Do you need a 2.000 € high-end 10bit colour monitor for photo editing? Maybe. I'm using an 8bit Dell U2412 for 250 € and I'm very satisfied. Prints often turn out different to your screen somehow anyway, so there's not really much use in ultra precise colour for me. I think it's far more important to see how images look on 99,9 % percent of the screens we look at everyday, especially on our smartphones, that's 8bit RGB colour. There's a lot of money to be saved on things others make us believe were necessary ...

People get ecstatic about their high resolution HD TVs. Do they know that even Canon's cheapest little camera, the Canon IXUS 145 for 90 € still has 8 times the resolution? This is called the megapixel myth. The 2 MP HD resolution we all love are good enough for most everything. 36 MP are impressive but don't make your photos any better ...

Update: Canon silently released a new pocket camera, the Powershot S200. The S120 is still my top recommendation but the S200 could to be as good for most people. It seems like Canon took an old S110 and added some useful things while some are missing compared to the S120 to make people buy the more expensive one who don't know better. The S200 can't shoot RAW, so I wouldn't buy it, but 99% of the people don't use RAW anyway for which you need expensive programs in most cases. The S200 is lighter and has a better Image Stabilizer and everything you need for fast photo sharing via wifi. For 280 € as of March 2014 it's my top pick for nomal people who just want great images. You can tweak them to your liking on your phone or tablet using VSCO Cam for example. It's lighter and smaller than the S120 making it even more portable. I think it's a really great little secret bargain for the smart shopper who doesn't want to fiddle around with RAW that slows everything down, is uncomfortable and takes more storage space. Highly Recommended! For tips on which camera to buy, read my article What camera to buy and why.

Maybe someday I buy some of these NEC 30" displays ;-)

KIKI

The following is for Mac users in particular but the same applies to Windows as well, I just can’t recommend any special programs for Windows at the moment because I’m not using it. You have to look it up and try yourself whenever I mention a specific program for Mac.

Ok, do you care about backups? Not really? A lot of my friends don’t and I am trying to explain now why it can be fatal and how easy and cheap it is to backup.

First of all, what is a backup? It’s a copy of your original data on a different drive, a different physical hard drive other than the one that is in your computer. Some people, friends of mine, say they didn’t have valuable data so they don’t care. But they probably haven’t experienced any hard drive failure or let down before.

If the hard drive of your main laptop fails all your data stored on it is gone. Sometimes it would be possible to recover it but cost would be enormous so I don’t take that into consideration. If you haven’t backed up your data, all your files will be gone forever. Even if I had no valuable data the snapshots I took with my cameras over the years are reason enough to backup because I would be incredibly sad if I lost them.

Hard drives fail from time to time, same as nuclear power plants. Not terribly often but of the 12 drives I bought over the years 2 seriously failed, and I’m only buying quality drives like those from Western Digital.

Ok, I recommend anybody to backup, letters, photos, files, personal documents, programs, downloads, which are all much to important to risk a complete loss.

How should you backup? Seriously, I keep at least 3 copies of all my data (including the Master copy of my computer), one at a different physical location than the other drives, plus I use Time Machine for constant backup of temporary files, Carbon Copy Cloner as Clone solution for my boot drive and Wuala as Cloud Backup. What does all this mean and why is it important?

Three different copies in general are important because we have to consider a hard drive fail. If it happens and you only got one copy left you already find yourself in an uncomfortable situation of relying only on the last copy. Just in case pure coincidence caused a drop of this last backup drive in a hurry or anything else went wrong you've lost everything as well. It’s very unlikely that two rare accidents happen at once but you never know. So three complete copies of your data is mandatory in my opinion, every extra copy is more of a prevention of unlikelihood.

