It’s been a long time since my last post. So what’s been going on around the Randolph household? Here are some of the highlights.

The boys turned 7 earlier this month. We celebrated by taking them bowling and then hiking at Stone Mountain, NC. The boys got new bikes for their birthday and small ipod shuffles.

I bought my first Mac – a 15″ MacBook Pro. I’ve been a PC user since my dad gave me his old 286 back in the mid ’80’s running DOS 3x or something. I stayed with Microsoft through Windows 3.11 and finally XP. Most of what I use my home computer for is managing music and photos and I’ve always heard that Mac is the way to go for that kind of work ~so~ as it became time to replace the old home notebook I thought I’d dip a toe into the Mac waters.

Forget the toe – I dove in head first and am loving the water! I’m a fan of good industrial design and the folks at Apple get it.

Along with the MacBook I bought the photo editing software Aperture – another Apple product. I looked at Adobe Lightroom first but, decided Aperture is more my style. Both products allow the most common photo adjusts without destroying the original. With Aperture the adjustments don’t take effect until a copy of the photo is exported. Otherwise the changes remain simply instructions in a database. Just what I was looking for. Also, I needed an easy way to add names and places (metadata) and was using ACDSee Pro on my Dell notebook. Aperture is easily up to that task.

Updating metadata is no small task. I have a decade of digital photos on my hard drive and since there’s not “photo” to write on I’ve been writing notes into text files. A better place to store all that great info is imbedded inside the photo itself. Didn’t know that before but, now that I do I’ve been moving the notes into the photos. It takes me anywhere from a week to a month to do one year so perhaps by the end of 2009 I’ll be finished! Then I can begin scanning all the old slides and create more busy work for myself!!

Finally, I’m looking to update my camera. I’ve been using digital point and shoot (P&S) cameras since 1999. I’ve watched the development of DSLR’s but have always held back buying one until now.

Now I’m ready. I’m not so sure the technology has changed as much as I have. I miss many of the old features of my Canon AE1 Program 35mm film camera – mostly depth of field. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I tried to create depth using my P&S camera and found it nearly impossible. I also found JPG alone is too limiting and want to get into using RAW. Not only does JPG compress the original data making the file smaller but, it also has a lower dynamic range. A smaller dynamic range is like having less room to get a perfect picture. In the old days with film you could really mess up your photo – making it too light or too dark – and the lab could still give you a usable print. Not a perfect print but usable .

With JPG files that’s not so easy to do. Bright whites get blown out so you lose all detail. Shadows quickly become black and you lose detail there as well. The data is “baked” into the JPG. There’s no room left to go in and correct the photo.

The RAW file on the other hand gives you that extra room like the film negative used to. You can go in and correct the color or exposure before creating the JPG. I fiddle with my camera controls too much and make too many mistakes. I need all the room I can get!

Tags: Aperture, DSLR, MacBook, RAW