It's a tight fit. No room for anything else in there and the lid doesn't close properly.

Important to me were the ability to hold a DSLR, an iPad and a big-ass lens I don’t yet own. Oh, and all the peripherals need to go somewhere and it needs to keep stuff dry in a light shower and have a pocket for a bin bag in case the skies open. It’d be nice if it could also hold my cheap tripod and by backup camera, a Panasonic Lumix FZ20. As I suspect modern photographers need a camera bag that holds a laptop or iPad, I thought I’d share my findings. If you’re not looking for a backpack, look elsewhere; I’m a great fan of backpacks for this sort of thing so that’s the route I took.

After a small amount of research, and leaning on the large shoulders of Twitter, in particular @markds and @mindnumbing, I had a shortlist of three bags to take to eBay: The Naneu U60, the Lowepro Vertex 100 AW and possibly the stupidly named ThinkTank StreetWalker HardDrive. To cut a long story short, eBay had a LowePro Vertex on offer at a price I couldn’t ignore and it arrived this morning. I’d probably be just as happy with any of the bags on my list, so don’t assume that the others are in any way not as good. I got this one, so I’ll tell you about it.

iPad, camera bag, Tripod. Plenty of room for everything.

The LowePro Vertex 100 AW does everything on my list. It’s got room for a laptop (My 13″ MacBook just fits, so it looks like 17″ users need to look elsewhere) or iPad with waterproof zips – the AW stands for All Weather – and there’s room for two camera bodies and loads of lenses. This will do me for a while. Two pockets on the back hold all the cables and memory cards you could need and there’s room for chargers and the like in the main section. There’s a neat fitting on the back for a tripod, but this isn’t usable when you activate my favourite feature; this bag has its own waterproof cover. I like the size as well, and this was one of the deciding factors for all three bags on my list.

What has it got in its pocketses?

Do I recommend it? So far, without having taken it out on assignment (ooh, hark at me sounding like an adventure photographer) I can say yes, it’s brilliant. I can’t see it having any problems, the brand is well reviewed by people I trust, but only once I’ve done the Magny Cours round of World Superbikes, the reason for buying the bag, will I be able to definitively say. So far, though, I’m bloody impressed.

There are some things that, when offered, you have to say yes to. You know them when you see them and you know them when you think “how much would I regret it if I didn’t do this?” I had one of those opportunities last weekend. I was asked to go and cover the World Superbikes race at Silverstone for MotoRaceReports, a blog I write for. I would get a full media pass and all I’d have to do was write a report, tweet about it and take some photos. Hell, yes.

Fabrizio was confident, right up to race two.

Now, I’ve taken photos at Silverstone before and I’ve had paddock access, so this would be the same sort of deal, right?

Wrong. So very wrong.

As a fan, what happened was that I would be gifted with the best weekend of motorsports I’d ever had; I’d be plunged right into the heart of the World Superbikes world. As a photographer, I would have access to everywhere around the circuit, except the grid, and be driven to any spot of the track, even those closed to the public, by the media shuttle at my whim. As a reporter, I would be given access to the Media Centre where the myriad of displays show all manner of race data during qualifying and racing, just like the TV commentators have access to. In all, it was a fan’s dream. I’d love to qualify that with caveats about how you miss the atmosphere, how you’re surrounded by jaded, cynical jobsworth journalists and photographers who have seen it all, or to find some other negative aspect to cling to to balance out the excellence, but I’m afraid there was none of this. It was just excellence from beginning to end; helpful security, talkative journos, accomodating riders and teams, there was no one trying to tell you what you couldn’t do apart from one lone airport security guy shouting at you to get off the helipad grass.

The Media Centre during Superpole 1

Thursday night, I had dinner with @weeyin13 (Jen), my fellow hack at MotoRaceReports, @mikeevstog, a photographer I’d met at the Silverstone MotoGP, and two young neophites looking forward to their first race weekend, @katie_86 and @supersoph23. plans were made, timings were agreed on and I was then dropped off at my hotel while they all went to their shared hotel. I couldn’t share their hotel as there was a fire somewhere that meant all the rooms were taken by the time I tried to book a reservation. This didn’t prove to be problematic, thankfully, and it helped us get organised and on the road each morning. On the Friday, it all started.

Note canister of earplugs. You'll want earplugs.

