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31

November 2013

Without warning, Jaci detected a slight,

peculiar noise that appeared to be coming

from her computer. With a little investiga-

tion, she confirmed the noise originated

from the remote hard drive. Shortly, the

noise disappeared but so did all of the data

stored there. Yes, she has (had) two hard

drives, the second backup contained a sig-

nificant amount of the data, but not all.

The following day, we visited a service to

determine what could be salvaged, if any-

thing. Shortly, we received a call report-

ing that most of the data could be recov-

ered; however, it would be a long and

costly process, perhaps $500 - 1000; what

are your images worth? Becoming a bit

concerned, perhaps paranoid, we began

inquiring how others address this issue;

everyone asked, had a different answer.

The question is not “do you need back up?”

the question is “how?” Cont’d page 2 . .

“Now you see it - Now you don’t” Camera - $1,000; Lens - $800; Memory Card - $20;

Data Recovery - Priceless

by Doug Finch, APSA

Astrophotography: Comet - ISON by Doug Finch, APSA

“Minute by minute, a rare comet is unravel-

ing, exposing 4.56 billions years of cosmic

history in the process.” (Corey E. Powell)

Russian scientists Vitali Nevski and Artyom

Novichonok spotted ISON while perform-

ing a routine sky survey on September 21,

2012 as part of the International Scientific

Optical Network (ISON). While most com-

ets, spotted just hours before they past the

sun and disintegrate, ISON was found a

significant distance from the sun, six times

the earth’s distance, providing plenty of

time to set-up for scientific observation.

Initial forecasts of brightness of the comet

could approach that of the full moon; while

at a much greater distance, still easily visi-

ble. More recent forecasts suggest a smaller

image but still visible with binoculars.

Cont’d page 2 . . .

Highlights:

Why and how of computer back-up

We expect to see you at the Holiday Party

You should always expect the unexpected in

astrophotography

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your

worst.” Henri Cartier—Bresson

Club’s Holiday Dinner 3

Club Visitors 4

Scores of 15 4

Jason Wallace’s Computer Back 5

Photoshop/Elements Class 5

Competition Photos 6, 7

Club & Meeting Information 8

Inside this issue:

Table Rock Falls

What’s it Worth - To Me?

2

exposed to a slight amount of heat. Cur-

rent estimate of the solid body of the comet

is about 2.5 miles with

a tail stretching mil-

lions of miles through

the solar system.

Over time, scientists

have utilized much of

the sophisticated tech-

nology available, in-

cluding the Mars

Resonance Orbiter and

the NASA spacecraft Messenger. How-

ever, ISON will be visible with binoculars

and then naked eye late November,

early December. The best time and

direction for viewing will be south-

east to east just before dawn.

Amateur astrophotographers have

already begun collecting images; you

need to start preparing your long

lenses now, or at least, find your bin-

oculars.

Using the well know Hubble Space Tele-

scope, images revealed a geyser

(vaporization) almost 2,500 miles high,

on the sunward side of the comet. The

most common ingredient in a comet is

ordinary ice, so comets typically remain

fairly sedate until they receive enough

sunlight to vaporize water, this typically

occurs as they approach Mars. ISON is

vaporizing beyond Jupiter leading to the

theory it may be covered with a layer of

frozen carbon monoxide and carbon diox-

ide, gases that vaporize rapidly when

removable hard drives for off-site, CD/

DVD”s, cloud storage, flash memory

cards/thumb drives, and on and on . . .

- I set a task in Window and on my

image server to throw, at the very least,

my photo folders into backup and cloud

storage. Its not hard to automate this

process with some Google use and a

few hours of work.

- I considered using

DVD’s but as far as I

can tell the jury is out

on their longevity, plus

you have to remember

to burn them; the

cloud works automati-

cally.

- I use Crashplan’s

cloud as it allows me

to backup files to: 1)

an external drive, 2) another computer

on my home network, 3) another com-

puter over the internet, 4) to Crash-

plan’s cloud and, 5) as I am paranoid, I

have two external drives that I place

copies on and switch out every month

to an offsite location.

So, what have I learned: current hard

drives, (mechanical device), both inter-

nal and external can, and will fail, it is just

a matter of time.

Therefore, the only sure-fire method of

ensuring data isn’t lost forever is a thing

called redundancy. Do it many times with

different devices, external hard drives,

cloud service, etc. (SSD’s, or solid-state

drives, not mechanical, were also men-

tioned; while expensive, prices are falling.)

Many companies offer cloud ser-

vice; Crashplan referenced above,

Carbonate is mentioned fre-

quently within the club. With

many services available, you may

want to explore before buying.

Be alert, the initial downloading

will likely take a looooong time,

we are talking weeks to months,.

Having completed the research

and writing of this article, I won-

dered outside for a break; I quickly noticed

that the early morning clouds were rapidly

disappearing - plan on it!!!

Note: Jason Wallace who presented our

last program, provided a detailed re-

sponse to my back-up inquiry, please see

page 4.

