Technology - David Mathre Photography

Tuesday (27-March-2012) — New Jersey

Early Spring Night Sky over New Jersey. NASA ATREX Mission. Early Morning Sky Lit Up By Five NASA Sounding Rockets.

Early this morning NASA launched five sounding rockets from Wallops Island, Virginia over a seven minute period to study the jet stream in the upper atmosphere at the edge of space. Once the rockets reached the thermosphere they were set to release trimethyaluminum that would react to create a cloud of aluminum oxide. This mission has been canceled several times waiting for clear skies from New Jersey to South Carolina. I set up a Nikon D3x camera with a 14-24 mm f/2.8 wide angle lens and pointed it south-east to capture an image every minute starting just after midnight to see if I could to catch something from the mission. The rockets were launched starting just before 5 AM (EDT).

The following is a composite of 40 images combined using the startrails program showing the release from all 5 rockets. You see the star trails, a couple of jet trails, all five of the ATREX rocket cloud releases and as a bonus a meteor trail.

NASA ATREX Jet Stream Study Lights up The Night Sky. Composite of 40 images taken with a Nikon D3x and 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 100, 14 mm, f/2.8, 59 sec) processed using DxO Pro, and Startrails. (David J Mathre)

Thursday (24-November-2011) — Pennsylvania

Autumn in Pennsylvania: New Mirrorless Camera (Nikon 1 V1).

I got up early this morning to see how the new Nikon 1 V1 mirrorless digital camera performs. I spent the night reading the manual to get an idea of how to use the camera. As with anything new, you have to use it to really understand its capabilities. I drove to the Lambertville – New Hope bridge for some early dawn images. The Delaware river was up a little over 4 feet in the last day due to all of the rain we got on Tuesday and Wednesday. Still below flood stage but up more than usual. The following image is an old building in New Hope along the Delaware river, taken from across the river in the Lambertville Station parking lot. The Raw image was converted to jpg using Adobe Lightroom 3.6 RC with no additional processing. Note that I had to upgrade from Lightroom 3.5 to the 3.6 Release Candidate in order to be able to see and process the image with Lightroom. More images to follow, and I need to check out if my other Raw image processing programs are able to handle images from this new camera.

Later in the afternoon, I had a great Thanksgiving dinner with neighbors across the street. (Images next post). Right now the camera is outside to see how it performs capturing Night Sky images.

New Hope from Lambertville across the Delaware River. Image taken with a Nikon 1 V1 and 10-100 mm Lens (ISO 110, 100 mm, f/5.6, 1/60 sec) (David J Mathre)

Wednesday (23-November-2011) — New Jersey

New Mirrorless Camera: Nikon 1 V1

It is 4 years ago today that I got my Nikon D300 while returning from a photography workshop with Thom Hogan in Hawaii (23-November-2007). Coincidentally, I received the new Nikon 1 V1 today from B&H. I was surprised that it was heavier than my Leica X1, but a lot lighter and smaller than a Nikon D700 or D3. Lots to learn. I like the Leica X1 because it has dials on the top for both aperture and shutter speed (designed for a photographer). These are missing on the Nikon V1 (have to use buttons/dials on the back). I got all four available Nikon 1 lenses 10 mm (27 mm equiv), 10-30 mm (27-81 mm equiv), 30-110 mm (81-297 mm equiv), and 10-100 mm (27-270 mm equiv). The 10-100 mm (VR) lens is larger and heavier than the camera for this evaluation. The Nikon V1 does have an electronic view finder (100%). Missing is the adapter for Nikon F-mount lenses (which I really want so I can have a mirrorless camera on my Questar telescopes). Reading the manual there seems to be some interesting video options. Lots to learn over the next 4 days.

Sunday (13-November-2011) — New Jersey

Technology Update: Drobo Storage Device Restored!

I’d previously posted that it was taking a long time for my Drobo B800i storage device to update after adding two additional 3 TB drives. The update never completed (after 12+ days), and appeared to need to restart after the multiple power failure after the early snow storm (and ultimately 42 hours of outage). I finally gave up, and decided to reset the device and restore my image database from backups. For the most part this went well, just took time. However, one of my primary backup devices, a Western Digital 2 TB MyBook devices failed. During the restore process, the process stalled. At first, I thought it was an overheating problem, so let the device cool before restarting. This was repeated several times. I even used the Western Digital “Data Lifeguard” program to check the device – and the device passed with no errors. Ultimately, I got a message that I needed to format the device before I could use it. OUCH!!!

OK — no problem, I have other backups. I went to the other backup that I keep in the house, the original RAW files stored on Western Digital Passport drives. These were my original external storage devices (160 GB, 240 GB, 500 GB, 750 GB, 1 TB) that I used since I started getting into digital photography. Unfortunately, one of the drives containing the data lost on the MyBook device was not recognized. STARTING TO PANIC!! — this included images from ANPAT 9 including image from a once in a lifetime trip to Alaska.

I guess that I am paranoid about data storage. I keep three, and sometimes four backups of key data, and some of the data is stored off-site (away from home). The third backup, I keep at work. I went and picked it up this weekend (3 hour round trip) and I was able to restore the data to my primary Drobo device. I am still running a full comparison (using Program Match — 32 bit CRC mode) since some of the earlier data restored from the failed drive may have been corrupted.

The thing that I did loose was any current metadata, or processing data for the images since I was going back to the original RAW files saved from the camera.

Bottom Line — One backup is not enough!! Primary media can fail, backup media can fail (hard drives fail). Primary media can be lost (fire, theft, other disasters etc). Technology moves forward, and old backup devices become obsolete. I am currently dealing with nearly 500 K (7 TB) images, and need to future proof my storage and back-up work-flow. Need to keep all of this in focus when devising a backup storage protocol.

I plan to get back to reviewing and processing images soon, so I can share images again!!

Wednesday (02-November-2011) — New Jersey

Late October Nor’easter Aftermath: Day 4

Update from PSE&G >95% of Power Restored. Restoration Challenges:

This storm caused more individual incidents of damage to PSE&G’s electric infrastructure than Hurricane Irene.
This storm was particularly damaging because, with leaves still on the
trees, the heavy snow created considerable weight on tree limbs, bringing down
numerous trees and power lines.
In addition to major circuits, there were a larger number of individual
service lines from our poles to customers’ homes and business that were
damaged.