Spring is just around the corner, but there's just enough time to squeeze this late-late-winter recipe into your cream soup arsenal before it arrives. The delicate bite of shallots is more subtle than the flavor you get from onions, while the egg yolks provide an extra depth of creaminess.
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As we continue to wait out the aftermath of one of history’s worst economic disasters, it can be prudent to continue to cut spending where possible. The digital medium does mean shooting costs are substantially lowered, but equipment and accessory costs can be still high. We’ve compiled a few simple home remedies for creating kit on a budget…
1. Reflectors can be a useful photography aid as the reflective surface, usually available in white, silver and gold stretched fabric, can fill in, reflect or diffuse light where necessary. Top brands can be on the pricey side so if you’re on a budget grab a cheap substitute such as a silver car sunscreen, reflective tanning mat or wrap a circular sheet of cardboard in aluminum foil.
2. A snoot is a fantastic lighting accessory designed to creatively direct and control an artificial beam of light, perfect for a beauty shot for example. Try the technique before you buy with a DIY alternative. Roll a sheet of black card into a cone and place a strip of black or gaffer tape along the seam to hold it securely in place. Next lock the end of a torch with the smaller whole of the cone using tape and you’re done!
4. Capturing Mother Nature at work is invigorating but exposing your kit to the elements definitely is not. You could buy a fully waterproof, custom fitted rain cover for protection in the rain but if you haven’t got the spare cash then opt for a clear plastic carrier bag (the thicker the better) so your kit is protected but the LCD, histogram and controls are still visible. Slice a small hole in the side of a carrier bag and stretch it over the lens hood, fastening with a rubber band to keep it in place. Create a second smaller hole where the eyepiece is and slide the eye-piece cover back on top to keep it in place.
5. Filters are fantastic for a plethora of reasons, but in particular the polarizer is superbly fun and effective. Photographers employ it for decreasing contrast, saturating blues and reducing harsh reflections. If a filter isn’t in your budget there is a household item that can be used as an affordable (yet less effective) substitute – sunglasses! This works best with a compact set on a tripod; simply hold a removed lens from the sunglasses’ frame as close to the front of your camera lens as possible. Results will vary and obviously images are unlikely to resonate the crispness that is achievable with the real thing – but it’s a start.
6. Underwater photography is becoming an increasingly popular genre but the equipment costs are extremely expensive. An achievable way to get started without shelling out thousands on specifically designed aquatic cameras, housing and strobes is to hire the equipment from a dive shop in tourist destinations, providing all the necessary gear at a fraction of the cost. Still not convinced? Camera manufacturers have really raised the bar in producing durable underwater compacts at affordable prices. In particular Olympus’ Mju: Tough range have a worthy reputation for shooting submerged scenes. Starting as low as £190 the Tough compacts are freeze proof, waterproof and shockproof.
7. Professional models can be expensive to hire so ask photogenic friends and family to pose for you instead. The additional benefit is their familiarity could produce more natural results. They may need more direction than their professional counterparts however, so have a stack of magazines on hand to offer posing guidance. Alternatively you could photograph an inexperienced model who is seeking head shots or a collection of images for his/her portfolio in exchange for their time. Gumtree.com and Starnow.com are great places to post ads or find willing subjects.
8. For many of us shooting models in a fancy studio backed with an encyclopaedic range of lighting equipment maybe more of a dream that a reality but that doesn’t mean beautifully lit portraits aren’t achievable. Natural daylight isn’t only free it’s very flattering, especially for portraiture and still life shooting. For the best results position your subject next to a large clean window. If the sun is too bright, drap a thin veil of white fabric (such as a cotton bed sheet or net curtain) in front of it to soften the effect.
9. Forget expensive printing services there are tonnes of websites offering free prints and bargain photo gift ideas so you have no excuse not to get creative. Popular choices like: Jessops, Snapfish and Photobox offer free print credits for every new customer and gifts that start from low price points.
10. Photoshop is one of the best editing apps on the market but it steep price tag isn’t, but there are plenty of cheaper and even free alternatives out there. Adobe’s Lightroom or Elements, Apple’s Aperture, Corel’s Paint Shop Pro Photo or Painter are all under half the cost of Photoshop. Many of these even offer a free 30-day trial, so be sure to try before you buy! And if you like free then don’t forget Picasa, a free editing app perfect for quick fixes and online album creation making sharing shots with friends, family and the world a piece if cake.
Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.
