Late-Autumn Nature in New Jersey. Sourland Mountain Preserve.
The mirror-less Nikon 1 V1 (N1V1) camera has been upgraded to the Nikon 1 V2 (N1V2). The first thing that I noticed about the N1V2 is that it is smaller than the N1V1. Ergonomically, it is easier to handle. The mode selector has been moved to the top — it was on the back of the N1V1 in a position that was too easy to accidentally change modes. A couple of negatives – the battery is new, and lower capacity than the battery in the N1V1. Also, the interval timer mode has disappeared. I won’t be able to take time-lapse videos with this camera. I took the camera out for a walk at the Sourland Mountain Preserve this morning and caught this Mallard duck taking off from the pond. I don’t know if it plans to stay for the winter, or is about to go south.
Male Mallard Duck Taking Off from a Pond in the Sourland Mountain Preserve in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera FT1 adapter and 70-200 mm f/2.8 VRII lens (ISO 160, 200 mm, f/2.8, 1/2000 sec). TIFF image process with Capture One Pro 7. (David J. Mathre)
Backyard Late Fall in New Jersey: Misty, Moody, Monochrome Monday Morning.
It was foggy when I woke up this morning. I took this picture using the Leica X2 using the in camera high contrast B&W mode. I find this useful to envision what a scene will look like in B&W in real-time rather than waiting till I get back to my computer and start processing images. Thom Hogan mentioned in one of his recent blogs that he often does the same thing.
Foggy Morning. Late Fall in New Jersey. Image taken with a Leica X2 camera (ISO 800, 24 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 sec). Out of the camera B&W (high contrast) jpg image. (David J Mathre)
Backyard Late Autumn Nature in New Jersey: Young Doe.
I took this image from my back deck using a Nikon 1 V1 camera and 500 mm f/4 VR lens connected using the FT1 adapter. With the smaller sensor size in the N1V1 the effective field of view (FOV) is equivalent to using a 1350 mm lens on a 35 mm FX sensor camera. This image is not cropped — almost too much magnification to have the whole deer in the frame. The lens was supported on a monopod, and VR was turned on to help stabilize the image. The mass on the lower part of the doe’s neck appears to be a deer fibroma, thought to be caused by a papilloma virus infection. I am seeing more of these abnormalities on the local herd of deer.
Young Doe in My Backyard. Image taken with a Nikon 1 V1 camera and 500 mm f/4 VR lens connected with a FT1 adapter (ISO 400, 1350 mm, f/4, 1/500 sec). (David J Mathre)
I found this old color picture of me with my parents in a booklet of pictures from my Grandmother. The picture was taken when I was about a month old. The reds in this scanned image are pretty intense. Apparently the blue and green pigments fade faster than the red ones.
Technology Update: ThinkPad W510 DIY Upgrade – Part II.
The Apricorn/Crucial data transfer program took about 4 hours make an image of my old hard drive on the new SSD drive. Access to the hard drive and memory for the W510 laptop is from the bottom. I replaced the old hard drive with the new SSD hard drive. I also checked the SIMMs installed and found two 2-GB cards. The other two cards are under the keyboard. So I did only have 8-GB of RAM installed. I should have looked up the instructions for checking on the RAM under the keyboard. Instead, I did it the hard way by removing all screws on the bottom. In the process of separating the top and bottom of the laptop case a ribbon cable became separated from its connector. I couldn’t figure how to reconnect the ribbon cable until I realized that the keyboard pops off after removing two screws from the bottom. With the keyboard removed reconnecting the ribbon cable was much easier. I put everything back together, and turned the computer on. I was amazed how quickly the computer booted up. Everything with the computer seemed snappy. I’m not sure how much of the increased speed is due to the new SSD hard drive, and how much is due to the data on the hard drive being defragmented during the data transfer process. I ordered four 4-GB SIMMS so I could upgrade the RAM in the computer to 16-GB, and then went to bed.
The computer was still on when I checked it in the morning, however there was no response when I tried to enter my password. I powered the computer off, removed the keyboard cover – the easy way this time and checked the ribbon cable connection. It appeared to be loose. I realized that I hadn’t locked the ribbon cable connector. After putting everything together again, I powered the computer up and everything worked. If the SSD hard drive failed, I also had the option to use the old hard drive.
The Ultra Bay hard drive caddy arrived in the mail. I didn’t expect it until next week. It was simple to install the new 1-TB hard drive into the Ultra Bay caddy, remove the CD/DVD from the Ultra Bay slot on the computer, and replace it with the new Ultra Bay hard drive caddy. When I turned the computer on, it recognized that a new device had been installed and installed new drivers. After waiting a bit, I tried to open up the MMC storage management program to set up the new hard drive. The storage management module didn’t open – locked up trying to connect to the virtual drive manager. I rebooted the computer – it still didn’t work. I rebooted the computer, to check if I missed some setting in the BIOS. It was taking too long for the computer to shut down, so I forced the power off by holding the power button down. This was a big mistake. After checking the BIOS and not finding anything I let the computer continue to reboot. Nothing – the new SSD hard drive was not recognized. I tried twice more, still nothing. I didn’t panic. I put the old hard drive back in and rebooted. This time the new 1-TB hard drive in the Ultra Bay was also recognized.
I went online to the Crucial support site and found a comment that the SSD drive will go into a “safe mode” to prevent data corruption if the power goes off unexpectedly. That is probably what happened when I forced the power off. The instructions on how to reset the SSD drive were to 1) power the laptop but hold it in the BIOS setup mode for 20 minutes. 2) Turn the computer off. 3) Remove the SSD drive for 30 seconds. 4) Reinstall the SSD drive. 5) Repeat steps #1 and #2. 6) Allow the computer to reboot. This worked!! Also, the new 1-TB drive in the Ultra Bay was recognized. I formatted the 1-TB hard drive as D:-drive to be used for data. The OS, program files, and cache will be on the new faster SSD C:-drive.
Laptop Computer Hard Disk Upgrade. Image taken with a Leica X2 camera (ISO 800, 24 mm, f/2.8, 1/30 sec) (David J Mathre)
