The use of obsolete enterprise technology for data hoarding - my adventure with LTO.

Recently I acquired a lightly used older HP Microserver as it was being decommissioned. With that in my possession I looked at projects that I could use an “obsolete” piece of tech like that for. I figured that with the available (usually optical) drive space in the top of the unit that it could fit a half-height LTO drive and enable me to learn about tape archival and the fun that brings. I picked a HP SAS LTO4 drive and 128TB of LTO tape for less than the cost of a single new (shucked) 4TB drive. The reason that this is as cheap is because it is all used enterprise equipment that is past its useful lifespan for its original role.

I had a licence for Windows 10 that would install on it and tried that with z-dbackup as that looked to be a software solution that matched what I wanted to do with it closely. I paid for it but their licensing did not produce a key that I could use to enable it past the trial period for the z-datdump portion of the software. Despite spending money to get a licence for the software and leaving a support request on the 16th of April, as of writing this (19th of June), nothing but radio silence from the developer. I went looking for other solutions off the back of this.

My needs were fairly simple. I aim to make an archive of hoarded data that is easily retrievable and an indexing platform that holds metadata about the files stored as well as which tape(s) the data is hoarded to. I looked about at open source as well as closed source options but thankfully fell on P5 just as they were starting an offer because of the current global situation with Covid-19.

P5 has been created as a simple way for primarily media professionals (video production houses, photographers, etc) to store and create an archive that keeps their older work off of their more expensive hot storage solutions. Supplemental cold storage allowing them to keep and monetise work that would otherwise be costing money stored on something like a RAID system or not being archived properly, for example on loose hard drives in a drawer or on a shelf.

Archiware were offering the lightest version of their software completely free of charge to people who applied for it. Seeing as this fit homelab pricing significantly more than its original RRP of £1200 I was convinced to try it. They offered 3 months of support for free which is lovely but hasn’t been used as of yet. It installs on any platform easily. Currently my server is running Ubuntu as a foundation for it from a spare old SSD, with 3 spare 3.5” hard disks as scratch space to stage files before they’re archived onto tape. P5 serves up a web interface that allows management of the software remotely.

The only thing I have to do local to the machine is use an iPhone application to scan the barcodes that were already on the tapes and send that info to my mac when I’m putting the tapes in the drive. I’m sure I should be making bespoke labels for these tapes but quite frankly, the app was on my phone and I’m not going to re-apply stickers to boxes of tapes to make it slightly neater for a small-scale personal project.

LTO4 may be an older technology, but at the moment I’m going through roughly 1 or 2 tapes a week which isn’t a lot considering the storage space I’ve allocated to this project. The real bottleneck in my archival is the internet connection it’s running through. It has to share bandwidth with the rest of my kit at home. It’s been a fun, sometimes exasperating jaunt into obsolete enterprise hardware. I plan on creating quite the archival of data with it. It’ll become useful for myself as well as friends and family.

Photos with gravity

This week I shared a photo with family and friends that has more meaning than I intended it to have.

I’d recently bought myself a new 85mm lens, and of course I wanted to play with it. I‘d taken it to a family event, my grandad’s birthday. I didn’t take more than a dozen shots because when I got it I knew what I was looking at.

I saw the photograph on the back of the camera and it dawned on me what it would be used for. He was looking back at me with his natural smile, filling the frame.

It was bittersweet for me.

This week the photo was used at his funeral service. So many people were happy to see him smiling into their eyes again as he had so often done with them. I’m glad I could share that moment with people who needed to see it at the right time.

Alan Gray Sr 1930 - 2019

Adventures in gear acquisition syndrome

If you’re like me and got into photography because of an inherent need to master a new (to you) skill, hoarding of equipment can occasionally be a problem. Gear acquisition syndrome can be difficult to overcome but thankfully I managed to get out the other side. I started with a digital camera I borrowed, then bought off the owner (cheers, Ross) and slowly upgraded until I had more kit than I really knew how to use properly.

The first problem I found was that I had “covered all of the bases”. I quickly learned that I did better work when forced to think more. Prime (fixed focal length) lenses helped that considerably. My zooms that I’d amassed became quickly redundant when I started concentrating on the feeling of the photograph rather than going the easiest route to a capture. I’d argue this would be the tipping point for me between snapshots and work I was proud of. Although they were mostly unused, they serve as backup and do help, especially once I wasn’t just the only one using my kit.

I don’t want this to come across as another “prime lenses are better than zoom lenses” rant, as it’s not. I’m more trying to get to the point that if things work for you, go with that. I know plenty of people who shoot their best work with zooms and others that shoot theirs with their “toy” cameras.

I’ve always tried to have a certain percentage of my kit reserved to being for play. It really helps me expand on what I’m comfortable with. I keep my core equipment as a base but have experimented with additions such as a tilt/shift or super telephoto. Every pocket camera that I’ve cycled through has fallen under this bracket (until I settled on the Ricoh GR) as well as every film camera I’ve owned. Playing with odd equipment makes photography feel new and interesting to me and that’s one of the ways I’ve found to stop it from getting stale.

I moved through kit based on how much cash was tied up in any specific addition to the roster versus how much use it got. Sentimental kit stuck. I have had pangs to repurchase occasionally but there’s usually been a good reason things haven’t stuck about. If you buy smart with “toy” camera equipment then it’s fairly easy to break even or thereabouts. I bought the 45mm tilt/shift because I wanted some autonomy for a college class that covered architectural photography. When I looked into rentals for the time period that I’d be wanting to use the lens for, I quickly realised that buying it was a better prospect.

