Monday, March 02, 2009

Quick Hit Monday: Big Day At B&H; Another Seagate Hard Drive DOA; Brand New Mini Z-Ray; and Imaging Insider Podcasts

Good Morning Everybody,
Well, as I type this morning, the snow is coming down like crazy, all NYC schools are closed for the first time since 2004, and all flights have been canceled out of LaGuardia Airport till noon. Things look like they're are going to clear up by the time our flight leaves later this afternoon. It is amazing being in this city during one of their famous Northeast storms. Nothing stops New Yorkers though - still lots of activity on the streets, albeit with 8 inches of snow on the ground in mid-town and over a foot of snow in Long Island.

Another kind of cool thing is the view from our hotel room - we are looking out onto the Hudson River right beyond the Javits Center where the miracle flight US Air Flight 1549 landed. It's amazing to me to try and imagine how the onlookers must have felt as they witnessed the "Miracle on the Hudson" that day. Anyway, everyday is a blessing - let's get to Quick Hit Monday.

Big Day At B&H Yesterday!
WOW! What a great time we had in NYC at B&H. We pulled up to the front door and people were lined up down the block - I wish I would have taken a quick photo. We reached their "Event Space" room, got set up and the crowd started pouring in - yep, it was a big crowd in a small room but everybody found a place and the show went off without a hitch.

These programs typically last 2 hours, but I was scheduled for 5 hours since I wanted to do a run through for my Digital WakeUp Call tour kicking off March 30 right after Photoshop World. Well, 5 hours wasn't long enough so B&H let me extend the program 1 more hour. Nearly everyone stayed to the end and I got some good feed back from the crowd. My personal thanks to all who came by to see the program and to Triple Scoop Music for a few door prizes. A good time was had by all.

New Yorkers are pretty darn lucky!! B&H hosts programs in their "Event Space" approximately 30 times a month - and they are FREE. Check out the link right here for upcoming programs.

Another Seagate Drive Bites The Dust
That's right, my second 1.5 tera byte Seagate Extreme hard drive bit the dust on Friday. Hey, at least I got 3 mores days of use out of that one. Here's the BAD news on this drive - it seems there is about a 30-40% FAILURE rate with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives. Check out the link right here for the full story. Thanks to DPT reader "amycham" who pointed to the problem when I last reported the first drive's failure.

Just Google "Barracuda 7200.11 problems" and a whole slew of posts come up about this drive. Check out the "horror stories" right here too. I would avoid these drives at all cost - don't play poker with your data!

NEW Mini Z-Ray
Thanks to Phil Walker from the UK who pointed me to a very cool mini Z-Ray device. Actually it's another one of those little LED flash lights, but this one is the "cat's meow" of all LED flash lights. It's one of the most powerful on the market and even has a "zoom" feature built in. Here is the link to the Model P-7, the one that caught my eye.

The babies are designed for the military, police, and the fire fighters. Their rock solid build, water proof design make then a bit "overkill" for photographers, but I loved the zoom feature and picked one up. Unfortunately it's no cheap little flash light, but I still can't wait to give it a try.

Imaging Insider And Podcasting
I got a note about a week ago from my buddies at Imaging Insider. It seems they have a series of podcasts with tons of information. Here is a link to one of their latest with Terence Tay, Product Architect for Bokeh from Alien Skin, a lens simulator plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. I wanted to point you in their direction because they have several more podcasts where that one came from too. Just head to their site right here and search for "podcasts" lots of them pop. Then have some fun on your next rainy afternoon.

Hey gang, that's it for me today - I hope we have a plane to catch. See you tomorrow for another episode of Technique Tuesday. See ya' then, -David

6 comments:

  1. David, I'm prettu sure seagate has released a fix for their Hard-Drives. It was a known problem that their 1tb and 1.5tb HD"s were Bricking themselves.

    Its a software fix however, you can download the new firmware to fix it at

    http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207957

    Use their firmware checker to see if you drive is one of the affected one.

    I'm not sure if it will work if their drive is already dead though, Seagate will replace the drive for you though.

    Keep up the great Blog

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  2. David,

    Two things...

    First off, thank you so much. What a great lecture. Happy to be part of the dry run and will definitely be back for the official wake up call.

    And second, thank you for getting me a job! I went home and immediately put together an animoto promo (http://tr.im/pjzstudiospromo) for my site and sent it out. 22 hours later...I'm shooting a wedding in June. So, thank you so much for the tip!

    Very much appreciated.

    Peter Zielinski

    Oh, and go LaCie for harddrives. I've had 4 (three of which are 4 years old) and I've never had any problems with failing.

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  3. I would love to get your imput on the Gun Light which was on display at WPPI...

    TheGunLight.com

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  4. I have two words for you David; Western Digital. One failure in eighteen years.

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  5. Hello David, I enjoyed and learned alot from your session at BHphoto. You are truly the master of the light. Now I can't wait to get your new book. When will it be available? I hope someday I'll be able to take good pictures like you.

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  6. David, Thank you so much for your sharing your ideas and experience with us. I had a blast and enjoyed the presentation all the way to the very last minute. My wife loved the picture with the thumb up (as she pictured it herself). Thanks to Ledawn for all her hard work and dedication. You guys make a great team!!!

    Regards,
    Nelson Diaz

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