First stop, Media Accreditation for my pass. I didn’t know what sort of pass I was down for, but when I saw it, my eye was drawn to the word Track; I’d be able to go to the dangerous places. I took a trip to the pit lane with Jen, but more on that in a bit. It turned out the trackside photography did nothing more than point out my long lens was magnificently underpowered for the task. I took up a spot inside Maggots, the first chicane on the track – a point the bikes would need to slow down making pictures easier, and shot a few action shots, getting more and more frustrated with f5.6 and ISO200. My MotoGP shots were easier from the grandstand, but even then I felt I was hitting the limits of my cheap equipment. Then I remembered, the MotoGP was sunny whereas this was overcast. I was right at the point my lens stopped being really usable thanks to the slightly lower amount of light. I managed a few passable shots, but felt I’d do better in pit lane, if they’d let me get close.

James Toseland didn't do as well as we hoped, but he tried.

When we walked into pit lane on the Friday during practice, we were greeted with all the garages and bikes. It felt like a glorious display and I had the feeling that at any point someone would tell me I wasn’t supposed to be there. Surely they’d want us out of the way once the teams started working, but no. The only times we didn’t have access to the pit lane and the garage doors was during Superpole and the races. This was where I belonged. Sure, my cheap lenses and consumer DSLR were still not perfect, but their deficiencies would be a lot less obvious here. We were actually outside the garages where we could see all the stuff we only normally see on TV. I was able to get the sorts of photos a fan could only dream of.

Cal Crutchlow, off to put in yet another blistering performance

Once I was bitten by the pit lane photography bug, I couldn’t help myself. We even got up early on Sunday just so we could go to the warm up, in spite of the fact we probably had all the photos we could ever want. It was real and I was there. So many photos …

Yummy R1 Akropovics

Saturday, I checked my assignment list from the Big Cheese at MotoRaceReports and there was one thing I was missing from his list: Brolly Dollies. Oh, it’s a hard life, but if I had to force myself to take photos of beautiful girls, I’m sure I could bring myself to it. All the girls were consummate professionals, dropping into poses, smiling and laughing when a camera was pointed at them. This was obviously something they were all very familiar with and they were patient and forgiving models.

Just a selection of two dollies. More on MotoRaceReports, or course.

After more time in the pits, the final qualifying, Superpole, was spent in the media centre where we were able to see much more information than you get watching TV. You could see every rider on the track’s time split by split in real time. You could see who was on a hot one, who was on a personal best and the order on the grid. It was obvious watching this that the weekend would be about Jonathan Rea and Cal Crutchlow. No one else was even close lap over lap. Sure, other riders would flirt with the top times, but those two would constantly hammer out time after time, lap after lap, all at top-flight pace, over and over. Looking back, it was obvious what Sunday would give us.

Yes, you won. Well done.

Sunday gave us some of the best racing of the year, in any class. Both World Superbike races were hard fought, but even they paled into comparison with the World Supersport race where Eugene Laverty and Kenan Sofuoglu gave us proper hammer-and-tongs stuff. Not even the early red flag from a nasty crash could dampen the fun of that one. But yes, both Superbike races started with Rea taking an early lead with Crutchlow right behind him. Both races ended with Crutchlow beating Rea to the flag. A different Brit in both races flew the flag for us local fans and the second race had British riders taking the top five spots. You can read more about it on MotoRaceReports.

Astounding performance, but just not enough this time.

However, Sunday after the races was one of the most wonderful experiences I had. I was able to get to Parc Fermé at the end of each race and see the top three return to their teams and families. I was able to congratulate Crutchlow in person, right after he won his first World Superbikes race. I was able to see the bikes up close and hear the conversations between the friendly bitter rivals. I even got my face on TV; friends tweeted me to tell me they saw me on Eurosport’s coverage of Parc Fermé.

Yes, that really is the Lord of Darkness in the background. Cal got a very good price for his soul.

Yes, as a fan of motorcycle racing, this will be hard to beat. Let’s hope I get a chance to try at Magny Cours in October. I’ll rent a decent lens if I get to go.

* For those interested in what camera I used, the EXIF on Flickr will show you what lenses were used for each shot, but the kit was essentially a Canon EOS400D body with the following cheap Canon lenses: 18-55mm f3.5-5.6, 50mm f1.8, 55-250mm f3.5-f5.6. The SLR photos were all processed from Raw in Adobe Lightroom. Photos on the day were tweeted from a 3G iPad using the Camera Connection Kit and an iPhone 4.

UPDATE: Look, mum, I’m on the telly!

Look at me!

