talking pixels

Here at Running Pixels we get a lot of questions about computers and cameras, but also about our home brew.

Yes, the home brew is good. And you can brew too.

It’s really not that difficult and if you made it through your 6th grade science project, you can make some excellent beer at home. Its rewarding and watching the fermentation process is simply amazing.

There are many books out there, but How to Brew by John Palmer has been highly recommended. I’m sure its great in print form, but John has also published the book online.

Being able to read through the important chapters online was an important help during our very first brew. Do check your local brew shops for demo’s. The brew demo we had by Erik Knutzen of Homegrown Evolution was extremely helpful when we started out. Don’t discount how watching someone brew can take the fear out of the unknown process. Its not difficult, but it definitely helps to watch someone go through the steps before you do it solo.

There is some basic brew equipment you must invest in, but it pays for itself with the first batch or two of beer you consume. Kits tend to run $70+ but have pretty much everything you need to get started. If you can swing it, we recommend glass carboys over the plastic buckets. Mostly because you can watch the fermentation process through the glass. The plastic is safe to use, but we feel better about glass.

We purchased our starter kit from Northern Brewer, but have also purchased supplies at a local place in Los Angeles called Culver City Home Brew. They have free intro to brewing classes and offer mail order starter kits.

Do look for local home brew supplies, I bet you will be surprised what is around the corner. Here is a Local Brew Supply listing online.

Yesterday we bottled our second batch of Hefeweizen and now have a Leffe Blonde in secondary which we’ll bottle late next week. Ordered more ingredient kits today so we can keep the flow going during the summer.

Home brew. Just do it.

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Home brewing has been our latest office distraction. The fermentation process is awfully enjoyable to watch. The live yeast moving about the glass carboy is almost as good as our fish tank. Well, maybe better. We don’t get to empty and drink the fish tank. We’ll shoot a bit of 5D2 Video on the next batch.

After wrapping a great Adidas shoot today with Margo Silver, we cracked open a bottle of what we labeled “40 Ton Tire”.. a Fat Tire recipe from Northern Brewer.

The photo on the label comes from our days of exploring the Mojave desert with guidance from The Center of Land Use Interpretation.

Only drawback we have found about Home Brewing so far is how fast it disappears.

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Our new “Nehalem” MacPro Towers have arrived. These 8 core beasts are custom built with 12gb RAM, 4 TB of hard drives, upgraded video cards, and both eSATA and FireWire expansion cards.

Ready to crank out your JPEGs in record time.

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Finally, Hasselblad has released their Phocus software to the public. Previously you had to have the serial number for a Hasselblad digital back to access the download. They also released four sample RAW 3F files.

This is a smart decision for Hasselblad as it will allow people to test drive their software without purchasing or renting an actual digital back.

Traditionally we have found Hasselblad Digital Backs and their old school FlexColor software to be excellent for still life and product work.  But it choked on any heavy image workflow.  What we have seen of Phocus has been promising and we have high hopes for it in the future.

Nice move Hassy.  Now where is my 65mm H lens??

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Get yourself a SIGG bottle & use it.  We must stop producing all these plastic water bottles.  The below sad photo is from one day of a studio photo shoot.  As an industry we need to stop this madness.

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We’ve been working on reinforcing our Tenba Air Tower cases for travel and shipping.  As purchased, our Tower cases have proven to be inadequate protection from the Airlines & FedEx.  Luckily, we have not had problems with our Monitor cases.

A FedEx Packaging Engineer visited us (because we filed a pricey insurance claim) & showed us exactly why the case consistently fails to protect our Towers (our claim was denied due to “inadequate packaging”).

Damage is likely caused by the case falling off a conveyor belt.  Conveyor belts move freight thru shipping centers & are above hip height to prevent back injuries.  If the case falls off the belt onto a cement floor, there is a good chance of damage.

The case is most vulnerable from top impacts as there are large air gaps between the case lid & the Tower.  You can easily dent the case lid by pushing firmly with your hand.  Try it.  A heavy impact to the top of the case will crush the lid and contact the Tower, commonly dislodging RAM or video cards, or even bending the computer handle.  ”These air gaps must be filled with padding,” said the FedEx Engineer.  If it had been up to his standards, our Tower would have been replaced.  Because it was not, we are left with damaged machines & voided AppleCare protection plans.  

We have implemented his suggestions to reinforce our cases & hope to no longer see this kind of damage from traveling with the Big Guns.

Below are pictures showing what we have done and what you should do too if you travel with a Tower.  We don’t promise this will protect you from the Gorillas, but it should do a much better job guarding your precious computer from impact.

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We have read across the internet about newfound USB tether speed with the recent OSX 10.5.6 update.  This is quite exciting as both the Canon 1DS Mark 3 and 5D Mark 2 are both USB now.  Firewire 400 is quickly disappearing from all digital cameras and it will soon be a USB and Firewire 800 market.

Today we did a test of a 5D Mark 2 tethered in both 10.5.4 (which we use on set) and 10.5.6 (which we are still testing).  YES, there is a remarkable USB speed increase with 10.5.6.  Definitely exciting.  Camera buffer clears significantly faster under 10.5.6 allowing a tremendous increase in shooting speed over time.  We found a 200% increase in captures over a 1 minute shooting frenzy.  Amazing.

You can peep our test figures here if you are interested in the data detail.

Most promising to us is how quickly the buffer clears.  In the 1 minute tests, once the buffer is hit, we found a ~2 sec per frame capture rate with 10.5.6.  Undeniably screaming compared to the ~6-7 sec per frame rate on 10.5.4.

UNFORTUNATELY, we found 10.5.6 tethered to be very unstable.  In this short test, the camera lost connection to the computer 5 times.  Both camera and software would require restarting to reconnect. All problems were under the “1 minute Max Frames” tests which emmulate the stress of an actual shoot.  We have heard that many cameras have connection problems after 100+ frames while tethered to 10.5.6.

We are ecstatic about the newfound speed with 10.5.6.  However, we will not be using it on set until the stability is sorted.  So we are anxiously awaiting 10.5.7.

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Just a tiny bit of multi-tasking..

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With January 2009 MacWorld Apple has announced a Unibody version of the 17″  MacBookPro.  The new 17″ has an 8 hr permanent battery.  Our guess is its 3-5 hrs in real life photo crunching.  Initially we aren’t happy with the lack of battery swap ability.  What do you do when that battery runs low and you don’t have a place to plug in?

The Unibody design appears to be an excellent structural move on Apple’s part.  Both new MBPs are lacking a FW400 port, put FW800 is backward compatible and adapters are commonly available.  15″s now have the “glass” screen stock but the 17″s have a $50 “Anti Glare” option.  Thats good news as the glass screens make location viewing difficult.

We are very happy to the new 8GB RAM capacity.  Maxing out that RAM will help tremendously while running Lightroom, etc.

On a green note, Apple’s claiming that the new notebook is arsenic-free, BFR-free, Mercury-free, PVC-free, more recyclable, 34% less packaging and EPEAT Gold certification.

For now we are definitely sticking with our Matte 15″ MBPs as we have love them for travel and there is not currently much processor advantage.  Our recommendation is to wait for upcoming Quad core processors if you don’t need a laptop immediately.

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