Lightroom as a DAM Tool and Metadata Stats
Everyone loves stats! I built a giant Lightroom catalogue of all my photos since 2004 — about 20,500 odd. Much to my surprise, it worked superbly well. This is one area in which Lightroom 2 is a vast improvement over version 1 which started slowing down noticeably when my catalogs reached a size of about 10k photos (although I have also upgraded my machine since last I tried that). Having so many photos lets you get a birdseye view of your own shooting habits and equipment. So here is a summary from the metadata view:
Top cameras:
- Pentax K100D - 11,972
- Pentax K10D - 3,636
- Pentax *ist DL - 1,938
- Canon EOS 350D - 1,471
- Fuji FinePix 4700z - 560
- various other point-and-shoots, film scans, edits
Of those, I still have the K10D and the K100D. Although I've had the K10D for about the same time that I had the K100D before, I took all my photos in Namibia and Europe last year with the K100D hence the much higher picture count from with body.
Top Pentax lenses:
- Pentax DA 50-200mm F4-5.6 ED - 6,713
- Pentax DA 16-45mm F4 ED AL - 5,069
- Pentax FA 50mm F1.4 - 2,911
- Pentax DA 18-55mm - 2,204
- various K/M/A lenses - 628
- various others
The 16-45/4 is the lens most likely to be found on the front of my K10D these days but I've shot all the fashion weeks with the 50-200 for lack of a better lens and those generate tons of shots in a short space time. This accounts for the puny 50-200 having so many pics against it! Otherwise the 16-45 is my favourite lens - great optical quality, light, and almost-but-not-quite wide enough standard zoom (equivalent to 24-70mm in 35mm terms).
*DAM = Digital Asset Management, i.e. handling very large media libraries.
The Streets of Sandton
Pics from the Saturday photo walk around Sandton. The complete set is over at Flickr.
Random rants
- Is the SOAP Stack an Embarrassing Failure? (Or should that be "Java's SOAP Stack" rather?) Axis 2, um, "leads the pack" in that regard. WS-* not complicated enough for you? Let's reinvent the app server wheel while we're at it too. If you have to do Web Services in Java, I recommend you check out Spring Web Services.
- Enabling Media Sharing in Vista doesn't unblock the Windows Firewall ports it uses. A while ago I got this to work with my Xbox 360 (though it was much slower and never worked with video compared to the free, 3rd party app TVersity). Then one day it decided to stop working. Turns out that Windows Firewall decided to block it for no apparent reason. This despite me re-enabling Media Sharing several times afterwards. @#$%! And this, kids, is why Apple is winning this round.
- Badly implemented Ajax is worse than no Ajax. We survived for many years without dynamic web pages but now everyone feels the need to Web 2.0-ify their online presence. Looking at you, Good Reads. Rendering badly in Firefox is not hip in this day and age
P.S. Don't you just hate it when they put footnotes at the end of a book?
Worldwide Photo Walk
I saw this mentioned on Photoshop User TV, and - surprise, surprise - there was even a Johannesburg edition! Scott Kelby is promoting his new Lightroom 2 book as part of a Worldwide Photo Walk, I figure it should be good fun. Starts at 9:30, 23rd August in Sandton - register to reserve your spot.
A Whole New Meaning to Role-playing Games
Nothing can prepare for you the amazing World of World of Warcraft!
'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'