What’s Up?
I am in the throes of a potentially major computer disaster. I may or may not be able to get a blog post done for the next few days. I will do my best. I sent my MacBook Pro (and a probably messed up back-up drive) to a data recovery outfit by Fed-Ex Overnight on Saturday afternoon. Fingers crossed.
If you need to get in touch with me, please shoot me an e-mail to staffbaa@att.net with the “ATTN: artie” as the Subject Line. Or try my cell at 863-221-2372.
Today is Sunday 30 January 2022. Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day. This blog post took about ten minutes to prepare and makes 79 days in a row with a new one.
ps: please consider that having triple back-ups is strongly advised (he said after the horses may have escaped from the barn …)
Selling Your Used Photo Gear Through BIRDS AS ART
Selling your used (or like-new) photo gear through the BAA Blog is a great idea. We charge only a 5% commission on items priced at $1,000 or more. With items less than $1000, there is a $50 flat-fee. One of the more popular used gear for sale sites charged a minimum of 20%. Plus assorted fees! Yikes. They went out of business. And e-Bay fees are now up to 13%. If you are interested, please click here, read everything carefully, and do what it says. To avoid any misunderstandings, please read the whole thing very carefully. If you agree to the terms, please state so clearly via e-mail and include the template or templates, one for each item you wish to sell. Then we can work together to get your stuff priced and listed.
Stuff that is priced fairly — I offer pricing advice only to those who agree to the terms — usually sells in no time flat. Over the past years, we have sold many hundreds of items. Do know that prices for used gear only go in one direction. Down. You can always see the current listings by clicking here or on the Used Photo Gear tab on the orange-yellow menu bar near the top of each blog post page.
Sony a9 Mirrorless Camera Body
BIRDS AS ART Record Low Price
Sale Pending the first day of listing
Good friend and multiple IPT veteran Mark Hardymon is offering a Sony A9 Mirrorless Camera Body in near-mint condition for a BAA record-low $1,847.00 The sale includes the body cap, the strap, the original box, books, the USB cable, the charger with one battery, and insured ground shipping via major courier to lower 48 U.S. addresses only. Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made.
Please contact Mark via e-mail
The a9, the original AF king, offers superb autofocus that absolutely kills for bird photography; virtually every image is sharp on the eye. Many feel that the AF system on the a9 ii is no better. As the a9 ii sells new for $4498.00 you can save an incredible $2651.00 by grabbing Mark’s a9 right now! artie
Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS Lens
BIRDS AS ART Record Low Price
Good friend and multiple IPT veteran Mark Hardymon is offering a Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS lens in near-mint condition for the BAA record-low price of $1,348.00. The sale includes the front and rear lens caps, the factory soft case, the strap, the original box, the manuals, and insured ground shipping via major courier to lower 48 U.S. addresses only. Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made.
Please contact Mark via e-mail
The versatile 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses have long been big favorites of many nature photographers. They are great for landscapes. I have used this lens with Canon and Nikon and SONY. I used my Canon version to photograph granddaughter Maya’s dance recitals and to create bird-scapes and pre-dawn blast-off blurs at Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico. They are fast and sharp and have 1,000 uses. The 70-200 f/2.8 lenses are a specialty lens for bird photographers. Like the bad little child, when they are good, they are really, really good! I’ve used mine mostly for flight photography at point blank range where their performance is unmatched, especially in low light. I’ve killed with these lenses on the gannet boat in the UK, in Homer for eagles, for pre-dawn and blizzard blast-offs at Bosque, and at Merritt Island on single birds from huge feeding sprees right next to the road.
This super-fast lens weighs only 3.26 pounds and is easily hand holdable by just about everyone. As it sells new right now for $2,298.00, you can save a cool $800.00 by grabbing mark’s lens asap. artie
ps: To see what the 70-200 zoom lenses can do, see the images in the blog post here. artie
Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS Lens
BIRDS AS ART Record Low Price
Sale Pending the first day of listing
Good friend and multiple IPT veteran Mark Hardymon is offering a Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS lens in near-mint condition for a BAA record-low $1,297.00. The sale includes the front and rear lens caps, factory soft case, strap, original box, books, and insured ground shipping via major courier to lower 48 U.S. addresses only.