10 Tips for Creating a Photography Kit on a Budget
Yesterday I was doing a little analysis of the statistics behind dPS as I did a little planning for the coming months on the site and as I looked at them I realised that some of what I was seeing would probably be interesting for you our readership.
I’ll share a few of the stats below – but I thought that of particular interest to newer readers of dPS would be our a list of our most read tutorials and tips. Here are the Top 13
dPS was founded in April 2006. We started tracking visitors using our current stats package in January 2007. Since that time:
While it feels like we’ve been around for a long time we’re a relatively new site in the photography niche. We’re by no means the biggest around but it’s exciting to be a part of something that has experienced real growth and that seems to be helping people.
The main reason that dPS has grown to the point that it has is that over the last 4 years our community has been incredibly active in contributing to and promoting our site. We’ve seen this in a number of ways including groups of people who have:
We greatly appreciate your help in these (and other) ways. Big or small – your contributions are (and will continue to be) valued.
Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.
Our YouTube Channel has now had 80,000 views which is amazing, not much by YouTube standards I know but we are really pleased with it and it’s only been up for a few months. Yesterday I posted a great new free tutorial on “Daylight Extended Exposures” which basically shows you how you can shoot long exposures in the day with a variety of filters for creative effect.
I’m hoping we can get our YouTube channel views to over a million by the end of the year as we get more subscribers to the Channel. So if you have any photographer friends and enthusiasts then please pass on the link http://www.youtube.com/user/GreatPhotographyTips there’s a whole load of great stuff on there and more to come and it’s completely FREE!
YouTube Channel
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how to use EventGhost to begin to automate your PC. Now we are going to take things a step forward and use EventGhost alongside a few other free programs to set up an amazing and fully automated Home Theatre PC.
If you have not read my previous EventGhost article I advise you to go and read it now as I am going to skip past the basics here.
To truly get this working properly you are going to need a few programs; they are all free and fairly straightforward to use (but I'm going to show you how anyway), so get to work on the list below and let me know when you have it all downloaded and installed.
The biggest difficulty a lot of people seem to face when they first set XBMC up is getting the library mode to work; this is because XBMC needs to have a specific file structure in order to scrape (download information about) your media files.
Note: I'm going to work on the assumption that you have a hard drive set up just for your media, if you do not then create a folder on one of your drives and do all this in the root of that folder.
TV Shows, Music, Photos, Movies, Unsorted Media
There are some things that XBMC does not scrape all that well or simply things you would like to be able to access in XBMC but don't really want it to be categorised as a TV show or movie, in this instance you should also create a folder for that (E.g., Documentaries, Children's TV shows, etc…)
The Movies folder should not directly contain any files; each movie should be in a folder which has the movie's name and year as its title. The movie file itself should be the movie's title, if it is a HD movie then you can also add that information to the file name:
E.g. /Movies/The Shawshank Redemption [1994]/The.Shawshank.Redemption.720p.BluRay.mkv
The TV Shows folder follows a similar format; each show should have a folder with its name and year as the title and each series of a show should go inside a ‘series x' folder. The name of each file should be the name of the show followed by the series number and episode number, if you wish you can also add the title of the episode:
E.g. /TV Shows/Life on Mars [2008]/Series 1/Life on Mars – s01e01 – The Crash.avi
Make sure you format the series and episode numbers using the above example, this method always works for the main scrapers. The year is not essential for movies or TV shows, it just makes it simpler for the scraper to make sure it's downloading the information for the correct title.
The music folder should contain a folder for the artist and then a folder for each album inside it.:
E.g. /Music/Fleetwood Mac/Rumours/
The year should not be needed for albums as it's rare that an artist will use the same album name more than once.
Photos are simple to categorise as they do not get scraped—therefore you can put any pictures you like in there without worrying about file structure.
The unsorted media folder should be empty.
At this stage you are ready to copy your media to the folders. If you have thumbnail or fanart files already you don't need to copy them over (unless you know the scraper will have trouble finding them) as this will be taken care of later.
XBMC has a great scraping tool; however it is quite slow and if you re-install your media centre for any reason you will have to re-scrape all your files again from scratch. Ember Media Manager is faster and even better, it downloads all the needed files to the movies folder, so if you do need to reinstall, no re-scrape is required (plus it downloads trailers – which is just awesome).
To set it up, go to ‘edit > settings', click ‘Files and Sources' then ‘add source' and browse to the root of your movies folder. (This can be done during setup as well, so you may not need to do it now). I won't tell you which boxes need ticking as it is all about personal preference really.