It’s important to store one of the three copies at a different physical location as the others because there are cases where both or all three copies would go lost at once. One could be your house burns down, another could be all your stuff gets stolen from your flat. If that happened and you had all your copies at home you were screwed. A good and easy way is to store your third copy at a friend’s place or in a locker or your parents’ house. I am using an extra drive with the temporary third copy to bridge the times during which you can’t backup on the far away location. This transport drive is additionally helpful for rearranging storage or temporarily delete from one drive before you save to another for example.

What kind drives do you need? I’m buying Western Digital and trust them. Seagate seems to be good as well. I’m generally using three small 2,5“ drives (extra transport drive and Time Machine/Clone drive) to be able to take all my data with me and easily connect without need of extra power supply. Because 2,5“ are more expensive (small size) the other two drives I’m using are 3,5“ drives. They are much cheaper. You have to calculate how much data you have, how likely it will fill up, so how much you need in the future and give a little extra space on top. I have 1,8 TB of data in total so at the moment 2 TB drives are fine but I will have to extend storage space later this year again. Generally I would recommend to buy 1 or 2 TB drives, the bigger they are the cheaper they are per TB, there are also 4 TB drives. 1 TB drives are very cheap if that’s enough for you.

Alright, we got at least three drives now (including your computer). How do you back up now? The easiest way is to use Time Machine with Macs. You just plug the external drive in and set the drive as backup volume. Your Mac does the rest. If you keep the drive attached the Mac makes an updated copy every hour. It’s incredibly handy and gives you peace of mind. And you can set more than one drive as Time Machine Volume and backup to the other drives manually when you plug those in. It’s actually the easiest way. BUT, some people, for example Lloyd Chambers, say Time Machine was unreliable sometimes. He doesn’t trust Time Machine any more than as a constant temporary extra backup. I believe him and think it’s a good idea to use dedicated Clone programs for real backups. Another disadvantage of Time Machine is that it’s not bootable. In case of a faulty drive in your computer other programs let you boot from your external drive and you can keep on working without any loss at all. You simply swap the faulty drive and be set.

The safest way and best program I know is Carbon Copy Cloner for Mac or something similar for Windows. It doesn’t matter if you're using only one master drive in your computer or different partitions with a separate boot drive for system and programs like I do, so I need an extra backup drive for that.

My recommendation is to keep one drive attached for hourly Time Machine backups (you don’t need to do that, but I remember how annoying it is sometimes to be thrown back only a couple of hours). Partition your first backup drive into one Time Machine partition and one for regular Clones or use two separate drives for that. Use Carbon Copy Cloner once a day or whenever you think a backup was necessary. CCC makes a complete bootable Clone of your computer on the external drive. Do this Clone backup to the backup drive that you have in your flat, the Clone drive with the Time Machine backup partition, you may as well only use the Time Machine backup at home. I don’t do that as mentioned above, it’s a matter of personal security threshold. And use the fourth recommended transport drive to backup the third copy that you take with you all the time or leave it somewhere away from your flat, f.e. your office, during the times you can't do the proper third backup to the far away backup drive. Carbon Copy Cloner is not very practical for the far away drive because you might not always have your computer with you to do the Clone but the transport drive. You just copy the new files manually to the far away drive. The great thing about Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine itself is they make incremental Clones/Backups so they only add new stuff after you have run a Clone/Backup for the first time, that makes it pretty fast, too, especially when you have USB 3.0 connection.

If you buy a WD drive they come with hardware protection so you can set a password to make access to your data reasonably difficult. If you really have valuable data that nobody else should be able to see use TrueCrypt, a program that lets you encrypt your drives with the latest security standards. I have my mobile drives encrypted with AES-256 encryption. Nobody who finds the drive will be able to access.

Phew, what else to tell, let me summarize to make sure I got everything.

Summary:

1. Calculate how much data you have and how much you need in the future. Buy at least two (ideally three backup drives, one small transport drive) of f.e. 2 TB each, one 2,5“ and one 3,5“ (about 200 €).

2. Partition the drives or use separate drives for Clone and Time Machine, recommendation: Set the mobile 2,5“ drive to one partition using Time Machine, f.e. 500 GB.