So, with that in mind, when I found myself looking for a watchdog script to monitor and fix Apache and nothing fitted my needs exactly, I decided to infuse my script with the power and will of the goose. I don’t know if this will be of use to anyone, but my previous script was well received by one or two people so here you go.

#!/bin/bash
#
# watchgoose.sh - an Apache restartinator.
# Put it in your crontab every five minutes
# 

export site="http://cat5.org/"        # replace with a site running on your webserver
export tempfile=~jearle/bin/goose.txt # This can be anywhere
export logfile=~jearle/bin/goose.log  # Logfile
export email=jearle@example.com       # Your email address

if [ "`curl -sIm 5 ${site} | head -1 | tr -d '\r'`" != "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" ]; then
	echo `date +%F\ %T` > $tempfile
	/usr/bin/top -b -n1 >> $tempfile
	ps wwaux | awk '/httpd/{print "kill -9 " $2}' | sh
	/usr/sbin/apachectl graceful >> $tempfile
	echo "Attempted Apache restart at `date +%F\ %T`" >> $tempfile
	echo "Attempted Apache restart at `date +%F\ %T`" >> $logfile
	cat ${tempfile} | /bin/mail $email -s "[CAT5] Restarted Apache"
	rm ${tempfile}
fi
echo "`date +%F\ %T` and all is well ..." >> $logfile

Apologies to those who came here to see how the native Americans used waterfowl to guard their teepees. This isn’t the post you’re looking for. Honk, honk! Oh, and if you’re looking for someone to cripple your goose, try Pet Connection NI instead.

Have iPad, will travel

The Glasgow to London leg was, as could be expected, very easy. No bureaucratic nonsense or overly fastidious security operatives assuming I wanted to invade somewhere. The irony of this is that GLA is one of the few airports in recent times to actually be physically attacked by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, whereby the local populace stuck the boot in and stated “Glasgow doesn’t accept this. This is Glasgow; we’ll set aboot ye.” This isn’t a normal city, in case you didn’t already know this.

Arrival at London’s famous Heathrow Airport was not without incident as we were led through the bowels of the airport by incompetent flight attendants, setting off security alarm after security alarm as we muddled our way through. Presenting an iPhone as a boarding card even after that was accepted as normal and I was allowed to pass through into the waiting area for my connection. Buying my Duty Free allocation was another step of the journey that would require a boarding pass, and this time I elected to use my iPad. The staff were a little perplexed, not knowing if this was an acceptable way of doing business, but when I enlarged the barcode with a pinch and held it under the scanner, they jumped back in amazement when the till went beep and told them my flight details. This was the first time any of the staff had seen anyone make a completely paperless transaction in their shop; the largest duty-free shop in the fifth busiest airport in the world. It won’t be their last.

Again, using the iPad to get onto the plane was simplicity itself and there was still enough battery life left in the iPad to keep me entertained the entire flight to LA. Arriving in LA, I was required to fill in an immigration form, which was the first piece of paper I’d needed to handle the entire trip.

This trip was brought back to me today when I went to open a bank account with HSBC, a bank with only five branches in Scotland that gets great reports of their online paperless banking, for my new business and I did so by bringing all my documentation on my iPad, with my trusty passport for proof of who I was, and a letter from Barclaycard as proof of address, but even that was the wrong one and I used a PDF from my bank in the end. All this was handled through GoodReader, which enabled me to mail the bank’s business manager the relevant docs during the meeting. Add this to the paperless accountant I’ve found and you can see my new company’s philosophy.

Paperless is here; you just need to have the balls to try it.

#!/bin/bash
# Jared Earle, 2008-03-28, BD-NTWK

# Set the datestamp, login credentials and backup directory
export date=$(date +\%Y\%m\%d)
export creds="-uadmin -p`sudo cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow`"
export backupdir="/home/jearle/backup"

# delete week old files
find ${backupdir}/ -regex '.*.dump.gz' -mtime +4 -exec rm {} \;

# dump databases to the backupdir
echo "show databases;" | mysql ${creds} | egrep -v ^Database$ | \
	awk '{print "mysqldump ${creds} "$1" | \
	gzip > ${backupdir}/db-"$1"-${date}.dump.gz"}' | \
	sh

Oh, don’t forget to make sure that $backupdir isn’t readable by everyone. Yeah, obvious, I know.

Plate Stand! iPad! Win!

It looks like this without the expensive bit on it.