Comet - ISON

Now you see it - Now you don’t

Hard drive failure, our problem, is

only one way your data can be de-

stroyed; fires, tornados, theft are a few

of the others.

Earlier concerns for protecting our

computer data lead to our initial pur-

chase and installation of two hard

drives for each computer system. Re-

cent inquiries of club members as well

as outside resources lead to a service

identified as cloud, this lead to a

Google search, not for a service, but for

a definition. For you novices (includes

me), the simple definition that makes

sense; cloud is a service by many out-

side companies to provide “safe, easily

accessible,” offsite storage for your

images and other data; fees and use of

the service vary.

The following summarizes the many

methodologies mentioned in response

to inquiries and, yes, I received many

more.

- The rule of thumb I learned from the

State Archives for backups: at least 2

different media types in at least two

different locations. So, depending on

your level of paranoid, you can have

external hard drives, networked drives,

3

HAVE A VERY HAPPY THANKSGIVING &

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Hello everyone, we want to be sure everyone in the Oklahoma

Camera Club has an invitation to our Holiday Party at 6:30 p.m.

on 12 November 2013. This will be a pot luck dinner so please

plan on preparing your own very special dish to share with eve-

ryone. Food items should be at the meeting room NOT LATER

THAN 6:00 p.m. so that everything will be in place and ready to

serve at 6:30.

If you bring a dish needing a serving spoon, please bring one

with you BUT please be sure to have your name on the item so

that we can get everything back to the person who brought the

dish. Since this is a “Holiday Dinner”, try to think of what you

make for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

I will be sending an email to everyone, via Doug Finch, asking

that you let me know what dish you plan on bringing – this is

only to prevent repeats of the same items. PLEASE plan on at-

tending and sharing this special time with everyone.

YOUR HOSTESSES ARE LORRAINE CADDY AND JACI FINCH

4

be very excitable or scared.

With each individual dog or cat we try

to determine its unique personality and

capture it in a photo. Ideally the dog or

cat will be facing the lights to get those

great catch lights in the eye but you

take what you can get!

This particular puppy, Jack, was very

shy and a little intimidated by the pho-

tography set-up and flash. With a little

time and quiet encouragement, we were

able to get him to look up, he had the

saddest little eyes. He warmed up to us

and was just the sweetest pup. Jack

was adopted by a nice couple the

weekend I took this photo.

I really love helping the animals be-

come adopted through photography.

Taking portraits also enables us to

interact with the pets one on one pro-

viding them a chance to let their per-

sonalities shine!

When photographing the shelter ani-

mals, it is really difficult to have a pre-

set composition in mind. These ani-

mals have little to no training and can

October 8, 2013

Gary Unruh, statefarm2@doc.com,

from Bethany visited the club as a

guest of John Key. Gary enjoys pho-

tography on vacations. Welcome Gary,

please return, we enjoyed your visit.

October 22, 2013

Bernard Fern, Ber-

nard.d.fern@gmail, lives

in Oklahoma City; he be-

came acquainted with the

club visiting our website.

Bernard enjoys all areas of

photography. Welcome

Bernard, we are pleased you stopped by

and hope you enjoyed your visit. Please

come back!

Virginia (Caddy) Brokenshire,

Lorraine’s sister from Allentown, PA,

was in the city celebrating Lorraine’s

birthday. We are very pleased you

stopped by and look forward to your

next visit to the city.

Terrie Varga, from Oklahoma City,

learned of the club on the web. Terrie

would fit in well as na-

ture is her primary pho-

tographic interests.

Welcome Terrie, we are

hopeful you will receive

this welcome via our

website.

Mary Hines, mewhines@yahoo.com,

lives in Edmond and visited our club

meeting a number of years ago. Mary

enjoys photographing Nature and Peo-

ple - sounds familiar. Mary, you will

fit in nicely, we enjoyed your visit and

look forward to your return.

Scored “15” by Jennifer D’Agostino (September Digital Competition)

Have you invited someone

to a club meeting lately?

Why not?

Club Visitors

Sad Eyes

Jennifer D’Agostino

Think about the photo before and after, never during.

The secret is to take your time. You mustn’t go too fast.

The subject must forget about you.

Then, however, you must be very quick.”

Henri Cartier– Bresson

5

Jason Wallace’s response to computer back

-up system; Jason presented our last club

program.

As for backup, I use a combination of

things:

Store all photos (and all business docu-

ments) under one folder on my main hard

drive. It’s actually my second drive, be-

cause the OS is on a drive all by itself.)

D:\docs

Subfolders for everything under the sun, but

at least it’s in one folder.

This is the working location. I do not touch

any other location except for recovery pur-

poses.

Have another internal drive, and an external

drive:

X:\ - internal drive

E:\ - external drive

Use sync software to automatically syn-

chronize all data in the “D:\docs” folder to

the X and E drives. GoodSync ($30 for

Windows and $40 for OSX. Not sure why

Mac version is more expensive.)