3. Let Time Machine make a backup on the mobile 2 TB drive. Clone twice to the other partition or drive and the 3,5“ drive.

4. Now you got 3 copies plus Time Machine, your computer as the Master, a partition of the mobile drive as Time Machine drive and the other partition as first external Clone backup and the 3,5“ external drive as second Clone backup of your Master computer. You may include a transport drive as fourth drive for rearranging drives, deleting and as temporary backup drive.

5. Leave the mobile drive attached to let Time Machine make constant temporary backups and clone once a day or whatever you consider an appropriate interval to make clones to the other two drives. Use the fourth transport drive to bridge the times you can’t backup to the far away drive.

SORTED!

Hope it helped.

Keep it safe …

KIKI

Bought a digital camera after Christmas? If you’re looking for serious stuff, you may read my recommendations here.

If you just want a great camera but don't have much money to spend, buy either used, use what you already have and try to improve your photography or buy just a small pocket camera, my most loved ones are Canon’s Powershots, in Germany there’s also the Ixus line (Powershots as well overseas), they are even smaller and somewhat more stylish. Those little point & shoot cameras are much better than your smartphone camera, because you have a zoom and a bigger sensor that gives better images in low light. On the other hand you can make great photos with whatever camera, even a smartphone. I believe iPhones have the best cameras.

A really great little camera is Canon’s S120. It’s a little more expensive than the rest but worth it. It has a bigger sensor than normal point & shoots and a brighter lens. My top recommendation stays a Panasonic LX7, though. It is a bit bulkier than the Canon but still quite pocketable, it has a much brighter lens, starting at f/1.4 but only slowing down to f/2.3 instaed of f/5.9 on the Canon when fully zoomed in. Its sensor is a tad bit better noise-wise. The lens is a bit wider at the wide end which you really feel, especially as you have a cool aspect ratio switch around the lens that gives you a little extra width when switching to 3:2 or even 16:9. And as of January 2014 it's cheaper than the Canon, too. I bought the LX7 at the beginning of last year and it still serves me very well.

What computer do you need? Seriously, any modern computer is fine to post process images from a little point & shoot. I’m using Mac for years and I love them for their ease of use, generally hassle free operation and speed, they just go (I don’t like Apple for a lot of other things, producing in China for example, but there’s simply no alternative, all major manufacturers have outsourced to Asia to save money).

Anyway, if you care about the environment, buy a MacBook Air, the 1.3 GHz base model is fine. The new Haswell ones have super long battery life and very low voltage processors. With a 54 Wh battery my 1.7 GHz Air lasts 12 hours or much longer, depending on workload (when processing images with Lightroom and Photoshop it's good for around 7 hours nonstop). That’s amazing, a full-fledged computer that only draws 5 Watts on average, great for your power bill as well. 

You may also take a Retina MacBook Pro, the 13“ with the new Haswell processors are particularly attractive. They don't have much more power than the Airs but you can get them with 16 GB of RAM which makes them much more future prove (strongly recommended to max out RAM because you can’t upgrade later, that’s too bad/idiotic!). The Retinas obviously have a much better display, honestly, though, I don’t have a problem with the Air display, and I kind a like the fact that it needs much less power with its 4 times less pixels. That means the Air has a much smaller battery and thus is considerably lighter than the 13“ Retina, making it much more portable. I am happy to walk around with the Air in my bag (and a light camera) for a pretty long time of the day. The upgraded Airs later this year will be even lighter.

If you really need power, more cores are essential to get serious work done. The 15“ Retinas of today are simply twice as fast for things like photo imports or exports, applying filters or effects to huge amounts of photos. Luckily I don’t have this kind of workflow, I’m still working on files individually. So I appreciate the speed of my desktop MacBook Pro and its 4 cores, but it's the 16 GB of RAM that are important to me.

If I had to buy one laptop now I’d probably take a 13“ Retina high-end with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB storage.