I'm trying to think of an interesting caption, but it's a plate stand.

And when you buy it, it looks like this.

Again … plate stand.

You can buy them from platestands.co.uk … no, really, that’s what they’re called. I know. Down at the bottom of that page, see the Large size? Buy them in bulk; sell them to your friends, you cheapskate.

Oh my, it's a thing of beauty

The case is a rigid faux-leather portfolio case that holds the iPad in place with two fixed tabs on the outer edge and two elasticated tabs on the spine. This makes for very quick insertion and removal, something that can be non-trivial in other cases. More details on the functionality and construction are available on the GriffinTech site, so I’ll deal with the stuff they don’t tell you, like the fact that it’s not a dust magnet like the official Apple case.

Very professional looking. Case closed.

The plus: It feels right. The lack of Apple branding doesn’t say “steal me”, not that you’d steal a GPS locatable device, and the overall look is of professionalism without ostentation. You can charge the iPad in the case and you don’t need to unplug your headphones to close it, making arriving at your train stop in the morning a less stressful ordeal. Oh, and it will protect your iPad.

The minus: Top right-hand corner, the tab that holds the iPad in covers the rotation lock and the off switch. The off switch isn’t a problem as you can press the tab, but if you’re a frequent user of the rotation lock, you’ll find yourself a little frustrated by this niggle. You can’t use it as a stand, but you’ve got a plate stand for that, right?

Conclusion: I don’t know the price in the UK yet, but at $49 in the US, it’s not a lot for something this swish. I like it and I think you will too.

Comments? Don’t hesitate to leave a comment below or on the Flickr pages of the photos. I like comments; they make me happy.

iPad 3G running on 3

Or does it?All you need is a Pay As You Go SIM from Three, a pen and a pair of scissors. Compare the size of the AT&T Micro-SIM provided with the iPad.

Both SIMs compared

Mark the contact area on the SIM so you can see where it lies when you put the other SIM on it.

Mark the Sim

Overlay the Micro-SIM on the regular SIM.

Overlay the Micro-SIM

Draw around the Micro-SIM and cut away the extraneous plastic. Have no fear; if your SIM is a 3G, all the electrics are contained under the contacts (don’t sue me if they’re not).

Cut away the plastic

Note the corners. I’ve taken the points off the corners for reasons that’ll be obvious later. Put the SIM in the holder.

Bottom view

As you can see, the corners need trimming to fit.

Top view

Once you’ve put your new Micro-SIM in, you should see it working like this:

Settings screen

In “Cellular Data”, you’ll need to put “three.co.uk” as the APN in APN Settings, but that’s it. You can now take advantage of Three’s competitive £10/month tariff for 1GB of data.

I wish I could go into more detail, but that’s it; it really is that simple. Grab me on Twitter if you’ve got any queries, or leave a comment below.

Boats at Bowling - Widescreen

The Software

Photomatix Pro is the software I used for my tutorial and it’s probably the most common solution in use. It comes as both a stand-alone application and as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop.

HDR PhotoStudio has been available to Windows users for a while but is a newcomer to the Mac. While it’s not got a Photoshop plugin, it does have a BEF exporter Photoshop plugin, so you can do the aligning and merging in Photoshop if you prefer.

Hydra is a stand-alone application only and is exclusively available on the Mac. It’s got neither a plug-in nor an exporter and as such can only rely on it’s own alignment system, which as you’ll see later is quite a drawback.

HDRtist is the free option. It’s got nothing apart from a slider. No, really. When you want to align images, it installs an open-source alignment binary, aligns the images and presents you with one slider control. One nice thing is that if you run it outside the Applications folder, it asks you if you want to move it there. Very nice, and yes please.

Move to Applications?

Right, let’s get started. I’ve selected two photographs with interesting areas of light and dark, taken without a tripod as JPEGs at three exposures, 2ev apart. I’m not using Raw photos this time as it would just add to the processing time and would show off the workflow more than the software. The aim of this review is not to show off my technical strengths or weaknesses, but rather to show how the software handles common issues you will come across.

Aligning and merging

All four applications accept multiple exposures and merge them together, aligning them with varying degrees of success. When you take bracketed photos without the use of a tripod, you need the software to cover up the unavoidable slight movements. The next four images are all 1:1 pixel crops of an aligned and rushed through image to give an impression of the alignment and should not be taken as quality of rendering.

