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Mike Panic

5 months ago

in I Shoot In RAW on Scott Wyden Imagery
I have a love / hate relationship with these discussions. Many photographers, not pointing a finger here, feel they are somehow better by shooting in RAW than those who shoot JPG. The reality is, the camera is a tool, period. If I'm snapping some quick photos for ebay, I see no reason to shoot in RAW. Moreover, I've shot a good number of stock images for iStock in JPG and done very little post and had them all accepted.

Sometimes, and only sometimes, photographers should be better at being photographers than digital developers. I work in this industry and often here too many shooter say, "O hell, why bother setting a custom white balance, I'll just fix it in post, that's why I shoot RAW." Sadly, they are mistaken because that same shooter won't bother to at the very least, shoot a grey card in the scene so they have some reference point. What color is that bride's dress? White, eggshell, cream, ivory?

5 months ago

in I Shoot In RAW on Scott Wyden Imagery
I have a love / hate relationship with these discussions. Many photographers, not pointing a finger here, feel they are somehow better by shooting in RAW than those who shoot JPG. The reality is, the camera is a tool, period. If I'm snapping some quick photos for ebay, I see no reason to shoot in RAW. Moreover, I've shot a good number of stock images for iStock in JPG and done very little post and had them all accepted.

Sometimes, and only sometimes, photographers should be better at being photographers than digital developers. I work in this industry and often here too many shooter say, "O hell, why bother setting a custom white balance, I'll just fix it in post, that's why I shoot RAW." Sadly, they are mistaken because that same shooter won't bother to at the very least, shoot a grey card in the scene so they have some reference point. What color is that bride's dress? White, eggshell, cream, ivory?

6 months ago

in 2008/12/01/dailymile/ on Mashable - The Social Media Guide
I've been on DailyMile since August and logged nearly 2,000 miles. Great site, founders, great people, amazing community. I'm on a lot of social networking sites, this one is seriously at the tops of my list for usability, features and has zero of the crap associated with most. Logging the miles has helped me push through some goals and achieve new ones with the help and advice of others.

6 months ago

in Why I heart Dreamhost on Scott Wyden Imagery
I've been with them for a few years and the fresh new web host smell is starting to fade. I have MySQL server issues with them every other month, the last one caused an error500 to show up on my site for more than an hour. Trouble ticket submitted, 4 hours later (3 hours after the problem was resolved) the official answer was, "the down time was due to the load your sites using WordPress put on our servers, here's a list of stuff you should do to reduce the load." Sorry, that's not an acceptable answer. According to my stats, at the time the site went down there were barely 50 users on my one site, as an article just started to get popular on StumbleUpon, total uniques for the day were only 10-15% higher though. Their other suggestion was that I upgrade my hosting plan to their premium account to prevent this from happening again.

This is a very common problem with web hosts, DreamHost is one of the biggest - they oversell their disk space and bandwidth, so it looks good from the outside but as soon as you start to push their limits, it fails. They hope you never use the "all you can eat" marketing ploys. I use maybe 1% between several sites of the bandwidth and disk space allocated to me, because they give you SOO much. If I ever did want to max out the amount of space I am paying for, I'm sure it would have a negative impact on whoever elese is sharing that particular server space with me.

6 months ago

in Why I heart Dreamhost on Scott Wyden Imagery
I've been with them for a few years and the fresh new web host smell is starting to fade. I have MySQL server issues with them every other month, the last one caused an error500 to show up on my site for more than an hour. Trouble ticket submitted, 4 hours later (3 hours after the problem was resolved) the official answer was, "the down time was due to the load your sites using WordPress put on our servers, here's a list of stuff you should do to reduce the load." Sorry, that's not an acceptable answer. According to my stats, at the time the site went down there were barely 50 users on my one site, as an article just started to get popular on StumbleUpon, total uniques for the day were only 10-15% higher though. Their other suggestion was that I upgrade my hosting plan to their premium account to prevent this from happening again.

This is a very common problem with web hosts, DreamHost is one of the biggest - they oversell their disk space and bandwidth, so it looks good from the outside but as soon as you start to push their limits, it fails. They hope you never use the "all you can eat" marketing ploys. I use maybe 1% between several sites of the bandwidth and disk space allocated to me, because they give you SOO much. If I ever did want to max out the amount of space I am paying for, I'm sure it would have a negative impact on whoever elese is sharing that particular server space with me.