Once that's done, return to the main menu and click ‘update library' (although I think this happens automatically the first time anyway). Once your list appears, select ‘Scrape Media > New Movies > Automatic > All items' and watch it find everything for you (Note: If you did not add the year to the folder names then you may get odd results on some movies using ‘automatic', use ‘ask' instead).
If you use the ‘automatic' mode then this should be the last time you ever see this screen as we will automate it in a later step.
TED is a simple Java application which automatically finds your favourite TV shows and starts downloading them. It's fairly simple to set up, but here is a little tutorial anyway.
Once the program is installed, click on ‘add show'. You will then be presented with the ‘Add show' window. Simply select the show you want to download and choose the episode you want to download from (this doesn't work that well for older episodes). Once this is done, select the episode and click ‘Edit show'.
The default settings are ok for the most part, however, I find that I get better results if I make a few tweaks. Firstly in ‘Feeds' click on ‘+' and add IsoHunt, select ‘yes' when the dialog box pops up and then click on ‘filters', change the top number to 300mb and the maximum size to 1200mb (this means you won't get low quality files and you might get the odd HD one—if you don't want HD, then set the max to about 750mb). Don't bother with ‘download in HD quality' as it's not perfect and usually results in no torrents being found for a lot of shows.
Once you have done that, just rinse and repeat until you've added all the shows you want.
Note: If you do not want TED to automatically open your torrent application (like if you download on a schedule) then you can change the options in Extra > Preferences.
This program is very easy to set up and even easier to use. Firstly, click on ‘settings' then change your fetch folder to your ‘unsorted media' folder and the TV shows archive to your ‘TV Shows' folder.
Make sure the following boxes are ticked
And that's it!
Ed. note: If you routinely download subtitles for your television shows or movies, make sure to grab the subtitles before renaming. Subtitles packages are timing-based—down to the millisecond specific!—and one subtitle package for a TV show is not the same as any other package.
Ok, so far we've managed to get a series of systems together to download and catalogue our TV Shows and organise our movies to be imported into XBMC. Now it's time to make it automatic using EventGhost.
Set the first Directory Watcher Plugin to look in your ‘unsorted media' folder and the second to look in your ‘Movies' folder. Then create a new macro called ‘move new shows'
Inside this macro set it to automatically launch the renamer (System > Start Application), in the command line box type ‘–fetch' and set the window options to ‘minimised' (this never seems to work for me but you may have more luck. Then – still inside the same macro – add another action below it, ‘Update Video Library' from the XBMC folder.
Now create a new macro called ‘scrape new movies', set it to open ember media manager and in the command line box enter ‘–newauto –all' (remember this is only foolproof if you add years to your movie directories). Then – still inside the same macro – add another action below it, ‘Update Video Library' from the XBMC folder.
Finally add an event called ‘DirectoryWatcher.Updated' to the top of the first macro and one called ‘DirectoryWatcher2.Updated' to the top of the second and save your configuration.
The last step to make sure everything is automated is to create shortcuts to uTorrent and TED in your Windows start-up folder.
Firstly let's add our media files. Go to ‘video's and select Add Source, browse to your ‘Movies' folder and press enter, the source should automatically be called ‘movies'.
Then click on ‘Set content', under ‘This directory contains', select ‘movies' and set the scraper to the one of your choosing (the default themoviedb.org is pretty good as it is), under scanning options only select ‘use folder names for lookups' Under ‘settings' you are presented with a number of options, these are completely up to you, for the most part Ember Media Manager will have taken care of them anyway.
Once this is done, do the same things again for TV shows, obviously this time select ‘TV shows' instead of ‘Movies'. I recommend thetvdb.org as your scraper. Don't tick any of the boxes and once again the options in the ‘settings' panel are up to you (although I find ‘use DVD' order to be more chronological than the ‘Absolute order' setting).
Note: If you created directories for video media you do not want to be catalogued, add them in the same way, but under ‘this directory contains' set it to ‘none'.
Adding sources to the music and pictures menus is a similar procedure, however, you do not need to specify any settings.
Now we need to tweak some settings to make sure everything works ok, so from the home screen go to ‘System', in the system menu select ‘Video' and check all the options under ‘Library'; then do exactly the same for ‘Music'. Then go back to the main ‘System' page and select ‘Skin' under the ‘home window options' menu, the top four options should be checked and the rest are optional, just make sure to deselect the ‘hide movies' and ‘hide tv show' options.