Item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made.
Please contact Mark via e-mail
This versatile, mega-close-focusing lens is easily hand holdable by most folks; it is much lighter than the 200-600 G lens. It is great for bird photography. I used mine often for flight photography, for head shots of silly-tame birds, and for large flowers, butterflies, frogs, and the like. It sells new for $2498.00 so you can save a handsome $1,2001.00 by grabbing Mark’s lens today. artie
Thanks all for your comments and suggestions. I may be getting back to some of you for help when the smoke clears. As far as the expense of data recovery, that is fortunately pretty much irrelevant to me. The laptop should be fine, unless the Fed Ex plane crashes.
Mentally, I am in pretty good shape and will be no matter the outcome. As far as cloud storage and backup, one of the problems here at ILE is that we have very slow internet with lots of promises but zero options at present. Please correct me if upload and download speeds have nothing to do with cloud storage.
with love, artie
BackBlaze is a great solution. I personally keep all my data files on an attached fast very small usb drive plugged into a fast port on my computer. That drive is backed up to MS’ cloud onedrive facility constantly and daily using acronis to another usb drive. So I have two backups (the cloud-ms’ onedrive and an usb drive).
Someone’s suggestion of using Backblaze is a good one instead on MS’s onedrive. There are major difference between the two. Backblaze is for offline backup of a computer only. Onedrive does that plus it is geared to allow one to access individual files online online as needed as if they were on your computer. Onedrive is designed to allow one to keep your files on it (meaning on the cloud) and not on your computer).
Perhaps Backblaze is a great place to start as you have a Mac and onedrive is a macrosoft thing. Your Mac most likely has a 10 or 20 fast C port so why not keep your images on a very fast small usb drive that you can move to a backup Mac if your primary mac crashes. You lose nothing. I don’t trust my very fast usb drive (it’s speed is 10 whatever) so I do backup’s as small usb drives fail like everything else. Bp
Good luck on recovering your data. That can be an expensive endeavor. Been there, done that, bought that t-shirt. I have backups to backups and like some others have no organization and finding a specific image for me is time consuming. Goal for ’22 is to get organized. (Would rather be out making images.)
James Saxon: That organization thing is a problem. I recently published a book of my photos (nothing to do with birds), and long before I got to that stage I had to figure out how to organize my images on that topic among thousands of folders going back to 2005. I can now find any image related to that topic in less than two minutes using hard copies of things, but I’d guess it took more than 100 hours of work to get to that stage and I bet I haven’t done it in nearly the most effective way.
Technology is great when it works, but when it doesn’t, it can be a pain in the rear, a very expensive one at times. I am keeping my fingers crossed that you will be up and running again in no time.
Thanks, Ron.
Human brains and bodies are great when they works, but when they don’t, it can be a pain in the rear end (and elsewhere), and very expensive at times.
with love, and don’t lock yourself out of the car!
artie
So sorry. These computer things take a huge chunk out of your time besides the worry of a lot of loss. I wish I had enough enough broadband power–just have DSL which is better than some other connections–to use BackBlaze.
In other words, I don’t know where the horses are. They could still be in the barn, but . . . .
Best of luck for recovery! (Your crisis reminds me that while I do have backup drives lying around, one of them off site, I’m not sure which has what, or what date they represent. Another area of my life in which I have lacked discipline.)
Good luck with the data. Happened to me last summer. The backup saved my bacon. At least most of it.
Sorry to hear that Artie. But, if you need to replace your laptop, you will be AMAZED at the speed of the M1 macs! DPP4 even runs fast on mine. 🙂
Thank you sir.
with love, artie
So sorry about your computer problems. Yes back up the back up – like suspenders and a belt. Just in case …. One time paying $3,000 to recover the hard drive is an expensive lesson.
Hoping for the best in getting your machine and images back. I keep an optical media copy of all my images (Blu-rays/DVDs) of all my work just in case my laptop and Drobo both go down and can’t be recovered.
So sorry to hear of your computer problems. I hope the data recovery is successful! A subscription to BackBlaze is worth every penny (ask me how I know)