShot S70,
PowerShot S100, IXY DIGITAL, DIGITAL IXUS,
PowerShot S110, IXY DIGITAL 200, DIGITAL IXUS v,
PowerShot S200, IXY DIGITAL 200a, DIGITAL IXUS v2,
PowerShot S230, IXY DIGITAL 320, DIGITAL IXUS v3,
PowerShot S300, IXY DIGITAL 300, DIGITAL IXUS 300,
PowerShot S330, IXY DIGITAL 300a, DIGITAL IXUS 330,
PowerShot S400, IXY DIGITAL 400, DIGITAL IXUS 400,
PowerShot SD100, IXY DIGITAL 30, DIGITAL IXUS II,
PowerShot SD10, IXY DIGITAL L, DIGITAL IXUS i,
PowerShot SD110, IXY DIGITAL 30a, DIGITAL IXUS IIs,
PowerShot S410, IXY DIGITAL 450, DIGITAL IXUS 430,
PowerShot S500, IXY DIGITAL 500, DIGITAL IXUS 500,
PowerShot SD20, IXY DIGITAL L2, DIGITAL IXUS I5,
PowerShot SD200, IXY DIGITAL 40, DIGITAL IXUS 30,
PowerShot SD300, IXY DIGITAL 50, DIGITAL IXUS 40,
PowerShot SD400, IXY DIGITAL 55, DIGITAL IXUS 50,
PowerShot SD500, IXY DIGITAL 600, DIGITAL IXUS 700
PowerShot G1, PowerShot G2, PowerShot G3, PowerShot G5, PowerShot G6,
PowerShot Pro90 IS, PowerShot S1 IS, PowerShot S2 IS, PowerShot Pro1

PLEASE NOTE:

Canon stopped development of their DLL library GetCanon! uses. That’s why there is no support for newer cameras Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it. You might try your luck with Windows Live Photo Gallery image downloader. It’s great, way better that GetCanon! I use it all the time.

It also doesn’t work on Windows Vista for the same reason. Some users reported that turning Windows XP compatibility on .exe file works.

Note: The EOS class of digital cameras is not supported. You can use the version GetCanon 1.02 with EOS class cameras.

Supported languages:

English
Slovenian
Danish
German
French
Hungarian
Italian
Dutch
Portuguese
Czech

Source code:

If you would like to get the source code for this version, you have to sign up for Canon Developer program.

Once you have got your hands on Canon SDK, contact me and I'll send you the source.

These are links where you can apply for Canon SDK, depending where you're from:

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.