Configure the software:

Sync the folders when the PC will be run-

ning, but when I won’t be there (1:30pm, I

will be at work. Your needs may vary.)

“1-way sync” – Sync from the main folder

to the corresponding folders on the other

drives, and propagate only one direction –

ignore differences on the destination.

Free software for Windows: Karen’s Repli-

cator, or Free File Sync (haven’t used ei-

ther, heard good things though)

Use online backup software to automati-

cally synchronize all data in the D:\docs

folder to “the cloud” Crashplan ($60 per

year). Other similar services: Carbonite,

Backblaze.

I tried Backblaze, but the restore process

was clunky – it only let me restore files as a

zip file, which I had to extract later.

Crashplan has the easiest software, and is

the cheapest for multiple computers on the

same account. Overall effect, my data is

stored on the main drive and backed up to:

Another internal drive – in case the main

drive goes bad, or the external drive goes

bad.

On an external drive – in case I want to

grab all my stuff and go somewhere.

On the cloud – in case of a tornado.

When it comes to finding something I lost,

it’s best for me to check Crashplan. It keeps

deleted files for something crazy like 30

days or forever. I have configured

GoodSync to propagate deletions, so this

means if I delete something from the master

folder, it will be deleted from the sync fold-

ers as well (but since I set up GoodSync to

run at 1:30 pm daily, I might find the file if

I get there before it runs!)

Hope that helps,

- Jason

Photoshop/Elements Class

Inside Story Headline

November 9, Saturday

Photoshop / Elements Beginner

thru Advanced Class

presented by Carol McCreary, APSA, EPSA

at McCreary home – 10am - 3:30pm

Cost is $ 35

Every student will received 4 hours of instruction and a

folder with CD (before and after images) along with set

of instructions for many more lessons.

To sign up for the class, please email

tcmccreary@cox.net by Thursday, Nov 7th

Jason Wallace’s Computer Back-up

6

Competition Photos

Parked for the Evening

Wally Lee,

APSA, PPSA

Tiger Stare

Carol McCreary,

APSA, EPSA

Merisa Eyes

Randy Carr

Woods Bison in the Rain

Charles Taylor,

APSA

Go - Team

Randy Carr Mt. St. Elias

Charles Taylor, APSA

Gumprects Viper

Steve McCartney

Courage in Three Sizes

Carol McCreary,

APSA, EPSA

Home in Pieces

Carol McCreary,

APSA, EPSA

Red Sail on Lee River

Bob Bozarth

7

Competition Photos

Daddy Long Legs

Jan Lee,

APSA, EPSA

Martha

Inge Vautrin Skateboarder

Debbie Devonshire

Pole Bender

Derrell Dover

Bernardo

Deb Bozarth Stairway

Charles Taylor,

APSA

Blinkers On

Linda Earley

Interesting Design

Bob Protus The Mood is Red

Aloma Anderson Closing– in

Randy Carr

8

OCC Board of Directors

President: Randy Carr

1 st Vice President: Jaci Finch, APSA

2nd Vice President: Aloma Anderson

Treasure: Brad Smith

Secretary: Wally Lee, APSA, PPSA

Directors:

1 yr. Sterling Ranne

1 yr. Ward Conaway

2 yr. Inge Vautrin

2 yr. John R. Key

Workshops: Beginning Image Workshop: Thursday,

following first club meeting, Jan & Wally

Lee’s home, 751-8179. While workshop

focus on Photoshop Elements, bring any

questions or pictures you would like to

discuss. Nonmembers are always welcome.

Hands - On Workshop: Timing for Work-

shop will be announced. If you have an

interest in participating, contact Tom or

Carol McCreary at 634-1817.

Photoshop Workshop: First Thursday of the

month. December 5, will be hosted by

Carol & Tom McCreary. Workshop fo-

cuses exclusively on Photoshop with hands-

on techniques. Contact Carol or Tom,

tcmccreary@cox.net, if you have an inter-

est. Subjects will be transformation and

topaz remask.

November 12:

Print Competition: Open Mono A & B,

Open Color A & B, Nature & PJ

Judges: John Key, Debbie Devonshire,

Brad Smith

Program/Refreshments:

HOLIDAY DINNER

November 26: NO MEETING

50th and N. May Ave.

Central Presbyterian Church

Oklahoma City, OK

Meetings: 7:30 pm

2nd and 4th Tuesdays

For club information, contact

wally.lee2@yahoo.com

HypoCheck Editors:

Doug Finch, APSA

Jaci Finch, APSA

dmfinch@cox.net

For more information:

We are on the web

Oklahomacameraclub.com

Club Meetings and Workshops

Meetings: 7:30 pm

2nd & 4th Tuesdays

50th and N. May Ave.

Central Presbyterian Church

For Club Information Contact

wally.lee2@yahoo.com

For Club Dues Contact

bradsmith5@cox.net

The Club Board meets on the third Wednesday of the month at

Randy Carr’s home. Everyone is welcome.

Please email Randy at rcarr4u@aol.net for address and directions

Oklahoma Camera

Club, Inc.