Stuff

If you use a Nikon digital SLR you are probably aware that you can have your pictures stored in memory in as .jpg files or as "RAW" files (.NEF) or as both. The NEF file format is what the data comes out of the sensor is before a processing engine either within the camera or on a computer translates it into a form which can be widely viewed or printed. Typically the NEF file takes up a lot more space than a jpg would as it is less compressed and also because they already have jpg files embedded in them.

PreviewExtractor can be useful here. Simply choose to only shoot in .NEF format and use Preview extractor to nearly instantly grab the embedded jpg's for things like emailing or posting on the web. Very quick, very simple, and free, but if you like it consider a donation to the author.

As a special bonus, PreviewExtractor is also capable of determining how many shots you have taken with a particular camera by reading a tag within the file.

If you haven't noticed, some of the photos on this site are hosted on the photo service Zooomr. And if you have been looking closely over the past week or two some of them may have flickered on and off. That is because Zooomr is going through a major upgrade. It really should have been done by now.

I think they missed their target date by at least a week due to both code and hardware issues. But they do have one redeeming quality - I have free use of my photos - which is important. Free is always a good thing especially when people take a liking to the photo and it gets downloaded a thousand times (what the attraction to a random orbital sander is I have no idea, but it is popular) - having on someone else's server makes this much better,

The new release has some interesting features. The most intriguing is that they are instituting some sort of mechanism by which people can sell their photographs (or probably more precisely, the rights to their photographs). How this will work I'm still not exactly sure because the new site was only up for 10 minutes - long enough for me to upload one picture and poke around a tiny bit. We just need to wait until their server is back up to figure out if this is brilliant or one of those things which "seemed like a good idea at the time".

If the site is up you can follow this link to my photos there: