So, as I’ve alluded to recently, I’ve been playing host to one of my descendants recently and whenever he visits, he’s always shocked by how little progress I’ve made technologically since his last visit and in a spirit of charity he tries to modernize my approach to various everyday life circumstances.
For instance, he reminded me pointedly that my camera, the Sony A7 III, still had the original firmware version. But there were currently versions above revision 4. And he stressed the fact that one of those revisions included a major upgrade to eye autofocus and tracking autofocus capability. And since he is painfully aware of my legendary laziness, he begged me to actually perform the upgrade while he was watching, which I did.
Later when he attempted to run a YouTube video on the tv through a DVD player that had wi-fi, he was dismayed at the terrible bandwidth and asked if I had any other alternative devices. I explained that a year ago I bought a Roku device but it seemed as if I would need to pay for a monthly subscription so in my annoyance at being sucked in, I threw it into my tech scrap heap and forgot all about it. He assured me that the credit card registration was a harmless feint and I would not be charged for free applications like YouTube and other movie channels that had free services. He then dug it out, installed it and suddenly my wide screen tv became a new world of high-definition nature shows that he favors.
And the other day he asked me about my photo workflow. I use Capture One software to post-process my files and I had mentioned that the loading and backup time was becoming unmanageably long. So, we went through the system and identified that one of my settings had been accidentally changed and I was loading all my files to one folder that was now horrifyingly large.
I attempted to remedy the situation. I did successfully change the setting and now am no longer making the problem worse. Score one for me! But I then attempted to break the catalog into smaller pieces to speed up the processing time. That didn’t work out so well. Capture One has several categories of files. There are catalogs and sessions and folders and even other things that I’m not really sure I understand at all. I spent several hours chopping up the giant folder into my existing file system. Then I tried to point the thumbnail renderings to the new file system and that was a total failure. It wouldn’t locate the files for the thumbnails to work as needed, a crushing blow. An alternative would be to manually point the thumbnails to the individual files one by one. But since there are tens of thousands of files, I might not live long enough to accomplish this. Plan B is to spend several hours combining all the files back into one folder the way they were before I started changing it and then move the thumbnails and files together into separate folders. It’s sad to know just how inept I am with the software tools I work with. But an honest man must swallow the hard truth and try to do better. I have vowed, with Peter Thiel as my witness, that I will get my tech house in order. I will give a DAM (that’s digital image management) and get my millions of photo files under control. I will learn how to make my own plug-ins for my website. And I will spend the time to find the appropriate (and cheap) software I need to optimize my other digital occupations like fiction writing.
Of course, I won’t start today. We’re having a big get together and I have to help Camera Girl with the set-up and general chores. But soon! And from now on! The world will see a new photog!
Did that sound convincing?