Once this is done, restart XBMC and watch all your media pour in. Your TV shows will now automatically download as soon as they are released and they will be automatically catalogued and added to your media centre. All downloaded movies will remain in your ‘Unsorted Media' Folder but as soon as you move them to ‘Movies' they will be found and catalogued by Ember and XBMC, You can use the ‘recently' added box on XBMC to see what new media you have to watch.
You knew that nothing this amazing was going to come without problems, didn't you? The main issue this method has is that it's terrible for seeding torrents. So far the only foolproof method around this I have found is that instead of setting your torrent program to move downloaded torrents to the ‘unsorted media' folder, it's better to copy them there instead. That way you can keep your ratios up without having to wait for the torrent to reach 1:1 before watching your media. Obviously, this removes some of the automation and you have copies of files on your hard drive until you delete the seeded copy so it's not perfect.
The other issue is that whilst TED is brilliant, it's not without its flaws—sometimes it cannot find some episodes for shows. So far the only way around this is to tell TED to skip to the next episode and download it manually (fiddling with the filters can sometimes work but often it's a problem with the program and you'll have to wait for an update to fix it).
If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments.
Alex Ward is a Yorkshire based web developer and self-confessed 'media geek'; he has an obsession with automation and home cinema systems and when he isn't messing around with computers, he enjoys cooking for his friends.
Photo by ryaninc.
We've previously covered a couple of these as part of our feature of top 10 apps that boost your media center, but we thought that Windows Media Center (WMC from here on) deserved its own special loving list. It also fills out the capabilities and powers of WMC, as many commenters felt our media center comparison chart didn't give the big picture when it came to their Windows boxes. Fair enough—here's an extended list of powers that the little blue-green app can pull off.
Note: Unless otherwise stated, most of these apps and plug-ins are intended for use with Windows 7's Media Center. Many keep older versions, compatible with Vista's WMC and the 'Media Center Edition' XP systems, available at their sites, but some may not. Similarly, one or two apps may only work with an older WMC edition, and that's been noted in the text as well.
Kendrick suggests that video editing, file encoding, and other tasks that might take your portable computer far too long are best done with a remote LogMeIn/VNC connection. Likewise, tasks like system updates, malware scans, and other maintenance that will take a long time when you're sitting down can be triggered remotely and set to shut down when done.
Kendrick lists four other clever uses of LogMeIn that he relies on regularly. We're wondering if you use remote desktop access regularly, and for what kinds of functions. Drop your discussion in the comments, if you please.
To paraphrase photographer Chase Jarvis, the best password manager is the one you have with you. Of all the password management utilities out there, I consider LastPass the most elegant compromise between convenience and security, and if you're not using it already, I recommend you start. It's mostly free, plugs into nearly any browser or smartphone, is KeePass compatible, and just works.
Why not just use KeePass for all my passwords and be done with it? It's secure, open-source, extensible, and geeks like Gina have sworn by it as a password solution. Oh, and many readers love it, too. If I only used Firefox, KeeFox would provide a pretty good browser integration, and I could use Dropbox as a universal KeePass syncer.
I like KeePass. KeePass is friendly and locks down pretty tight. But when it comes to filling in web passwords, I want the path of least resistance—and I want to convert my friends and family into more secure practices, too. LastPass offers a few advantages over KeePass:
Intrigued? Even just a little interested? Here's how LastPass can make your web browsing, or maybe the browsing of a friend with really weak passwords, more convenient and secure. Go ahead and create an account if you'd like, but LastPass actually recommends creating that account from a browser extension or software download.
Here's LastPass' (somewhat clinical) explanation of how their extensions work, demonstrated on Firefox:
If you're in a foreign land or on a sketchy Wi-Fi connection, the last thing you want to do is pass your universal LastPass password over the insecure airwaves. Luckily LastPass has a brilliant solution: Set up your account with some one-time passwords, then use them whenever you're somewhere not entirely locked down. As soon as you log in, that password becomes invalid, and, as mentioned before, your passwords don't fly over the open air in any case.
As we've previously shown, when you're on a system where you can't install your LastPass extension, or if you only like to occasionally fill in a form or login/password field, you can use LastPass bookmarklets to get at your stashed-away passwords. They work on nearly any browser with decent JavaScript capabilities on most any platform.
