I have been searching high and low for the perfect camera bag. I need two, really. One is for my daily commute. This is the kind of bag that can accommodate my notebook computer and associated accessories, maybe a book or two, my lunch, and so on. It’s the kind of bag that can also accommodate my camera, and provide easy access to it. It doesn’t have to be able to fit all my camera gear – just the essentials: Body, one or two lenses, flash, extra battery maybe. This bag, I have found. It’s the Lowepro Fastpack 250. This bag does all the above, and can take for more photo gear than I expected. It’s compact, fairly discreet, goes through airport security without any problems, and after six months of daily use, show no signs of wear.

For travelling, and photographic excursions, however, I need something that can take a lot of photo gear, and also fit my notebook computer – not the other way around.   Meet the Crumpler Brazillion Dollar Home.  This bag looks fairly compact, but it’s really roomy, and can gobble up an amazing variety of stuff.

I want one…

Have you seen a “suspicious looking” photographer lately? You should read this article by Bruce Schneider, BT’s chief security technology officer.

While I haven’t been hassled yet (not in the UK, at least – US is a different story), it is saddening to read about ordinary people being harassed by police officers, security guards, and yes, even other ordinary people. While people absolutely should be vigilant, it’s really worrying when people are taking on government’s distrust of their own people.

OK, you’ve heard it all before.  And I’m going to spare you the debate. The Gadget Show made some really big prints – one from a Nikon D700 and one from a Nikon F4. The results are interesting, to say the least.

I could poke several holes in their methods, but as I said, I’m going to spare you the debate. Have a look and decide for yourself.

I ran into this problem while travelling. I wandered into a camera shop, and asked to try out a Canon 5D they had on display. I took the CF card from my 40D, put it in the 5D, fired off some shots, and then put the card back in my 40D. I quickly viewed the photos – the 40D had no problem displaying the 5D’s images, but the file numbers had changed. I didn’t notice this immediately – only that evening when reviewing the day’s pictures. The 40D was on 5000 odd, and now, all of a sudden, it was counting in the 8000 range.

I realised that this was because the 5D were on that many shots, and my 40D is set to “continuous” – it simply continued where the card stopped. While this makes no difference to the operation of the camera, the continuous file numbering is the only way I have to know how many clicks my shutter has done. So I wanted to fix it. Since I was travelling I didn’t have the tools at hand to make screenshots, etc, so I did this again on purpose, just on a smaller scale. Here’s how to fix it:

I use an AMOD AGL3080 GPS logger in my photography. For a few days now, I cannot get it to do anything. The storage light stays on, but nothing happens. I thought that I’m out of disc space, maybe the trash is taking up all the free space? But that seemed not to be the case – I had 112MB free.

Today I got to look at this more closely for the first time. In the .Trashes directory, there is a ‘501′ directory, and under that, I get the following:

# ls -lha
ls: QžÇØ\026gYø.œ?\036: No such file or directory
ls: ýdßÞæer˜.^ín: No such file or directory

# rm *
rm: cannot remove `QžÇØ\026gYø.œ?\036′: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `ýdßÞæer˜.^ín’: No such file or directory

Eventually, I gave up and plugged it into a linux box. Now the ‘501′ didn’t show up as a directory any more, but as a file. rm -rf, unmount it, switch it on, and what do you know, it’s working! I’m not sure if just deleting the 501 from the terminal in OSX would have worked, it probably would have. I just find it strange that it showed up as a directory and not a regular file.

Firefox 3 adds support for colour profiles – finally! But (isn’t there always a “but”?) it is not enabled by default. To enable colour profiles, type the following into the address bar: about:config

Read the warning and take it serious. Click the button to proceed. Now, in the “Filter” bar, type: gfx.color – this will give three results. The second result should be gfx.color_management.enabled and it should be set to false – double click on it to set it to true. Now restart your browser, and you’re all set.