Iron Creek Photography®: Catching up and more Leica M9 images

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Catching up and more Leica M9 images

Its been almost an entire month since the last posting on the blog. I've been very busy with the main studio computer first loading Windows 7 Ultimate (64 bit), Adobe Photoshop CS5, and Nik software Viveza 2 (64bit).

I also found I was running short on space on a disk drive that I used as my primary working drive and had to order a larger drive (Western Digital 1.5tb Green with 64bit cache). The new drive arrived and I cloned my old working drive to the new drive using Apricorn software. In the process I decided I needed a better way of backing up the image files that Sandy and I shoot as well as all the other files we use thus I decided to add another Drobo. I wanted a faster speed for the large files we generate and decided to add the 5-bay Drobo S; the Drobo S can be connected via e-Sata which is much faster than the Drobo (4-bay) we have connected via USB. I had our original Drobo connected via firewire however since upgrading to Win 7 that connection was causing problems and I decided to connect using USB till I find the proper upgrade. We now use two Drobos with a disk 9-capacity; we're currently are using 6- 2tb Western Digital drives and 3 smaller older drives. We're also using "DroboCopy Setting" to setup a standard backup routine using both Drobos as well as the internal drives; while no computer or backup system is perfect I feel comfortable with what we have now.

All the above took close to 3-weeks to order and install which also keep me away from working on any images. I also wanted to learn the new ins and outs of CS5 before I mucked things up.

That just about catches everyone up however this leaves just one other topic - Infrared Photography.

I have been playing with IR for many years; I started with film in the '70s then gave it up till late last year when I had a Canon 1DsII converted by Precision Camera. I used the camera with great success from September through last month when I decided to retire it. There wasn't any problems with the camera, just me as I found myself converting the images to black & white and very little color. The other item was the new Leica M9; I found that I was picking that camera to use way before the 1DsII IR. As a matter of fact I hadn't used the IR camera since leaving Carmel; it never left the camera bag the entire time I was in Yosemite. So, no more IR images as the camera has been sold to a Dave Gallagher and I'm currently waiting for a Leica 135mm to replace it.

Having finally finished working on all the images from our recent trip to UT and all the computer work I decided to take a drive along Mt Lemmon Road yesterday. The images included here are all taken yesterday during my drive along Mt Lemmon Road and were captured using a combination of the Summarit 90mm and Summicron 35mm lens.