The hole that most people seem to dig themselves into with gear is thinking that X will make them produce better work and Y will let them book more clients. It’s a bit like a sunk cost fallacy, the more you sink into it the more you’re worthy of success, in love, life or any endeavour. I had a recent conversation with a friend who wanted to upgrade their camera to the latest and greatest (I won’t go naming names). He’s a lot like myself in this regard and is a total nerd. I can see a lot of myself a few years ago in how he’s acquiring both equipment but also ability.

This post has sat for a few weeks unfinished because I don’t really know if there’s anything to say in this space other than not to overdo your budget, photography is fine to play with as a hobby as well as a skill and to take what you want to from it whenever you feel like it.

Pi-hole

I recently added a raspberry pi to my network with the intention of making a decent home VPN. Once that was done I looked at what else I could do with the tiny £30 credit card sized computer and came across pi-hole. The service replaces your DNS server on your network with some light configuration on the router and causes a large percentage of tracking and ad content to fall to a localhost death.

I’ve found it blocks ads on various services that wouldn’t otherwise have adblocking capability, Apple TV and various mobile apps for example.

Set up in less than 10 minutes, if you’ve got the time and don’t like ads it’s got the nod from me.

pi-hole.net

Canon EOS R

Before I start on this I want to lay it out there that I worked for Canon a few years ago - none of this information was anything that I was privy to and they aren’t paying me to say anything about any of their products.

Functionally, SLR cameras have been the same since at least since the 5d mark 1 came out way back in 2005. This and a massive shift in the way people have been taking photos since then really hasn’t done much to the industry as a whole, yet. I’d argue that in the next few years the low end of the market will nearly fall away to nothing as computational photography expands through mobile phone upgrade cycles. Camera manufacturers have been forced to innovate for the first time in a generation and the result is the mirrorless camera.

So, mirrorless is the future, that is something that not just the industry of camera manufacturers as well as many working professionals have decided. The advantages are obvious - a live preview of the exposure as well as the composition is the main one, but several other small bonuses like peaking and more algorithmic based AF routines (eye-af/advanced subject tracking) are also very important and are going to continue becoming more important as the years go on.

Canon was late to the game, as, historically they’ve been in terms of technological shifts for at least the past decade. Their size, compared to their competition probably fuels much of this, as well as their aim to make sure they get it right (just about) first time. Let’s ignore the EOS-M for now, and probably forever after.

The elephant in the room is Sony. They started their major push into their photographic world with the NEX 3/5 way back in 2010 and have been pushing their system for quite a while now. While it was a bit of a joke for the first years with all the Sony trappings (more bodies than lenses for quite a while as well as a non-existent professional body or service department) they’ve really turned things around and many have been using their full-frame bodies with adaptors for their Canon glass or have transitioned fully over to the Sony A mount completely. Even their professional services seem to be slowly trickling into existence which is nice to see.

Canon hasn’t really set the world on fire with the launch of their take on the space but I don’t think that’s a major problem for them at the moment. The space is still in its infancy - they’re looking still at their high end and low end camera offering and feeling that they’re in good places and will remain the way through at least 2021. Their mirrorless offering will advance with the market in time and I’d imagine will fill more of the niches that aren’t currently served by their current offerings, both higher and lower end than they are at present.

It will get to the point where their “rebel / xxxD / kiss” lineup isn’t a decent value and consumers just don’t want to buy them at all due to the size of the sensor being outdated and the abilities of their mobile phones taking on the quality of all but the highest end cameras. I feel something similar to the recent RP will fill that niche albeit at a slightly inflated price/margin. Canon has alluded to this in financial documents recently as well.

The current iteration of the EOS R does a lot right - ergonomically they’re not the best cameras they’ve ever released but they do stand up to both the 6d and the Sony/Nikon offerings in the same space. Their implementation of the software for eye-AF isn’t as good as Sony’s at the moment either but it does work well enough for a first generation product in my eyes. I’m a big fan of the adaptor selection for previous EOS system lenses. They’re able to be used natively on the camera and a few have neat features that go beyond just fan-service.

Image quality is nothing better than the current round of full frame cameras from Canon and as someone who’s still shooting a camera two generations behind and getting results I enjoy - I’m sure if you’re not getting exactly what you need out of the camera, either you know where else to get it or you’re using it wrong.

Time will tell with their push into a new frontier but I think they did enough right the first time they did a full frame mirrorless system that they’ll be able to push that into the future fairly easily. With sensor-shifting image stabilisation and a raft of new high-end lenses coming I think that the tipping point for most will be a natural evolution from their standard upgrade cycle, especially as all EF lenses are supported.

I’m looking forward to seeing where it takes their offering and I’m all for seeing what the increased competition in the space does for all players in the space. A rising tide and whatnot. As long as I can use my 85mm 1.2 on it, I’m sure I’ll be happy.

Hello World 6.0

I’ve had a website of some sort since my teens and have always found them a reliable way to get me to rant. I’m giving it another bash on this one because I had slightly ignored this page for a while. I think this will be a decent way to get back into it.

I’m aiming to make this a place that I can ramble away into the ether about anything and everything that I see and enjoy, for talking about shoots and general nerd stuff. For the first bit I’ll start this off as a private endeavour and move on to posting publicly once I’ve found the voice I want to talk in.