7 reasons not to buy the Kindle Fire.

I bought a Tablet yesterday. I did NOT buy an Apple iPad, like most of my friends would have expected, or a Barnes and Noble Nook Color, which seems to have great features, or even a Kindle Fire, which I have been seriously considering for the past two weeks.

My new toy is a Lenovo Ideapad A1.

I have been against the “tablet” idea since the iPad was announced. I don’t want to carry more stuff, more weight, more cables. I don’t want to worry about syncing all my devices. If I want to travel light, I always have my HTC Incredible with me (when the battery doesn’t die). If I need to do real work, I take my loyal MacBook Pro. I couldn’t think of any reason to change that peaceful balance. That was until I had to fly over 230,000 miles this year alone, tried unsuccessfully to work on a red-eye flight, took my laptop to endless meetings where a notepad could have been enough, had to return countless unread books to the library because I didn’t have time for them, and got really tired of burning my legs with a MacBook Pro while trying to read in bed.

A tablet suddenly seemed like a good compromise; fast enough for most daily tasks, small, ultra light, and at last at an affordable price. My budget was $250. Both the Ideapad A1 and the Kindle Fire cost $199, and the Nook goes for $249. The iPad 2 is completely out of my price range starting at $500, but I included it on the comparison as a reference.

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How to Sync Catalogs with Adobe Lightroom 3.

Tuesdays Tutorials.

I am often shooting on location, and I need to make sure that my images are safe and properly backed up. I start by creating a temporary Lightroom catalog, usually with the client’s name. For this tutorial I am going to name it “Temporary Catalog TBD.”

Click on Import and the Import dialog opens.

We can see that I have 2 external hard drives connected to my laptop, my MAIN external hard drive is called “ONE TB” and a SECONDARY external hard drive is called “ORANGE 120”.

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Why Hard Drive prices are going (way) up.

Approximately 65% off all hard drives are made in Thailand; another 20% have components made there as well. A single facility in Bang Pa-In owned by Western Digital produces one-quarter of the world’s supply of “sliders,” an integral part of hard-disk drives.

A goal partially submerged on a flooded football field in Bangkok's suburbs. Reuters/Damir Sagolj

Since July’s flood, I have received notifications that prices have an immediate price increase for external hard drives but it will be less noticeable for laptops and desktop computers due weakened demand. According to the New York Times, those companies whose facilities were not damaged, such as Seagate, might see an increase in profit margin to about 30 percent from about 20 percent before the floods. Actually, Seagate’s share price has increased 60% in one month!

If you have been planning on getting a new hard drive, buy it now. If you are shooting HDSLR video or are planning to start anytime soon, you will need a faster, bigger hard drive, buy it now.

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Watson MD. New ways to see data.

Data is not useful until it becomes information, and on this fascinating 30-second commercial the flow of information is presented in a unique way by seamlessly combining medical visualizations, scientific literature, live action photography, pathogen analysis, and more. Guillermo Navarro, the same cinematographer who shot Night at the Museum, the Hellboy series, and the fantastic Pan’s Labyrinth, used two RED cameras and one ARRI Alexa camera to capture over a million images for this project.

“We shot insects, livestock, plants and other elements live on greenscreen. We licensed medical procedures for the young actor in the spot to get medical visualizations of the boy’s actual anatomy – CAT scans, X-rays, brain stem eye visualizations, and more; photos of his family members to illustrate medical history, medical literature showing research on actual potential causes and conditions of the scenario, images of pathogens, viruses, allergens and bacteria at the root of the possible causes, and more.”

Motion Theory’s Director Mathew Cullen Visualizes Supercomputer’s Thinking Process for IBM’s “Watson M.D.”

Incredibly, none of the images in the spot are computer generated! According to another source, production on “Watson M.D.” took four weeks and included consulting with medical practitioners, a three-day live-action shoot, developing the animation engine and integrating visual effects, and editing.

Weekend Wrap up.

What a great weekend! Tons of new friends, and a few exciting announcements at the PDN PhotoPlus Expo in New York. My Adobe Lightroom and Digital Cinema seminars went great, big thanks to Victor Ha from Cinevate for his awesome hands-on demo on High Production Value. The 2-day HDSLR Workshop at B&H was really fun. We had a great group of photographers transitioning into digital cinema!

Thank you all for the great feedback and support. Here are some pictures.