Raw converter comparison

Prelude For better or worse, Aperture is dying.  Abandoned by Apple many years ago now, it’s frankly amazing it hasn’t completely broken already, given the steady stream of system updates and such changes since then.  Regardless, it has always had rough edges, and on top of all that I’ve grown increasingly disappointed with its image… Read more

Why I cancelled Backblaze

This is the feedback I sent to Backblaze shortly before I cancelled my account with them. For the additional context – the restore failure I alluded to was basically that: So, the departing ‘support’ ticket I filed with them (#167833): Maybe this’ll help your future would-be customers. The main reason is that when I tried… Read more

Disorganised thoughts on the Sony a7R II

It has some outright bugs around handling of SD cards.  For example, it will not record high quality video to a SanDisk Extreme Pro card.  It falsely claims that the card is not UHS-I compliant, nor fast enough – both utter garbage. “Silent” mode (electronic front & rear curtain shutters) makes a significant difference to… Read more

Sony a7R II rolling shutter

The ‘Silent Shutter’ mode is (electronic front & rear shutters) is very useful as it really does reduce a lot of sensor vibration (not that the a7R’s mechanical shutters are very heavy – certainly nothing like the shutters let alone mirror on an e.g. D7100). However, despite Sony’s claims about the amazing speed of the electronic… Read more

The last five years in photography

I’ve been reading through the back catalog of Digital Camera magazine, from the first issues available for the iPad back in 2009 or so.  There’s been a few things which have been amusing: Teleconverters back then were apparently a great way to get extra reach basically for free.  Just avoid those 3x teleconverters – those… Read more