Photomatix Pro

The choices offered for aligning images when you import them in Photomatix Pro are excellent. They work very well and are the best of this bunch of applications. To make them even better, you have the option of aligning the exposures in Photoshop as part of its “Merge to HDR…” automation as mentioned above.

Photomatix Pro 1:1 crop

Photomatix Generate HDR - Options

HDR PhotoStudio

Alignment options are scarce, but it seems to do fine.

HDR Photostudio 1:1 crop

Hydra

Ugh. The automatic option is lousy and even when doing it by hand (using matching points in a rather unintuitive interface) you still get overlap. Worst of the lot. They’d be better off adopting the system used by HDRtist, in my opinion.

Hydra 1:1 crop

Hydra's Align options

HDRtist

An open-source application called “Align_Image_Stack” is installed when you click the Align option. Like HDR Photostudio above, this just works.

HDRtist 1:1 crop

Go ahead, click my button.

Tone Mapping

Tone Mapping is the stage that turns the HDR image into a visible LCD-ranged image. It’s the part that you need to be most careful with, as you’ll know from my tutorial. The HDR images below are what comes out of the software and would also look much better finished off in photoshop (cropping, cleaning, cloning, etc.) but you can do all that yourselves once you’ve played with your choice of software. No attempt has been made to try to render the images with the same settings; what I’ve done is fiddle with the settings to get an output that works as quickly as possible. With Hydra, this was difficult and the resulting output will require a lot of post-processing. With HDRtist, I just whacked the single slider up to eleven and hit save.

Photomatix Pro

The range of choices are very easy to get to grips with. I usually have Luminosity, Microcontrast and Smoothing set fairly high and try to keep Strength and Saturation low, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.

Landscape from Photomatix

Photomatix screen

Settings used above

HDR PhotoStudio

If you decide to use HDR Photostudio, I woiuld definitely take some time to learn the Veiling Glare and the Brightness/Contrast controls as that’s where the magic happens. Not as easy to get to grips with as Photomatix, but rewarding nonetheless. I miss the white and black point settings, but again, that’s something I can finish in Photoshop or Acorn if needed.

Landscape from HDR Photostudio

HDR Photostudio: Settings/tools on the left

Hydra

Confusing and not very rewarding. I can’t get up the energy to go into too much detail, but I’ll try. There are three basic Tone Mapping choices: Compression, Local Adaptation and Perceptive. None of them gives a good result.

Landscape from Hydra

Hydra working screen

HDRtist

One slider. Fast Preview. Lesson over.

Landscape from HDRtist

No frills, slider on bottom left.

Conclusion

If you’re just playing around casually, HDRtist is hard to beat for the price. Sure, it is very variable, but if you shoot for it and get lucky, it’s great. However, we can’t consider it a real contender as it cannot produce consistent results from variable sources. Next up, Hydra offers nothing of note and should be avoided until it gets some chops. Yes, it is a very good Mac citizen, with 64-bit compatibility, a great OSX interface and a very good Mac feel, and yes, it’s harsh to say this, but if it can’t even align pictures that well, it’s never going to be a go-to application. This leaves us a choice between Photomatix Pro and HDR PhotoStudio as the software to get, and depending on your needs, either will do. I’m going to declare Photomatix Pro as the winner, especially for of the Photoshop Plugin, but HDR PhotoStudio may suit you and your photography style better. Try both out as demos and make your own mind up as I can’t be sure my familiarity with Photomatix Pro isn’t biasing the result. HDR Photostudio has some nice touches and some amazing colour controls, for instance check out their comprehensive tutorials for stuff I may have missed, and I’m going to keep exploring it, so come back for updates and a long-term test.

Don’t take my word on any of this when you can download demos here:

• Photomatix Pro
• HDR PhotoStudio
• Hydra
• HDRtist

Yes, even give Hydra a try as I may have missed the “make it good” button in my eagerness to slag it off unnecessarily.

Oh, and before I forget, here are zip files containing the crappy hand-held photos used in the tests above. Each 9MB ZIP contains three photos at +/-2ev.

• landscape
• bowlingboats

Please comment and show me what you’ve done. If you’re lucky, I may even chuck a quick TrueHDR iPhone App review in the comments later.

Shawn King with an iPad

Welcome, listeners of Your Mac Life. If you can, paypal $5 or $10 to Shawn King so he can get an iPad. He’s had a tough year and he could do with some good fortune.

This button no longer does anything

He’ll be posting photos of the event on Flickr. Hear about it on Your Mac Life.