What bemused you today?

[spinner]

Came home to Canada from Florida. Get to spend time with my Granddaughter which makes the return worthwhile, but getting used to cold, grey, colourless surroundings is a bit of a shock. Why am I bemused? The run up the highway was greeted with sunny, blue skies and reasonable temps right up to the border, then cross into Canada and wow. Now I know why Americans think we live in a perpetual Winter. 

If I'm going to do any photography I'll need to think Black and White. 

[Oldboy]

Came home to Canada from Florida. Get to spend time with my Granddaughter which makes the return worthwhile, but getting used to cold, grey, colourless surroundings is a bit of a shock. Why am I bemused? The run up the highway was greeted with sunny, blue skies and reasonable temps right up to the border, then cross into Canada and wow. Now I know why Americans think we live in a perpetual Winter. 

If I'm going to do any photography I'll need to think Black and White. 

So its not just the UK that has grey sky's then? 

[spinner]

Came home to Canada from Florida. Get to spend time with my Granddaughter which makes the return worthwhile, but getting used to cold, grey, colourless surroundings is a bit of a shock. Why am I bemused? The run up the highway was greeted with sunny, blue skies and reasonable temps right up to the border, then cross into Canada and wow. Now I know why Americans think we live in a perpetual Winter. 

If I'm going to do any photography I'll need to think Black and White. 

So its not just the UK that has grey sky's then? 

OB, the change of weather after crossing the border was dramatic. Been home a week now and while I am enjoying time with my Granddaughter, my mood has shifted horribly. S.A.D. is real IMHO and I've got it. 

[Hinfrance]

The weather isn't much better here in south west France. It's been one of the coldest and wettest Marches that we've ever seen. When I was laying the terrace around the pool in mid March 2003 it was 28C in the shade and I was working under an awning to keep a little cooler. This year we still have the heating on and a fire in the hearth most evenings.

Meanwhile I just received one of the most obvious phishing emails I have ever seen, allegedly from Amazon, on an email address I don't have associated with an Amazon account. I replied asking for 3 bitcoins to cover my expenses. 

[Hinfrance]

Just renewing daughter's passport. Only one of the four photo examples on the ukgov website shown as 'accepted' actually conform to the rules they quote directly above them. Governments eh?

[anglefire]

Last passport I did for me and the wife, I took the pictures, but got the pictures printed professionally - cos that is what the website says to do.

Mine was "Ok" but the wifes was awful, didn't fit the criteria , so I printed it at home, sent it off and had no issues at all.

[Hinfrance]

A friend has given me 6 SD cards to try to recover the deleted pictures. They are the cards his daughter took on her 'trip of a lifetime' through several South American countries. Oh dear. She should perhaps have spent a few minutes learning how her Olympus tough camera worked. She had the image size set a lot of the time to what I suspect is the smallest one possible, 624x416, and has no concept of the idea that autofocus might have some lag - almost everything is out of focus. Add to that her complaint that the battery life was rubbish (she claimed she was pressing the shutter release more than 500 times a day, so it's not surprising that she quickly exhausted her batteries). Perhaps if she had bothered to read the camera manual she wouldn't have formatted all of the cards 'by mistake'. I can understand doing it to one card, but all of them? Sheesh.

So far I've managed to get about 1000 shots from two 32gb cards - but the cards were mostly empty. And all of the files have the date stamp superimposed on them.

Forgot to mention, 2 of the SD cards weren't cards at all, they are micro SD adapters. I wonder why there is nothing on those?

[Reinardina]

A hard lesson! Let's hope someone else took some photos as well.

[Reinardina]

A friend bought a new smartphone, on line. It's given up the ghost within the first week, and guess what? He had to phone the company!
He's just left, after using my land line.

[jinky]

A friend has given me 6 SD cards to try to recover the deleted pictures. They are the cards his daughter took on her 'trip of a lifetime' through several South American countries. Oh dear. She should perhaps have spent a few minutes learning how her Olympus tough camera worked. She had the image size set a lot of the time to what I suspect is the smallest one possible, 624x416, and has no concept of the idea that autofocus might have some lag - almost everything is out of focus. Add to that her complaint that the battery life was rubbish (she claimed she was pressing the shutter release more than 500 times a day, so it's not surprising that she quickly exhausted her batteries). Perhaps if she had bothered to read the camera manual she wouldn't have formatted all of the cards 'by mistake'. I can understand doing it to one card, but all of them? Sheesh.

So far I've managed to get about 1000 shots from two 32gb cards - but the cards were mostly empty. And all of the files have the date stamp superimposed on them.

Forgot to mention, 2 of the SD cards weren't cards at all, they are micro SD adapters. I wonder why there is nothing on those?

Oh dear - I guess the age of "anyone can shoot digital" does bypass the odd one or two!

[donoreo]

A friend has given me 6 SD cards to try to recover the deleted pictures. They are the cards his daughter took on her 'trip of a lifetime' through several South American countries. Oh dear. She should perhaps have spent a few minutes learning how her Olympus tough camera worked. She had the image size set a lot of the time to what I suspect is the smallest one possible, 624x416, and has no concept of the idea that autofocus might have some lag - almost everything is out of focus. Add to that her complaint that the battery life was rubbish (she claimed she was pressing the shutter release more than 500 times a day, so it's not surprising that she quickly exhausted her batteries). Perhaps if she had bothered to read the camera manual she wouldn't have formatted all of the cards 'by mistake'. I can understand doing it to one card, but all of them? Sheesh.

So far I've managed to get about 1000 shots from two 32gb cards - but the cards were mostly empty. And all of the files have the date stamp superimposed on them.

Forgot to mention, 2 of the SD cards weren't cards at all, they are micro SD adapters. I wonder why there is nothing on those?

I think you need to get her camera and change a few settings then tell her to RTFM.  The fine manual will have the info she needs. 

[Hinfrance]

Finished the recovery process now. Got just under 6000 stills and about 100 video clips from the 'real' SD cards. The good news is that I got daddy to cough for the latest version of File Scavenger (I previously had 3.2, now I've got 5.2). I had to use pukka software because the free utilities just didn't find very much. Of the free ones Recuva was the best, but only found a small percentage of the files that File Scavenger did.

So all in all not too shabby.

[jinky]

Finished the recovery process now. Got just under 6000 stills and about 100 video clips from the 'real' SD cards. The good news is that I got daddy to cough for the latest version of File Scavenger (I previously had 3.2, now I've got 5.2). I had to use pukka software because the free utilities just didn't find very much. Of the free ones Recuva was the best, but only found a small percentage of the files that File Scavenger did.

So all in all not too shabby.

You`ve done well - would have cost them a lot to go somewhere to get them recovered. Hope the shots are worth the trouble!

[Hinfrance]

Yes, I reckon I was a bargain.

It really is quite eye opening how much more effective File Scavenger is than the free utilities. On one card, for example, Pandora found 2 jpgs, and Recuva found 3. File Scavenger found 1251 jpgs and .mov clips.

I also ran Ease US's offering in trial mode. That was within a gnat's whisker of File Scavenger. Tip for the Ease US utility: run the trial and then uninstall it - their website will then offer the software at half price for a limited time.

[Reinardina]

Email from a nice, good looking, young contractor, asking me to 'bare with him.'