When to buy? It’s always my recommendation to buy the moment you need the computer or tech device. Waiting for newer machines is almost always a waste of time where you could have enjoyed a new device already, Macs don’t get cheaper when new ones are around the corner anyway.

It gets different when you have a little time. I try to follow Intel’s Tick-Tock-strategy. Every year a new generation of processors is released but it’s only every two years that a new architecture (Tock) comes out that brings considerable speed and efficiency improvements compared to the moderate changes in Tick years in between, where only the chips shrink. The Sandy Bridge generation three years ago was a Tock year with incredible speed gains, nearly twice as fast as the Arrandale generation before. Ivy Bridge in 2012 was only a mild upgrade. Haswell in 2013 was a Tock and brought amazing battery life improvements last year.

Have a look at the energy monitor, when only doing some facebook and very lightly browsing the web you can get up to 20 hours (mostly idle with display at half brightness) out of one battery charge ...

It’s a great time to buy the new Haswell MacBook Pros now, the expected Broadwell chips later this year will only bring light improvements again, so you don’t have to wait for them. But there are new MacBook Airs coming this year. The platform is pretty dated and Apple is expected to release smaller and lighter ones in summer or fall. You may probably wait for the new Air. BUT, Skylake next year will be a Tock again with much better internals. I tend not to like the first generation of new Macs too much, because it always happens to be just a couple of month before much better processors come out. Skylake in 2015 will rock again!

Tablets by the way don't replace a laptop for me at all. They are much slower and multitasking is a pain. When I have a computer with me I always grab that in favor of the tablet. Latter are nice consuming devices, facebook, reading, videos, but no match for serious work.

Update (08.01.14):

I did a short real life power consumption comparison between my early 2011 Sandy Bridge MacBook Pro 15" (2.2 GHz Quad Core i7, 16 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD) and my mid 2013 Haswell MacBook Air 13" (1.7 GHz Dual Core i7, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD) to give you an idea of how economical this new processors are. I charged both laptops to full charge (they have about equally fresh batteries, the Pro got its battery replaced in summer 2013, same time I bought the Air, but the Pro's battery is a good bit bigger, 77,5 Wh compared to the 54 Wh battery in the MacBook Air. That means you got 43,5 % more battery power in the Pro). I then disconnected them both from the power plug and used them doing the exact same things on both (both at half brightness). Here are the results:

Idling, doing nothing, either with Wifi turned on or off, the Pro consumes 8,6 W, the Air 2,5 W, that's 3,4 x lower power consumption in the Air. Opening and using apps like Photoshop, Lightroom or Chrome the Pro again consumed 3-4 times more power. With very light workload in the first hour, some Lightroom and Photoshop, staying on the main page of facebook most of the time, browsing around 10 different websites reading, the Pro lost 15,59 % of battery life (based on actual mAh measurements) during this one hour, the Air lost 6,09 %, that's 2,56 x longer battery life with this kind of workload. During the second hour I did even less, put both into stand-by for a while and read articles on both in the last 15 minutes. After 2 hours the Pro had lost 24,04 % of its full charge, the Air lost 10,06 %, that's roughly the same gap, 2,39 x better battery life with the Air. Given an over 30 % smaller battery (43,5 % bigger from the Air perspective) that's an amazing power efficiency of the Air. With light to super light workload (mostly reading articles) you can get 15-20 hours of battery life out of the Air. Plus as said above, less than 5 Watts average power draw is not only great for the environment, it's also great for your wallet!

Phew, so much tech talk again, I’m loving my blog ;-)

KIKI

Yeah! VSCO released Film Pack 04 today, a set of 117 Slide presets, something I've been waiting for since they started maybe two years ago. And it includes my favorite landscape film Fuji Velvia 50. 2013 landscape shots will rock! Looking forward to play around with it next week! This week I don't have reliable internet connection due to some travels, so my posts will be a bit delayed ...

Check out VSCO Slide, it's supposedly great as the three Packs before ...

See you later

KIKI