6 months ago

in Orbis / Ray Flash Comparison & Review on Scott Wyden Imagery
I'd be more interested to see sample shots of people, since these really aren't intended for macro purposes. Idealy, if you could tripod mount both, same settings, same light output, same post processing.. with a person standing still against a wall, that would give the best comparison I think.

I'm having seen the RayFlash in person, not the Orbis yet. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around spending an extra $100 for the RayFlash right now with the only benefit I can see is that it mounts to my flash and I don't have to hand hold it. Having shot with the Alien Bees ringflash, I'll be the first to tell you that a 5d with grip and 24-70 f/2.8L attached to it all starts to really suck after about 20-30 minutes of shooting, weighing several many pounds. Along with the fact that I'd have to spend another $450 for a bucket o' batteries to go on location with it, either one of these starts to look really appealing.

6 months ago

in Orbis / Ray Flash Comparison & Review on Scott Wyden Imagery
I'd be more interested to see sample shots of people, since these really aren't intended for macro purposes. Idealy, if you could tripod mount both, same settings, same light output, same post processing.. with a person standing still against a wall, that would give the best comparison I think.

I'm having seen the RayFlash in person, not the Orbis yet. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around spending an extra $100 for the RayFlash right now with the only benefit I can see is that it mounts to my flash and I don't have to hand hold it. Having shot with the Alien Bees ringflash, I'll be the first to tell you that a 5d with grip and 24-70 f/2.8L attached to it all starts to really suck after about 20-30 minutes of shooting, weighing several many pounds. Along with the fact that I'd have to spend another $450 for a bucket o' batteries to go on location with it, either one of these starts to look really appealing.

6 months ago

in 2008/12/16/twitter-dell-million/ on Mashable - The Social Media Guide
My eyes see only two ways of monetizing Twitter.

1. Ads served on pages, even though the vast majority of hard-core Twitterers use a 3rd party app...

2. Premium services for a fee.

Neither sound that appealing, but I could be over-looking something.

7 months ago

in 5 Great Unofficial Gmail Themes on Mashable - The Social Media Guide
I used stylish for a while to reskin my Gmail, it was probably the most unstable plugin evar. So glad Google took this upon themselves to handle.

1 year ago

in How To Shave Like Your Grandpa on Art of Manliness
I've been using a Futur razor since picking one up in Austria back in 1999, been on the same bar of DR Harris lavender soap for nearly 4 years now. I couldn't imagine shaving with anything but platinum coated double sided razors, a bar of shave soap and a badger brush.

1 year ago

in Blog Action Day 2007 is Coming! on The Marketing Technology Blog
I'm going to say 18,000 - I honestly hope it is a LOT more than that though.

1 year ago

in Nalgene and their awesome “Refillable Water Bottle” Campaign on Keetsa Eco-Friendly and Green Blog
I apologize if this seems like comment spam, you don’t have a “contact” page for me to get in contact with privately. I am currently running a contest inspired by BlogActionDay.org, which I am participating in, giving away a Nalgene Refill Not Landfill bottle to help cut down on plastic bottle waste. Thought you may be interested in it.

2 years ago

in Joost Invitations Up For Grabs! on OhGizmo!
I'll take one...

2 years ago

in OhGizmo! » Archive » PanDigital’s 15 Inch Digital Picture Frame on OhGizmo!
I've seen these in person, they are pretty impressive.

2 years ago

in OhGizmo! » Archive » OhGizmo Review - db clay myDuctbills Kit + Stampage Wallet on OhGizmo!
The gafers tape wallet is nice, but for less money I'll stick with my leather J-Fold that has held up for more then 2 years and still looks new.

2 years ago

in OhGizmo! » Archive » Pantone hueyPRO on OhGizmo!
From my experiance, the best software is from Gretag Macbeth, and it costs about the same for the eye-one display.

2 years ago

in OhGizmo! » Archive » iPod Dock Extender Lets You Dock With Your Skin On on OhGizmo!
Thank you! I am using the same skin that is in that picture, the iSkin evo3 - it is above and beyond the best skin I've used but it does not let me use my dock and has prevented me from buying an iHome or similar device for the bedroom. Sadly, it does not appear to be available yet...

2 years ago

in OhGizmo! » Archive » 52-in-1 Cardreader Now With Bluetooth on OhGizmo!
Call me when they make an internal version, the last thing I need is another small doo-hicky on my desk to clutter it up more.
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