I really got used to my new keyboard and a bit bored of the original version in use now at work. So I decided to do something good for me and by another one. I'll take that on work on monday…

I bought it privately because I can't convince my colleages why I need a special keyboard! But I'm really used to ergonomic keyboards now and it's more fun writing on them. Further I rather often suffer from some kinds of RSS (repetitive stress syndrome) and a good keyboard helps.

So why not use the old one longer? First the feeling is very different to the new one. You have to press the keys much harder on the old one and some even start to stick a bit (maybe greasing could help). And the new ones is more ergonomic too (the wrist rest of the oringial natural keyboard is very steep and too narrow).

All in all I'm very pleased with the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. I'm sure there're better keyboards out there, but most are much more expensive and many of them are not available with a German layout…

Just filed another bug report for f-spot: Bug 321596 - Importing should give the option to move the files. It really should be possible, to move the pictures on import and not only to copy them. As the pictures are stored in normal files on the hard drive, this doesn't seem too risky even in the current early state of f-spot. OK, doing a verify if the copy worked well would be very interesting before deleting the original (calculating a hash should be sufficient).

Speaking about enhancement, I watched some of the usability test videos at Better Desktop. I was a bit shocked, that the simple nice interface of f-spot doesn't seem to work in some respects. Four people were supposed to crop a picture and nobody succeeded! 3 found how to draw a rectangle (just draw it) but only one found the crop button. Unfortunately the one who found the crop button, was the one who didn't try just drawing the rectangle (she looked for a way to switch to a crop tool, like in Gimp maybe, and to use this to draw the rectangle). I think the buttons below the image are quite unusual. At least there should be a menu option under “Edit” to crop the image after a selection is made.

BTW, if I'm in edit mode, I don't need the time bar and the tag tree. It's just wasting space and if you click accidently there, you might even move away from the image you opened to work on (most probably).

I just filed two f-spot bugs (yes Larry, I know that I'm often too lazy to add bugs to databases and I promise, I'll try to do it more frequently as I'm aware that bug filing is very important).

Bug 321588

I always had the problem, that my CR2 raws are not shown beside the accompanying jpegs (if I shoot pictures I might use for a Cyanotype I always use the parallel saving mode). Today I realised that this happens because f-spot shows a wrong time for the jpegs, but not for the raws. The jpeg time is always 2 hours early. Other applications I tested, like nautilus and gthumb, show the correct time. I'm just wondering, why this happens only to the jpeg. As the exposure information is available for the CR2s as well, I assume the data of the CR2s is taken from the embedded jpeg preview there (but I'm not sure about that).

Bug 321589

The size information for the CR2 raws is wrong. f-spot reports 1536 × 1024, but it should be 3504 × 2336. I assume f-spot returns the information of the preview images, but it should report the size of the raw. Larry wrote that there's work on raw support currently under way, so maybe this just happens because of the “preliminary” raw support currently.

Some thoughts about what I expect of f-spot

Actually I'm already pretty happy with f-spot, as I see it primarily as a photo management software and not a editing software. So what features do I need?

Most important feature for me is tagging and a stable saving format (whether in a database or in some image header). To management features I count options to create web galleries, upload to services like flickr, burning CDs/DVDs, and so on. Maybe even a good integration to create presentation DVDs/VCD could be interesting. I'd like to have some editional export feature: export to folder as link. This could be nice if I want to order some paper prints. German services often use some java applet, where you can specify some folder to upload. So it would be nice to select all the wanted images in f-spot and export them to a folder, but copying isn't really needed and a waste of time and space, a link is sufficient (if I don't want to resize the images, which is a good option if I just want some 10 cm × 15 cm prints as 8 MPs are not useful for these and scaling down saves uploading time).

Actually I don't need many editing options. What I more need, is an option to open the selected image(s) in Gimp (or any other editing program). Currently this works using drag and drop, but having a menu entry is even better. Some editing features like a quick cropping is very good. I esp. like the “versioning” in f-spot. A better raw support could be interesting as well. I'd prefer some integration of ufraw (I'm using this as a Gimp plugin) as this is doing a very good job.

So my basic wish is, that f-spot concentrates on photo managing with some basic editing like cropping and fast colour correcting (things you need to upload your images to an image gallery)…

The building with the relief on the Cyanotype in “New work” has almost vanished.

But fortunately the relief itself will be saved (eventually). This at least said an article of a local newspaper on Thursday. It's even supposed to be integrated into the new building which will be erected there! Luckily it's made out of sandstone and not a plaster worl, so they suspect that a recovery will be feasible (for safety they measured it today, so that an accurate replication is possible if something happens). I think this is good news.

Acutally I took a nice shot of the relief itself today in the afternoon which is much better lighted and shows more details and depth. A task to make a Cyanotype out of it…

On Wednesday I used another advantage of digital cameras, the white balance. I was visiting some family and did want to use my flash (Canon Speedlite 420EX), but I don't like direct flash, so normally I use the ceiling to flash indirectly.

With an analog camera this wouldn't have worked there, because the ceiling is a wood knock-off and by that brown. But this is no problem with digital pictures if you adjust the white balance accordingly. You could do this later on your pc, but using the Canon EOS 20D is much easier: just use the manual white balance. For this you have to take a picture of a white object. Using this picture the 20D can calculate a white balance setting. Select this one and you get white without any further work. ;-)

To demonstrate the effect have a look at the image below. The first stripe was shot using a direct flash, the second flashing indirectly via the ceiling with automatik white balance, the third stripe is the white object (a door), and the forth it the bouquet again using the manual white balance got from the door image.

I think this is quite impressive. Esp. as this is a very easy and fast solution (if the colour of the reflected flash doesn't change depending on your position).

Today on the autobahn I had the idea just to hold my camera out of the window towards the other lane. Here are some results:

I think these are some quite interesting results. You can see more in my Autobahn @ night set. All shots were exposed about 6 to 30 seconds.

Now F-Spot (my favourite photo management program for the Gnome desktop) has a “real” homepage! The page is currently being worked on, so not all does work perfectly, yet.

My company is currently looking for two engineers to expand our team, a Development Engineer and a Test Engineer.

You like to work on high temperature fuel cell systems in a young team and fulfill one of the profiles perfectly? Then apply…

The prints arrived today (yesterday we had an official holiday). As suspected they look very good—at least most of them and for most prints you don't see much difference to prints made from negatives. On some very few shots the focus did miss and there're some not perfect exposed pictures as well. But both sharpness seems to be much better if you have an 11 cm × 17 cm prints and small overexposed areas are not so prominent as well. Mercifully the prints don't seem to be sharpened additionally.

BTW, for all the prints I used the jpegs created by the 20D without any retouching.