NOT taking a camera -- updated -- I'm back

[bazzanoid]

I deliberately left my digital rebel indoors since we were on a proper 'adrenaline junkie' trip - needed to be able stow loos articles in pockets at a moment's notice to jump on rides! So instead, i took my painstakingly-chosen P&S - must have spent two months earlier this year deciding which one to use, knowing it was specifically for my WDW trip! I'm pleased with the outcome! Although i need to tidy up a few pics (redeye, the odd soft edge here and there where it wasn't supposed to be), i'm overall very happy. It was a Panasonic DMC-LS2 - very handy dinky camera, lots of manual tweaks which were very useful.

If you'd like to take a look, most of my pictures are here:

http://s73.photobucket.com/albums/i213/bazzanoid/Florida 2006/

Comments & criticisms (constructive or destructive ) always welcome!

TwoOldPoohs - lovely shots!

 

[bazzanoid]

In an unrelated note, the laptop I'm typing on now (a secondary machine so I'm not so worried about it) just started making a squealing noise from the hard drive and is freezing up for a few seconds at a time. Have I mentioned before that hard drives are NOT reliable?

Start listening for the death tick..... as soon as you hear it, backup and dump the drive!

 

[Groucho]

Start listening for the death tick..... as soon as you hear it, backup and dump the drive!

I've seen a LOT of hard drives die but this one died a new way by me. It started squealing very loud for about 30 seconds then quieted down. It was completely dead a day later.

Meanwhile, a couple days ago, another laptop I was working on here died, and a desktop machine I built for someone a couple years ago had a hard drive die the same day. I was fortunately enough to be able to save the data off all three drives before they completely croaked, but you're not always so lucky.

I never wait for a "death tick" - if there's any question whatsoever, I pull out the drive manufacturer's drive testing utility and run that. Occasionally a bad drive will pass the tests, but most of the time, it'll give you an accurate answer. If a drive is making weird noises during the test but passes, you may need to re-run it a couple times to get an error code to get it replaced under warranty. I'm disappointed that everyone seems to have gone back to one-year warranties again, except Seagate, with their five-year warranties. You almost have to go with them nowadays.

I did spend some time last night doing backup DVDs and finally started burning duplicate photo DVD backups to put in our fireproof safe. This will also let me finally start really organizing the collection on my hard drive and delete the bad pictures, without fear of accidentally losing something important.

 

[manning]

Looks to me like a good photographer will always get good photographs!

With both a P&S and DSLR.