If your phone isn't covered by an app, or you don't want to pay the $14/year for a premium subscription, you can hit the LastPass mobile site to get at your security goods. If you're the type to keep a USB thumb drive handy at all times, you can grab a Firefox Portable extension, or 'LastPass Pocket,' from the downloads page and launch either one right off your drive.
HippoRemote turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a touchscreen-based multimedia keyboard, trackpad, and feature-rich remote. It does so much more, however, than simply let you type out URLs on the screen instead of a keyboard.
You can control applications, open sites for easier reading on your monitor or television, and interact with the media you're watching. Check out the video below to see it in action:
The video demonstrates the feature set of HippoRemote Pro, which is $4.99. HippoRemote is also available in Basic and Lite editions which are $0.99 and free, respectively. You can check out the features for each at the Pro, Basic, and Lite sections of the HippoRemote page. If you're curious if HippoRemote supports your specific application you can check out the support page here—chances are good that it's supported. HippoRemote supports Firefox, iTunes, XBMC, and dozens of apps in between.
The link below will take you to the iTunes App Store. If you'd like to check out HippoRemote without visiting the App Store you can visit their main site here. HippoRemote requires an iPhone or iPod touch and works with Windows, Mac, Linux, or any other operating system that supports VNC remote control.
Have a cool remote control application, iPhone OS-centered or not? Let's hear about it in the comments.
The Air Video app for iPhone users is great for Windows Home Server users. Just point it to your Videos folder and you have access to your entire video library. HP makes a similar solution for their own home servers, in the form of iStream but it is nowhere near as functional and simple as Air Video.
Minnaar Pieters has a great review of the app here.
The app is currently priced at $1.99 (£1.19) in the appstore and you install the free Air Video Server onto WHS.
Over the last few months I have upgraded a number of Windows Vista computers to Windows 7, and more recently a few people have asked me for help upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7.
Now there is no clean upgrade path from XP to 7 – there is only a clean installation, which on the whole is putting people off, as they don’t know what to do about their files and their settings.
This is where the Windows Easy Transfer tool comes into play – and believe me it is so easy to use and it has saved me a lot of time on those people’s XP machines!
So I decided to put an article together, and here it is – enjoy.
If you are moving from Windows XP or Vista, you most probably want to take your data and your settings with you. It is quite rare for someone to upgrade to a different version of Windows and not want something they had before, even if it is only their Internet Explorer Favourites.
Microsoft provide an application to help the backup and restore of your data if you are using the clean install method. This application is called Windows Easy Transfer and is used to transfer a number of different files and settings from computers running Windows 2000, Windows XP and even Windows Vista.
The types of files and settings include:
· User Accounts
· Files and folders
· Email messages, settings, and contacts
· Photos, music, and videos
· Windows settings
· Program data files and settings
· Internet favourites
You can buy the Easy Transfer Cable, as shown in Figure 3-1, from your local computer shop which contains a special USB cable for connecting your old computer to your new computer, if you are planning on building or buying a new one. It also comes with all the software you need to perform the transfer.
Another option is to download Windows Easy Transfer for XP (if you are using Windows XP) and use that to backup your software. Windows Vista already has a version of Windows Easy Transfer installed so you don’t need to worry about getting software for your Vista installation.
If you are running Windows Vista you can jump to step 4. The remainder of the steps are for the Vista version, although they will work fine for the XP version.
1. Download Windows Easy Transfer for XP from: http://www.microsoft.com:80/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2B6F1631-973A-45C7-A4EC-4928FA173266&displaylang=en.
2. Double-click the file you just downloaded and choose Run when prompted.
3. Follow the steps to install the software on your computer.
4. Launch the software by clicking on Windows Easy Transfer from the Start menu. This will display the Welcome screen.
If you can’t find it in the Start menu, just type Windows Easy Transfer in the search box and then click on Windows Easy Transfer from the displayed results.
5. Click Next (you may be asked to close any programs that are currently running and may conflict with the transfer process).
6. You will then be asked if you want to start a new transfer or continue with an existing one. Choose Start a new transfer.
7. You will then be asked which computer you are using – the one you want to transfer to or the one you want to transfer from. Choose My old computer.
8. You are then presented with three options for how you want to transfer the files and settings:
· Use an Easy Transfer Cable
· Transfer directly, using a network connection
· Use a CD, DVD, or other removable media
For this example, I am going to select Use a CD, DVD, or other removable media.
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Continue reading Infinitec details Infinite USB Memory Device functionality ahead of launch
Infinitec details Infinite USB Memory Device functionality ahead of launch originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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